Rhyme’s, and everyone else’s, eyes slipped to the screen.
‘It’s Old English, or some Gothic variation. You don’t see that much now around here. I’d guess he’s got rural roots: redneck, shit kicker, biker, meth cooker. On the other hand, maybe born-again, righteous, upstanding. But definitely a country boy.’
‘The typeface tells you that?’ Sachs asked.
‘Oh, yeah. Here, if somebody wants words, they’ll go for some kind of flowery script or thick sans serif. At least that’s current now. Man, for a few years everybody wanted this Elvish crap.’
‘Elvis Presley?’ Sellitto asked.
‘No, Elvish. Lord of the Rings.’
‘So country,’ Rhyme said. ‘Any particular region?’
‘Not really. There’s city inking and country inking. All I can say is this smells like country. Now, look at the border. The scallops. The technique is scarification. Or cicatrization is the official name for it. That’s important.’
He looked up and tapped the scallops surrounding the words ‘the second’.
‘What’s significant is that usually people scar to draw attention to an image. It’s important for this dude to make that design more prominent. It would’ve been easier just to ink a border. But, no, he wanted cicatrization. There’s a reason for it, I’m guessing. No clue what. But there it is.
‘Now, there’s one other thing. I was thinking about it. I brought show-and-tell.’ Gordon reached into his canvas shoulder bag and lifted out a plastic sack containing a number of metal parts. Rhyme recognized the transparent container as the sort in which surgical and forensic instruments are sterilized in an autoclave. ‘These are part of a tattoo machine — you don’t call them guns, by the way.’ Gordon smiled. ‘Whatever you hear on TV.’
He took a small Swiss Army knife from his pocket and cut open the bag. In a moment he’d assembled a tattoo gun — well, machine. ‘Here’s what it looks like put together and ready to ink.’ The tattoo artist walked closer to the others. ‘These’re the coils that move the needle up and down. This’s the tube for the ink and here’s the needle itself, coming out the end.’
Rhyme could see it, very small.
‘Needles have to go into the dermis — the layer of skin just below the outermost layer.’
‘Which is the epidermis,’ Rhyme said.
Nodding, Gordon disassembled the device and lifted out the needle, displaying it to everyone. Resembling a thin shish kebab skewer, about three inches long, it had a ring on one end. The other end contained a cluster of tiny metal rods soldered or welded together. They ended in sharp points.
‘See how they’re joined together, in a star-shaped pattern? I make ’em myself. Most serious artists do. But we have to buy blanks and combine ’em. There’re two types of needles: those for lining — outlining the image — and then those for filling or shading. The dude needed to get a lot of poison into her body fast. That means he had to use filling needles after he was done with the bloodline. But these wouldn’t work, I don’t think. They wouldn’t go deep enough. But this kind of needle would.’ He reached into his bag once more and extracted a small plastic jar. He shook out two rods of metal, similar to his needles but longer. ‘They’re from an old-time rotary machine — the new ones, like mine, are two-coil, oscillation models. Was it a portable machine?’
‘Had to be. There was no electric source,’ Sachs told him.
Pulaski said, ‘I’ve been looking for portable guns … machines. But there’re a lot of them.’
Gordon thought for a moment. Then said, ‘I’m guessing it would have to be an American Eagle model. Goes way back. One of the first to run off battery power. It comes from the days when tattooing wasn’t very scientific. The artist could adjust the stroke of the needles. He could make them go real deep. I’d look for somebody who’s got an Eagle.’
Sellitto asked, ‘Are they sold here? In supply stores?’
‘I’ve never seen any. They’re not made anymore. You could get them online, I’d guess. That’d be the only way to find them.’
‘No, he’s not going to be buying anything that way, too traceable,’ Rhyme pointed out. ‘He probably picked it up where he lives. Or maybe he’s had it for years or inherited it.’
‘Needles’re a different story. You might be able to find somebody who’s sold needles for American Eagles. Anybody who bought those recently could be he.’
‘What’d you say?’ Rhyme asked.
‘What did I say?’ The slim man frowned. ‘When, now? Whoever’s buying needles for an American Eagle machine, it could be your perp. Don’t you say that? They do on NCIS.’
The criminalist laughed. ‘No. I was noting the proper use of the pronoun. Nominative case.’
Rhyme noted Pulaski roll his eyes.
‘Oh, that? The “he”?’ Gordon shrugged. ‘I never did very … well in school. Thought I was going to say “good”, didn’t you? Couple years at Hunter but got bored, you know. But when I started inking, I’d do a lot of text. Bible verses, passages from books, poems. So I learned writing from famous authors. Spelling, grammar. I mean, dude, it was pretty interesting. Typography too. The same passage in one font has a whole different impact when it’s printed in another.
‘Sometimes a couple’d come in and they’d want to ink wedding vows on their arms or ankles. Or crappy love poems they’d written, like I mentioned. I’d say, okay, dudes, you sure you want to go through life with “Jimmy I love you you’re heart and mine for ever” on your biceps. That’s Jimmy no comma, you no period or semicolon, Y-O-U apostrophe R-E, and for ever two words. They’d say, “Huh.” I’d edit anyway when I inked them. They’ll have kids and have to go to a PTA meeting, meet the English teacher. After all, not like you can use White-Out, right?’
‘And cut and paste would be really bad,’ Pulaski joked, drawing smiles.
But not from Gordon. ‘Oh, there’s a version of scarification where people actually cut strips of skin out of their body.’
Rhyme then heard a click in the front door latch and the door open — or, more accurately, the wind howl and the sleet clatter from the sky.
The door closed.
After that footsteps and a light, airy laugh.
He knew who had come to visit and shot a glance to Sachs, who quickly rose and turned around the whiteboard that contained the crime scene pictures of Chloe Moore and switched the high-def screens away from the images TT Gordon had been examining.
A moment later Pam Willoughby stepped into the room. The pretty, slim nineteen year old was enwrapped in a brown overcoat trimmed in faux fur. Her long, dark hair was tucked up under a burgundy stocking cap, and her outer garments were dusted with dots of sleet or snow, melting fast. She waved hello to everyone.
Accompanying her was her boyfriend, Seth McGuinn, a handsome, dark-haired man of about twenty-five. She introduced him to Pulaski and Mel Cooper, neither of whom he’d met.
Seth’s dark-brown eyes, which matched Pam’s, blinked when they turned to TT Gordon, who greeted the couple pleasantly. Pam had a similar reaction. Rhyme had seen athletic Seth in a T-shirt and jogging shorts, when he and Pam had been going to the park several weeks ago, and noted he’d sported no tattoos. Pam had none either, visible at least. The young couple now tried, unsuccessfully, to hide their surprise at Rhyme’s quirky visitor.