“Absolutely. I started that here.” He pulled down one side of the V-neck of his black T-shirt to show the same symbols incorporated into the complicated design on his chest. “I wanted to make a statement and see how many people would take it up as their own. Spread the message.”

“Pooch did mine,” Sonya said, pushing up the sleeve of her purple sweater to show Liska.

“I’ve done a couple hundred of these, at least,” the artist said proudly. “It’s big with the college crowd. People want to think this younger generation is completely egocentric, but that’s not so. Acceptance is an important message for a lot of them. Acceptance of race, gender, religion, sexual preference.”

“What about teenagers?” Kovac asked.

Halvorsen pointed to a big sign on the wall behind him:

YOU MUST BE 18 TO GET A TATTOO.

PHOTO ID REQUIRED.

NO EXCEPTIONS.

“Let’s say a kid was really determined,” Liska said.

The big man shrugged. “Nothing is foolproof to a really determined fool. Somebody wants something badly enough, they’ll find someone willing to do it for a price.”

“Do you happen to know any of those someones?”

“I hear things,” he conceded. “Young artists just starting out. Guys who are hard up for money do stuff on the side. People who have no business owning machines think they can learn by doing on their friends.

“There’s a boom in the business now,” he explained. “Everyone wants ink. Demand will find supply. It’s basic economics. When I started out, there were a handful of shops in the Twin Cities. Now these places sprout up like mushrooms—and die just as quick. You’ve got to know what you’re doing to run a business in this economy. People get into it because they think it’ll be fun. They think it’ll make them cool to run a tattoo shop the same way people think it’ll make them cool if they own a bar.”

The buzz of tattoo machines and muffled conversations coming from the back of the shop gave credence to his claim of a booming business. A narrow hall on one side of the space led back to hidden rooms where the magic happened.

“You didn’t do the tattoo on our victim?” Kovac asked.

“No. That didn’t happen in my shop. Sonya showed me the picture. That’s none of my people.”

“Any idea whose work it might be?”

He shook his head. “There’s not enough to it to show a particular style. You get into real art, I can recognize whose work it is.”

Sonya tugged down the scoop neck of her sweater, revealing a full-color heart with elaborate wings reaching across the width of her chest edged with a subtle leopard print. In the center of the heart was an ornately detailed gold-colored padlock with the words Try Harder delicately drawn in an arch above the keyhole. The shading of the ink was masterfully done, the outlining impeccable. The longer Kovac looked at the tattoo, the more he saw.

“This is Pooch,” she said. “Everyone who knows tattoos in this town knows Pooch did this.”

Halvorsen nodded, proud. “My foo dog is the work of a friend of mine from Florida. He specializes in traditional Chinese and Japanese art. Everyone in the business knows Shane’s work.

“But it takes years and a true artist to develop a distinctive signature look,” he said. “Most people—even really good technicians—never do.”

“And not the person who did our dead girl’s tattoo,” Kovac said.

“No. That’s an amateurish job. The outlines aren’t as sharp as they should be. There’s no artistry, no shading. Any newbie could have done that.”

“And do you know if this symbol is being used in other parts of the country?” Liska asked.

“Absolutely. It’s everywhere now. Half a dozen of us started doing it at the same time—East Coast, West Coast, middle America.”

“So our victim could have come from anywhere,” Kovac said.

Liska’s phone rang, and she dug it out of her pocket, frowning at it as she excused herself and stepped toward the door.

Pooch Halvorsen spread his hands. “I can’t help you there. But I’ll sniff around, ask some questions, see if I can get a lead on anyone here in town.”

“We’d appreciate that,” Kovac said. He sighed, not sure what he had been hoping for. Zombie Doe’s photograph on the Helm of Awe Social Club’s wall of fame, perhaps.

He turned to Sonya. “You’ll get together with Tip later and go over any kind of response you might have gotten to your story, right?”

Even as he asked, his eyes darted to Liska, who was in conversation, her expression tense. Jaw set, she jammed the phone back in her coat pocket and looked up at him.

“I have to go,” she said. “Now. I need to commit an infanticide.”

16

As with any good interrogation, the suspects had been separated and taken to different rooms so as not to be able to get their stories straight. The downside of that was that Liska was not in charge of this investigation and had access to only one side of the story. That did not sit well. She was coming into the situation with no background, and she wasn’t going to be able to hear both sides of the story to decide which parts of the individual tales to piece together into what was probably the truth.

If the culprit had been her younger son, R.J. would have readily spilled his guts, openly and honestly portraying his own culpability in the incident. Kyle sat sullen and silent, avoiding eye contact.

“You need to tell me what this about, Kyle,” Nikki said firmly, pacing at the end of the table with her arms crossed tight over her chest. “Principal Rodgers is going to come in here and I’m not going to be able to help you if I don’t have a clear picture of what happened.”

“It was nothing,” he said, staring at the tabletop. “Guys were just horsing around.”

“‘Just horsing around’ doesn’t end up in a fight.”

“It wasn’t a fight,” he said. “There was no fight.”

“You realize how serious this is, don’t you?” she asked. “This school has a zero-tolerance policy for fighting. That means you can be expelled.”

“I wasn’t fighting!” he insisted, finally looking at her. “Jeez, could you believe me for a change?”

“How can I believe you if you won’t tell me what happened? I have to piece this together from what other people tell me, Kyle. I can’t read your mind. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened.”

Quick tears filled her son’s blue eyes and he looked down at the tabletop again, trying to stare a hole through it. His face was red with the effort to wrestle the emotions back into their box.

As exasperated as she was, Nikki wanted to go to him and put her arms around him as she had done when he was a little boy. It physically hurt to see him in emotional pain. But she knew her touch would not be welcome, not here, not now when he was trying so hard to be a man and take whatever fate was about to deal out to him.

Sighing, trying to release some of her own tension, she pulled a chair out and sat down, close enough to him that their knees touched beneath the table. Maybe if they were at the same eye level, he would confide in her. Maybe if she wasn’t physically asserting her position of authority, he wouldn’t feel so defensive. Advanced Interrogation Skills 2.0.

“So what’s with this Fogelman kid?” she asked. “You have some beef with him?”

He tipped his head, tilting his chin toward her but looking the other way. “He’s a jerk.”

“In what way?”

“In every way.”

“Did you hit him?”

“No.”

“Did you knock him down?”

Hesitation. He was about to twist the truth into something he thought would be more acceptable. “I banged into him and he tripped and fell, and I fell on top of him.”

“Kyle . . . ,” Nikki said. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Not the mother who writes the checks for your jiu-jitsu lessons. You took him down.”