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taking the mountain ’ s curves a little too fast and tight.
    “What happened to your shop?”
    “It closed. Businesses do that.” That topic was off-limits. “I got a lot of people coming in and out. Some were getting their first ink, others had so many tats that we had to get creative to find bare skin for me to work on. I did everything from names—boyfriends, girlfriends, kids—to memorials.”
    Sooner or later she did the cover up work as well, when the relationship fell apart, but the ink remained. The memorial tattoos stuck around, except that it had gotten harder and her when she started recognizing her walk-ins, adding a new name to the growing list of the dead etched into their skin. Oakland ’ s streets weren ’ t easy and too many people made mistakes or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    “You were good.”
    His certainty gave her a little pulse of pure pleasure. “Absolutely. I loved tattooing.”
    “So why did you stop?”
    For so many reasons, the Oakland District Attorney being merely the visible tip of the iceberg that had crippled her ship.
    “I had a guy come in. I didn ’ t know him, hadn ’ t seen him before. He said he wanted to commemorate a shooting. He had a couple of cell phone pics of the victim.”
    He watched her calmly. “That was normal?”
    “Pretty much. I mean, I would have passed on seeing the dead guy, but my walk-in also had pics from the funeral home and…”
    Yeah. The look on Mack ’ s face said it all.
    “You inked him.”
    “That was my job. I liked keeping the electricity on and the landlord happy, so I inked what the guy wanted. He had space on the back of his left shoulder. I put it there, gave him the flyer about post-tattoo care. He paid cash and left.”
    Mack stared at her.
    She shrugged. “I ’ d had stranger requests.”
    “You can tell me about those later,” he muttered. “When did you realize that there was a problem?”
    “The guy came back in, two months later and he wanted me to cover it up. Usually, the guys inking girls ’ names and faces, they come back fast. The girl moves on, they move on, but the tat ’ s still there and the next honey is asking questions, so I give them a new design and everyone ’ s happy. Memorial tattoos tend to be keepers. How can a dead person piss you off?”
    That particular tattoo had made an impression on her. There had been something wrong about it, but she hadn ’ t been able to put her finger on what that something was and she ’ d definitely had the bills to pay. If the guy in her chair wanted a tattoo of a dead guy sprawled out on the floor of a convenience store, complete with name and date, she really wasn ’ t in any position to say no. Everyone remembered fallen friends differently. When Auntie Belle had passed and left her the bar, she ’ d inked a small black and yellow bumblebee on the inside of her wrist because the insect ’ s cheerful determination and nonstop chatter reminded her of her aunt. Maybe her client had moved on, maybe he ’ d regretted looking at the grisly reminder whenever he checked out his back. It wasn ’ t her business.
    “You did the cover up?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So where does the Oakland D.A. come into all this?”
    “I accidentally walked into the store.” She ’ d never gone into the place before, but she ’ d wanted a soda and chips and so she ’ d pushed open the door and been hit with the strongest sense of déj à vu. She hadn ’ t even had to ask. The store ’ s clerk had volunteered details about the shooting that had gone down two months before. The problem was, her walk-in had parked his ass in her chair before the cops had discovered the scene.
    “I did some asking,” she said, “and a few things became real clear, real fast. My client had come to me with his pictures before the cops had let anyone into the store, so he had to have been on the scene himself. These weren ’ t snapped over the shoulder of the cop. He had close ups and