Red by Kate Kinsey Page B

assume you asked Marla?”
    “Sure, we asked,” Griggs said, shrugging. “She says she never heard of anybody named Cherry. So maybe she is a stripper—”
    “You—” Daubs pointed a finger at Griggs. “Not another word out of you. ”
    Griggs mimed zipping his lips and looked at the ceiling.
    Marla’s reaction to the question about Cherry did bother Hanson, though he saw no need to tell Daubs. Most wives, even the ones who trusted their husbands, would be at least a little annoyed to find a strange woman had been leaving messages on their husband’s cell phone.
    Not Marla. She had simply shrugged and said the woman must be someone he knew through work. A paralegal or secretary, perhaps.
    The chief turned his scowl back to Hanson.
    “What about this new girl two days ago? Is it the same guy?”
    “We think so. Same weapon. Some kind of blunt object with a rounded end, probably wooden. Same kind of small blade, very sharp.”
    “Same mutilation?”
    “Afraid so.”
    “Any connection at all between—what was her name? Robyn Macy ? And Roger?”
    “None that we can find. Not personally, not professionally. Nothing. They didn’t even use the same bank. We’re still waiting on the LUDs from Robyn Macy’s phone to compare them against Banks’s.”
    “That’s it ?” Daubs asked.
    “Well, there was one thing,” Griggs said, hands still in his pockets, rocking slightly. “That symbol. The one on his key chain and her ass.”
    “What kind of symbol?” Daubs asked, suddenly suspicious.
    “Roger Banks had a key chain with a round tag on it.” Hanson circled his finger and thumb to show the size of it, about an inch and a half in diameter. “It has a symbol, some kind of emblem on it. Robyn Macy had the same design as a tattoo.”
    He pulled the photo of the key chain from his coat pocket where he’d been carrying it around for two days, showing it to everybody with no luck.
    “Any idea what this is? I don’t suppose it’s any kind of fraternity symbol?”
    Daubs squinted, pulled the paper closer, and shook his head.
    “I have no idea. Marla didn’t know?”
    “Mrs. Banks says she has no idea where it came from.”
    Hanson thought he’d seen something odd flicker across Marla’s face when they’d asked about the key chain. She’d been just a little too eager in suggesting that it was probably just some promotional giveaway. Roger was always picking up stuff like that, she had said.
    Griggs hadn’t liked it, either. When they’d left Marla, he had snorted. “Who gives away something without their name on it?”
    But this was something else he saw no point in confusing Daubs with. The man was beginning to breathe hard again.
    “And the girl had a tattoo ?” Daubs demanded.
    “We found the artist who did the tat. But she claims Robyn Macy brought in the design and that she has no idea what it is.”
    Hanson had spent a couple of hours on the Web, but it was damned hard to know what to search for when all you had was a symbol that couldn’t be typed into Google. Astrological, Celtic, Egyptian, mathematical, chemical, Hindu, Christian. Entire websites devoted to that Da Vinci Code crap. Don’t even ask about witchcraft and Satanic symbols. A guy could go blind.
    “Nearest thing we can find is a symbol for Okinawan Karate.” Griggs laughed sourly. “And the U.S. Department of Transportation.”
    “That doesn’t make any sense,” Daubs frowned. “I never knew Roger to be involved in any martial art or anything with the DOT.”
    “Neither does anybody else,” Hanson said, wiping a hand over his mouth, just in case he lost the fight not to smile. “Robyn Macy’s mother didn’t even know she had a tattoo. One of her friends at the bank where she worked said, yeah, Robyn had been talking about getting some ink, but not whether she actually went through with it. The tattoo was only a couple of days old.”
    His gut told him the tattoo artist knew more than she was telling, but he didn’t