Flowering Judas(35)

“This is the fingers of the left hand,” Gregor said. “There’s nothing on them. Nothing. There isn’t even a ring, or indentations saying he usually wore a ring. Nothing. It’s just the hand, sitting there, looking like a hand. Oh, except a little too white for comfort. Did I tell you the guy had piercings? So far, I’ve found the holes for a nipple ring and an actual penis ring, which was lovely. Oh, and he’s got a Death Eater tattoo on the inside of his left arm. I’ll have to thank Tibor for taking me to all those Harry Potter movies.”

“Isn’t that odd, that he had the piercings for a nipple ring and he didn’t have the nipple ring? I mean don’t you have to keep those up or they fill in or get infected or something?”

“I don’t know,” Gregor said. He flipped back through the pictures until he found the one of the right nipple. He tried to get a good look at the piercing holes. He held the picture up to the light. He turned it sideways. He put it down again.

“Gregor?” Bennis said.

“I’m here.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a tattoo,” he said.

“You’re not making any sense,” Bennis said. “He got some messages written into his body in a tattoo? What?”

“No,” Gregor said. “No, the first time I saw it, I thought it was—I mean, there aren’t any other tattoos on the chest that I can see so far, and I wasn’t really paying attention, and—”

“Good,” Bennis said. “You sound interested in something. That’s all I ask. I want you to be interested in something that isn’t old George for a while.”

3

If there was one thing Gregor Demarkian had learned in all his years of doing this kind of work, in the FBI and out of it, it was this: It wasn’t a good thing to jump to conclusions, but it was usually the case that things were what they seemed. Either the master criminal was a myth, or he was never caught, and they knew nothing about him. Real-life criminals, the kind that got arrested every day, rarely found themselves thinking straight, even when they thought they were. He could think of maybe three ordinary murders in all his career where the answer hadn’t been screamingly obvious from the first. Serial killers were harder, but only because they picked their victims quasi at random. Although that wasn’t completely true, either. Most of the serial killers Gregor had run into over the years had ended up having a personal connection with one of their victims. The only real question had been which one.

He picked up the photograph again. He held it under the light again. He pulled over the desk lamp so that the light was shining directly at what he wanted to see. There was no doubt about it. There was a tattoo. It was a very small tattoo. It was also a bright, vivid red. He put the photograph down.

Most things were what they seemed. Suicides were suicides. Murders were murders. People killed out of blind rage or jealousy or the need for money or just because it was Tuesday. They did not run around making evil plans to conquer the world. They did run around making plans to get away with what they were doing, but those plans almost never worked.

Gregor picked up his cell phone again, went through the contacts directory, and found the number for Howard Androcoelho. He liked this new cell phone better than the old iPhone, which he had never been able to figure out how to use properly. He wasn’t sure he really knew how to use this Propel thing, but at least he could use it as a phone.

There were two numbers for Howard Androcoelho. One of them would be for the office. The other would be for the cell. Gregor had no idea which was which, so he clicked on the first one.

The phone rang and rang, and was picked up by a woman with a nasal voice. “Mattatuck Police Department, central station,” the voice said.

Gregor let that pass—“Central station”?—Who had a central station?—and said, “This is Gregor Demarkian. I’m returning Howard Androcoelho’s call.”

There was a little pause. There was talking in the background. Gregor was surprised he could hear it. One of the things he liked least about cell phones was that it was almost always impossible for him to hear what was going on in the background.

The background noise stopped. The nasal voice said, “I’ll put you through.”

Then Howard Androcoelho was suddenly on the line, sounding agitated. “Mr. Demarkian? Thank you for calling. Are you in town? Did you get here all right? Are you at the Howard Johnson?”

“Yes,” Gregor said, feeling that he needed to be patient to a fault. “I’m at the Howard Johnson. I got your package.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Howard Androcoelho said. “That’s very good. They’re usually really okay over there, but then I got worried that I was wrong about the motel, the hotel, I don’t know what to call anything these days. Do you want to come in to the station? I could set you up with some people, some of us who were here when the disappearance happened, you know, and some of us who caught the stuff last week. I figure, the more people you talk to, the more you know about all this—”