The Tattoo Collector, page 13
He places the portrait back in the same spot. He’s not wearing gloves, but he’s not worried about leaving fingerprints. If they have the same DNA, they ought to have the same fingerprints unless he has any scars on his fingertips. Given the kind of pampered, privileged life the man has led, he doubts he has any such scars.
A car rolls by outside, slowing down, and he jumps to the front window to see if it’s stopping. A garage door is opening across the street two houses down, and the car turns into that driveway. He turns and sees the master bedroom to his right. The room is neat and well kept, although the bed is unmade. When he walks in, he sees more photos of the man and the woman. These are smaller and are in frames lined up on top of the dresser. One is of them in front of the Arch in St. Louis. Another is of them at a baseball game with that same Arch in the background behind the outfield seats. He laughs at the third one he sees, the man and woman in front of a sign that says “Uranus Fudge Factory”.
There is a picture on the wall of footprints in sand along with a poem about Jesus. There’s also a painting that looks to be original of a small house in the middle of a field of corn stalks. He wonders if it’s worth anything. There’s a desk in the corner with a flat screen monitor, keyboard, and mouse but no computer. Ignoring the master bathroom and the closet, he wanders out and sees two other rooms on the other side of the living area. One is set up as an office with a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and empty docking station for a laptop. There is also a recliner with a box of yarn on the floor next to it. The other room is set up as a guest bedroom with a bed that is tidily made up. The chest of drawers in that room is empty. At least the two drawers he slides open are empty. He ignores the others. There is nothing under the bed, and with the frill on the bottom, he knows that a person could hide under there if necessary.
He walks back into the living room and sits on the sofa, staring at the portrait above the fireplace. It occurs to him that he could walk away, let the man in the photo go to prison for the things he has done. He could walk away, live a regular life. But he knows he can no longer ignore the pull of the hunt and the thrill of the taking any more than he can ignore breathing. That moment of possessing someone, making her his, is worth all the searching, stalking, and planning that he puts into it. He couldn’t give that up. But what happens when they get a DNA sample from one that he does after the man is sent to prison? Then they’ll know he couldn’t have done it. He laughs at the thought of how perplexed they’d be. He was perplexed himself when he saw the story that the man had been arrested based on that DNA evidence. Until he figured it out. His mother had always said that she wished she’d given him away like she gave away his brother. Turns out, she wasn’t lying after all.
He could alter what he does so that he doesn’t leave DNA, but that would remove his reason for being. His release, their release. They both have to happen at the same time for any kind of satisfaction. Otherwise, why do it at all? And they’d find DNA from other sources. He couldn’t clean all the hairs from the place, all the little fragments of him under their fingernails when they try to fight him at first. No, his only choice is to carry on as he has been doing.
He starts to get up from the sofa when his eye stops on a business card sitting on the coffee table in front of him. The FBI logo is prominent. The print next to it reads “Special Agent Jeremy Sloan, Violent Crimes Division”. He picks it up, looking at the two phone numbers, one fax number, and email address below this. This, he realizes, is the lead hunter, the person in charge of the pack of law enforcement after him. He wonders if he shouldn’t make the hunter the hunted. But no, the rest of them would be all over him if he did that. He wonders if this Jeremy Sloan has a woman, wonders if he couldn’t take her from him and make her one of his. The thought makes him smile. He looks at the man and woman in the picture again, that man who looks just like him. The woman is smiling. She is pretty. Older but pretty. Not his normal type. But if she’s good enough for the man, she’d be good enough for him. He wonders if he came here while she was here, pretended to be the man, how long it would take her to notice, to know that he wasn’t the man.
He knows he’s been here too long. He puts the business card in his shirt pocket and walks back through the kitchen and out the back door. He needs a key to lock the door from the outside, and he doesn’t want to stand there with his tools picking the lock in reverse. So he leaves it unlocked and walks back the way he came, back to the car. Once he is sitting behind the wheel, he pulls the business card out of his shirt pocket and looks at the address of the FBI office in Dallas. He thinks he might take a look at it after he makes a stop at the public library to see what he can find out about Special Agent Jeremy Sloan on the computer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ON THE WAY back to the office from the nudist resort (not colony), Sloan diverted to west Fort Worth and stopped at the Valero on the service road just off Ridglea Blvd. The fuel pumps were deserted. He pulled Donald White’s mug shot up on his phone screen and walked in. Sloan was the only customer. The clerk sat behind the counter, a clear plane of plastic, installed after the advent of COVID, hanging from two chains between him and the rest of the store. The clerk seemed to take notice of him in his Friday suit and tie and sat up straighter. Sloan took a twenty ounce bottle of Diet Mountain Dew to the counter. As the clerk scanned the bottle, Sloan flashed his FBI ID and held his phone up to the plastic.
“Do you recognize this man?”
The clerk glanced at the phone screen and shrugged. “Yeah, he looks familiar.”
Sloan glanced at the green digital number on the cash register, $2.17. He fished two ones and a quarter from his pocket and put it on the counter as he talked.
“Is he a regular?”
“Been in here a few times.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
The clerk shrugged again. “Three, four days ago.”
“Do you remember what he was driving?”
“He usually walks here.”
“He walks?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
Sloan took out one of the regular business cards, one with the FBI office’s general number and not his cell phone, and handed it to the clerk. He thought about getting the footage from the security camera in the store, but they already know who the guy is and what the guy looks like. The tape might show what times he came into the store and what he’d been wearing, but it would take a lot of man-hours to find those visits.
“If you see him again, call this number immediately.”
The clerk took the card, looked at it, and said, “Is he, like, dangerous?”
“Very.”
The clerk picked the money up off the counter and keyed the amount into the register. The drawer popped open. He put the business card in the front slot of the drawer, where dollar coins would normally go, then made change and handed it to Sloan.
“OK,” he said.
“Does the store have an email address where I can send this picture?”
The clerk recited an email address as Sloan typed it in, then emailed the photo.
“Print that out and post it back there for the other clerks to see, all right?”
“Yes sir,” the clerk said.
Sloan pocketed his eight cents, took his Diet Mountain Dew, and returned to his Navigator. He looked around the tiny parking lot, the gas pumps, and the access road and Interstate 30 beyond.
“He walked,” Sloan muttered to himself.
He thought about walking around a bit, but it was too hot to be walking around in a suit. Once he got into the Navigator and had his phone hooked up to the charging cord, he started the vehicle and called Sam.
“I think we need to concentrate our search in west Fort Worth,” he said after Sam answered the phone.
“Why is that?”
Sloan told him about White’s experience the previous week in the Valero and what the clerk told him about Crum walking there during his somewhat regular visits. As he talked, he drove around the area keeping an eye for pedestrians and dark colored Toyota Corollas. He thought about telling Sam about White’s dreams and about his “hunch” that Crum was driving a Corolla, but he ultimately decided to keep that to himself for now.
“There are a lot of older apartment complexes here. The kind that may not run credit checks. He’s got to be using an alias since his name isn’t coming up like we would expect.”
“I’ll call Fort Worth PD and check on any mobile surveillance video they might have in that area,” Sam said. “The APB has been issued, so they should be cooperative.”
“If he’s walking, I don’t think he would cross I-30. He’d walk somewhere on the side he’s on. So have Fort Worth concentrate on the area just north of I-30 between Horne Street and Green Oaks Road.”
“Got it.”
As Sloan finished driving around the neighborhood, he and Sam talked about other things related to this case and to others. The good news was that the press hadn’t yet caught wind of White’s release or transfer. By the time Sloan got back to the office, almost everyone else had gone home. He sat at his workstation writing reports on the events of the day, transcribing a lot of it from his handwritten notes and composing the rest from memory. It was almost dark when he finished, and at this time of year, that meant it was around 8:30 PM.
On his drive home, he called Amanda.
“Hey, how did your finals go?” he asked when she answered.
“They went good, I think. Are you just now on your way home?”
“Yeah. It was a long day.”
“You want to come over here?”
The thought of spending the evening with his girlfriend sounded infinitely better than going home to an empty apartment.
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said. “Have you eaten?”
“Yeah, but that’s all right.”
“I was thinking about running through a Whataburger drive-thru on my way there.”
“Ooh, get me one of those Dr. Pepper shakes,” she said.
“I’ll do it.”
Whataburger drive-thru’s are generally slower than those of other fast food chains since they don’t start making burgers until they’re ordered. Sloan used the time to check his email on his phone. Fort Worth PD has had an elevated CCTV unit at a strip shopping at I-30 and Green Oaks Road and is searching through their video. Sloan remembered the place. There’s an Albertson’s grocery store there along with a closed down BestBuy and a few other small stores, an Applebee’s restaurant in front of the parking lot. If Crum lived nearby, and Sloan was betting he did, he has probably done a bit of grocery shopping at that Albertson’s.
Sloan ordered a double meat Whataburger with a Diet Coke for himself and a regular Whataburger with a Dr. Pepper shake for Amanda. He skipped the fries—too many carbs—although he knew Amanda would berate him for it. When he got to Amanda’s apartment, he was irritated to see that the blinds were wide open, and anyone could see everything in the lit-up living room. He knocked on the door, but it was Amanda’s roommate Marcella who answered.
“Oh hi,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’m going out for awhile, so you two can have the living room if you want it.”
“That’s OK.”
Sloan walked inside and looked out the window. All he saw was the blackness of the dark.
“How have you been, Marcella?”
“Oh, I’ve been OK. Taking the summer off from school, but, you know, still working at Starbuck’s.”
Sloan looked back at her and couldn’t help but notice the flirtatious grin on Marcella’s face and then the quick look away, almost as if she were blushing. She was a short Latina with shoulder length dark brown hair.
“Do you like working at Starbuck’s?” he asked just to make conversation as he set the Whataburger bag and drink caddy on the kitchen counter.
“There are worse jobs.”
“Yeah, I imagine there are.”
They stood looking at each other over the bar, silent. They both looked away for an awkward moment.
“Where is Amanda, by the way?” Sloan asked.
“Here I am,” her voice came from the back.
She walked in from the back of the apartment, all 5 feet 11 inches of her, blonde, curvaceous, and beautiful. Sloan’s breath caught every time he saw her, and even though she was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, her hair and makeup were flawless. She walked over to him, and he kissed her, his hand in the small of her back.
“I thought I told you to close those blinds at night,” Sloan said when the kiss ended.
“Oh, I forgot. I was making myself beautiful for you.”
Amanda walked to the window and rolled the blinds shut. “There.”
“All right,” Marcella said, “I’m out of here. Don’t wait up for me.”
“We won’t,” Amanda replied, laughing.
As Marcella walked out the apartment door, Amanda looked into the Whataburger bag.
“Where are the fries?”
“I didn’t get any fries.”
“Why not? How am I supposed to dip my fries in my Dr. Pepper shake if there aren’t any fries?”
“That, my dear, is a misuse of a perfectly good Dr. Pepper shake.”
He grabbed her and pulled her toward him, brushing her hair back from her face with his fingers.
“Are we going to watch a movie or do something else?” Amanda asked.
“I’m voting for something else. After I eat my burger though. I’m starved.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IT DIDN’T TAKE long for Jean to come up with a list of things they would need for their weekend in the trailer. Donald added a couple of items of his own to that list. So at about seven PM, she dressed and got in her car and headed toward the Walmart in Decatur. They both hated to be apart for even a minute given the experience of the last day and a half, but they both thought it best that Donald remain away from the public. Once Jean left, the first thing Donald thought to do was call his mother, both to tell her he was out of jail and to talk about the secret she had kept so long. But his phone was still in the possession of either the FBI or some other law enforcement agency, so he logged onto the laptop Jean had retrieved from her office. He tried connecting to the resort Wi-Fi which didn’t always work in the trailer. But today it did, although it was painfully slow. Donald logged into his social media accounts. The number of comments and messages he had received since his arrest was overwhelming, so he logged out of those and into his Ancestry account. The last message he had sent to Barbara Janney, “Who is Randy?” was still there, but there was a new reply from her.
Dear Donald: I apologize for my last message. My grandson, Randy, has a history of messing with people, sometimes not in a nice way. When I saw your photo, I thought it was him. The two of you look that much alike. An FBI agent called me earlier today and told me that my daughter had twins and for some reason had given one up for adoption and kept the other. I don’t understand that. I guess I never will. My daughter — your mother, I guess — was killed 15 years ago. Her name was Nancy, but everyone called her Nan. Nancy Ann Janney, although she was Nancy Ann Crum for awhile.
In answer to your questions, my husband, Richard Janney, your grandfather, had type 2 diabetes for the last eight years of his life. He also had high cholesterol and high blood pressure, but it was rectal cancer that got him in the end. Oh my, that sounds wrong, doesn’t it. In the end. I’m sorry. It’s been eight years, and I still miss him. He had that kind of sense of humor. His father died of a heart attack in 1977. His mother caught pneumonia and died in 1984. I’m not sure if they had any chronic conditions before that. My father died in World War II, and my mother lived to be 106. She died just last year.
I don’t know much about your biological father’s family. He was married to Nan only a short time. I think she kept the baby to get him to marry her, and then she used the child to get child support from him when they split up. I never did understand that girl. She had a lot of problems. Anyway, I hope this helps.
Barbara
Donald read the message twice before typing a response. “Thanks for that information. I take heart in the fact that my great grandmother lived such a long life. I do have to ask though, how did—“ He thought about typing “my mother”, but his mom was still his mother. Instead he typed “your daughter die?” to finish the question. He then typed his first name and hit send.
It was almost dark by the time Jean got back with the groceries. He started to walk out and help her bring them in, but she shooed him back into the trailer.
“Agent Sloan said to lay low and that’s exactly what you’re going to do. Besides, there’s not that much anyway.”
She got them all inside in one load, five plastic bags full. Donald did put everything up while Jean put a small Mexican lasagna in the oven to eat for dinner. They had just sat down to eat on paper plates and with plastic forks when they heard a knock on the trailer door. Jean got up to answer it.
“Hey there,” Donald heard Baldy Bob say.
“Hi,” Jean replied.
“We were heading up to the clubhouse for karaoke, saw your car, and wondered if you wanted a ride,” Sandy said.
“Actually, I’m just going to chill here at the trailer.”
“What! No karaoke?” Bob said.
“You have to keep on living,” Sandy said.
Donald saw her eyes light on him as she looked past Jean into the trailer.
“Oh my God! Don, you’re out?”
Donald stood up and went to the door to stand next to Jean.
“Yeah, it’s long story.”
“Come on in,” Jean said, obviously nervous that others might see Donald standing there.
Sandy and Bob stepped into the trailer, and Jean shut the door.
“We were just starting dinner,” Jean said, sitting back down.
Donald sat down at his plate and motioned for Sandy and Bob to sit next to them at what passed for a dining room table in the tiny travel trailer. They were both nude and their towels were out on their golf cart, so they hesitated.
