Driven to Ink

Chapter 20

While I could see motive in trying to run down Will Parker-don’t quite understand why some people think animals are worth more than humans-it was still unclear as to why Dan Franklin would kill Ray Lucci. And then there was Lou Marino’s mugging.

Will had to leave for his interview, but he scheduled an appointment with Bitsy for a tattoo touch-up, and he even hinted that maybe he’d want more ink, too. I’d probably have to make sure to get the work done before he found out it was possibly my car that was used to run him down.

“Why don’t we call Dan Franklin again?” Bitsy asked when I told her everything Will Parker had said. She was already tapping on the computer keyboard, pulling up Dan Franklin’s information, the information Ray Lucci left for us.

“He’s missing, remember?”

“But maybe this is a cell phone number. Maybe he’s missing on purpose.”

“Okay, so say I do call him,” I said. “What am I going to ask him? Why haven’t you gone to the chapel in two days? Why is your wallet in your locker there? Right. Like he’s going to answer.” I thought about that ten thousand dollars. Another thing Bitsy didn’t need to know about.

Bitsy handed me the phone. “You’ll think of something,” she said.

But as it turned out, I didn’t have to think of anything at all.

The recording told me that the number was no longer in service. A number that had been perfectly fine yesterday.

Something was definitely up with Dan Franklin, and I didn’t know whether he was a good guy or a bad guy.

Even though my head was swirling, I couldn’t spend too much time pondering the situation. My next client came in as I hung up the phone.

As I picked up my tattoo machine and it hovered over Rachel Kristina Jones’s lower back, the clip cord got in the way a little, and I had to shift around slightly. I’d never looked at a cord as a murder weapon before, but now I could imagine it as one.

“Anything wrong?” Rachel’s voice was muffled because her face was in the crook of her elbow as she lay on her stomach.

“No,” I said, taking a deep breath and pushing away the thoughts. I dipped the needle into the ink and pressed on the foot pedal, the machine vibrating slightly in a familiar way against my hand.

Rachel was an English major at UNLV, and she was into quotations. So far I’d inked “Frailty, thy name is woman!” from Hamlet along her forearm and “We live as we dream-alone” from Heart of Darkness across her chest, just above her breasts. Today’s quote was from Crime and Punishment: “To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”

I vaguely remembered reading all three in school, but I spent my days with artists, not writers.

“So how’s school going?” I asked casually as I worked, adjusting the light so I could see better.

“Pretty good,” she said.

“I’ve never been over to the campus,” I said. “But I know a guy who works with lab animals. Would you know where that might be?”

Smooth, Kavanaugh, smooth.

Now I was talking to myself like Jeff Coleman.

Rachel lifted her head a little. “That’s probably over where all the science buildings are. I’m not really sure exactly where, but you can access that part of campus over by Flamingo Road.”

Good to know.

I mentally slapped myself. What was I thinking? Was I really considering going over there to check up on Dan Franklin?

I paused a second, lifting the needle off Rachel’s back.

Yes, I was considering it.

Tim would kill me.

“Is something wrong?” Rachel asked again.

“No.” I went back to work.

If my next client hadn’t canceled, I don’t think I would’ve found myself driving toward the university campus. And if Bitsy hadn’t pressured me into telling her where I was going, she wouldn’t have come with me.

But here we were, Bitsy and I, off to look for Dan Franklin, or at least see if anyone might know where he was.

“I should call Tim,” I said for the umpteenth time.

“He’s not even on the case,” Bitsy said.

“Why are you encouraging this?” I asked, shifting the Jeep into fourth, even though it really didn’t want to. Tim needed to get this Jeep serviced soon, or it would rebel on him and stay in first gear forever.

“I’m curious,” she said. “And it’s not as though you haven’t already told that detective about Dan Franklin. You did tell him about the phone conversation. But it doesn’t hurt to double-check things. Things they might have missed.”

“The police wouldn’t miss anything,” I said, although I thought about Dan Franklin’s empty house. Had the police been over there? Did the cruiser that showed up on our heels earlier check out the mail piling up in the mailbox, the newspapers on the doorstep?

“They miss a lot,” she was saying. “You’ve heard stories about people being locked up in prison for years, and then the police discover they’re innocent and have to let them go. What about that girl who was kidnapped and worked in public and no one ever figured it out, even though the cops knew the guy was a sex offender? Eighteen years and two kids later they finally figure it out? Give me a break. And then there are all those crimes that are never solved.”

She had a point.

“Unless you want to talk yourself out of this,” Bitsy said.

We were halfway there already. Might as well do it and satisfy my curiosity. I could tell Tim about it later.

Bitsy had Googled the Laboratory Animal Care Services department and discovered it was in the life sciences building, surrounded by chemistry and physics buildings. These were all subjects I had no talent for. The sisters had tried to teach me chemistry, but after I set a trash can on fire by accident, we all agreed that my future would not include medical school.

I turned off Flamingo Road and took an access road into a large parking lot. Bitsy held up the map that she’d downloaded, then looked up at the buildings in front of her.

She pointed to one. “That’s it.”

I hated to admit that I needed the navigation help.

I parked the Jeep, and we climbed out. Bitsy came around the side of the Jeep, stuffing the map into her purse. We both looked up at the building.

“What if they don’t let us in?” I asked.

She made a face at me. “You should stay in the car, then. I’ll do it.”

We started walking.

The life sciences building was boxy and concrete, with a green lawn and trees. In fact, there was a lot of green lawn around here, and it seemed an oxymoron in a desert city that was suffering a drought. Wouldn’t any of these scientists see the contradiction in this? Wouldn’t they make some noise and get the administration to revert to a natural desert environment?

Tim says I should work in city government so I can turn down all those permits for waterfalls and waterways.

A few people passed us on the walkway, both on foot and on bikes. Even though it wasn’t the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, I felt somehow at home here. Maybe it was the whole college-campus atmosphere that translated from school to school. Maybe it was the green grass and the trees. But I wasn’t quite so uncomfortable anymore as we made our way around to the entrance.

The security guard at the desk made us take pause.

“What do we do?” I asked.

Bitsy barely blinked. She flashed some sort of ID and walked right by. I tried to act as confident as I followed her, not making eye contact with the guard.

He didn’t stop us.

We were on the perimeter of an atrium filled with flora and fauna indigenous to the Southwest. Benches were scattered throughout, and a few students were lounging on them, some with laptops, some texting on their phones, some wearing iPod earbuds.

Bitsy turned to the right, and I followed.

“Where to?” I whispered.

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because you’re the one acting like you own the place. What was that card you showed him?”

Bitsy grinned and pulled out her laminated supermarket card.

I had to give her credit.

“But we need to keep moving,” she said, stuffing it back in her bag. “Otherwise they’ll know we don’t know where we’re going.”

“But we don’t.”

“Ye of little faith.”

When we turned the next corner into the next hallway, even Bitsy had to admit we were going to have to ask someone for directions. The building was too big to try to find anything on our own.

A guy in a Nickelback T-shirt with a black backpack slung over his shoulder started to skirt around us, and I said loudly, “Excuse me?”

He stopped and turned. “Yes?”

“We’ve got an appointment in the Laboratory Animal Care Services department,” I said, “but we’re lost. Can you help us?”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re kidding, right?” And he practically ran off.

I frowned at Bitsy. “What was that about?”

She shook her head. “Who knows? Let’s keep wandering.”

I didn’t know how much wandering we could do without being found out, and as we passed classrooms and labs, I began to think this whole road trip was incredibly futile.

Until we turned another corner and ran into a familiar face.

Dr. Colin Bixby was as good-looking as I remembered. I just wished he’d stop looking at me as if I were a leper.