Say Goodbye Page 28

  Then Daisy whistled. “You are a vault, Liza Barkley. I never would have guessed that you kept a secret like that. Now I know who to tell if I ever have a burning secret I can’t tell Gideon.”

  “Hey,” Gideon protested.

  “Like a birthday present,” Daisy told him, then turned to Liza, her eyes gone soft. “If you ever want to talk about him, I’m always ready to listen. If you don’t, that’s okay, too.”

  “Thank you. I might take you up on it.” Liza was surprised to realize that she just might. Telling them hadn’t been as hard as she’d anticipated. “I have nightmares about them. Last night’s was really bad. I’m hoping that carrying them on my back will help me lay them to rest.”

  Gideon returned the sketch to Liza with a gentle smile. “I understand now. Do you want me to come in with you or wait out here?”

  Liza folded the sketch and put it back in her bag. “I think I should talk to him first and feel him out. You might need to stay out here the whole time.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I can watch for trouble better from out here. What about Daisy?”

  Liza turned to the back seat. “What do you think, Daisy?”

  Daisy grimaced. “Maybe I should wait here with Gideon until you calm him down. Text me when I should come in. I’ve got e-mail to catch up on, so it’s fine.”

  “Good luck,” Gideon said sincerely. “Wave if you need us.”

  Liza hoped that she wouldn’t. Please let Sergio know something. Please let him tell me.

  Sergio stood behind the counter, welcoming her with a wide smile. He appeared to be in his midthirties. “I’m Sal Ibarra.” His new name. “You must be Liza?”

  “I am,” Liza said.

  “Please come in.” He motioned her to a sitting area.

  “Can we talk a little first?” Liza asked when they were seated.

  “Of course. You’ve booked out my afternoon, so you must know what you want.”

  “I do.” She patted her handbag. “I made a sketch.” She drew a breath. Forward, soldier. Just do it. “I’m hoping you’ll still be willing to tattoo me after we’ve talked.”

  Fear flickered in his eyes. “What is this?”

  “Nothing bad,” Liza assured him. “I’m not law enforcement. I’m a normal person.”

  Sergio edged forward, looking like he was preparing to bolt. “A normal person,” he repeated.

  “Well, I served in the army,” Liza amended. “But I’m not a cop and I’m not FBI or ICE. I wanted to talk to you about a tattoo you did.” From her handbag, she pulled a copy of the Eden tattoo that he’d posted on his old Instagram account. “This one.”

  Sergio lurched to his feet. “No. Please go. The last time someone talked to me about this, the FBI came. I am not a criminal.”

  Liza slowly rose, her hands out in an attempt to calm him. “Mr. Iglesias, please, just hear me out. I don’t believe you are a criminal. I think you’re a father trying to support his family. But my family is in danger right now and I really hope you can help us.”

  Sergio still looked ready to run. “Why? Why are you interested in this tattoo? It’s old.”

  “Because it’s a symbol of slavery. My friend was forced to wear a locket with this design on a chain around her neck. A dog chain. Nothing pretty. Her brother was forced to get the tattoo. Both were assaulted. Both nearly died, but they were able to escape. Now they’re in danger because the people who hurt them don’t want them to talk.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Sergio sank back down to the sofa and seemed to deflate. “But I don’t want any trouble.”

  “You won’t get any trouble from us,” Liza promised.

  Sergio tensed again. “Us?” He looked through the window to Gideon’s Suburban parked on the curb. “Who is ‘us’?”

  “The people who don’t want my friends to talk tried to shoot me a few days ago, so I brought protection. We don’t care if you’re undocumented or not. I swear.”

  Sergio’s jaw tightened. “But I’m not undocumented. I’ve had a green card since I was a boy, just arriving from El Salvador with my parents. But a customer of mine didn’t like the tattoo I gave her, even though she signed off on the design before I started. She threatened to have me deported. I told her I had a green card, but she said that her father was with ICE and that it wouldn’t matter. Men claiming to be ICE agents came to my old studio and threatened me. I don’t know if they were ICE or not, but they scared me. And they scared my wife.”

  Liza ignored the temper that fizzled under her skin on his behalf. “The FBI showing up at your old studio must have been terrifying.”

  “It was. My wife, my child . . . they were very afraid. Not for themselves. My wife is a citizen. She was born in Florida. But she was afraid for me, afraid I’d be deported.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Liza considered hiding Gideon’s profession, but she was asking this man to trust her. She couldn’t lie to him. “Full disclosure: Daisy Dawson came with me. She’s the one who contacted you before. She’s waiting in the truck with her boyfriend, Gideon. He’s the friend who was forced to get the tattoo as a young man. He’s also with the FBI, but he’s here as a civilian,” she rushed to add, because Sergio looked like he’d run again. “He’s not on duty or here in any official capacity. He will not report you, but he wouldn’t let Daisy come without him. You know, because the people who hurt them are dangerous.”

  “Is Daisy FBI?” Sergio asked suspiciously.

  Liza had to chuckle. “No. I don’t think that the FBI would survive Daisy. Can she come in?”

  “What about the FBI agent?” Sergio asked nervously.

  “The off-duty FBI agent is going to stay outside,” Liza replied. “Partly out of respect for you and partly to make sure that the people who want to hurt our family don’t catch us unaware. They didn’t follow us here, so you’re safe. But Gideon is super careful about our safety.”

  Sergio drew a breath. “Yes, Miss Dawson may come in.”

  “I’ll let her know.” Liza sent a text, then withdrew her sketch from her handbag. “So you don’t worry about me blocking out your afternoon, I really do want a tattoo. I wasn’t being deceitful. I loved the detail you achieved on the angel feathers on the tattoo we’re asking about.”

  Sergio studied her sketch. “A memorial tattoo?”

  “Yes,” she murmured. “For people who were my family over there.”

  “I can do this,” he said. “When we are finished talking, I will work up a design. When you are satisfied, we can begin. You will probably need a second session. Maybe a third.”

  “I figured as much. I thought maybe you could just outline it today.”

  His lips curved. “Not your first tattoo, I take it?”

  “No. Not even my first memorial tattoo.”

  He sobered. “Then you have known much loss.”

  She was saved a reply by Daisy’s entrance. Daisy was her typical self, striding forward, hand outstretched. “Sergio. So nice to meet you in person. I’m Daisy.”

  “Please, sit. The studio is empty, so no one will hear us talking here. Shall we begin?”

  FOURTEEN

  MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA

  THURSDAY, MAY 25, 3:20 P.M.

  Sergio Iglesias studied the photo of the Eden tattoo for a long moment. “My wife set up my Instagram account a few years ago. She went through all the photos I’d kept since I started tattooing and picked the ones she liked. This was one she liked.”

  “It’s beautiful work,” Liza murmured.

  He dipped his head once. “Thank you.”

  “Do you remember the subject?” Daisy asked.

  “I didn’t when you first contacted me, Daisy. I had to go back into my files to jog my memory. Once I saw the file, though, I remembered him well.”

  The photo was of the tattoo itself, so only the person’
s left pectoral was visible. It had the grainy quality of a photo taken with a cheap camera, then scanned.

  “When did you ink this tattoo?” Daisy asked.

  “Eighteen years ago.”

  Liza was surprised. “You keep your files that long?”

  “I do. I’ve kept them all, a file for every tattoo I’ve ever done, including signed documents stating that they are not intoxicated, and that they approve my design. It was the way I was taught by my mentor, almost twenty years ago.”

  “Why do you remember him specifically?” Daisy asked.

  “Partly because it was one of my first, and I was really proud of how it turned out. But mostly because I almost didn’t do this tattoo. He seemed really young and immature, which was funny, because we were about the same age. The day he came in was his eighteenth birthday and I’d had mine only a few weeks before. But he had ID and there wasn’t anything offensive about the design, so I did it.” He hesitated. “Why do you want to find him?”

  “The short answer is, we don’t know,” Daisy admitted. “We’re looking at every connection to the community from which our friends escaped. This person”—Daisy pointed at the photo—“wouldn’t have been from their community, because he would have already had a tattoo by his thirteenth birthday. But he has to have known someone who had one. The tattoo you inked is identical to the one my boyfriend had inked over when he was eighteen.”

  “We ultimately want to talk to whoever told this guy about the tattoo,” Liza said. “That person may give us information about the community and the people who are trying to hurt us.”

  Sergio inhaled sharply. “It was like a cult?”

  “Yes,” Daisy said. “My boyfriend still wakes with nightmares from that place, and he’s been gone for seventeen years.”

  “The young man who got this tattoo was very happy to be eighteen, to ‘finally be free.’ ”

  “Free from what?” Liza asked.

  “I asked him that. He said it was from his mother’s control. She was apparently quite overbearing and he was very unhappy at home. He said that the tattoo would ‘show her.’ I got a bad feeling while I was working on him. I might have stopped, but he was eighteen. I made a copy of his driver’s license. Just to cover myself, you know. He’s one of the reasons I keep all my files with signed releases. Just in case someone comes forward years later and complains.”

  “Oh wow!” Daisy exclaimed, excited. “Please say you still have it!”

  Sergio’s smile was faint, but genuine. “Yes, I have it. I scanned the files to my phone when you first contacted me.” He tapped his phone and turned it so that they could see the screen.

  “May I?” Liza asked, reaching for the phone.

  “Yes,” Sergio said warily, handing it over.

  The driver’s license photo showed a young man with a baby face, but his lips curled down, giving him a sullen appearance. His hair was blond, cut military short. Nearly black eyes stared defiantly through round-rimmed eyeglasses.

  “William Holly,” Daisy murmured, looking over Liza’s shoulder. “The name doesn’t mean anything to me, but it might to Gideon. Can you send us this file?”

  Sergio nodded. “Of course.”

  Liza tried to enlarge the photo, but it swiped left, revealing the original tattoo design with a scrawled signature beneath. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s fine,” Sergio said. “That’s the design he approved.”

  “What’s this?” Daisy pointed to a second signature in the margin.

  Liza enlarged the sketch. The children kneeling in prayer had something written beneath them. “Are these names?” She peered harder. “Bo and Bernie.”

  “Yes,” Sergio confirmed. “For him and his sister, but when I got to that part, he decided he didn’t want the names after all, so I updated the release and had him sign off on the changes.”

  Liza frowned to herself. She’d heard those names before, and in conjunction with Eden.

  Sergio was also frowning, but at Daisy. “You know who they are.”

  Liza turned her attention to the other woman and knew that Sergio was right. Daisy appeared stunned, but her eyes were coming back into sharp focus.

  “Where were you when you did his tattoo?” Daisy asked. “Which city?”

  “Benicia, same city as is on his ID. It’s outside of Oakland.”

  “I know it,” Daisy said quietly. “I lived in Oakland when I was a little girl.”

  Liza wanted to ask questions but held them. She could ask once they were in the SUV.

  “Can you send this to my phone?” Daisy asked. “It’s the number I called you from a few weeks ago.”

  Liza returned his phone and Sergio sent the files via text, paling at the concern etched into Daisy’s brow. “Is this man a danger to me and my family?”

  “I don’t know,” Daisy said honestly. “It’s unlikely, but . . .”

  Sergio’s expression became grim. “But I should be very aware.”

  Daisy nodded. “I would be.”

  Sergio ran his hands through his hair before turning to Liza with a strained smile. “Do you still want the memorial tattoo? No worries if you don’t.”

  “I really do. But can you give us a minute to talk privately?”

  “Of course. I’ll go in the back and prepare your design. It will take me fifteen minutes.”

  “Who is he?” Liza asked as soon as they’d shut all the doors to Gideon’s Suburban.

  Daisy quickly brought Gideon up to date, his eyes widening at the mention of Bo and Bernie.

  Gideon’s mouth fell open. “Are you fucking kidding me? The guy who got the tattoo was Bo? Pastor’s dead son, Bo?”

  Daisy nodded. “He initially wanted his and his sister’s names included on the tattoo.”

  Gideon stared at the driver’s license photo in disbelief. “I don’t recognize him, but I was very young when he and his mother and sister were declared dead, and he was a lot younger than he is in this photo. Plus it’s been twenty-five years. We need to show this photo to Amos. He might be a better judge.”

  “Oh,” Liza breathed. “Bo and Bernie. Boaz and Bernice.” That was where she’d heard the names. They were Pastor’s children.

  Gideon was shaking his head, stunned. “This . . . this is not what I expected. We were told that they were lost in the wilderness.”

  “Which is what they said about you,” Daisy said softly.

  Gideon’s laugh was bitter. “True. Marcia—she was Pastor’s wife—had taken the kids on a hike to gather herbs and they never came back. Pastor looked and Waylon looked. All the men searched, but never found them. Eventually Waylon found their remains at the bottom of a ravine. They were not recognizable. Or so goes the story we were told as kids. It was something the leaders told us to keep us from venturing far from the compound.”

  “Those remains belonged to someone else,” Liza said, feeling foolish for stating the obvious. “Hopefully victims of an unrelated accident.”

  “But possibly murder victims,” Daisy said soberly. “Waylon brought back a body after Gideon escaped. Told everyone it was him, but he was also unrecognizable.”

  “So Pastor’s wife and kids survived,” Liza murmured. “I wonder why she ran? How old were they when they disappeared?”

  “Eleven,” Gideon said, still staring at the photo. Then he looked up, understanding in his eyes. “Almost twelve. Bernice would have been married off very soon.”

  “And her mother didn’t want her daughter raped in the name of marriage at twelve years old,” Daisy finished. “What a hypocrite.”

  “Yes, but also a mother who saved her kids,” Liza said. “Although it sounds like Bo didn’t like being saved all that well if he wanted an Eden tattoo.” She sighed. “So which of us is going to tell Tom?”

  Daisy and Gideon shar
ed an uncomfortable glance. “I’m not supposed to be here right now,” Gideon said. “I’m recused.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Liza said. Having an appointment for a tattoo would make a good reason to cut her conversation short. “Are you going to stay here? Or go get some food or something?”

  “We’re staying,” Gideon said firmly. “No way are we leaving you alone. Go ahead and call Tom. We’ll have your back if he gets angry with you like Irina said he did this morning on the telephone.”

  “Let him even try,” Daisy added. “He’ll be sorry he decided to tangle with me.”

  The thought of five-foot-nothing Daisy facing off against six-foot-six Tom was enough to make her grin. “That is exactly the image I needed today, Daisy. You, fists on your hips, glaring up at Tom. I think he’d be quaking in his boots, quite honestly.”

  Daisy grinned back. “As he should. But I hadn’t planned to personally confront him. I just took a page from his book and got one of these.” From a pocket in her jacket she produced a flip phone. “It’s a burner. Got it at Walmart. The FBI won’t be able to track us back to Sergio.”

  “Seriously, Daisy?” Gideon asked. “What have you used it for?”

  “Nothing. This is its inaugural call. I like carrying it. Makes me feel all clandestine.”

  Gideon’s smile was fond. “You’re impossible.”

  Liza took the phone, completely impressed. “I’m just glad you’re on my side.”

  “Many people say this,” Daisy said loftily.

  Liza laughed softly. “Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.”

  Daisy winked at her. “That’s what family’s for. Make your call.”

  BENICIA, CALIFORNIA

  THURSDAY, MAY 25, 4:00 P.M.

  “It’s empty,” Croft said, peering into a window of the Belmonts’ rental home.

  Tom joined her after taking a walk around the perimeter of the house. “Basement too.”

  They’d come up empty on their search for members of the Chicos gang. The local PDs knew of them, but no one knew any names or locations where they might hide out. The gang, which seemed to have ceased recruiting new members, stayed under the radar through both skill and intimidation. Every cop they’d asked requested they share any information they dug up.