No worries there.
Evan’s voice broke through. “Sydney?”
“Sorry.” I pulled up the mark the killers had left on Noah. “They tattooed this on his arm around the same time they carved words into his flesh. A day or two before they killed him.”
He studied the photo and nodded. “Man rightfully over woman. Unfortunately, not an unusual conviction. You mentioned a girlfriend. What does she say?”
“We haven’t found her yet.” I gripped my glass, watched the crystal shimmer with reflected light, the amber liquid within deepen toward crimson. “But there’s something else. When Noah drew Ami, he sketched a symbol on her shirt. Would you take a look? One of our detectives tried to find it in our tattoo book, but no luck.”
“You had me at symbol.”
I placed the drawing of Ami and the photo of Noah’s tattoo on the coffee table. Evan picked them up.
“It might be a representation of the letter P,” he said. “Do you have something I can write on?”
I grabbed paper and pen from the writing desk near the windows. Outside, the trees were hunched before the wind like old men. I glanced at the doorway. Still no sign of Cohen or Bandoni.
I returned to the chairs.
Evan knuckled his hand under his chin. “What do you know about this woman?”
“Only that her name is Ami, spelled with an i. And she might have worked cleaning houses.”
“She’s Latina?”
“From El Salvador.”
“Ah. Interesting.” Evan picked up a pen. “I’m just theorizing, you understand?”
“I live for conjecture.”
“Aminta is a common Salvadoran name. It means protector. The word for protector in Spanish also starts with the letter P. Protectora. Since this emblem is on her shirt, much like the Superman logo, perhaps we can imagine it is intended as the letter P. Because”—he drew a curved line on the paper—“it is identical to the Semitic, or Phoenician, form of the letter.”
“Why would they choose a letter from the Phoenician alphabet?”
“Creativity, perhaps. Or curiosity. Or because it is the oldest verifiable alphabet. The Semitic form of P, or Pe, is the origin form for the letter P in all other alphabets. Greek. Latin. Even Cyrillic.”
“Maybe they were making a superhero origin story.”
“That is one possibility.”
“If they were creating their own superhero, the Protector,” I said. “Who did they intend to protect?”
Evan spread his hands. “That, I have no hypothesis for.”
My mind plucked at the various strings of the investigation, trying to pull them into a hummable tune. A housecleaner from El Salvador. Her boyfriend, a man who’d gone from geek to pickup artist to feminist. A man who called himself Craze, who’d taken over Noah’s pickup artists and who inspired disgust in Todd and perhaps fear in the gutter punk Kelly, a.k.a. Damn Fox.
Then there was the handsome, athletic Donovan. I sighed. What, if anything, did he have to do with these other strings?
Ami the housecleaner. Kaylee had said she didn’t recognize her in Noah’s drawing. But even if Ami had worked at Top-A, she might have quit before Kaylee moved into the supervisor’s position.
I pictured the three women at Top-A Cleaning. Helen, Lupita, and Erica. Erica glaring over privileged white men. Firmly denying she’d been harassed even as the heat in her voice said otherwise.
Evan cleared his throat. “I fear the house has swallowed our compatriots.”
I pulled myself back into the present. “Clyde and I’ll go see what’s keeping them.”
He slid off his chair. “Not without me.”
I touched Clyde to get his attention. When his eyes were on mine, I said, “Find Cohen!”
The hallway was a labyrinth of shadows, lit only by softly glowing sconces. But Clyde trotted confidently toward the other end of the house. We passed the front door, now closed. Soothing green lights glowed on the alarm panel. The marble near the door was wet, and raindrops had left ghostly prints on the walls. Two pairs of damp footprints led away, into the gloom.
A few feet along, a glow appeared.
“The kitchen,” I said.
Clyde rushed ahead.
When we entered, Cohen and Bandoni were huddled over the center island, looking at something.
I noticed first that they were both drenched. Next, that their hands were gloved. Then my eyes moved past them to the island where a fist-size rock, a crumpled piece of paper, and a thick rubber band marred the otherwise empty expanse of granite.
Written in block letters on the paper were the words Have a nice day!
Bandoni rubbed his jowls. His bloodshot eyes met mine. “I saw a light near your Tahoe and went to check it out. The rock was in the driver’s seat, wrapped up with the paper.”
“But the car was—” Realization dawned. “He broke a window.”
“Sorry, rookie. We looked around, but the asshole was gone.”
“The rain was too heavy for the camera to catch anything,” Cohen said. “But there’s been a run of minor vandalism in the neighborhood. Smashed mailboxes. Broken lights. It’s either someone local or someone coming in over the neighborhood’s perimeter wall.”
“The seats—” I began.
“We taped plastic over the hole.” Cohen’s dark hair was plastered to his skull, his white shirt transparent with rain. “It’ll hold until the glass-repair guy gets here. He’s on his way.”
The elevator with its scratched note and dangling handcuffs rose like a vision in front of me. The phallus carved into the paneling. And drawn in the dirt on the door of the Tahoe.
The naked Barbie doll tied to the chassis.
And a dark-blue cargo van.
Smile! I’m watching you!
Bandoni eyeballed me. “This note put you in mind of the words left near the Donovan crime scene?”
I nodded.
Cohen frowned. “What words?”
My hands had drifted up to grip my upper arms. “A pair of handcuffs were left in an elevator next to the words Smile! I’m watching you. Along with a sketch of a penis.
