Jack Webster stepped carefully over the broken glass and joined the group. “Nathan, you might remember Emily’s mother, Vivienne. She left when Emily was a baby. She passed away shortly after that.”
“Vaguely. Mom has some pictures of her.”
“She tried to clean up. She stayed sober for the pregnancy, but after a year or so...” he trailed off, his eyes filled with pain, “. . . she relapsed. She met Cyril at a dive bar she used to frequent. Cyril Bond knew a fat bank account when he saw it. He got her hooked on anything and everything that would keep her coming back. Her descent was remarkable. She could have been a model, a movie star—but after a month with Cyril....” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t go after her, but I kept tabs on her. It happened so fast. She was dead six weeks after she moved in with him.”
“Dad, we’ve talked about this. You couldn’t control, he addiction. There was nothing you could have done.”
Jack continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “We tried.”
“We?” Nathan queried.
“Your father and I. I recruited him one night to help because of his...” he gestured at the pack of testosterone gathered in the room, “. . . private security contacts. We brought some muscle and paid Cyril a visit.”
“What happened?” Tox was a bag of popcorn away from looking like he was watching a movie.
“She refused to leave. Cyril wanted money. I offered to pay what he asked. Five thousand dollars.” Jack gave a humorless chuckle. “He knew she had money, but Cyril didn’t realize what a cash cow he had. Vivi said she would pay him twice that to let her stay. The one conscientious neighbor in that hellhole called the police. As you would say, we aborted the mission.”
“Cyril would have known about Emily. If Vivienne was doped up, she would mention it.”
“He knew about Emily because he came to the house.” Jack went to the bar and poured himself another scotch. “He claimed he had video footage of Vivienne.” He shot an apologetic glance to Emily. “I won’t go into detail, but he wanted money again. When I refused, he offered to sell me guns. Emily barged in, as she was prone to do even at the age of three. I quickly sent her off, but he saw her clear as day.”
Nathan gave a dry laugh. “Living next door to us, you had access to a veritable armory.”
Harris agreed. “Rule number one in sales: know your buyer.”
“Yes, well, when I pulled the Glock out of my desk and assured him I was adequately armed, he got the message. Jackass probably stole the silver on his way out.”
Ren quirked a brow.
“He must have offered up some info when Savo’s men were trolling. He may even have been the guy in the van. The tattoos Emily described match.” He tossed a gruesome photo of the body onto the table.
“A criminal, but more importantly, an opportunist.” Nathan nodded.
“A dead opportunist,” Tox reminded him.
“Must’ve seized the wrong opportunity.”
Tox retrieved a whiteboard from the corner of the room. “Okay, let’s get this shit sorted.” He drew a large rectangle at the top with a question mark inside. Directly below it, he drew another box and wrote inside “Tattoo Man,” then, next to it, quickly copied a version of the tattoo Emily had drawn. Below that, boxes with the dead kidnappers, Cyril Bond, and the prison assassin. Then he sighed and scratched his face with the end of the marker. “Well, that certainly clears things up.”
“That tattoo.” Ren looked at the rudimentary drawing, then tapped something into his tablet. “Did it look like this?” He flipped the tablet around to reveal a stone relief elaborately carved with a cross atop a rosette.
Emily’s eyes lit as she stood. “Yes! That’s it, almost exactly.”
The group waited for Ren’s revelation.
“It’s a khachkar. An Armenian religious icon, a symbol for salvation of the soul.”
“So, our guy’s Armenian,” Nathan said.
“But the man I remembered from the house was in a Middle Eastern tunic,” Emily clarified.
“Most Armenians fled Turkey during the Christian genocide, but he could have lived or worked in the Middle East,” Ren offered.
“Which means he works for someone from that part of the world.” Nathan pondered a moment, then scrolled through a file. “Jack, how long were you in Qatar?”
“Four months.” Jack searched the ceiling. “It would have been sixteen years ago and was utterly uneventful.”
“Nothing? No violence, no unrest?” Tox queried.