Shelley took the cell out of her hand,examining it with a frown. “This is John Dowling’s tiger tattoo. It looks likethis was taken when it was freshly done.”
“Not the tiger. Underneath it.”
Shelley moved the cell closer to herface, squinted, moved it away again. “It looks like… maybe… a series ofnumbers?”
Zoe snatched the device back,reexamining the picture herself. “That is what I thought. A sequence of fivenumbers. I cannot make it out.”
“Are there any other angles?”
Zoe swiped down the tattoo artist’spage, trying to see if they had any other shots of John’s biceps. “I cannot seeanything,” she said. The tattoo was in an awkward place—on the inner part ofhis upper arm, an area that was not commonly photographed. Not only that, butit was now covered by the tail of the tiger, shaded in over the numbers.
In all of the shots she had seen of Johnsince he got the tiger tattoo, she had noticed that he was prone to angling hisbiceps toward the camera, showing off the design. By consequence, this serialnumber behind the tail—if that was what it was—would have been hidden. If itwas only a new habit, and not the way he had always held himself, then therewas a chance—a small chance—that they might be able to find a shot of it fromthe past.
“I’ll check his other accounts,” Shelleysaid.
Zoe nodded and went back to scrollingdown John’s feed. She had to get back into the past—farther back than she hadbeen last night—to a time before he had the tiger put onto his arm. To a timewhen he raised his arms for the photograph, or the angle was just so…
And then she found it.
“Here!” she said, putting her cell intothe middle of the table. They could both see it clearly now. A young John Dowling,wearing a muscle vest with his arms above his head as he leaned on the frame ofa door. They could see it.
A six-digit serial code, tattooed insequence: 159225.
Six digits…
“It does not match,” Zoe said. “Theserial number on Callie Everard was five digits. Until now, I assumed that thestripes on the tiger matched it with five areas of stripes, and Naomi’s vinetattoo had five flowers. But this is six.”
“So, we’re looking for something thatcould be represented either by five or six numbers,” Shelley said. “That shouldnarrow it down quite a lot, shouldn’t it?”
Zoe was baffled. “Codes or serialnumbers normally follow a precise pattern. The number of digits is set, and fora reason. The identification process would be much harder if you did not knowhow many digits to look for.”
“Say that again,” Shelley said, an oddlook on her face.
“… The identification process would bemuch harder if—”
“That’s it!” Shelley’s hands shot to hermouth, then dropped again as she spoke more rapidly. “That’s it, Zoe. They’reidentification numbers. You’ve hit the nail on the head!”
“What are you talking about?” she asked,but even as she did so, it was beginning to hit her. Identification numbers,tattooed onto humans. Particularly on their arms. Why had she not seen itbefore? It was so obvious…
“Holocaust identification numbers,”Shelley said. “The Nazis tattooed their prisoner identification numbers ontotheir bodies, because after they were killed their clothes would be removed. Itwas the only way they could keep a proper track of those who were registeredprisoners.”
“But these people are young,” Zoe said. “JohnDowling is the oldest, and he is not out of his thirties. It would be absurd tosuggest that they were prisoners during the Holocaust.”
“Unless they were time-travelers,”Shelley said, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “But this is a trend rightnow. I’m so stupid for not recognizing it before, on Callie. People get theprisoner numbers of their grandparents, or other relatives, tattooed onto themas a mark of respect and solidarity. A memorial.”
Zoe couldn’t help but think the practicewas a stupid one—engraving your body with something that had been, for manypeople, a mark of extreme suffering and cruelty. But then again, it had beenproven multiple times that she was not in touch with the way most other humansthought. “So, both John Dowling and Callie Everard had close ancestors who wereprisoners during the Holocaust.”
“It looks like we can assume that, butwe’ll need to talk to their families and get confirmation. For Naomi Karling,too. I can’t see anything on her body that would resemble a serial number.”
“Me, either,” Zoe agreed. “And I havelooked. Are we sure this is the right answer?”
“What else could it be?”
Zoe thought about it. “Zip codes. Landlinenumbers with the area code cut off. Something stupid from a game that youngpeople are playing.”
Shelley suppressed a laugh at the lastpart. “So, let’s look into it.”
She moved to the computer they had beenassigned and typed in a search term—number tattoos—to check the results.Zoe was immediately distracted by the images that popped up with examples—mostof them dates, though dates wouldn’t make sense; they would have to contain theright kinds of digits, such as a 19 or a 20 before the last two, and even thenthey would normally be separated by dots or dashes. A date seemed unlikely.Unless John Dowling was commemorating something that would happen in the year9225—or had happened in 1592. Either seemed implausible.
Shelley clicked on a list of “bestnumber tattoo ideas ever” and started scrolling down the page. Most of theideas posited in the article were easy to rule out. A set of coordinates wouldhave required more numbers, not to mention letters indicating direction. Dateswere another popular suggestion, but they had already been ruled out. Luckynumbers weren’t usually so long.
The image of a Fibonacci sequence in oneof the examples made Zoe shudder, casting her mind back to their first bigcase: a killer who wanted to recreate the golden ratio, only with murders. Thevalue of pi was an almost laughable idea—as if Zoe would not have recognizedsuch a sequence immediately.
“Here,” Shelley said, reading aloud forboth of their benefits. “The relatives of Holocaust survivors, particularlychildren or grandchildren, have been getting their prisoner numbers tattooed onthemselves as a mark of tribute. They do this to stand in solidarity with thesurvivors who had the tattoos put on their skin against
