“Maybe you only just got started,”Shelley told him. “And you were stupid enough to get caught. Tell me, does thatmake you feel angry? Angry enough to kill?”
“That’s enough,” Smith blustered,shaking his head furiously. “You’re stopping this interview now. I demand sometime to confer with my client!”
Shelley leaned back in her chair,looking at the two of them. Smith all bristling authority, Franks pale andshaking. A beat passed, then two. Then she looked at Zoe and stood. “You boystake your time,” she said. “Make sure to tell your client that he’ll get a lightersentence if he does the right thing and confesses.”
***
Zoe shook her head, chewing on her lowerlip. There was something off here, but she couldn’t put her finger on it yet.
“This is a done deal, Zoe,” Shelleysaid. “I’ll call SAIC Maitland in an hour or so. I’m guessing he’ll want to getus on a plane back tonight, rather than paying for longer at the motel.”
“There is one thing we have not yetascertained,” Zoe pointed out. “We know that he gave Callie Everard her number,and that he did both the number and then the later tiger cover-up for JohnDowling. But what about Naomi Karling? He claimed not to have recognized her.”
Shelley paused a moment, tapping a penagainst her open palm. Then she turned to one of the evidence boxes and slippedon a pair of gloves to start unpacking it. “Captain Warburton indicated theyhad taken his appointment book from the tattoo parlor. It should be in heresomewhere. Apparently it goes back a couple of years.”
She pulled out a thick tome, heavyleather binding with 3D depictions of a grotesque, laughing devil’s skull onboth the front and back covers. When she laid it down on the table, the textileelements propped the book up, tilting it slightly forward toward the reader. Aclever design, if one that lacked taste.
There was a blood-crimson ribbon tuckedinto one of the pages as a bookmark, and Shelley pulled it to open up the pageson the present day. The whole week was seen at a glance, with only a fewnotations—it seemed that most of Franks’s clients were booked in for largerpieces that were set to take hours.
“This is today. Nothing notable, really.”
Zoe ignored that and flicked ahead a fewpages, scanning the coming weeks. There were a few names scheduled in. Not toomany. Franks was busy, but he wasn’t booked solid.
“What is this, here?” Zoe asked,frowning. She was pointing to a notation in one of the boxes. “Naomi K, 12:30pm,46535.”
Shelley frowned too, reading thenotation and flicking forward a few pages to see if she could spot any otherclues. “It doesn’t give the full name. Do you think it’s her?”
“Hell of a coincidence if it is not,”Zoe said. “You have two past customers show up dead, and the third body belongsto someone with the same name and initial as one of your customers—but is notthe same person?”
“I think we have her phone,” Shelleysaid, heading over to another box of evidence—one that the techs had left withthem after going through everything. They hadn’t reported any cyber threats ormysterious activity on Naomi Karling’s phone. Maybe they just hadn’t known whatto look for.
Shelley pressed numbers on the screen,logging in with the passcode that the LAPD tech team had chosen afterdecrypting it in the first place. 9-1-1-1. Probably their idea of somethingfunny. After a few quick taps, she turned the screen to show Zoe.
“It’s him,” she said, grinning. “Look.She has it on her calendar, too. “Gramps tattoo.” She was getting anothermemorial.”
Zoe thought back. “46535. That must bethe Holocaust prisoner number. I saw it on her arm.”
Shelley hesitated. “But she hasn’t hadthe tattoo yet.”
Zoe shook her head. “No. The vine withthe flowers. Four petals, then six, then five, then three, then five. Insequence along the vine, from her wrist up to her elbow. It must have beenintended as an initial tribute. Perhaps she decided it was too subtle.”
“This is what we’ve been looking for,”Shelley said. She was happy, laughter catching at the edge of her words, hereyes lit up with a new spark. “We have him dead to rights, Z. We just need toforce a confession. Maybe get some witness statements from neighbors who sawhim going out, in the meantime. But we’ve got him. He’s not going to killagain.”
Zoe bit her lip, feeling a rough pieceof skin there where she had absentmindedly bitten it earlier. What Shelley wassaying made sense. It did. And people lied—they lied all the time, about allkinds of things, and definitely about alibis that couldn’t possibly be backedup.
Zoe knew all of that.
So why did something feel just a littlebit off?
“You are better at this than me,” shesaid. “I am no help in there. See what you can get out of him. I will gothrough a few of the things here, try to find more evidence.”
Shelley nodded, accepting the excuse.Because it was just an excuse. Zoe didn’t know why she didn’t want to arguewith her partner about the man they’d arrested. Well, no: she knew why. It wasbecause it all added up. No matter which way you looked at it, it seemed likethey had their man.
Except for one nagging feeling, whichkept tugging on Zoe’s nerves. It was something to do with the fact that hiscollection of historical artefacts contained, as far as she could see, memorabiliafrom both sides of the war. From multiple armies and nations. Even prisoner artifacts,personal belongings that could not be returned to wholly extinct families.Would a true Nazi want all of those? Or was his story of being a collector ingeneral the truth?
There was something else, too. Thefeeling of an equation left unfinished. One sum that was left to be done, whichhad not been done.
“I’ll come find you if I crack him,”Shelley said, breezing out of the room. “Or come find me if you get something.Just try not to interrupt if I’m leaning forward. That means I think I’mbreaking him down. Got it?”
Zoe nodded, barely listening, her eyesskimming over the appointment book again.
There was something here. There had tobe.
She first flicked back to the beginning,scanning all of the entries
