“It’s script. The first half was scraped off with her skin but the words “sick, masochistic lion” are still visible. Which would be pretty fucking egotistical for this guy.”
Eric had seen some grotesque things humans did to each other since he’d joined the force. He’d heard about even more. Scarring. Branding. An involuntary tattoo was still bad, but it was on the less offensive side of the scale. “Maybe it will help the profilers,” he said.
“I wanted to let you know I was updating the description on the wire. How’s the date going?”
“We keep getting interrupted when my phone goes off.”
The little shit chuckled. “Message received. I’ll leave you alone,” Adam said, ending the call before Eric could complain further.
Bree set her napkin on the table. “Do you have to go?”
“No.” He couldn’t tell if she was anxious to end their dinner or trying to be helpful. Ever since he’d seen her in court and realized how she’d played Zane, Eric had doubted his ability to read Bree. It was stupid. He’d always taken her at face value.
“Okay.” She slipped the cloth back onto her lap. “Is it bad?”
He could tell her this, since it was going out into the public domain anyway. “Our Jane Doe had a tattoo. Something something ‘sick, masochistic lion.’ It’s not much, but it’s substantially more than we had. We think her killer might have put it on her like a brand. Maybe it can help us identify her.”
Bree choked on her wine and tried to cover it up by diving into her water glass. It wasn’t a gory detail, which left one option to cause such a reaction. “Bree, do you know our victim?”
“Of course not. I would have contacted somebody if I’d recognized her picture.”
“But you recognized the tattoo.”
She blushed. Painfully and deeply. Even in the restaurant’s low light, Eric could see the bright red stain starting at her hairline and stretching as far as he could see. It wasn’t guilt. It was something else. “Tell me.”
She shook her head infinitesimally. “I don’t want to.”
God, what was she involved in? “Bree, it’s a dead girl. Tell me.”
She muttered something, then gulped some wine.
“I didn’t catch that.” He hated pressuring her but it was important.
“It’s a part of a line from a Twilight movie, okay?”
“The teenage vampire movie crap?”
“It’s freaking crack is what it is. It’s not my fault I can’t stop watching!”
His girlfriend was addicted to sparkling vampires. Those movies had come out while they were together; she’d hidden this from him. “Are you sure?” he asked. The phrase sounded like something a pyscho would put on his victim, not like something a woman would tattoo on herself.
Bree leveled a look on him that had him reaching for his own glass.
Now he knew Jane Doe was a hard-core teeny-bopper movie fan. Like millions of other women. Eric didn’t think her tattoo was going to be particularly useful after all. He didn’t look forward to breaking that news to Adam.
It gave him something to think about when it came to Bree, though.
He had some research to do.