Free Dead Last by James W. Hall

laundry room off the kitchen, Thorn found a bath towel and wrapped it around his waist. He ran cold water over his hand while Buddha scooped ice cubes from the freezer and dumped them into a mixing bowl. She stayed at arm’s length, pistol at the ready.
    When the bowl was full, Thorn slid his throbbing hand among the cubes and examined the woman in the kitchen lights. Her bangs were ragged across her forehead, the hair butchered on top in no discernible style, and on both sides of her head she was shaved to the scalp. It was as bad a haircut as he’d ever seen, as if she’d barbered herself during a seizure. She had a soft oval face and wide-set dark eyes, a small chin, pretty mouth. Though all of that was hard to make out clearly through the hundreds of tiny markings that were lined up in parallel rows across the pale flesh of her cheeks and forehead like a battalion of insects marching into battle.
    “Tattoos,” she said. “In case you were wondering.”
    Thorn hadn’t been a fan of tats until Rusty converted him. She had an elegant pink butterfly tribal design inked at the base of her spine, just above her rump, a drawing that Thorn never tired of tracing with his fingertips. It was their own erogenous zone. An elaborate and artful G-spot.
    Folks like Rusty with two or three tattoos were simply marking themselves with the sacred symbols of their beliefs. Exercising their individuality. But serious tattoo junkies, the ones who covered themselves from head to toe, were a different breed. To them the hot scratch of the needle became a chemical addiction, and their swirly, colorful designs covering every inch of arms and legs and backs and torsos were topographic maps of their pain.
    Rusty believed their secret goal was to disappear behind the murals of embedded ink, to divert the eyes of onlookers to the artwork and away from the sad disclosures of their faces.
    But even in the world of tattoo freaks, this young woman was an extreme case. The outlandish tats that disfigured her cheeks and forehead and chin were like a veil drawn across her features, all but hiding her from view.
    “Okay, you have my attention,” he said. “Ask your questions, then go.”
    “Thank you.”
    She took her time. Ambled around the kitchen, appraising the ancient appliances, the tile countertops, the pickled wood cabinetry. Still with the pistol in her hand, she touched a fingertip to a line of grout and traced its straight edge down the length of the counter.
    “I’m investigating the homicide of Michaela Stabler.”
    “Never heard of her.”
    “Rusty never mentioned the name?”
    “Why would she?”
    At the side window she halted her tour of the kitchen and stared outside at the bonfire’s dying flames.
    While she was distracted, Thorn quietly slipped his hand from the bowl of ice and stepped around the counter. He eased behind her, eyes on the pistol held loosely in her hand. He didn’t know if she was a cop or not. He didn’t know who the hell she was. But she was a stranger, and she was inside his house with a revolver in her hand, and in Thorn’s view, that was unacceptable.
    He set his feet, timed his move, then snapped his left hand for the gun. But the young woman was wound tighter than she appeared. She slid to her right, chopped the edge of her free hand against his wrist, and danced out of range. She brought the pistol up again to sight on Thorn’s face.
    “Dude, you’re getting old and slow.”
    Thorn held his ground.
    “And so predictable,” she said. “Rash and brash just like she said.”
    “Who said?”
    “Rusty Stabler, your wife.”
    “What the hell do you know about Rusty?”
    “I know a good bit about her, and way too much about you.”
    She was studying him intently as if trying to match his face to some image in her head.
    “You don’t know shit.”
    “Okay, for one thing,” she said, “I know you’ve been living off the grid since before there even was a grid.”
    Thorn tightened the towel