Tattooed to Death Page 2

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She was premature, born almost three months too early. It was more than we could handle, so we let her go to a family that knew what they were doing. My ex gets photos once a year.’ Dr Burrell nodded. ‘Painful stuff, but a long time ago.’

  ‘Do you see photos, too?’

  He pointed to her phone. ‘You’d better get going. I don’t want Fannah mad at you on my account.’

  How could she not want to learn more? But shift workers couldn’t be late from breaks. Taking a deep breath, she strode away, shocked by this new dimension to the handsome doctor.

  At least she now had her curiosity satisfied about his career choice.

  At three thirty, Mandy grabbed her purse, slung it over her shoulder, then picked up two drink holders. Fannah made a throaty noise when Mandy glanced at the third drink holder doubtfully.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere until I return,’ Fannah told Houston, then picked up the other carrier.

  Mandy followed her boss up the escalator to the next floor, where a glassed-in sky bridge led over the front driveway to the office building. The complex was built as three sides of a square, with busy Madison Avenue making up the fourth side.

  Reese’s podiatry office was on the same floor as the bridge. Fannah walked confidently across the tiled floor to the right side. Her catwalk stomp remained from her model days, as had her spectacular glowing skin, though she was a couple of years older than Mandy. The soothing tones of her voice came from her native tongue – Amharic.

  ‘You know where you’re going.’ Mandy trotted behind the floor-eating stride of her taller boss.

  ‘I’ve been to the podiatrist a couple of times to have my foot wrapped.’

  ‘Plantar fasciitis?’

  Fannah nodded. ‘Too many of my careers have involved standing. Reese can be abrasive as a customer, but she’s a great nurse.’

  ‘I haven’t needed her services so far, though she helped Vellum,’ Mandy said, smiling at a little boy coming out of a children’s therapy office.

  ‘You will if you stay a barista.’ Fannah shrugged, making the ice in one of the drinks she held rattle. ‘When I had the chance to get off my feet, I took it, but they were already damaged.’

  ‘Food for thought,’ Mandy said. ‘Though, other than people trying to kill me, I’ve enjoyed working here.’

  Fannah said nothing, just ran a manicured nail along her forehead, under her headwrap. They had never talked about what had happened. Mandy had buried her feelings during the days she’d been given off, then returned to work. Her attacker, and others involved, were awaiting trial somewhere in the region, and she simply chose not to think about it. Fannah must have decided the same, although Mandy had noticed they had three security cameras installed above the coffee bar now.

  Mandy had fun at the little party and ended up in an extended discussion about an exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum with the office manager. Long after dark, Mandy yawned as she walked across the sky bridge from the office building to the parking garage. She noted the sign which proudly declared that the entire sky bridge circuit was a half-mile long, and made her usual unfulfilled pledge to walk the circuit a couple of times during the day, to get her steps in.

  She chuckled at the thought. A teenage boy gave her a quizzical look as he saw her laughing face, so she touched her ear, pretending she was laughing at something on earbuds hidden behind her curly brown hair. People talked to themselves all the time these days. It was rare anyone even bothered to notice.

  She turned off the bridge at the elevators and rose up to the top floor, partially uncovered to the rainy March sky. A gust of not-quite-freezing wind blasted her as she walked out of the overhang to her car, half an aisle down. Happy first day of spring to her. The streetlamps were coming on as twilight deepened.

  She had parked in her favorite spot, next to the dumpster in a triangular space created by one corner of the garage. She never lost her car when she parked there.

  Her neck spasmed as she reached her car. She winced as she unlocked her trunk and dumped in her bag of party favors and the slice of cake Reese had insisted she take for Vellum before she had rushed off somewhere.

  Mandy rubbed her neck, wondering how she’d managed to be roped into a conversation that kept her at the party longer than the planner herself had stayed. Ugh. She never should have agreed to carry heavy trays all the way to the podiatrist’s office. Walking while holding them had been too much after a day at the espresso machine.

  She tucked her chin into her chest, stretching the back of her neck as she stepped around her car to unlock the driver-side door.

  With her neck in that position, it was no surprise she saw the foot.

  TWO

  Mandy did a double take as wind whipped her hair in and out of her eyes. The foot was clad in vertical black-and-white striped fabric. Mandy’s mocha threatened to reappear as her disbelieving eyes followed the foot to the attached leg, then past the thigh to a short black skirt. She swallowed hard as her gaze passed a brief expanse of belly with marks on it, to a black shirt. A black jacket, office-style, opened over the torso.

  Mandy’s hand went to her mouth. It shook when she saw the face leaning away from the dumpster, unfamiliar to her with a slack mouth painted vermilion, half-closed eyes.

  She knelt down, scarcely noting the freezing concrete under her knees, and wrapped her fingers around the woman’s wrist. Unable to find a pulse, she noted that the woman’s skin still felt warm.

  After discovering her cousin’s body last month, she had learned how to feel for a pulse. She didn’t know if this woman was dead exactly, but she was close to death at the very least. Horror hit abruptly.

  ‘Call nine-one-one!’ she screamed into the parking garage, hoping someone unseen would hear her. ‘Hello! Hello!’

  She tilted the woman’s head back and blew two breaths into her unresponsive mouth, following ancient CPR training that she probably remembered wrong.

  Nothing happened. Mandy felt for the woman’s sternum and began to compress her chest, trying to remember the rhythm of the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive.’ Wasn’t that what she was supposed to do? Suddenly, she realized her hands were wet.

  From her first compression, they seemed to stick to the fabric. She stared down at her hands in confusion and, in the fading light, saw blood coating them.

  The dark garage spun with stars for a moment. Oh no. The woman’s black clothing had hidden serious wounds. This wasn’t an overdose or heart attack. Mandy shook her head a little, trying to stay focused. She pulled up the untucked shirt. A nightmare of thin cuts was sliced across the woman’s chest. Tattoos, too – black bullseye tattoos on her belly.

  Mandy reached for her phone, buried in her coat pocket, and dialed 911. She’d lost track of time, but no one seemed to be coming to help her.

  While she talked to the operator through the speaker, she turned on the flashlight app on her phone. She hadn’t been imagining it. The woman really didn’t have any shoes on. Mandy still didn’t recognize her, but she was young. Fashionable too, with dip-dyed hair, cotton candy blue over blond. Her even features and smooth skin had probably been lovely, though Mandy had smeared her lipstick.

  Realizing what that meant, she dropped her phone and scrubbed at her mouth with her wrist. Her lips felt greasy against the soft skin of her inner arm. Nausea rising, she skittered back and wound up leaning against her tire, hands covered in blood, her wrist and mouth dabbed with a dead woman’s lipstick.

  ‘Hello? Hello?’

  No one answered. She’d managed to disconnect the emergency operator. When she glanced down, her phone screen had left the call function and now displayed her daughter’s smiling face, along with various apps. Vellum’s face was full of life, compared with the slack face of the victim.

  Mandy had to do something to help. She ripped off her coat and pushed it against the woman’s chest, then hit the call app again. This time she dialed the hospital operator and explained her situation, hoping they could come to her aid. Would the hospital insurance policy allow it?

  Tears pricked her eyes and the piece of cake she’d eaten at the party seemed to churn in her stomach. How could this be happening again? Tentatively, she touched the woman’s hand. Still warm. Should she do more compressions? Was this crumpled figure’s life completely extinguished?

  ‘Mandy Meadows?’

  She heard her name called, almost before she heard the sound of the elevator door opening. ‘Over here, by the dumpster!’ she called.

  She struggled to her feet and held her phone in the direction of the elevator, creating a beacon. Two people carried a stretcher, and an emergency room medical resident ran alongside them. She thanked the operator and hung up, not paying attention to what the woman said.

  Mandy recognized all three of the respondents since they were customers of the coffee bar.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ the resident, Dr Anderson, asked.

  Mandy pointed. ‘No, her. Thank you for coming so quickly.’

  The young doctor’s eyes went wide when he looked past Mandy, then he barked out orders. They treated the victim as if she was still alive, though Mandy pointed out the stab wounds. She wondered if they had any hope of saving the woman’s life.

  Dr Anderson told her to wait for the police, then followed his team as they headed back to the elevator with the woman on their stretcher. The trio had worked with lightning speed. Maybe there hadn’t been enough blood to be certain she was irrevocably dead? Except a pool of it remained on the concrete, now that the body had gone.

  Mandy wished she’d stayed in school, maybe majoring in nursing instead of art as she had before she dropped out, so she would have known the basics of medicine and the human body. Then she could have o
ffered more help.

  A minute later, the high pitch of a police siren wailed. A patrol car roared up the parking ramp. Just underneath the wail, Mandy heard the elevator open. Her name was called again. Running footsteps revealed Keawe Kim, the security guard from the ER.

  ‘Are you OK?’ The heavy-set man wheezed, putting his hands on his back as he came to a stumbling stop ahead of the police car braking.

  Uniformed police officers climbed out of their car. Strobe lights flashed garishly, illuminating the dumpster. Behind them, an ambulance appeared.

  ‘Just light-headed.’ Mandy put her hand to her forehead. ‘I tried to do CPR.’

  ‘All you can do is try,’ Keawe said. He looked exhausted by his race through the hospital.

  ‘You found the victim?’ asked the officer, an older, long-faced man who’d been on the passenger side. She’d seen him before in the hospital. This must be his usual beat.

  Mandy nodded, starting to shiver in her long-sleeved tee. ‘I think she’s dead, but they took her away.’

  The officer frowned. ‘Who?’

  ‘Doctor Anderson was in charge.’ She registered the police officer’s confusion. ‘I lost my connection to nine-one-one, so I called the hospital. I guess they are allowed to send employees into the parking garage. I wasn’t sure.’

  The officer ignored all that with a little flip of his head. ‘Why did you think the person was dead?’

  Mandy gestured to her chest. ‘Mostly the stab wounds. She didn’t have a pulse when I tried to find it, either.’

  ‘She did CPR,’ Keawe interjected.

  Mandy wiped at her mouth with her sleeve, remembering the lipstick again. ‘I didn’t see the stab wounds at first.’

  ‘Where were they?’ asked the second officer. Mandy didn’t recognize her. Younger than the first by twenty years and biracial, she wore her straight black hair in an unflattering collar-length pageboy.

  ‘Her chest. She has a black shirt on.’ Mandy shuddered and pointed to the pavement. ‘I felt the blood sticking to my fingers when I did chest compressions.’

  The two officers shared a glance. The woman took out a notebook as the other spoke into his body cam.

  ‘There’s a chaplain on duty,’ Keawe said. ‘Do you want me to get him for you, Mandy?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Take her to your office if you have one,’ the second police officer said. ‘We’ll secure the scene and send someone to interview the witness.’

  Keawe didn’t allow Mandy to wash, saying she’d have to ask the police for permission in case they needed to collect evidence. She sat on the guest chair in his windowless office, dried blood on her hands and lipstick on her face and arm, for the better part of an hour, with nothing to do but watch the output of the surveillance cameras Keawe had up on his computer screen. He had one camera loaded from the employee part of the parking garage, so she watched the police and their technicians scurry around her car until the security-office door opened.

  She recognized her tenant, homicide detective Justin Ahola, and his partner, Detective Craig Rideout, with a sinking feeling. Was she being treated as a witness or a Good Samaritan, or, as she increasingly felt, a suspect? ‘Did you come to rescue me or is the woman I found dead?’

  Justin, just a year younger than Mandy and possessing the looks of a Viking warrior, gave her an exasperated nod. ‘I’m afraid she didn’t make it, Mandy. How did you, out of everyone who works here, manage to be the one who found her?’

  ‘Was she still alive when I got there?’ Mandy said querulously.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Justin asked.

  ‘Of course it does. I want to know if I could have saved her.’ She swallowed hard. ‘You know, if I’d done something differently.’

  His eyebrows knitted together. ‘How long was it before you called for help?’

  ‘I yelled for help but no one responded. Then I tried to do CPR until I realized how wounded she was. A minute or two, I guess.’

  ‘I doubt it would have mattered,’ he said.

  She didn’t like the word ‘doubt.’ ‘Are you sure? Because—’

  Justin grimaced.

  Detective Rideout, heavy-set with graying black hair and terracotta skin, held up his hand as if to forestall Justin’s irritation. ‘Let’s take Mandy to the station and get her statement out of the way.’

  ‘Can I clean up first?’ she asked.

  ‘At the station, please,’ Justin said. ‘You knelt in the crime scene, handled the crime scene. If you don’t mind, I’d like to collect any trace evidence we can.’

  Mandy was relieved by his tone of request, rather than demand. She hoped the security cameras would show the murder and she’d be completely exonerated. ‘I thought she might be alive. She was warm despite the wind.’

  Detective Rideout’s wife was fighting late-stage cancer. Mandy never saw her housemate’s partner without a rush of sympathy and the desire to bake something Mrs Rideout might be willing to nibble on. ‘They pronounced her dead soon after arriving in the ER, but at least you tried. She had a lot of deep wounds, Mandy.’

  The sight of that cluster of stab wounds danced across Mandy’s vision. And the bizarre tattoos. But it could all wait for the interview room at the police station. She didn’t have it in her to talk about it just then. Maybe they’d offer her a hot drink. She needed one. A change of clothes too, since they might want hers.

  ‘Did you find the murder weapon?’ she asked, touching her hip pocket to make sure she still had her phone.

  Justin narrowed his eyes at her. ‘They’re searching the dumpster now. But you need to forget about this. It isn’t your problem.’

  Not a chance. ‘It’s my hospital,’ Mandy said. ‘Does this have something to do with the drug operation we learned about last month?’

  ‘Nah,’ Detective Rideout said. ‘Criminal Investigations cleared out those bastards last week. Kept it quiet.’

  Mandy rose from the office chair, feeling as if she’d aged a decade since she carried those drinks to the baby shower. ‘Very. I’m amazed. They must not have had to close any departments.’

  ‘I guess they can keep going with limited staff in the affected area,’ Justin explained.

  ‘I forget how big this campus is sometimes.’ Mandy felt for her car keys. They were still in her possession.

  ‘What were you doing here so late?’ Justin asked. ‘I thought your schedule was the same every day now.’

  Mandy walked between the men out of the security-room door. The office was tucked in behind the cafeteria on the second floor. ‘I was at a baby shower,’ she called behind her.

  Justin took Mandy’s arm as they went to the elevator. The other detective frowned at his partner.

  ‘I hope this doesn’t look like I’m under arrest,’ Mandy said.

  She heard Justin snort but he released her arm. ‘Where’s Vellum?’

  ‘I texted her. She’s going to my mother’s.’ Unlike the last time she’d found a body, the police had no need to confiscate her phone. Since her mother lived across the street from her Maple Leaf neighborhood home, Vellum could easily change course.

  ‘I made pizza for dinner,’ Justin said. ‘I should have known better, since we were on call.’

  Mandy rolled her eyes. ‘So exciting. I’m sorry I ruined your pizza.’

  ‘It wasn’t from a box,’ Justin said. ‘I bought a cauliflower crust and topped it myself. Better than the endless tofu stir-fry you live on.’

  ‘It’s far more flexible than pizza,’ Mandy rebutted.

  ‘Children,’ said the other detective when the elevator opened. ‘Can it. This is a murder investigation, not a night at casa Meadows-Ahola.’

  At least he had put her name first, Mandy grumped to herself.

  ‘Casa,’ Justin muttered.

  ‘What’s wrong with “casa”?’ Mandy asked. ‘We can use a Spanish word.’

  ‘His ex was Latinx,’ Detective Rideout said. ‘He takes all Spanish like an insult now. It used to be cute.’ He nudged Justin. ‘Remember when you thought it was cute?’

  Justin growled, his thick brows furrowing together over his pronounced eye ridges. ‘I’m way past the cute phase.’

  His partner quirked his lips. ‘He didn’t want to sell his house. I don’t know why he didn’t simply get a housemate like you did.’