Her face was the face from the dead tattoo artist’s upper arm. A little older, a little more weathered, her hair dyed red now.

But the resemblance was plain. The facial recognition search had worked. This was the same woman.

“You are Octavia, correct?”

“Are you here about Gary?” Her mouth hung open a bit. She seemed to know what was coming.

Garza and Fisk stepped inside. The apartment reeked of cannabis smoke.

“Where is he?” the woman said. Garza noticed her tongue stud, the twin silver rings through her left eyebrow, the multiple loops in both ears. She looked petrified with fear and suspicion, her skin ashen, her hands trembling.

“May we sit down somewhere?”

The woman shook her head. She might have been indicating no to the truth she knew was about to come, but they did not sit. “Is Gary okay?” she asked.

Cecilia Garza pulled her cell phone from her purse. She had the photo of the tattoo ready. She thumbed the display button and turned it around so that Octavia Clement could see the picture of herself taken from the arm of the dead man on Rockaway Beach.

Octavia Clement stared at the picture. It was just the arm, not the entire dead body . . . but Garza could see that she knew. You didn’t show a candid picture of a tattoo on a person’s arm and then tell the person looking at it that the person in the phone was just fine.

Garza hated this part of her job. It was one hundred times easier looking at decapitated bodies than it was talking to the families of victims. “This is Gary?” asked Garza.

The tattooed woman let out an awful howl and sagged against the doorframe, clutching onto it as though she were holding onto the edge of a cliff. Fisk caught her before she could collapse completely and strike her head on the floor. He helped her into the front room of the apartment, setting her on a futon covered with homemade blankets.

It was a good minute or two before the woman could get enough breath to speak. “I knew he was gone,” she said, wiping her tears on her tattooed wrist.

“His full name?” asked Fisk.

“His name is Gary Lee Clement,” she said. “He’s my husband. Did those men kill him?”

“Those men who?” said Garza. “Please tell me what men you’re talking about?”

Garza sat so close to the woman on the couch, she felt the woman’s leg against her own. The apartment was lit by lamps with colored shades—red, amber, yellow. Large bright photographs of flowers hung on the walls, and there was a tripod and other camera equipment in the corner of the room. The furniture was old and mismatched, but the place appeared to be in perfect order, every surface clean. Amazingly clean. The scent of cleaning solution, bleach and ammonia, came through behind the lingering marijuana smoke. Bohemian, but without the squalor. A TV played a news channel on the other side of the room, turned so low it was barely audible.

The young woman waved a hand around the apartment. “I’ve been cleaning for twenty-four hours straight. Just trying to keep my mind focused on something . . . something else.” Her lips were pressed tightly together. “You still haven’t told me what happened to him. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Garza nodded. “I am very sorry to be the one to inform you.”

“And it was those men?”

Garza was patient with Octavia Clement. The bereaved required forbearance. Sometimes they were quite helpful; sometimes they were no help at all. “Tell me about the men.”

Octavia Clement closed her eyes for a moment. “Me and Gary, we grew up in McCool Junction, Nebraska. Population three hundred and seventy-two. Can you imagine that? We were the only people in our town who were like this.” She ran her hands down her body, showing off the tattoos, the hipster clothes, the eyebrow rings. “And it was subtle then, compared to now. Gary, he had such a gift. He was such a beautiful soul . . .”

She collapsed into tears again. Fisk went off in search of tissues and thankfully returned with some. Octavia blew her nose and balled the tissue in her hand.

“He was an artist. From the very first time I saw him, he could draw these amazing pictures.” She pressed her fingers against her wet eyelids, as though pressing and activating these happy memories. “I fell in love with him the very moment I saw him draw for the first time. Ninth grade! He was everything I wanted out of life. Everything.” She smiled gently, still with her fingers on her eyes. “It took him maybe a little longer to see me. But eventually he came around. I got him. We got married on my nineteenth birthday, March the twenty-third. On March the twenty-fourth, we loaded up his pickup truck and drove out here. Knew nobody and nothing. And we made it our home.”

Her voice trembled momentarily, but she held it together. Garza wanted to pounce on her, to drag the information out of her, but had to sit and listen.

“We were so happy together. The tattoo business has taken off so big, the past ten, twelve years. People could see it, you know? His talent? His gift? It just . . . it shined out of everything he ever did.” She paused. “But he was sweet, too. You could see that in the work, too. The sweetness.”

Garza saw an opening. “And the men?” she asked. “Please tell me about the men.”

“Too sweet maybe,” said Octavia, going on without hearing Garza. “He would never have gone with those men if he hadn’t been too naive, too trusting for this world. I didn’t like them. I told him that. There was something about them. Something dark. Something evil. I could just see it.”

A siren screamed outside suddenly, a passing ambulance. Octavia went silent until the sound faded away.

“There were three of them,” she said finally. “Last week we got a call from a man who said he had a special order. Said he’d pay four thousand dollars cash for a good afternoon’s work. Gary had to come to him, though. That was the only catch. But for the price, it was good for him. Four thousand.” She looked from Garza to Fisk, stressing the impact of that much cash. “Gary asked where he should go, and they said, ‘Don’t worry about that, we’ll pick you up.’ ”

She sat forward suddenly, as though she was about to get up. But she was just stretching out so that she could swallow more easily, craning her neck as though for extra air.

“Gary was so excited, but I didn’t like it. I truly . . . I’m not just saying that now. I did not like it at all. I don’t like different things. ‘Whatever it is,’ I said to Gary, ‘it’s not worth it. Don’t do it.’ But he was like, ‘It’ll be fine, Tavy. It’s a gig. Nothing’s going to happen.’ ” She smiled a sad, fond smile. “No one else ever called me Tavy. And now no one ever will.” Her smile turned pinched, and tears sprang from her eyes. “Gary’s folks farmed wheat. That was the difference between him and me. You stand out in a field of wheat, looking out at all that bounty, and you think the world is bounteous and gentle and generous. But me? My old man ran a meatpacking plant. You spend your young years near a slaughterhouse, you realize on a deep level that things won’t always be fine. Just the opposite. You understand that beneath all our good intentions and bad pretensions, we’re just meat on the hoof.” She stared at Garza. “All that killing. It does something to you. Makes you cold.”

Garza looked at her own hands for a moment. Fisk was standing to the side, giving them space.

Octavia said, “Maybe that’s why I needed Gary. I needed his light.”

Garza hesitated before saying, “Please, Octavia . . . so when did the men come?”

“Three days ago. Not to the house, they came to the store downstairs. I was up here working when they came. I sure never talked to them or anything. I do Photoshop work, mostly advertising, but some glamour, some fashion. Taking the ugly off people—that’s what Gary calls it.” She smiled faintly. “Anyway, Gary called me from the store downstairs to say he was leaving. Said he’d be back that night. So I went over and looked out the window. Set back a bit, so they couldn’t see me.”