Parting Shot Read online

  Albert went very quiet. Monica slipped an arm around him, patted his far shoulder. “I love you, Dad.”

  He said nothing.

  At the far end of the hall, Constance appeared. She walked briskly in their direction.

  “There you are,” she said. “I was looking all over.”

  “What’s happening?” Monica asked.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to know what happened to you two.”

  “We’re talking,” Monica said.

  Constance said, “I want to speak to that policeman again. What was his name?”

  “Duckworth,” Monica said. “I think.”

  Albert stood, took a moment, then walked past his wife without looking at her.

  “And just where are you going?”

  “I’m going to see my son,” he said without looking back.

  “Yes, you should do that,” she snapped.

  When Albert got back to the ward attached to the ER and found his son’s curtained examining room, he paused for a moment.

  Steeled himself.

  He whisked back the curtain.

  The bed was empty. Brian’s clothes, which had been on the chair, were gone.

  Albert went to the nurses’ station a few steps away and asked whether his son had been moved to a room or taken somewhere for tests.

  “I think I just saw him walk by,” the nurse said. “Far as I know, he hasn’t been discharged. But come to think of it, he was all dressed.”

  Albert ran down to the ER, then out through the sliding glass doors to the bay where the ambulances pulled up.

  There was no sign of Brian.

  His son was gone.

  ELEVEN

  BARRY Duckworth sent a text to his son Trevor: Need to see you.

  He hit Send and stared at the phone for the better part of a minute, waiting to see whether Trevor would respond right away. Sometimes, when Barry sent him a message, Trevor got back immediately. But just as often, he could take an hour or two, or even into the next day, to reply. Of course, it was less of an issue now that he was living with them. Sometimes Duckworth would see his son in person and simply ask him what he wanted to know. To Trevor’s credit, Duckworth thought, he was not a slave to his phone the way some people were. He often muted it and didn’t check for messages of any kind until the end of the day.

  After that minute, Duckworth decided not to spend any more time waiting.

  He definitely wanted to talk to Trevor about being at Knight’s. Was it possible he’d seen anything? He’d left the bar only a few seconds after Brian Gaffney. But in the meantime, there were other things he could do.

  Phone still in hand, he looked up tattoo parlors in Promise Falls. There were three listed: Mike’s Tattoos, Kinky Inky, and Dreamy Tatts.

  Kinky Inky was just up the street from Knight’s, so he walked it. But when he got there, he found a sign in the window that read: Out of Bizness. Thanx for your Patronage.

  He made his hand into a visor and peered through the smudged window. The place had been cleared out. No chairs, no tables, nothing.

  Hitting the other two parlors meant getting back into his car. Dreamy Tatts was seven blocks away, sharing a small plaza with a 7-Eleven and a wig shop. As he approached the door, he encountered another sign: CLOSED. He had missed Dreamy Tatts’ business hours by ten minutes. He made a mental note that the place would reopen at noon the next day.

  That only left Mike’s, and Duckworth figured it might be closed too. But eight minutes later, when he rolled to a stop behind a black van out front of a shop sandwiched between a comic book shop and a lawnmower repair place, he got lucky. A neon OPEN sign lit up a window that was decorated with dozens of sample tattoos.

  He went inside and immediately heard the high-pitched buzzing sounds of a tattoo gun. A blonde-haired woman in her mid-twenties, dressed in jeans and a red short-sleeved T-shirt, surprisingly free of any visible tattoos but with several studs in her ears, sat behind a simple desk with a computer on top of it. She was engaged in conversation with a man who was perched on the edge of the desk, pointing out something to her on the computer screen.

  She eyed Duckworth with sleepy eyes and said, “Cop?”

  Duckworth grinned. “Is it that obvious?”

  The man turned and looked at him with sudden awareness. “Whoa, I’ve seen you on the news.”

  “Yeah, that’s where I’ve seen you, too,” the woman said.

  “Ah, well, that’s cheating,” Duckworth said. “It’s not like you’ve got some sort of sixth sense.” He flashed his ID. “Detective Duckworth, Promise Falls Police.”

  The man slid his butt off the desk and grinned. “I think even if we hadn’t seen you on TV, we’d know what you do for a living.”

  Duckworth gave him a quick look. Early thirties, two hundred pounds, short reddish hair and round cheeks. He peered at Duckworth through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, and was dressed in tan khakis and a dark blue shirt with a button-down collar. No visible tattoos on him, either. He seemed out of place here, the detective thought. A little too clean-cut. He reminded Duckworth of Howdy Doody, that rosy-cheeked, red-haired cowboy puppet from the fifties TV show. Which was even before Duckworth’s time, but some American icons had staying power.

  “What gives it away that I’m a cop?” Duckworth asked.

  “You just have the look,” the man said.

  “Come on, Cory, it’s not that obvious,” the woman said.

  Cory shook his head. “First of all, you don’t look like someone who’s here for a tattoo.”

  Duckworth nodded. “You’re right about that.” He smiled. “And you don’t look to me like a guy who’d make his living as a tattoo artist.”

  Cory grinned. “You got me.” He stood back and crossed his arms, as though issuing a challenge. “What do you think I do?”

  Duckworth thought a moment. “Computer programmer.”

  Cory’s mouth dropped. “Whoa, that’s not bad. I mean, that’s not what I do, but I spend a lot of time on the computer.”

  “What do you do?” Duckworth asked.

  “I guess I’m what you’d call a social activist,” Cory said. “Causes and stuff.”

  “Good for you,” Duckworth said.

  The girl behind the desk said, “Cory, for the love of God, stop talking. Can I help you, Mr. Policeman?”

  Duckworth said, “What’s your name?”

  “Dolores. Like from Seinfeld.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know. The girl whose name rhymes with a female body part.”

  Duckworth said, “I never watched that show.”

  “Seriously?” said Cory.

  “Seriously.”

  “Wow. I didn’t think there was anyone who hadn’t seen it,” Dolores said. “I mean, I was barely born when it came on, but even I’ve seen all the episodes. Anyway, my friends call me Dolly.”

  “Hi, Dolly.”

  “So what can I do for you?”

  Duckworth pointed up at the Mike’s Tattoos sign. “I’d like to see Mike.”

  “Hang on.”

  She disappeared through a door into a back room where the buzzing noise was coming from. The tattoo gun ceased making a noise, and Dolly said, “Hey, Mike, there’s a cop here who’s never seen Seinfeld who wants to talk to you.”

  “Sure,” a man said. “Send him round.”

  Dolly reappeared and waved Duckworth in her direction. “The doctor will see you now,” she said, smirking.

  Cory gave Dolly a wave and said, “See ya.” Then, to Duckworth, “Good luck catching the bad guys.”

  Duckworth gave him an upturned thumb as Cory left the shop, then followed Dolly into the back of the store. Mike, a thin, bearded man in his thirties wearing a pair of magnifying goggles, was hunched over a heavyset guy about twice that age sitting in what looked like a barber’s chair. It was leaned back to about forty-five degrees to allow Mike to work comfortably on the man’s upper arm. The tattoo was a nice rendering of a waterfal
l—about three inches long—and below it, the numbers 5-23-16.

  Below that, the words: I SURVIVED.

  “Hey,” Mike said, not taking his eyes off his work.

  Duckworth said, “Hi.” Then, “That’s some tattoo.” There was no approval in his voice.

  The man in the chair smiled. “You get it, right?”

  “I get it,” Duckworth said.

  “May twenty-third of last year,” he said. “I didn’t drink the water.”

  “Lucky you.”

  Dolly pointed to the tattoo. “Jeez, Mike, shouldn’t the 23 be first, and then the 5?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mike said, suddenly looking worried. He glanced at his customer. “That’s the way you wanted it, right?”

  “You got it.”

  “Whew. You scared me for a sec, Dolly.”

  Mike finally looked at Duckworth. “What can I do ya for?” He moved the magnifying goggles up to his hairline.

  “I want to show you something,” Duckworth said, getting out his phone. He tapped the screen and brought up the picture he’d taken of Gaffney. “Do you know this man?”

  Mike studied it for three seconds. “Nope.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure. Dolly, you recognize that dude?”

  Dolores gave the picture a long look, pursed her lips, and said, “Can’t say that I do.”

  “I have another picture,” Duckworth said. He brought up the picture of Gaffney’s back, then held the phone in Mike’s direction.

  “Jesus, what am I looking at?” He slid the magnifying glasses back down, studied the shot, then raised them again.

  “What the fuck is that?” he asked.

  “That’s someone’s idea of a tattoo,” the detective said. “Recognize the handiwork?”

  “Are you kidding me? That’s a goddamn abortion you got there. May I?” He was asking to hold the phone to get a better look. He set the tattoo gun down and, using thumb and forefinger, blew up the image to examine the details. “Is this for real? Someone actually got this tattoo?”

  “Lemme see?” said Dolly. Mike handed her the phone. “Whoa. This guy should definitely get his money back.”

  The guy in the chair wanted a peek, too. “Man, please don’t do that to me.”

  Duckworth took his phone back and asked his question again, in a slightly different way. “You any idea who might have done this?”

  Mike had his own question. “Why would someone get a tatt like that?”

  “It wasn’t voluntary,” Duckworth said.

  Mike’s eyes went wide. “Someone did that without his permission?”

  “That’s fuckin’ crazy,” Dolly said.

  “How could someone sit still that long and let someone do that to him?” Mike wanted to know.

  Duckworth felt he’d told them enough already. “So you don’t know whose work this might be?”

  “I’d say a four-year-old did it,” Mike said. “That’s how bad it is. This is not the work of a professional. This is amateur night.”

  “Do a lot of amateurs do tattoo work?”

  “They sure as hell shouldn’t,” Mike said.

  “You ever lend out your equipment?” Duckworth asked, nodding at the tattoo gun in Mike’s hand.

  “God, no way. I’d never—” He stopped himself mid-sentence.

  “What?”

  “Dolly, when did we have that thing?”

  “Thing?”

  “That night someone got in here?”

  Dolly thought. “That was, like, two weeks ago? I think.”

  “You had a break-in?” Duckworth asked.

  Mike shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Not exactly. We each thought the other person had locked up, and the back door got left open one night. At first we didn’t think anything had been stolen, but a couple days later I noticed one of the guns and some other stuff was missing. Figured it happened that night.”

  “It was my bad,” Dolly said. “I shoulda checked.”

  “How hard would it be for someone to work out how to do what you do?”

  “Well, if they got the stuff they needed, they could do it,” Mike said. “They just couldn’t do a very good job. I mean, I’m an artist, you know?” He nodded toward the waterfall on the man’s shoulder.

  “Sure.”

  “You wouldn’t figure a guy who stole some paint and a few brushes could turn out the Mona Lisa, would you?”

  Duckworth took another look at the tattoo on the customer’s arm. “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “What I don’t get,” Dolly said, “is how you could do something like that without the guy lettin’ ya.”

  “’Cause it hurts like a son of a bitch,” offered the man in the chair.

  “Did you call the police about the tattoo gun that was stolen?” Duckworth asked.

  Mike made a snorting noise. “Honestly, how much effort would the Promise Falls Police have put into that?”

  Duckworth nodded, taking his point. He thought about Knight’s and asked, “You got cameras?”

  Mike shook his head. “Hell, no. I got a lot of clientele wouldn’t even come in here if they knew they were on video.”

  “Like bikers?”

  “Bikers? No, I’m talking upstanding leaders of the community, housewives, people like that. People who think they’re too respectable.” He grinned. “They get tatts in some pretty interesting places. Kind of a challenge gettin’ at some of those places, let me tell you.”

  Dolly smirked.

  “Thanks for your time,” Duckworth said.

  As he was heading for the door, the guy in the chair asked, “Who’s the Sean that sick fuck killed?”

  “Workin’ on that,” the detective said.

  Getting into his car, he thought it interesting that he was the only one who’d thought to ask.

  Once behind the wheel, he took out his phone again and called up the picture he’d taken of the van parked in the driveway of Mrs. Beecham’s house. He memorized the plate, then called in to the communications division at the station. A woman answered.

  “Shirley?” Duckworth said.

  “Yes, it is. That you, Barry?”

  “Yeah. I need you to run a plate for me.”

  “Barry, when you gonna get one of those computers for your car like the real police have?”

  “Are you ready?”

  “Fire away.”

  He closed his eyes and read off the combination of letters and numbers.

  “Hang on,” Shirley said. He could hear her typing in the background. “Okay, got it.”

  “Who does it belong to?”

  “Van’s registered to a Norma Howton.”

  “Spell that last name?”

  She did.

  “So, not Norma Lastman,” Duckworth said.

  “Nope,” Shirley said. “Anything else I can do for you today? Book you a cruise to Tahiti? Order you a pizza?”

  “No, that’ll do,” Duckworth said.

  TWELVE

  CAL

  “YOU’RE gonna have to buy me a new phone,” Jeremy Pilford told me from the passenger seat.

  We were pulling out of the parking lot of the burger place. I glanced in my rear-view to see Jeremy’s girlfriend backing out of her spot in her red Miata, grinding the gears slightly as she did so.

  “She’s something,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Charlene. She seems to believe in you.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “Been friends a long time?”

  “Pretty much forever, I guess.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  He gave me a pained look. “You already asked me the going-steady question.”

  “Which you really didn’t answer.”

  “You’re like my mom. You’re all hung up on labels. Is she a girlfriend. She’s a friend. Sometimes we’re closer than at other times.”

  “Regardless of how close you are right now, you shouldn’t have called her or let her know where you are.”<
br />
  “What?”

  “I think the word you were looking for there is ‘pardon.’ Or perhaps a question, along the lines of, oh, Mr. Weaver, why would you say that?”

  “You think you’re funny, don’t you?” Jeremy asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m saving my best stuff for later. Anyway, since you’re not going to ask, I’ll tell you. You’ve got a target on your back. Now, if you want to be stupid and let the world know where you are, that’s one thing. But when you invited Charlene up here to join you, you put her at risk. You want to get her killed?”

  He shot me a look. “No one’s going to kill me.”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  “I’m not scared.”

  It was my turn to shoot him a look. “Then what was that I saw earlier?”

  “When?”

  “On the porch of Ms. Plimpton’s house.”

  “Huh?”

  “The look in your eyes. I know what I saw.”

  “What did you see?”

  “You looked scared to me.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m fucking shaking in my boots.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Look, I know the whole world’s been calling you a big baby and you want to show that you’re not. I get that. But the fact is, a little bit of fear is a good thing. It makes you smarter. It makes you pay attention. Now, all I’m being hired to do is have a look at your level of security, and right now I’d say it’s zero. A good portion of the blame goes to you and your mother for being too free with what you say online. You might as well have put a billboard on your grandmother’s front lawn advertising your arrival. Part of you wants to bust out and party, but part of you knows you may actually be in danger. That’s what I saw when I looked at you on the porch.”

  Jeremy didn’t say anything for several seconds. “Maybe. But only a little.”

  “Whatever. You’re a soldier.”

  “You gonna buy me a new phone?”

  “No.”

  He thought about that. “Bob will.”

  “There you go. I thought you didn’t like him.”

  Jeremy looked out his window. “I don’t know. I guess he’s okay.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “He’s some big real-estate guy. Has properties all over the place. He’s always doing deals. Always waiting for the really, really big one, like the one he did with, you know.”