She was training to be a teacher. Thatwas the biggest joke of it all. Imagine someone like her, being allowed to bearound children. To be entrusted with their education, with looking after them.A position of trust like that for someone like her.
The world was going to be much betteroff without her in it.
For now, there was nothing that he coulddo but wait. He had his research, and he liked to spend his spare time lookingpeople up, rooting out the evil that threatened everything if he did nothingabout it. He had plenty to occupy his time.
And tonight, when it was time for her toend her shift, he would be there. Watching. Waiting. Ready to cleanse the worldof her sins.
CHAPTER NINE
Zoe waited for the search operation torun, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms over her chest.
“Got anything yet?” Shelley asked.
“Give the system a minute,” Zoe said.She was still feeling a little grouchy from earlier, and she was toocomfortable around Shelley to bother to hide it. “This is not a movie. Thingsactually take time to process here.”
“All right, all right,” Shelley said. “I’mjust excited. This could be a big lead.”
Zoe eyed her darkly, wondering howsomeone could swing from emotion to emotion so powerfully. How Shelley could bedistraught and brought to the verge of tears when viewing a body orinterviewing a loved one, then as excited as a schoolchild at the prospect ofgetting the case solved.
The screen in front of her blinked,drawing her attention back as a list of results flooded back onto it. It seemedthat their second victim, Callie Everard, had been a busy girl for a few years.There were multiple records of her in the local police precinct’s system,including a couple of arrests for possession of illicit substances.
“Here we are,” Zoe said. “She wasinterviewed a few times about the death of one Clay Jackson. That must be him.”
“Clay Jackson? All right,” Shelleyrepeated, typing in her own search on the computer that had been brought intotheir temporary investigation room.
It was exhausting sometimes, workinglike this. Always on the move from city to city. Just managing to get settledin and then going off somewhere else. Coming back only for the court dates,which were always unwanted and inevitably inconvenient.
Zoe clicked his name on the system to gothrough to the records of the investigation. She was still waiting for the pageto load in when Shelley spoke up. To the surprise of none, any and all searchengines on the internet worked quicker than the county police system.
“Here’s something. Clay Jackson memorialsocial media page. It has a smattering of posts every year on the anniversaryof his death and birthdays, but there’s pictures, too. He had a lot of tattoos.”
“A lot?”
“More than Callie. And I think I mightrecognize one or two of them as having particular street meaning. This gangtheory could hold some water.”
Zoe snorted, shaking her head. She gotup to look over Shelley’s shoulder, taking in the images of Clay Jackson. Hewas six foot one, a hundred and forty pounds in his last images. Strung out, barelyeating between fixes. He had the look of someone who had been fit and healthy,muscular, before his addiction took over his life. He was slowly shrinking inthe photographs. He had never followed that course through to its conclusion—hewas killed midway through the transformation.
“Why do criminals do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Mark themselves out for us. Make iteasy with their gang tattoos.”
“I don’t think that’s the point of thepractice,” Shelley said, giving her a wry smile over her own shoulder. “It’ssocial conformity. Showing that you belong to a particular group. Sometimes,the boost of loyalty and companionship that someone gets from that sense ofbelonging overrides the need to protect themselves or the logic to avoidarrest.”
“I would never get a gang tattoo. Evenif it was a requirement for joining the gang. In fact, especially so if thatwas the case. What a stupid rule to have.”
Shelley swiveled her chair slightly,giving Zoe an amused look now. “You wouldn’t join a gang anyway, would you? Itwould require a lot of small talk. I don’t think you would like that.”
“I would not get a tattoo under anycircumstance, anyway,” Zoe replied, pointing out the other part of the problemwith what she had said. “I do not understand why anyone would. What couldpossibly be so significant that it requires inking onto the body in a permanentfashion?”
“You really don’t like tattoos, do you?”
Zoe couldn’t tell if Shelley waslaughing at her or not. “They are a mark of lower intelligence. Offenders arefar more statistically likely to have tattoos than law-abiding citizens are. Andafter time passes, they inevitably look stupid. Why are you smiling like that?”
“Because there’s something about me thatyou don’t know.” Shelley pushed her chair a little way back from her desk andlifted her foot up onto the seat of her chair. Before Zoe had a chance toprotest or ask her what she was doing, Shelley had lifted up the hem of hertrousers to reveal the bare skin on her lower leg.
A miniature poppy was etched there, inbrilliant red and black, almost realistic enough for Zoe to think she couldreach out and pluck it.
“You have a tattoo?” Zoe said, eventhough it was stating the obvious. It was too much of a shock. She would neverhave imagined Shelley to be someone who would defile her body with ink.
“Still looks pretty good, I think,”Shelley said. She was smiling, and though Zoe thought it might begood-naturedly, she couldn’t completely tell. “I got it when I was in college.My grandmother’s name was Poppy. After she passed, I thought it might be a niceway to remember her.”
Zoe returned to her own chair and sankdown into it. She felt like the wind had been blown out of her sails. “Do youhave any others?”
“No,” Shelley laughed. “This one hurtlike hell. I swore off them after that.”
“I did not know about… this part of you.”
“What part? The criminal, lowintelligence part?”
Zoe swallowed. She may have
