Page 45 of A Future To Remember

“Yeah. He had a horseshoe mustache and a goatee under that.”

“Was the beard and mustache the same color as the hair?”

She nodded again.

“Did you notice anything else about him? Any tattoos or scars?”

She squirmed a little, and I could tell she was holding back, trying to decide if she should tell us what else she’d noticed. At last, she whispered, “He had a tattoo of a naked lady on his forearm.”

“Naked lady. Would you recognize the tattoo if you saw it again?”

“Yeah. Definitely. The naked lady was being . . .” she paused to look down at her daughter. “Sophie, honey, will you get mama her slippers?”

Little Sophie stared up at her and nodded dully, then trotted off. Once she was out of earshot, Gwen said, “The naked lady was being…licked by a…tiger.”

I felt bile hit the back of my throat, and I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds to get ahold of myself. Eggy squirmed in his sling, no doubt sensing my fury and fear. Swallowing hard, I opened my eyes again, doing my level best to hold my emotions in check.

“Licked,” I repeated, knowing exactly what she must mean. “As in…”

She nodded and pointed to her crotch.

“Jesus Christ,” Oscar muttered. The only kind of guys who brazenly wore shit like that were the worst kind of scum.

“Do you remember the car he was driving?” I asked, giving myself credit for sounding a thousand times calmer than I felt.

“It was one of them SUVs. Maybe a 4Runner?”

“How about a Tahoe?” Oscar asked. “Could it have been a Chevy Tahoe?”

She nodded slowly. “Yeah, it coulda been.”

“What color?” I asked.

“Dark blue. Maybe black.”

“And the camper?”

“It looked like a piece of shit. It definitely didn’t go with the SUV towing it.”

“In what way?” I pressed.

“It was old and dirty.”

“Color?”

“Tan, I think. It had a stripe at the top.”

“A stripe?”

“Maybe a couple of stripes. I don’t remember. I just remember the one stripe that was darker than the color of the camper.”

“So, brown?”

“Yeah.”

The toddler came back with her mother’s slippers. Gwen took them from her and stroked her fine blond hair. The gesture was tender, and it tugged at me a little.

I pushed a smile to my lips while I looked down at the little girl and asked her mother, “Do you remember which gas station?”