The Investigator 2: A Legal Thriller by Dave Daren

Author:Dave Daren [Daren, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

I took a screenshot of the paused video and then sent it to my phone so I’d have it handy. Once that was done, I studied the tattoo more closely. It was a beautiful piece of work and not just something someone got on a whim after a few too many shots. The rose was remarkably lifelike, and the scales on the snake that twisted around the flower were a detailed study in color and contrast. This was the kind of thing that I might be able to track back to the owner.

So now I knew my killer had a distinctive tattoo and probably a bruised jaw from the punch that Xavier had thrown. As annoying as Fontenot had been, I had to give him credit. He’d put up a good fight, and he’d even managed to leave clues for me to follow to find his killer. I almost had to wonder if he’d still be alive if he hadn’t left the bottle out on the counter. If Xavier had managed to pull the knife from the drawer before being bashed in the head by his drink of choice, would the outcome have been different?

The real problem I had now was how to trace the tattoo. New Orleans did not suffer from a shortage of tattoo parlors, and that was assuming that the killer had the work done somewhere in the city limits. And though the work was really good, there wasn’t any guarantee that the artist who’d done it would remember much about it. Or that the artist was even still in New Orleans. Someone that good might have moved on to more fertile ground by now.

I realized I was still holding the last piece of beignet, so I popped it into my mouth and munched while I considered my options for what I should do next. After running through a mental list of the more popular tattoo parlors, I finally decided to start with a place called Tony’s Tattoos.

It was one of the best in New Orleans, and their business was so good that they’d bought the floor above the shop as well and turned it into rooms where they could pierce ears and other places. It wasn’t far from here, and I figured that the tattoo artists that worked there would either claim the piece or recognize whose hand might have made it. There were certainly enough artists at work in the place that the odds were good that someone might be able to give me a lead.

I also decided that once I’d checked Tony’s for anyone who recognized the ink, then I would head over to the Krewe of Night’s warehouse again. Raphael and Xavier worked closely together, so I assumed that Raphael was in touch with at least a few of Xavier’s connections within the various business ventures he was a part of. The killer knew not only where Xavier lived, but when he would be in and how to avoid revealing too much to the camera, all of which pointed to an inside job.

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