9

The door jingled as I pushed it open. A mix of scents greeted me as I stepped into the darkened shop: spicy day-old takeout, rubbing alcohol, and an ‘herbal incense’ that may not have been of the legal variety. The blinds across the front windows blocked a good portion of the midmorning sun, and what they didn’t diffused into the smoky haze that hovered over the shop’s worn wooden floor.

Yeah. Incense, my ass.

“You know, you could at least try not to look like you want to tear someone’s head off.” Shay stood beside me, having followed me into the shop.

“What if I do want to tear someone’s head off?”

“Not the tattoo artist’s we’re here to talk to, hopefully.”

I unclenched my jaw. “Sorry. Can’t blame me, though. I’m starting to think we should’ve canvassed the streets after all.”

“You know what they say,” said Steele. “Third time’s the charm.”

“Only problem is this is our fifth tattoo parlor.”

The sign above the door had read Thicker Than Water, which I gave a three out of five in terms of pun creativity. Sure, skin bled when tattooed, but the liquid most important to the process was the dye. I’d much preferred the name of the second shop we’d set foot in, Inked, Inc.

I took a look around. A quartet of leather barber’s chairs populated the corners of the shop, each of them showing cracks in the seats, backing, and headrests. Cabinets loaded with bottles of ink, racks of sharp needles, and hand tools needed to insert ink under the patron’s skin stood behind each station, but it was the artwork on the walls that caught my eye.

Each station had several pieces of art hung around it, no doubt representative of the individual artist’s style. Based on the displayed pieces, one did traditional tribal designs, another ventured more into realistic depictions of animals and nature, though only in black and gray, the third focused purely on abstract, color works, and the last did something altogether unique. A quirky style of characters with oversized heads, exaggerated body dimensions, and the flair of a children’s book illustrator. Hopefully the designs weren’t actually intended for children…

A piece of furniture at the back end of the shop—more than a hostess stand but not quite a desk—stood a few feet in front of a bead curtain. The incense wafted over from that direction.

Shay approached the counter. Failing to find a bell, she knocked on the side of the stand and called out. “Hello? Anyone here?”

I heard coughing from the back, then the sound of something clattering to the ground. Footsteps followed.

A hand brushed the beads aside. A guy with long matted hair, sleepy eyes, and a braided goatee walked through. He wore baggy canvas pants, a colorful knit hat, and a vest over his bare chest. He brought with him a wave of fresh smoke.

I coughed, too, but probably not for the same reasons our host had.

The tattoo bum eyed the pair of us, but mostly Shay. “Welcome. My name’s Dwayne. Sorry it took me a moment to come out. Didn’t hear you at first.”

“Really?” said Shay. “It’s a small shop. That’s the whole point of the door chime.”

Dwayne blinked. “Uh…right. So what can I do for you? You’ve got sort of a yin and yang thing going on. Maybe a skull for the tough guy and a more delicate piece for you? A bird or a butterfly? Or are only one of you getting inked today?”

I took a wild guess that Dwayne specialized in the abstract color work, but who knows? Maybe he was the brains behind the swollen-headed marionette babies.

“Neither. We’re here looking for someone. Two someones, actually.” I reached into my coat and produced the sketches I’d received from Boatreng. I unfolded them and held them out.

Dwayne looked at them blankly. “Sorry. Those guys don’t work here. You must have the wrong shop.”

“We didn’t expect them to work here,” said Shay. “We were hoping they might be clients of yours.”

Dwayne blinked again. I wondered if the habit was more chemically-induced or a product of his mental capacity. “Who did you say you were?”

“We didn’t. Detectives Daggers and Steele. New Welwic PD. Homicide division.”

“Whoa.” Dwayne took another look at the sketches. “These guys are dead?”

I swallowed hard, recalling my role in that. “You catch on quick.”

“Ever seen them around the shop?” asked Shay.

“Sorry,” said Dwayne with a shrug. “Should I have?”

“Maybe,” said Shay. “They had matching ink on the inside of their left forearms. A series of three lines, tight at the bottom, spreading out toward the wrist, with some bubbles or semicircles at the end.”

Dopey Dwayne gave us a blank look.

I rummaged in my jacket, producing another piece of paper. Dwayne wasn’t the first employee to look as if we’d described an engineering diagram instead of a tattoo.

“This,” I said, holding the sketch forward.

Dwayne snorted. “Really? You think someone would come by Thicker than Water for that? Come on, man. We’re artists. We take pride in our work. This isn’t some two bit poke shop. That looks like the kind of thing someone got in a prison.”

“We’re not implying you couldn’t do better than this. The wall art speaks for itself.” And not necessarily in a good way, I thought. “But you run a business here, right? I’m sure people come in all the time asking for tattoos that aren’t you or your shop mates’ specialty.”

“They do,” said Dwayne. “And we turn them down. Because we have standards.”

I glanced at the empty chairs. There seemed to be a clear inverse correlation between standards and business.

“Our apologies,” said Shay. “We weren’t trying to disparage your artistic talents. We’re simply following leads. I’m assuming you have other artists who work here though, right? Next time you see them, could you ask if they’ve seen either of the individuals in the sketches?”

Dwayne held up a hand. His fingertips were stained yellow, either from his tattoo work or all the ‘incense’ he’d inhaled. “Hold up. I said I’d never seen the guys. Never tatted something so trivial, either. Doesn’t mean I haven’t seen the tattoo before.”

My eyes widened. “You have?”

“Sure,” he said. “A potential client from a couple weeks ago had one, same place you mentioned. Left forearm. Had a bunch of other tattoos, too. Skull on his upper arm. Knife on the inside of his bicep. Said he had a few others on his chest and back, too, but I didn’t ask to see them. He was looking to get another one on his arm, of a warrior on a hill holding a hammer to the sky. Cool idea, but it needed a little work. I tried to convince him to—”

“Dwayne,” I said. “We’re not interested in the tattoo you gave him.”

“Didn’t give him,” said Dwayne. “He and I couldn’t come to an artistic compromise.”

“Did he have a name?”

“Uh…” The smoke-infused tattoo artist blinked. “Come to think of it, he never mentioned it. I didn’t get a chance to bond with him, you know, seeing as he left without getting anything. Maybe it was for the better. He seemed like a rough dude.”

“What else can you tell us about him?” asked Shay. “Physical attributes. Any names he might’ve mentioned besides his?”

“I don’t remember any, no,” said Dwayne. “But I can tell you what he looked like. He was an ogre. A big one. Probably wouldn’t have even fit in the chair, to be honest. Bald. Scary looking.”

That wasn’t the most helpful of descriptions. Most ogres were big and scary looking. “How well do you remember him? If we sent our artist over, do you think you could work with him to create a reasonable likeness?”

Dwayne snorted again. “Dude. I’m an artist. I have an eye for that sort of thing.”

“As long as you remember,” I said.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

In my experience, the particular type of ‘incense’ he reeked of didn’t help with long-term memory, but I kept that bit of pessimism to myself. Instead, Shay and I thanked the guy for his help and assured him Boatreng would be right over.