Another loud rap at the front, this onemaking him jump, making him catch his breath.
“Naomi! Come on, open up! I want to gethome and eat!”
Then a sound he recognized, even thoughthe door was closing, even though he could no longer see.
The letterbox squeaking open with agroan of complaining metal.
And then, because he was outside now andthere were no walls between him and the coworker, only fresh air that couldtravel around the side of a building, he heard it.
A gasp, startled and strangled.
An “Oh, god,” quick and strained.
A “Naomi!” yelled at full volume, andthe sound of scuffling for a better view. A half-scream, a gasp for air after agag.
And then the inevitable: “Hello? I needan ambulance!”
He was calling 911, and there was no waythe man could remain there any longer. There would not be another opportunity.Soon this place would be crawling with cops, paramedics, all of it. He would bein trouble if he stayed.
He made a decision, the only one. Nomore hesitation now. He ran for the fence and jumped it, going for speed andheight this time, not stealth. He felt the jarring pain as his feet hit theground hard, then pushed off into a run, pushing past the startled coworker andhoping he would remember only a flash of a dark coat and not his face.
And he ran, not stopping to look behindhim, darting down side streets and zigzagging, not stopping for as long as hedared, the cold air snatching at his breath with every step.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Zoe barely noticed the passage of time.She only knew that she had to get up at a certain point to turn on the lampbeside her temporary desk, around the same time that Shelley went out to go andreserve them a room at a motel.
She couldn’t stop, couldn’t draw herselfaway from the tattoos for long enough to think about anything else. Not even tothink about whether she was hungry or tired or cold or aching. Nothing. Therehad to be some kind of answer here. She didn’t know how she knew it, but therewas a pattern—a certain symbolism—something.
If only it had been written in thenumbers, she could have found it easily. The six-inch length of this tattoo,the four ink colors used in that one, the number of tattoos each of the victimshad. She could have given any of those facts off the top of her head, withouthaving to think about it. They had sunk into her memory like glue.
She had studied them as closely as sheknew how. The nine stripes on the tiger’s back, compared to the five on itshead. Two on each visible leg and then five on the tail. Meaningless, probably.Just random chance, part of the design the artist had drawn. He likely feltthat the artwork needed another stripe here, one more stripe there. Filling thespace. Nothing more.
Still, there was one of the tattoos thatshe couldn’t stop going back to, time and time again. It was hardly surprising,given what it was. On her forearm, five simple numbers had been inked withoutceremony or flash. Just a sequence on its own, like a serial number: 35681.
Three, five, six, eight, one… what couldthat mean? Zoe tried to think about things that might require a five-digitpasscode, or identity number. Something like a safety deposit box? But then youwould have to be pretty dumb to wear it on your skin, where anyone could readit and use it. Not a passcode, then. Assuming that Callie wasn’t dumb enoughfor that.
An identity number? There were lots ofways one might be assigned a number like that. Inmates in the federal prisonsystem were given a five-digit number followed by a dash and then a furtherthree digits as an identifier. Could this be a prisoner’s identification, cutat the dash? But why not include the full number? And why would you want toremember it so dearly?
If it was a loved one, you would want aname, or a picture, or a symbol—not a confirmation of the fact that they were acriminal. Unless you were proud of it, which you might be if you were a gangmember. But then why not include the whole thing?
Zoe rubbed her eyes, not caring if shesmudged her mascara across her face. This felt like a dead end. She was justmaking the association to felony because she was an FBI agent. Nothing unusualabout that.
But what was unusual was to get afive-digit number tattooed on your arm, alone, without any further explanationor flourish. She didn’t know a lot about tattoos, but she knew that. She’dnever seen anything like it. Not on a prisoner, not on a civilian. It had tomean something. But what?
She could go down any number of rabbitholes thinking about the number alone. Five digits could be the key to unlock apiece of software, a zip code (but not one that would be relevant to Callie inany way that she could see, since it was a location in Brazil), even a monetaryvalue.
But it had to be meaningful, or itwouldn’t have been a tattoo. So all of those ideas went out the window oneafter another, until there was nothing left to try. And it wasn’t as though thefirst victim, John Dowling, had a similar serial number himself, something thatwould tie them together no matter what it meant. She had to figure out the meaningon her own.
She searched the area of Brazil on hercomputer, trying to look for something that would stand out. The map yielded noclues. No coded message, no especially important building or landmark thatstood out. Had Callie ever been to Brazil? How would they even know? There hadbeen no mention of something like that on her social media pages.
Zoe looked up prisoner numbers next,poring over the list of men and women marked out by the same five-letter codewith another unique identifier after it. There were many of them—too many.Their names meant nothing to her. She went down the list one by one, looking uptheir gang affiliations, the states where they had committed their crimes andwhere they were incarcerated, their known relatives and connections. Nothingthat tied any of them to Callie,
