“We would need a concrete link withNaomi Karling.” Zoe lifted up the reports from the LAPD officers who had beenspeaking to her friends and family. “By all accounts, she was a good girl. Astudent who worked full-time to save up for college before she could startstudying. She had a serious future ahead of her.”
“She was desperate for money. People inher situation are more likely to end up doing something illegal to get by,”Shelley pointed out.
Zoe rubbed her eyes. “I agree that it ispossible,” she admitted. “We just do not have the evidence to back up thetheory.”
“We could ask Captain Warburton to bringup a list of potential affiliates to both Jackson’s and Diaz’s gangs. Startworking to eliminate them one by one from the suspect pool by way of alibi.”
Zoe nodded. “Ask him. But I do not feelthat we should focus all of our time on this. The local cops can work on that.We should be looking for something more concrete.”
Shelley picked up the phone and dialedthe internal number for Captain Warburton, engaging in a brief conversationwith him to make their request. Zoe tuned her out, trying to focus.
The images of the tattoos were stillcalling to her. She had printed out everything that she could find, consideredthem from every angle. Still, there was nothing there. Idly, while Shelleytalked, she opened her phone and started scrolling through John Dowling’s feedagain, trying to see if there was anything that she had missed. It wouldn’thurt to refamiliarize herself with the names of commenters and likers on hisaccount, so that she would spot them right away if they also appeared on CaptainWarburton’s list.
“What else?” Shelley asked, the phonenow back in its cradle as she reapplied her attention to the case files.
“It could still be something to do witha common location,” Zoe said. “As in the case of Bar 23 West, it is more thanpossible that all three went to the same place, maybe even at the same time. Aparty, or a sports event, or something where a lot of people gather together.Maybe they even saw one another. It is not as though we can ask them.”
“But that’s the problem, isn’t it?”Shelley sighed. “We can’t ask them. We would never know.”
Zoe nodded. “Unfortunately, it is true.Unless someone were to come forward and say that they had been with all threevictims at this hypothetical event, we would not know. Even then, it would betenuous.”
They both looked over the files in frontof them in silence for a short while, processing. There had been no hint ofscandal in Naomi Karling’s life so far, not even so much as a jealousex-boyfriend. Although there were potential candidates who might have wantedharm to come to either Callie Everard or John Dowling, it was harder to seesomeone who would attack all three of them.
“What if Naomi Karling is a red herring?”Shelley said. “She’s the only one who wasn’t burned. We’re assuming the killerstopped because he was interrupted, but it might be that he was never planningto burn her at all. It might be a completely unrelated killing, maybe aburglary gone wrong.”
Zoe covered her face with her hands andgroaned. “I hope you are wrong,” she said. “If you are, then we have a lot morework to do. It is likely that we will not be able to make a breakthrough untilhe kills again.”
Shelley hummed in sympathetic agreement,turning over pages in the files she had spread in front of her.
Another silent pause was broken by agroan from Shelley, who closed Naomi’s file with an impatient slap of paperagainst the table. “I don’t know where to go on this one, Z,” she said. “Allthe statements, everything everyone has given us. All we know is that we’relooking for a white man of around six feet tall with dark, short hair. We stilldon’t even know his motive.”
Zoe knew that, as the senior agent, sheought to be able to give some reassurance. To give a direction to their case.But she had nothing.
“All we can do is keep looking,” shesaid, resuming her slow scroll down John Dowling’s page. “Retracing the sameground. I am still looking into the tattoos, although I know you doubt theirrelevance. Maybe something new will come up.”
Shelley shrugged, then reached for thepile of printed images that Zoe had been poring over the night before. “I guessI might as well join you,” she said.
Zoe chose one of the images she had seenbefore, clicking on John’s tattoo to bring it up larger on her screen, looking atthe tiger. What did it really mean? Anything at all? Was she just dragging theinvestigation even further in the wrong direction? But what other direction didshe have to go in?
Last night’s printing spree had been acase of dashing between images, printing them and then finding the next; Zoehad not taken the time to properly examine the actual posts themselves. On thisone, she now saw, John Dowling had tagged his tattoo artist. She clickedthrough to the man’s page, interested in seeing if he had more images of thetiger that she had not yet seen.
It took a lot of scrolling. The artistwas prolific, often posting up new pieces more than once a day. He includedprogress shots of larger artworks, tattoos that would take more than onesession to complete, as well as his own sketches and designs. But eventually,she was rewarded by an image taken when the tiger was fresh and new, the skinstill slightly red around it.
Zoe zoomed in on the image and winced,thinking for the umpteenth time in this case that she would never want tosubject herself to something so painful and lasting on a whim. She scrolledacross to the next image, which was a shot of the tattoo in progress—heavyblack shading at the top, down to only an outline at the bottom of the design.
Then she leaned forward, putting thecell screen so close to her eyes that she almost bumped her nose into it, tryingto see if she was seeing something correctly.
“Shelley,” she said, her voice comingout strangely pitched as she attempted to sound casual.
