Hush (22 page)

People could be such assholes.

Ethan figured the guy doing the scamming was
some fat hillbilly with a battered pickup, thinking it served the
kid right for trying to get a fake ID. He was probably sitting
around scratching his belly, laughing about it with a mouthful of
rotten teeth.

Ethan signaled to Ryan that he wanted to quit
with the puck and just skate. He was getting a weird edge on his
right blade, but Casey, the only guy who really knew how to sharpen
hockey skates, wasn't at the rink that night.

The whistle blew and everybody gathered up
the scattered pucks and skated in. Ethan scanned the bleachers.

No Max.

Suddenly Ethan didn't feel like skating. He
didn't feel like playing.

He knew Max was working on some headache of a
case, but Max was always working on a headache of a case. His not
showing up was just one more sign that he really didn't care, that
Ethan was really no more than a pain in the ass. Max was just too
nice to say so to his face.

No matter how you looked at it, life
sucked.

Ethan's present frame of mind didn't do the
game any good. He missed some easy plays, broke his best stick, and
ended up in the penalty box two times for hooking and high-sticking
before the coach took him out completely. That night's game was
part of a summer-league tournament, not as important as school-year
games, but still important. And the coach used the summer games to
determine his school- season lineup.

"What's wrong with you?" Ryan asked as Ethan
dropped down on the bench and pulled off his helmet. He wiped at
the sweat pouring off his head. "Are you sick or something?"

"My skates are dull," Ethan said. "The blades
kept slipping out from under me."

"Better get them sharpened before the next
game."

"Yeah, I know."

He was just going to come out and ask Max
about the adoption thing. Max would be pissed to know he'd gone
behind his back, but Ethan had to know.

He got to his feet. "I'm going to
change."

"Coach won't want you to leave."

Yeah, the coach liked you to stay on the
bleachers whether you were playing or not. But Ethan wanted to get
into dry clothes. "I gotta piss."

"Okay, bud."

Ethan neatly sidestepped Ryan's hand. "Don't
hit me on the ass. You know I hate that." He was heading to the
lockers when an unfamiliar voice said, "Tough game."

He looked over to see a dark-haired man of
about forty standing near the locker-room entrance, his arms
crossed at his chest. Was he somebody Ethan was supposed to know?
Somebody's dad? Or somebody who knew or worked with Max?

"I don't know what was wrong with me," Ethan
said.

"That's the way it goes. There'll be other
games."

"Oh, yeah," Ethan said absentmindedly,
wishing the guy would shut up. He didn't feel like making small
talk with somebody he was probably supposed to know but couldn't
place.

"Even Gretzky had bad nights. Says it's part
of the game."

"Are you a personal friend of Wayne Gretzky?"
Ethan asked sarcastically.

Wayne Gretzky was Ethan's hero. Max had
promised to take Ethan to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, the
city where Gretzky began his career. Ethan still wanted to go, but
not with Max.

"I don't know him, but I've seen him play a
few times," the guy said. "Ran into him after a game and he talked
to me like we were buddies."

"Yeah, I'll bet he did." The guy was full of
shit.

"Too bad your dad couldn't make it to the
game tonight."

So he was some buddy of his dad's.

"But your dad's job is important. Really
important."

"It doesn't matter if he's at the game or
not."

"Need a ride home?"

"No. No thanks. I'm riding with a
friend."

"Just thought I'd make the offer. Want me to
throw that away for you?" he asked, indicating the broken stick
Ethan held in his hand.

"Sure." Ethan handed him the hockey stick and
headed into the locker room, not giving the guy another
thought.

Max pushed the mouse across the mousepad,
clicking on a site called Tattoos, Tattoo, Tattoos. While waiting
for the page to download, he took a bite of his ham and cheese on
rye.

He and Ivy were sitting in his office, the
wet black umbrella they'd shared propped against the wall, dripping
water on the floor. Ivy had pulled up a chair near the corner of
the desk. He could hear the crinkle of her sandwich wrapper and
smell her almond cappuccino.

"How's your sandwich?" he asked absently
while checking on an icon labeled "traditional tattoos."

"Great," she said around a mouthful of food.
"I was starving."

She'd gotten the house vegetarian with
sprouts, tomatoes, black olives, mushrooms, and cranberries, hold
the onions. Apparently his post-hypnotic relaxation suggestion had
worked. In fact, he was more traumatized by the hypnosis than she
was.

He typed the word mother in the search box.
"Okay, here we go," he said as pictures began to appear.

He kept his eyes directed at the screen.
"Didn't know there were so many MOTHER tattoos."

Ivy got up and moved closer, bending so she
could see the screen. "There," she said, pointing a finger with the
hand that held the cappuccino. "That's it."

He clicked on the small photo; an enlargement
quickly filled the screen. "You sure?"

"That's it, exactly." Not a shred of
doubt.

Couldn't sound more certain than that. He
saved the photo to disk, then printed out a handful of copies.
"We'll have the photo lab put together what we need for the media
while I work on getting approval to run it in the papers and on TV.
We'll also get a copy to David Scott so he can rim it through the
FBI's tattoo database."

"How are we going to explain the source of
the information?"

She still didn't seem overly concerned. Maybe
he should try hypnosis on himself.

He'd never had much faith in the power of
hypnosis, but when he was in college he'd taken a course out of
curiosity, then became involved in some experiments that led him to
believe it could be a useful tool under the right conditions. But
he'd never used it to keep his own head from exploding.

"We'll just say an eyewitness came forward,
and for that eyewitness's safety we can't divulge the name," Max
said.

"I think we should tell the rest of the team
who I am. The secrecy is hindering the investigation."

Abraham had taken the news of Ivy's
confession well. Rather than getting angry, as Max had expected,
he'd seemed relieved that the secret was out.

"There are too many people involved. And
people talk. It's human nature." He pulled up his address book on
the screen, then put in a call to FBI Agent Spence. When he didn't
answer, Max punched in Mary Cantrell's number and quickly explained
their strategy.

"You have to be aware that running the photo
could trigger another killing," Agent Cantrell said. "On the other
hand, I don't think you have any choice. The vigil didn't flush him
out. The leads on stolen drugs were dead ends. I see the tattoo as
the next step. Realizing that we have such knowledge about him
could trick the killer into making a mistake. That's what we're
after. A mistake. And so far he hasn't made any. But you need to
protect your source. Don't let the witness's name get out, or his
or her life will be in danger."

Conversation over. Max hung up and glanced at
Ivy, who was sipping her coffee, staring at the tattoo printout in
her hand.

Two days later, the photo of the tattoo ran
in the Chicago papers and made national television news. A couple
of matches were found in the FBI tattoo database, but one of the
guys ended up being dead, the other in prison.

Task-force members hit the streets, checking
out every tattoo parlor in a six-county area.

"Seen anybody with a tattoo like this?" Ronny
Ramirez stuck a five-by-seven photo under the tattoo artist's
nose.

The guy was a biker, with long blond hair
pulled back in a ponytail and arms covered with tattoos, some good,
some bad. He shook his head. "Nobody gets those kind of tattoos
anymore, man. I've never even done a tattoo like that."

Regina Hastings pulled her gaze away from a
glass display case of body-piercing jewelry. "We don't want to know
if you've done one, we want to know if anybody's come in wanting
you to change one into something else. You do that, don't you?
Change tattoos so they look like something completely
different?"

"Yeah. Sure. We even do it free sometimes for
kids who want to get out of gangs. But I ain't seen one of these in
years." He tried to hand the photo back.

"Keep it," Ronny said. "And if somebody does
show up with that kind of tattoo, don't say anything to him. Just
call this number." He handed him a card with the number of the
direct line to the task-force office.

"Homicide, huh? What'd this guy do? Kill
somebody?"

It was obvious the tattoo artist didn't want
to rat on one of his own.

"He's killed a lot of people," Ramirez said.
"He's killed babies."

"Oh, fuck me." The guy stuck the card in the
pocket of his black leather vest, then patted it. "If he comes
around here I'll give him a tattoo with an HIV- infected
needle."

"Just give us a call instead," Hastings said
dryly.

"Ten down, fifteen to go," Hastings said four
hours later, crossing A Good Poke off their list. "That's just
metro Chicago. I didn't know there were so many tattoo parlors
around."

"You got any tattoos?" Ronny asked, shooting
a glance in her direction as he pulled out of the parking lot.

"You'll never know the answer to that one.
Turn right, next block."

"Tell me." He stopped at a red light. "Why'd
we only go out one time? I forget."

"Because I found out you were an
asshole."

"Oh. Oh, yeah."

"Are you admitting it?" she asked,
amazed.

He made the right turn and they rode in
silence for a couple more blocks. "I don't like to be laughed at,"
he finally said.

"Who does? But when something's funny, I
laugh. That's the way I am."

"Guess that explains why I dumped you."

"I dumped you."

"I dumped you."

She laughed.

"Don't laugh at me."

"Asshole."

"Come on, Hastings. I just tried to
apologize, and you keep calling me names."

"Okay, okay."

"How about going out again?"

"It would be a waste of our time."

"How's that?"

"As you know, I don't do it on the first
date. I don't do it on the second either. Or the third."

"How about the fourth?"

"You're so full of yourself. For me, sex has
to mean something. I have to feel something for the guy. I don't
see it as simply recreation."

"I think the same way."

"That's bullshit. You have a reputation,
Ramirez. And it ain't a good one."

"Don't say ain't."

"I was making a point. And anyway, we
shouldn't be talking about this now. Not when we're on duty."

"Are you a virgin?" he asked, suddenly
sounding enlightened.

"Nope."

"Sure?"

"Positive."

"Start young? With sex, I mean."

"When I was fourteen I was raped, beaten, and
left for dead. So yeah, you could say I started young."

That shut him up.

Some so-called musicians were so stupid they
couldn't read music. Because of their stupidity, he spent hours
listening to cassettes of their songs, transcribing it to notes so
other idiots could play the exact same tripe. He'd transcribed some
big names. The money wasn't great, but it allowed him more time to
himself, less time having to wear his social mask.

When he was little, other kids picked on him.
They used to steal his lunch and steal his money—when he had
any—and steal his clothes. Not because they wanted them. They
weren't anything anybody would want; they did it just to be mean.
His mother had tried to get him to fight back, taunting him with
the same words the kids used, words like chicken, sissy, baby.
Later, those words evolved, became more cutting. Then he was called
queer and faggot and pussy. He didn't like guys.

He didn't know why everybody thought he liked
guys. But he didn't like girls either. He hated everybody
equally.

Above his head, he could hear his mother's
snores. She was sleeping like a baby.

She was building up a tolerance to the drugs,
but she should still remain asleep a couple more hours. Yesterday
she'd given him a heart attack by waking up unexpectedly, so he'd
upped her dosage again.

She'd sued somebody once. That's how she'd
gotten the house. She'd been drunk, coming out of a bar, when she
fell and broke her leg—that time in four places. It had been a
compound fracture that had required surgery and metal pins. She
sued the owner of the bar, and ever since she'd just sat around
watching TV all day, getting loaded.

But he had bigger things on his mind than his
mother.

At exactly 6:00 P.M., he shut off the
cassette player and pulled the headphones down so they rested
around his neck. Then he turned on the local news. He always gave
the news his undivided attention.

He always hoped to be the lead story, but
unfortunately that rarely happened. Usually the reports about him
were buried by the media, world happenings taking precedence over
his cleansings. Gosh, but that was frustrating.

Tonight was different.

Tonight was his night.

The blond female newscaster sat at her
sprawling studio desk, a fake Chicago skyline behind her. The
camera moved in close so her entire face filled the screen. She was
beautiful in a doll-like way, and her makeup and hair were perfect,
her pearl necklace both seductive and sterile.