The Impaler

Chapter 21

Markham hung up with Schaap and parked his Trail-Blazer in the loading area behind the shopping plaza. He sat there for a moment, eyes closed, listening to the rain. Schaap had just told him the results from Quantico had come back negative; no discernable correlation between the constellations and the coordinates of the murder sites. There were patterns that jibed between individual stars, but that was to be expected, Markham thought. Schaap would forward everything to their man at NC State, of course, but Markham felt in his gut that it was all just another dead end. Just like Tracy Donovan. Either she was totally clueless, he thought, or her husband was not a homosexual.

Markham opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and made a dash for the back door of the tattoo parlor—BILLY’S, someone had written on it in black Magic Marker. Driving through the parking lot, he’d noticed a Chinese restaurant at the opposite end of the shopping plaza. He could smell it now through the rain, and promised himself he’d get something to eat there later. He was starving, hadn’t eaten a thing all day—

Anything but beef teriyaki, said a voice in his head. You’ve had enough skewered meat to last you a lifetime, eh Sammy boy?

Markham sighed and inserted the key into the lock. It was sticky, and he had to turn it a couple of times before the door finally gave. He stepped inside, felt for the light switch, and flicked it. He was in the back office. Homicide had removed all the business records and some other evidence the month before, but turned everything over (including the key) to the FBI upon the positive ID from Canning’s lover. The business records were scarce, but Schaap’s team would take care of the follow-up. That part of the investigation wouldn’t take long. There simply wasn’t much to look at.

Markham gave the office a quick once-over and stepped out into the studio.

Billy’s Tattoo Parlor was a small, one-man operation with a large plate-glass window and an L-shaped display counter full of cheap, sterling-silver jewelry. There was a couch and a Barcalounger toward the front, and behind the counter, along with a pair of chairs and a padded table, was Canning’s equipment. None of that stuff had been touched since the day he disappeared, Dorsey had told the FBI in a stream of tears, and Markham could clearly see the marks the forensic team had made in the dust upon their initial sweep of the parlor earlier that afternoon.

He wandered about looking at the images on the walls—thousands of drawings grouped by subject matter. He paused briefly at the signs of the zodiac, then came upon the letters and symbols—the obligatory Chinese and Japanese, of course, but also Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, even Egyptian. There were countless others, too, but no Babylonian cuneiform from what he could see, and certainly no arrangement of letters that even remotely approached the markings found on Donovan and Canning.

Markham worked his way in a horseshoe around the par- lor and came to the section devoted to photographs of Billy Canning’s work: a large, six-by-six-foot bulletin board covered in Polaroids of tattooed flesh—arms and legs and chests and backs, a couple of necks and a pair of breasts here and there. There were hundreds of them, and Markham’s eyes darted about the photos haphazardly.

Canning was good, he had to admit, and the Polaroids were obviously of some of the artist’s best work. His eyes came to rest on a large back tattoo of a pair of sword-dueling ninjas. He thought of Jackson Briggs—removed the picture and stared at it for a long time.

The superposition principle, said the voice in his head. The ninjas are speaking to you, telling you to look closely, telling you not to miss anything. Like that time in the martial arts studio. Briggs was coming for your head with his ninja sword. Would have lopped it off like a pineapple if you hadn’t stopped to look in the mirror.

Markham’s left shoulder began to tingle. He quickly skirted around the counter, grabbed one of the chairs, and sat down in front of the bulletin board. He let his eyes wander slowly across the collage of jumbled body parts, scanning back and forth in a manner that reminded him for some reason of Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. There had to be a thousand pictures, he thought, going back many years.

Markham’s eyes began to ache with fatigue. What the hell was he looking for? The writing on Donovan and Canning? Was it possible Vlad had Canning tattoo the same thing on his chest? But surely Vlad wouldn’t have been so stupid as to let him take a Polaroid of it.

He gazed down at the photo of the dueling ninjas in his hand. The size, the detail, the color—how long would it take Canning to do a tattoo like that?

Vlad kept Canning longer than the others, Markham thought suddenly. Almost two and a half weeks. The hair growth. What if the autopsy comes back and says Canning was alive for most of that time? What if Vlad had his own private tattoo session with Canning before he impaled him?

Pure supposition, Markham thought—but something about the image of the faceless Vlad forcing Canning to tattoo him gnawed at his gut.

Canning’s car was found out back, Markham said to himself. That means he had to have driven here after he went to the convenience store. But why so late at night? A private session? Could he have been two-timing Dorsey? Whatever the case, Vlad had to have known he was coming back here that night.

Or, the voice in his head countered, Vlad could’ve simply been following him. Canning could’ve come back here for any number of reasons—forgot his cell phone or some-thing—and Vlad took advantage of the situation. Pretty dark back there.

But the writing on Canning and Donovan is like a tattoo. He didn’t do that to Rodriguez and Guerrera. It started with Canning.

The voice in his head was silent, and Markham stared at the photos. He would have to get Dorsey back in here to double-check if any equipment was missing. Would have to follow up with distributors on any recent orders in the Raleigh area, too. Christ, that would be a pain in the ass—just another wild-goose chase? Was he really getting that desperate?

Markham sighed and returned the photo of the dueling ninjas to the bulletin board. The guy in the picture was bald—reminded him of an album cover he’d once seen.

What was the name of the group?

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. Then it came to him.

Sublime. That was it. Picture of some skinhead-looking dude with the group’s name tattooed across his back.

Nineties music. Tattoos.

Markham didn’t understand nineties music—felt disconnected from it—and didn’t understand the ninties tattoo craze, either. Every stockbroker with his tribal band, every sorority girl with her “tramp stamp” sticking to the seat of her BMW.

Tramp stamp. That had been Michelle’s bon mot.

Markham smiled.

He can see her now, on the beach, rising naked from the surf like Botticelli’s Venus—her skin pristine and glistening in the sun, her hips swaying as she walks toward him.

“Where’s your clamshell, Venus?” he asks. He is naked, too, lying on the sand. Michelle kneels over him and kisses his lips. She tastes salty.

“I think it’s an oyster shell,” she says, and reaches behind him and clicks on an old-school-style boom box—Blue Öys-ter Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”

“That’s right,” he says, then kisses her again. “Seventies and eighties all the way, baby. That’s where we belong. Another world. Another time.”

“I miss you,” she whispers.

“I miss you, too.”

A wave of sadness passed through him, and he opened his eyes.

He sat there well into the night, adrift on an ocean of tattooed flesh and feeling more lost than ever.