Free Violets Are Blue by James Patterson Page A

Maybe I never would. Even now, if I let myself, I could get torn up thinking about Maria and what happened to her, to us, and how goddamn senseless it had been. What a terrible waste of a human life. It had left Damon and Jannie without their mother.
    I had tried hard to find someone, but maybe I just wasn’t meant to be lucky twice in my lifetime. There had been Jezzie Flanagan, but that couldn’t have turned out worse. And then Christine Johnson, little Alex’s mother. She was a teacher and now lived out here on the West Coast. She was doing well, loved Seattle, and had “found someone.” I still had terribly mixed feelings about Christine. She’d been hurt because of me. My fault, not hers. She had made it clear she couldn’t live with a homicide detective. And then, not too long ago, I had started to become involved with an FBI agent named Betsey Cavalierre. Now Betsey was dead. Her murder remained unsolved. I was afraid to even have drinks with Jamilla Hughes. The past was starting to haunt me.
    “Some detective,” I muttered, as I spotted the overhead sign: Fresno. I had come here to see a man about some teeth.
    Fangs, actually.

Chapter 29

    THE TATTOO, fang, and claws parlor was located on the fringe of a lower-middle-class commercial district in downtown Fresno. It was a ramshackle storefront with an old dentist’s chair prominently displayed in the window. In the chair was a girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen. She sat with her skinny, pimpled neck bowed toward her lap, wincing with each needle puncture.
    On a tall stool beside her sat a young guy with a bright blue-and-yellow bandanna wrapped tightly around his head. He was applying the tattoo. He reached for a bottle of ink. The array of tattoo inks beside him reminded me of the spin-art booth at a school fair.
    I watched the tattoo process from the street for the next few minutes. I couldn’t help thinking about the role of physical pain in getting tattoos, but also in the murders so far.
    I knew the basic tattoo process and watched as the resident artist adjusted a gooseneck lamp toward the nape of the girl’s neck. The artist used two foot-operated tattoo machines: one for outlining, the other for shading and coloring. The round shader between the machines held fourteen different needles. The more needles, the more colorful the flash.
    A middle-aged man with a crew cut was passing by on the street, and he paused just long enough to mutter, “That’s nuts, and so are you for watching.”
    Everybody’s a critic these days. I finally went inside and saw the tattoo master’s art, a small Celtic symbol, green and gold. I asked him where I could get fangs and claws. He moved his head, his chin, actually, to indicate a hallway to his left. Never said a word.
    I walked past display cases: tongue and navel studs, including glow-in-the-dark studs, massive knuckle rings, sunglasses, pipes, beaded thingees, a poster for two popular claws — Ogre and Faust.
    You’re getting warmer,
I thought as I entered the hallway, and then I met the fang master face-to-face.
    He was expecting me, and he just started talking as soon as I entered his small shop.
    “You’ve finally arrived, pilgrim. You know, when you go to the most interesting, and most dangerous, vampire clubs, the ones in L.A., New York, New Orleans, Houston, you see fangs everywhere. It’s the scene, and what a scene, my man. Goth, Edwardian, Victorian, bondage apparel, anything goes. I was one of the first to custom-make fangs out here. Started in Laguna Beach, worked my way north. And now here I am, the Fresno Kid.”
    As he spoke, I became aware of his teeth, his elongated incisors. Those teeth looked as if they could inflict severe damage.
    His name was John Barreiro, and he was short, painfully thin, and dressed mostly in black, much like Peter Westin. He was probably the most sinister-looking person I had ever met.
    “You know why I’m here — the Golden Gate Park