The Death Artist Read online

  “But you didn’t tell me you had planned to see him only a week before he was murdered.”

  “I didn’t think it was important.”

  “Really? A man is murdered—a man you were supposed to visit—and you don’t find that important?”

  Washington smoldered, said nothing.

  “Did you know William Pruitt?”

  “No.”

  Kate let a moment pass, continued to speak in a matter-of-fact manner. “You didn’t exactly leave your job at FirstRate Music voluntarily, did you, Mr. Washington? You were fired.”

  “And your point?”

  “My point is that William Pruitt owned a substantial amount of stock in FirstRate Music. And according to your boss, Aaron Feldman, it was Pruitt’s fault you lost your job.”

  Washington’s dark eyes flashed. “A bunch of lily-white assholes afraid of a little music. But you know what? Pruitt did me a favor. I’m a lot happier out on my own—I told you that last time.”

  “So you did. You just omitted the part about knowing Bill Pruitt.”

  “I didn’t know him.” Washington eyed her with contempt. “I knew who he was, knew he was the one leading the lynch mob against us crazy jive-talkin’ niggers.” Washington laid it on thick. “But I never met the man.”

  Kate looked into his eyes. “Knowing that Pruitt was the man who had you fired is enough of a motive.”

  “I told you. He did me a favor. I’m better solo.”

  “Maybe,” said Kate. “Suppose I decide to believe you on that point. Will you level with me—about Elena?”

  He folded his arms across his massive chest. “How so?”

  “You were involved.”

  Washington stared at her, said nothing.

  “Darton.” Kate leaned toward him. “You fit the description of a man who Elena Solana’s landlord says was more than an occasional visitor. You want me to get the landlord down here, put you in a lineup, or do you just want to tell me the truth?”

  “Okay.” Washington’s huge shoulders sagged. “We were involved.”

  “So what happened?”

  “It was going along fine—at least I thought so—and then, boom, she dumped me for another guy.”

  “You know who that was?”

  Washington’s eyes slid off Kate’s toward the dull gray walls. “I saw her one time with the guy—she didn’t see me—a blond guy, tall, slim, maybe thirty-five, he had his arm around her.” Washington’s hands curled into fists again. “She dumped me for a white guy. Way of the world, isn’t it?” He laughed, ironic, no gaiety in it. “I followed them. Saw where he lived. Got his name, too.” His eyes had gone black. “Damien Trip.”

  “But you and Elena spoke again. And Darton, please remember—we have the phone records to prove it.”

  “Yes. No. I hung up on her. She wanted my help, but . . .” He looked down at his hands.

  Kate’s voice took on an insistent tone. “Why did she want your help?”

  “I think Trip was scaring her, but . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t listen. I thought, oh, now you want my help, do you? She’d hurt me, you know, and—Fuck! Why didn’t I listen?” His body stiffened again, but there were tears in his eyes. “Fuck,” he said again, but this time only a whisper.

  “We’ve talked to Trip.”

  Washington sat upright. “Thank God.”

  “Well, let’s not thank him yet. Trip’s got a very good lawyer.”

  “You let him go?’

  “We had no choice.” Kate sighed.

  Darton Washington flexed his shoulders; the ropy muscles in his thick neck stood out in high relief. “You’ve got to get him.”

  “We’re trying to.”

  “Don’t just try.” His mouth twitched with fury. “Do it.”

  Kate could feel his rage. But was he just trying to deflect suspicion from himself by putting it on Damien Trip? “You want Trip out of the way, that it, Darton?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “That wasn’t my question.” Kate dragged a chair close, sat. “Let me recap, shall I?” She counted off on her fingers. “One: Elena Solana called you. Days later she’s dead. Two: Ethan Stein has your name in his date book. Days later he’s dead. Three: You get fired. A couple of weeks later the man behind your firing is dead. I’ll tell you something, Darton. From where I sit, it doesn’t look good.”

  “And from where I sit, it looks like coincidence. I was not in Elena Solana’s apartment for weeks. I didn’t make it to Ethan Stein’s studio because I was cutting a demo. And I never met Pruitt. You’ve got nothing tangible to connect me to any of these crimes.”

  “Not yet,” said Kate. “But I’ll be working on it.”

  Washington stared down at his hands, just barely whispered, “I loved her. Elena.”

  Unrequited love? Hell, that was an even stronger motive. “So you loved her and she rejected you,” said Kate.

  “I didn’t kill her.” Washington looked up, his brown eyes moist. “I told you. I loved her.”

  Kate rapped on the half-wall of Maureen Slattery’s cubicle. “You have a message for me?”

  “Oh, McKinnon.” Maureen looked up, fingers resting on her computer keyboard. “Yeah. Got a message from Brown. He’s out in Brooklyn. Something about the Shooter case, from months ago. Said to tell you he’d meet you at Trip’s, along with a tech team, at six P.M. Also, you should bring the warrant in case Trip is on the premises.”

  “Thanks.”

  Maureen tilted her head at the bulletin board above her desk, where she’d pinned a reproduction of The Death of Marat. “Hey, I was wondering, like, why’d this painter, what’s his name, David, paint it in the first place?”

  “He was Napoleon’s court painter,” said Kate. “He painted lots of historical scenes. This was just one of them. In those days, if you wanted something documented or recreated, you needed a painter to do it. Of course that all changed when photography was invented.” She glanced over at the reproduction, thought of poor Bill Pruitt as a weak imitation of Marat. “I’ll get you a book of David’s paintings. Wait’ll you see his Coronation of Napoleon painting. It’s a knockout.”

  “This death artist might turn me into an art lover yet.” Slattery laughed.

  Kate laughed, too, then got serious, filled Slattery in on her talk with Darton Washington.

  “You think we’re jumping the gun on Trip—that Washington could be a suspect?”

  “It’s completely possible,” said Kate, considering the question. “But I believed him when he said he loved Elena.”

  “Always a popular motive for murder.”

  “I agree,” Kate said. “But we’ve got nothing to prove he was at the Solana scene. No prints. Nothing to DNA. He says he was out of town when Elena died, home alone the night Pruitt was drowned, cutting a demo CD in a midtown studio from late afternoon till almost two in the morning the night Ethan Stein died. I’m having all the alibis checked out, but we had to let him go—for the moment.”

  “We should put a tail on him. Trip, too. I’ll speak to Mead about it.”

  “Good idea.” Kate’s foot was tapping, her adrenaline starting to pump in anticipation of the search. She checked her watch. She had an hour to kill. “You want to get a cup of coffee?”

  “Love to. But I can’t. Mead wants the reports of the gallery and museum interrogations on his desk, ASAP.” She gave Kate the once-over. “You look tired, McKinnon. Why don’t you take a rest before the search?”

  Kate could use a rest—like a month on a Caribbean island, for starters. She checked her bag to make sure the search warrant for Damien Trip’s apartment was still there. “Maybe later,” she said.

  He glances across the room at the still life, the plate of rotting fruit, a few slices of deli turkey now sprouting green and blue mold, all drenched in rat poison, and the rats—in various stages of decomposition, here, there; one gagging, choking, its tiny red eyes ready to explode out of its skull.

  May
be he should send her one?

  He sits back, pictures her opening the package, imagines the smell, the look on her face. That would serve her right.

  But no, it’s not part of the game, doesn’t really prove anything.

  He stares down at the reproduction. He’s just about finished his latest piece, the birthday card, admires his additions—the clock, the totally confusing calendar, the clump of real hair he has glued onto it. He resists the urge to stroke it, knows what will happen if he does.

  He paces. He’s ready. More than ready.

  He’s got everything he needs. Six knives, a plastic fish-bowl, the piece of old luggage he picked up at the flea market. He hoists the suitcase onto the table. It’s not exactly like the one in the picture, but close enough. He places the knives carefully into it, noting the worn interior, trying to imagine the people who once owned it, the places they had traveled. Was it a family, a tortured, hideous family? His head begins to ache. But then seeing how perfectly the fishbowl and knives fit into the case soothes him.

  He flips open Who’s Who in American Art to the page he has marked, his eyes flitting over the biography he has chosen one more time. Particularly the birth date.

  Could it possibly have worked out any better than this? He doesn’t see how.

  30

  The one time Kate was not in a hurry and there was no traffic. She guided her car into a spot across the street from Damien Trip’s building. She’d sit awhile, wait for Brown and the tech team, force herself to relax. She switched the car key to battery, hit the CD player, listened to Sade crooning about a “smooth operator,” lit a cigarette, and leaned back against the headrest.

  She was just watching the smoke snake out the window when she heard the three loud pops in succession. Gunshots. No mistaking it.

  A second later she was pushing through the front door, charging up the stairs, her gun drawn.

  On the second-floor landing, a woman with a baby in her arms poked her head out, saw Kate, and froze.

  Kate screamed, “Back inside! Now!”

  Kate took the next staircase slowly. The old wooden stairs creaked under her crepe soles. Was someone waiting for her? Trip?

  But on the top floor it was quiet, Trip’s door slightly ajar. Kate aimed the pistol out in front of her, pivoted through the door.

  Damien Trip was on the floor beside that king-size bed and the lights on tripods, sitting up, hands gripping his belly.

  Trip stared at her, his baby blues filled with panic. Blood was pumping, spilling between his fingers so fast that it looked fake.

  Kate yanked the stained sheet from the bed, tore off a long strip, balled it up and pressed it against Trip’s midsection. It soaked through in less than twenty seconds.

  Trip opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out, only more blood, bubbling past his lips. He managed a nod toward an open window, his eyes blinking like a cartoon character.

  Kate was on her feet fast; she peered out the window, spotted him—a jerking staccato figure, on the fire escape. A split-second look back at Trip, who had fallen to the floor, arms stretched out, blood spreading beneath his inert body like a satiny ocean of deep red. It was way too late to help him.

  The fire escape groaned, even sagged a bit as Kate made the vertiginous descent. It was like a German Expressionist film set, all oblique angles and dingy gray.

  Below her, the man leaped from the last bit of hanging ladder.

  A minute later, Kate was doing the same. She came down hard on her heels, rocked backward, banged against the brick wall, then pitched forward into one of several steel Dumpsters.

  Shit.

  She’d have a bruise on her rib cage for sure.

  She sprinted around the building, caught a glimpse of a shadow as the door to a BMW slammed shut, the engine revved, tires squealed.

  But Kate was right on him, angling her car into the street, her foot bearing down on the accelerator.

  Jesus fucking Christ. A car chase. A fucking car chase. Last time she did this she was what, twenty-eight? But her adrenaline was pumping again, as fast as the gas was pouring into the engine, thoughts ping-ponging in her brain: Trip. Shot. But who? Why?

  The speedometer read sixty. The strip of project buildings flew by, blurring like scenes glimpsed through a train window. There were horns blaring, pedestrians racing back to the safety of curbs.

  Ahead of her, the BMW ran six red lights in a row and Kate did the same. All around them drivers were hitting their brakes, cars were bouncing up on the sidewalks, slamming into each other.

  It might have been over a decade since she had maneuvered a car at raceway speeds, but Kate McKinnon had been the drag-racing princess of Astoria, Queens. No one even came close; not Johnny Bertinelli in his souped-up Chevy II, nor Timmy O’Brien in his dad’s eight-cylinder Grand Prix. Kate had left them all in the dust—little boys with their tails between their legs.

  Kate managed to call in for backup with one hand on the wheel.

  “Damien Trip is dead,” she said, giving his address.

  “Brown was just at the scene,” said the desk cop. “He called it in.”

  “I’m in pursuit of the assailant. I’ve just passed Eighteenth Street on Park Avenue South, heading north. First three digits of the license plate are DJW. That’s David John West.” She clicked off.

  The BMW charged all the way up to Twenty-third Street, hung a screeching left, which Kate echoed. They raced across to the West Side, darting between cars, trucks, cabs, and traffic cops gesturing like wind-up dolls gone berserk. Alongside him a moment ago, Kate tried to catch a nanosecond glimpse, but everything was a blur.

  At the intersection of Ninth Avenue and Twenty-third, the BMW was trapped between a bus and a cab, but Kate was boxed in, too. From somewhere behind, sirens were getting louder.

  First the BMW, then Kate zigzagged a way out. They were back up to hazardous speed in a minute, the two of them in their own fast-forward movie, out of sync with the normal rpm world. The BMW was a half a block ahead, not far from the piers and the new Chelsea sports complex, an intersection where the West Side Highway met normal city traffic, where four or five thoroughfares converged.

  Kate eased off the gas. She had him. No way he could speed through this.

  The sirens were behind her now, their lights flashing in her rearview mirror.

  But he didn’t slow down; he virtually flew through the intersection.

  Jesus. Where’s he going?

  Framed through her windshield, Kate watched the BMW swerve to the left so sharply, its right side lifted off the ground before straightening out, and once again was racing west.

  The screech and squeal of brakes and tires matched the shrill police sirens, with all vehicles coming to a dead stop.

  All except the tourist bus, which, after depositing its visitors for a lazy riverside stroll, pulled out of the Chelsea Piers parking lot, somehow blind to the silver bullet hurtling toward it at breakneck speed.

  Too late.

  The BMW folded like an accordion, the entire front half disappearing as though the bus had opened its hungry jaws and chomped it off.

  The noise was like a full-scale orchestra made up entirely of cymbals and drums with a strange chorus of altos, groaning.

  Fire engines had clogged Twenty-third Street from Tenth Avenue to the Hudson River. Over a dozen cop cars looped around the scene, their beacons flashing; uniforms, out of their vehicles, formed a ring—rigid toy soldiers keeping thrill seekers and gawkers at bay. Two ambulances stood by, sirens deafening. A couple of local TV news vans had managed to slip in, angle-parked on the sidewalk. Firemen hosed down the smashed bus, steam rising off it like Old Faithful. Another group of firemen were working a chainsaw on the BMW while Kate huddled with Floyd Brown.

  “Trip’s dead,” he said, shaking his head. “But you obviously know that.”

  Kate nodded, but wasn’t really listening. She had turned to see the firemen tear the crumpled door off the BMW, and the p
aramedics attempt to pry Darton Washington’s huge body from the mass of steaming, mangled metal. They signaled her over.

  Kate wrapped her hand around Washington’s. The younger medic caught her eye, led her vision toward Washington’s lower half, where the ragged edge of what might have been the dashboard had cut across the man’s legs, severing them just below the knees.

  Washington’s pupils were dilated in shock. “I’m cold,” he whispered.

  “We can fix that,” said Kate, laying her jacket over his chest. A medic shot morphine into Washington’s arm, probably enough to kill him before the loss of blood did. Either way, it was only a matter of minutes.

  The TV reporters were storming the uniforms, waving microphones like prehistoric men with bones.

  Brown trotted back, made sure they were kept away.

  “Someone said it’s the death artist,” said a young guy with an ABC press pass stuck to his corduroy blazer. “Is he dead?”

  “No comment, fellas,” said Brown, turning to look at Kate, who was cradling Washington’s dying head in her arms. It made him think of Michelangelo’s Pietá, the Blessed Virgin with Christ in her lap. He remembered seeing the statue at the New York World’s Fair when he was a kid, and crying.

  Kate tried to sip coffee from a styrofoam cup, but her hands were trembling too badly. Trip dead. Washington dead. Kate didn’t know what to think. Both men had connections to each of the victims—Elena, Pruitt, Stein. Had all of the answers to her questions died with them?

  “Lord works in mysterious ways,” said Brown, watching them load the remains of Darton Washington into the back of an ambulance.

  “Killing Trip was an act of passion,” said Kate. “Washington loved her. He loved Elena.”

  “You loved her, too. But you didn’t go and shoot Trip.”

  “No,” said Kate. “But I wanted to.”

  31

  Randy Mead rapped a Bic pen against the edge of the conference table. “Who do you think you are, McKinnon, fucking Superman?”