“This has to be it,” Zoe said, shakingher head. “I feel it. Do you? It feels right.”
“It fits well,” Shelley agreed. “Not tomention the fact that there is still lingering hate and anger related to theHolocaust. We could be dealing with a neo-Nazi, a Holocaust denier, maybe evena misguided descendant who believes that the use of the tattoos isdisrespectful.”
“We have to follow this lead up,” Zoesaid. “Talk to the relatives. And we will have to move fast, because if we areright, it means that anyone with a link to the Holocaust in any way couldconceivably be a potential victim. How many of those do you think there are inLos Angeles?”
Shelley turned and met her gaze with alook of horror. The scale of the investigation had seemed insurmountable just ashort while before—and now it seemed as though they were only just gettingstarted.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Zoe couldn’t stop looking at thephotograph. The woman in the frame was beautiful, dark hair framing soft skinin grayscale, her eyes filled with a poetry that even now spoke through theimage. She was a great beauty in her time. Even a person who knew little abouthuman attraction could understand that.
“John was always fond of Grammie,”Violet was saying. She was John Dowling’s younger sister, made pale and drawnby the grief of her brother’s loss. Still, it was possible to see the familyresemblance in all three of them: John, Violet, and their great-grandmother. “Shelived a long life. By the end she wasn’t moving much, so we would all go to seeher every Sunday afternoon.”
“When did he get the tattoo?” Shelleyasked. She was calm and quiet, attentive to Violet’s moods. Zoe was gratefulyet again to have a partner who was so good at dealing with people. For her ownpart, she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the elegant woman in the photograph—whoseemed to carry a shadow hung over her, made of all the horrors she hadendured. It wasn’t written in the length of her nose or the distance betweenher eyes, or the individual eyelashes Zoe could count in the clear photograph.It was something intangible, impossible to count.
“When he was a teenager. Mom hit theroof. He wasn’t old enough. Then he pulled the plastic off so we could see whatit was and she had to forgive him.” Violet smiled, remembering. “After that,there were tears. Grammie didn’t say a word when he showed her. She just gotall misty and turned her arm over, showing us the matching numbers. She couldn’tstop crying.”
“Where did your Grammie get her tattoo?”Shelley asked. Gentle, gentle. Not brusque like it might have sounded fromanyone else.
“Auschwitz.” Violet sniffed and wiped ahand across the bottom of her eyes swiftly, as if to pretend she wasn’t doingit. “She was a girl then. Really, it was a bit of a miracle that she survived.She had younger siblings who were taken right to the gas chambers. They weren’tfit for work.”
“I can’t imagine,” Shelley said. Therewas a long pause, silence hanging respectfully over the room for one, two,three, four beats.
“Anyway,” Violet said, taking a breathand squaring her shoulders. “Grammie died a few years after that. Then Johnchanged. He’d been close with her, and everything was… it was too hard for him.He didn’t want the tattoo anymore. He was grieving, I guess. Eventually, he cameup with a plan to get it covered over.”
“The tiger,” Zoe said, almost withoutmeaning to, breaking the rapport of the conversation that was only betweenShelley and Violet.
Violet responded, all the same. “He saidit was more symbolic. There were different numbers of stripes on each part ofits body, and a black spot around the nose. That represented the number thathad been there originally, but also gave it a new meaning. One he didn’t feelso sad to look at.”
“If it still represents the numbers,then how did it change anything?” Zoe asked. Then wished she hadn’t.
Violet was frowning, but she answered,her tone a little flatter. “He didn’t want her to be remembered for the numbers.That wasn’t who she was. It was a part of her life, yes, but it didn’t defineher. She was strong. A tiger spirit who fought to the end. That’s how itchanged.”
Zoe nodded, saying nothing. She had saidenough. Any more feet in her mouth, and she was liable to get them both kickedout of the house.
“Do you know where he got these tattoosdone?” Shelley asked, taking the conversation in hand again. “Either of them?”
Violet shook his head. “That wasn’trelevant, I suppose. I never got tempted to get a tattoo, so I didn’t ask him.I guess it was somewhere local. I don’t remember him going out of town to getit done.”
Shelley made a few pleasantries, takingthe framed photograph out of Zoe’s hands and handing it firmly back to Violet.Then she made their excuses, and they left, Zoe feeling strangely like she wasleaving behind a ghost.
***
Zoe flicked through the now-familiarsequence of images on John Dowling’s social media feed, looking for the one shehad seen before. The tattoo artist who had done his tiger. “Here it is,” shesaid, leaning over the gearstick to show it Shelley. “It is downtown. A parlorcalled Dead Eye Dave’s.”
“What’s the address?” Shelley asked. “Wecan go there now.”
“Wait just a second. We do not know ifwe have the right lead here. What if it was the original tattoo that marked himout? The serial number, not the tiger?”
Shelley hesitated. “Do we know who didthat one?”
Zoe shook her head. “I already looked.He never put up an announcement post about getting the original tattoo. He hadit already when he started his account. The artist was never tagged.”
“What about Callie Everard?” Shelleypicked up her own cell and started tapping on the screen. “The fonts lookedkind of similar, didn’t they? On John’s and Callie’s, both.”
“You are right,” Zoe agreed, examiningthe image she had seen before of John with his arm raised. She did not need tocheck it against Callie’s. She had seen that enough times that the image wasengraved on her mind. They were a good match, possibly even the same hand. Theheight of the
