“No—of course not—I…” Zoe struggled forwords, feeling very much like kicking something might be a better way toexpress her feelings at that moment. “I want to catch him. Bring him tojustice. What if he just goes underground for a while, and finds a new way toget at his victims? Starts a different MO and takes more of them because no onecan make the connection to stop him?”
“Just calm down. We’ll do what we saidwe were going to do. Investigate the other employees at Dead Eye Dave’s, one byone. There will be at least one of them who doesn’t have alibis for the timesof the murders.”
“And then what?” Zoe snapped. “How isthat going to have any weight in a courtroom? You were the one who said a lackof alibi and connection to the victims was not going to be enough. If he knowswe are coming for him, we will not find any evidence. There will not be amurder weapon or trophies from the victims. And even if he has researchedserial numbers or has some obsession with the occult, a good lawyer couldeasily defeat that kind of evidence at trial.”
Shelley bit her lip, looking away. “What’smore important? Stopping him from killing, or bringing him to justice?”
“Both,” Zoe said flatly. “And if he isnot brought to justice, he might kill again. Even one more victim, and the bloodwill be on our hands.”
There was a long pause in the room. Zoehad not realized how hard she had been fighting, and she struggled for breath.Shelley wouldn’t look at her.
“What’s done is done,” Shelley said,eventually. “We can’t go back.”
“So then what?” Zoe asked. And she wasreally asking. She was so strung out on anger, turned in on herself, anddesperate frustration that she could barely force a thought through theclinging mud of her brain.
The mud was made up of facts, and mostprevalent amongst them was this: the fact that every single one of the fourpeople from her shortlist had been found, brought in safely, and then left inthe care of LAPD officers to ensure that they would not try to go back home orfall victim some other way. They were all accounted for. Which meant that thekiller no longer had a target.
It was all for nothing. All of her work,the deductions she had made—in the end, they weren’t going to be able to comeup with a viable suspect. Not now that he had no targets left.
“It was always going to be a long shot,”Shelley said. She sounded resigned, defeated. “We didn’t even know for surethat we had all of the right victim profiles. We could easily have missed one.”
Zoe shot her a look. “That is not true.I went through everything carefully. I did not make any mistakes. These are theonly four who fit the profile.”
“Well, sure,” Shelley said. “From JasperFranks’s appointment book. But if the killer is an employee at Dead Eye Dave’s,he wouldn’t just be targeting people because they came to Franks. It could havebeen any of the other tattoo artists as well.”
“I already thought of that,” Zoe said. “Iasked the officers to make checks when they spoke to the other tattooists.Franks was the only one at Dead Eye Dave’s willing to do the serial numbers.After he was arrested for his ties to the Aryan Brotherhood, most of the localartists stopped handling anything connected to the Holocaust in any way. Beforethat, it was not yet a trend. No one else at Dead Eye Dave’s ever did a serialnumber tattoo.”
Shelley shrugged one shoulder, alopsided gesture that temporarily threw her body off. “That doesn’t mean wedidn’t miss something. I mean, think about it. John Dowling got that cover-updone over the original tattoo. People change their minds all the time. And theymight go for symbolism, like Naomi Karling did. How would we know that it wassupposed to represent a Holocaust survivor if the notation in the appointmentsbook just read ‘tiger’?”
Zoe felt as though a tunnel were openingup right at her feet, a whirling vortex threatening to suck her in. And whynot? She deserved it. She had missed such a big hole in her own logic.
“What can we do?” she asked in horror. “Gothrough each and every customer? How would we be able to do that? It would takeus hours—days, even.”
“We can go to the horse’s mouth,”Shelley said. She picked up her jacket, which she had abandoned over the backof a chair on their return to the precinct. “Come on. Come with me. We stillhave Jasper Franks in custody.”
***
Jasper Franks’s body language hadchanged immeasurably since Zoe had seen him last. He was slumped back in hischair, his hands lying on his lap, open and unmoving. He looked like he hadgiven up the ghost, all of the energy drained out of him. He barely looked upas they entered the room.
“Come back for another round, AgentRose?” Smith, the lawyer, asked imperiously. “Perhaps you have finally decidedto let my client go before he starts building a lawsuit for harassment?”
“Neither,” Shelley said, slippinggracefully down into a chair opposite Franks. Now that they were back in theroom, on display, she was alert and fresh. She barely seemed tired, althoughZoe had seen just how exhausted she felt back in the investigation room. Shehad put on her mask—a skill that Zoe wished she could conquer. “Actually, mypartner has some new questions. You’ll like these, Mr. Franks. They’re allabout establishing your innocence.”
Franks perked up, lifting his head andleaning forward slightly. “My innocence?”
“That is correct,” Zoe said. She placedthe appointment book down in front of him, spinning it around so that he couldread the entries. “We would like you to take a look through your appointments.You need to point out any that fit, in your recollection, with a certaincriterion.”
“What?”
“Any of these tattoos that were done inthe memory of a Holocaust survivor or victim, which contained the digits oftheir prisoner number in a symbolic fashion. Like John Dowling.”
Jasper Franks blinked. “I don’t have togo through the book,” he said. “I can remember easily enough off the top of myhead.”
“Oh?” Zoe waited with
