An evil they had to stop.
But for all that she felt that she nowunderstood, there was one thing that bothered her a lot.
No, scratch that: two things.
First, that they had the wrong man incustody, and right now both Shelley and the LAPD were wasting all of theirresources barking up the wrong tree.
And second, that the real killer couldbe stalking his next victim even now—and she had not yet even managed to puttogether a shortlist of who that might be.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
The search had to be methodical.
Zoe thought about it like this: themistake in the number had been in the booking, not in the actual tattoo when itwas finished. That meant two things for her. First, it meant that the personwho was actually carrying out the murders had to have access to the diary thatFranks would have kept at the tattoo parlor at all times. It could have beenany of a number of people, though the field was small enough to be investigated—butworking on her own, it would take time.
The second thing was that the personwasn’t around all the time. They hadn’t seen the correction when it had beenmade in the diary, and they had not seen the finished tattoo. Maybe not evenwhen they cut Callie Everard’s throat and then lit her on fire. Or perhapstheir eyes had simply seen what they wanted to see. Other people weren’t likeZoe, she had to remind herself. They didn’t memorize numbers at a glance, orunderstand them in one. Some people saw numbers just like shapes, and the shapebetween a five and a six wasn’t so different that they stood out at a glance.
There were six other tattoo artists atDead Eye Dave’s. Two of them were part-time. Then there were three piercers,one full-time and two part-time, and the receptionist. There was also no wayfor Zoe to eliminate other people who might come in regularly, like romanticpartners of those who worked there, who might from time to time have been ableto snatch a look at the appointment book. That left too many variables when itcame to the killer. She needed to find out how many potential victims therewere. If there were fewer options for victims than there were suspects, it wasa better place to start.
So, she had begun her methodical searchfrom the front of the appointment book, a date two years in the past. She hadpored over each and every page, taking down the names and serial numbers of thepeople who had booked themselves in for Holocaust memorial tattoos. They wereeasy enough to find—Franks had never bothered with much flourish, just noteddown the serial number and the occasional additional notation as to style oraccompanying illustration.
Once she had the full list, she was donewith the book. She set it aside and began to make her way down the list onename at a time, crossing out any serial number that did not have a three-lettersequence adding up to thirteen somewhere inside it.
That was when Shelley came back in,looking tired and rumpled, loosening the top button of her shirt as she slumpeddown into a chair. “Nothing yet,” she said. “I’m taking a break. Please tell meyou have some evidence that means I can stop trying to talk to this asshole.”
Zoe looked up. “Not exactly. Well, notthe kind you mean. But as far as I am concerned, you can definitely stoptalking to him.”
Shelley frowned, her eyes flicking downa second later to the fifty-two neat rows of Zoe’s handwriting on the sheet ofpaper in front of her, the lines slashed through several of them. “What haveyou been doing?”
The tone stung a little, Zoe had toadmit to herself. “Working on my theory,” she said. “I have proof now. Atleast, my kind of proof. The numbers.”
Shelley said nothing, just raised one ofher eyebrows.
Zoe plowed on regardless. “Listen. I gotthinking after looking at the appointment book again. On Callie’s originalbooking, there was a mistake. One of the digits for her serial number waswritten down wrong, and then later corrected.”
“So?”
“So, if the serial number tattoos arethe connection between them, then we have to consider any possible connotationthat the numbers can bring us. Looking at it with the correct serial numbers,there is no connection between them. I know I went down the wrong road before,but my original theory was quashed when we found out about the extra digit thatwe were missing from John Dowling’s number. But that was with the correctnumbers. When I looked at them in the context of the incorrect number that wasoriginally written down for Callie, I came upon a new connection.”
Shelley was looking at her with supremehesitation. Her chin was pulled back at a sharp angle toward her neck, hermouth always just a little open as if she wanted to say something but didn’tyet dare. “Z,” she began, her tone preemptively calm and soothing. “Are you…getting, you know? Lost in the numbers, again?”
“No,” Zoe insisted, shaking her head. “Ihave something this time. I know it just sounds like last time, when I was sosure then, but this one makes more sense. Each of them has three digits thatadd up to thirteen. It has just the right mixture of numerology with religiousconnotations that could really appeal to someone having a psychotic break, orundiagnosed schizophrenia. The kind of thing that could push someone over theedge and make them kill. If you are a history buff, why kill Holocaust survivordescendants now? Why not start by going after the few remaining survivorsthemselves? It just makes more sense that it would be about the numbers themselves,not the history.”
Shelley twisted her mouth, but she didnot disagree. “I’m going to look into some of these witness statements, okay?The captain brought me a whole bunch more from his guys. I want to see if there’sanything I can use to get Franks to talk before I go back in.”
Zoe shook her head, but followed Shelley’slead in
