The Death Artist Read online

For a moment he hesitated, then his fingers closed around hers. “Of course. You’ve got it.”

  They were quiet a minute in the dimly lit living room, then Kate remembered she’d been trying to reach him for hours. “Where were you?”

  “When?”

  “Tonight?”

  He hesitated a moment. “At the office, and then out with clients. Plus, my cell phone died. God, I’m so sorry, honey. If I knew—”

  “I needed you there with me—to throw your weight around. Get the cops off my back.”

  “They were rough on you?” Richard’s blue eyes sparked with anger.

  “No. Not really.” She closed her eyes. Again, Elena’s face—destroyed, bloated—flashed.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes.” Kate shook her head, whispered, “No.” She leaned against her husband, let him lead her toward the bedroom.

  “Lie down, darling.” Richard’s hands gently pressed her shoulders onto the bed.

  Her eyes sought his. “I love you, Richard.”

  “I love you, too.” He took her hand, squeezed it.

  Kate let her body sag into the big white bed, pressed her eyes closed. She pictured Mead in his stupid paisley bow tie. The finder is often the perp.

  The man was way off with that one. But who then? And why?

  6

  Two miserable days in the Hamptons. How Richard had ever convinced Kate that it would do her good to get away, to walk along the close-to-perfect stretch of beach nestled below the dunes of their East Hampton home, Kate would never know. When she wasn’t crying, her insides were raging. Another day out there and she’d have been shooting up the local farmers’ market.

  Two days. Two days! Damn it, she knew what time meant to a murder investigation. Even if Richard had insisted that little or nothing would get done over the week-end, Kate worried that little or nothing would ever get done—no matter what Tapell said. This wasn’t the kind of case that got attention unless someone was pushing, and pushing hard.

  At least now, back in Manhattan, she could be active.

  After Richard left for the office—Kate having assured him she’d be fine—she’d been organizing her own small office, making neat stacks from the papers that had previously sprawled over most of the authentic Biedermeier wooden desktop. First, her art history research. Hard copies of every lecture she’d ever given, dozens of reproductions with hand-written notes, art journals, periodicals and magazines, literally hundreds of art postcards. Thank God for her filing cabinet. Not that she was going to organize any of that right now, but it was a place to store it.

  But now what to do with a decade’s worth of miscellaneous information? A folder on New York’s finest restaurants with the names and personal telephone numbers of each maître ď, a list of caterers for every possible occasion, information on the best florists in New York and every major American city, catalogs from South American hothouses specializing in mail-order orchids, articles and clippings on noted French and domestic vineyards.

  All of it seemed totally absurd. She dumped the papers into the antique silver wastepaper basket, just one of the many gifts Richard had given her when she first set up this office. It had been after her second miscarriage, after the hand-stenciled balloons on the walls and puffy white painted clouds on the ceiling had been latexed over and the crib returned for good.

  What was it that seemed familiar about Elena’s crime scene? Kate closed her eyes, tried to reconstruct it, but it was no good.

  She turned her attention to the two cartons of books that had been stacked in the corner for years, and chose from among them Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity, Sheilagh Hodgins, Mental Disorder and Crime, Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. She blew dust off the cover of David Abrahamsen’s Crime and the Human Mind, thumbed through it, noted her own faded yellow highlighted markings, scribbled margin notes. Certainly there had to be new findings, new studies. It had been ten years since she had even looked at them.

  A call to Liz. If anyone would know, Liz would.

  Of course, Liz was more interested in Kate’s state of mind than in helping her focus on criminology. But five minutes on how she was doing was about all Kate could take. Another second and she knew she would break down. “Enough,” she finally said. “Let’s just pretend I’m fine, okay?” Then, quietly, she said, “I’ve got to feel like I’m doing something, Liz—whether I’ve got the legal clout or not.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “Probably not. But what can I do?”

  “Let the police handle it?”

  “I didn’t ask to have this back in my life, but shit, it’s crawled back in through the front door.”

  “Okay,” said Liz, resigned. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’ve made a list. I figure with your FBI status you can pull the information a lot faster than I can.”

  “Like what?”

  “Recent studies on sex murders, as well as updates on violent crime that might help me see this more clearly.”

  “Kate, are you aware of how much information on violent crime Quantico alone has produced in the last few years? Enough to stock the Library of Congress.”

  “That’s why I called you. I made a bunch of notes this weekend about what I observed at Elena’s scene.” Kate spent the next five minutes filling Liz in. “Can you run any of this through VICAP, and NCIC, see what the computer spits out?”

  “You say there wasn’t any evidence of a break-in. Could be date rape rather than homicide.”

  “Even if it was, Liz, Elena is dead. It is a homicide.” She took a breath.

  “True. I’ll see what I can get my staff to pull together.”

  Kate thanked her friend, hung up, reached into her bag for a smoke, came up with an empty pack. Damn. She turned her bag upside down: keys, gum, lipstick, comb, an atomizer filled with Bal à Versailles, tissues, and a dozen cigarettes, half of them broken, spilled onto her desktop, along with that color photograph.

  This time, Kate regarded it more carefully. Elena in cap and gown, Kate beside her; high school graduation, five—no, six—years ago. A familiar photo. In fact, Kate thought she had one just like it.

  In her library, she flipped through a dozen leather-bound albums until she found it. Identical.

  She tried to remember that moment outside George Washington High School. A sunny day. Elena’s camera. Richard took the photo. Elena sent her a dupe. Right. So this one in her hand would be the original. Elena’s?

  Kate bent the gooseneck on the high-intensity lamp closer to the snapshot. A thin film, something flesh-colored, had been meticulously painted over Elena’s eyes so they appeared, on closer inspection, to be closed, blinded, dead—like some creepy Surrealist painting by Dalí.

  Kate dropped the photo as if she’d received an electrical shock. But a moment later she got her magnifying glass. Yes, it was paint on those eyelids. Careful work, too. Something for a lab to go over, though by now any fingerprints would have been smudged, ruined. And what lab? Whom could she possibly bring it to? And what would she say: Oh, this picture made its way into my bag, mysteriously, you see, and look, there’s this odd paint on the girl’s eyes, and oh yes, this girl is now dead.

  Emotion rippled through like a spider crawling along her arm. Or was it simply fear, knowing that someone had taken this photo from Elena and planted it on her?

  Kate knew that some psychopaths had a need to participate—the ones who stood in the crowd as the police found the body, watched the TV news to see what was said about their crimes, had scrapbooks filled with newspaper clip-pings. Was he one of those?

  Kate would have to show this to Tapell.

  The phone was ringing in her hand.

  “Oh, Blair.” Kate couldn’t hide the fact that she was in no mood to talk with her benefit co-chair.

  “Kate, darling. I tossed and turned all weekend. Didn’t sleep a wink. I’ve exhausted my supply of Valium. I look a w
reck. Oh, it’s so awful. Awful, awful, awful.” She took a breath. “But how are you doing?”

  Kate wanted to say: It’s not about you, Blair! Can you possibly understand that? But she said, flatly, “I guess you could say I’m coping.”

  “Kudos, darling. That’s the Kate I know.” Blair waited a beat. “Now. You know I hate to bother you at a time like this, but we need to tie up a few things. Let There Be a Future’s benefit is practically upon us and there are still lots of little details to discuss.”

  Kate heard it all—seating arrangements, flowers, party bags—but none of it registered, let alone mattered. Sure, the benefit had to go on, and other kids needed their help, but party bags! Jesus. Blair was lucky Kate didn’t take her head off. Sure, it was Blair who had first welcomed her into New York society, rough edges and all, who had given her a few select pointers along the way, and had signed on when Kate chose Let There Be a Future, giving it a lot more cachet than it would have had without her. But flower arrangements? At a time like this?

  No way.

  No matter how many times Kate had seen Arlen James, the founder of Let There Be a Future, he never failed to impress her. Even leaning on a cane the man was larger than life.

  Six feet three, a full head of bone-white hair, clear blue eyes. His fine wool suit was English, his shoes Italian, but the back story—son of a poor tenant farmer who likes to build model planes grows up to create an airplane construction company and makes millions—was pure American corn. Yet Arlen James was no ordinary capitalist. The man had a conscience, and put it to work. Let There Be a Future was his payback, his dream-child: educational money for any poor kid who wanted it.

  Ten years earlier, on a rainy Saturday night, only three months after becoming Mrs. Richard Rothstein, Kate had been introduced to Arlen James at a cocktail party. Monday morning she was in his office. On Friday, she was in the South Bronx, walking into that seventh-grade classroom, kneeling beside desks, asking each kid what they wanted to be when they grew up. The answers? Well, a few Michael Jordans, but for most of the kids Kate’s question seemed merely to puzzle. Growing up was enough of a challenge. Of course, Willie had an answer. “An artist,” he said, sketching so hard his pencil broke in two. And Elena did too. Kate waited, watched as the dark-eyed twelve-year-old rolled the idea around in her mind. “I’m not sure,” she finally said, looking Kate directly in the eye. “But I like to sing and act things out, you know?”

  By the end of that day, she had talked Richard into signing on to adopt the entire class, to support any and all of them through high school and hopefully college. A decision that had altered Kate’s life forever.

  Arlen James put an arm around her, and Kate actually felt, for the moment, safe. But that was about as much fathering as she could take. Memories of her own father crawled into the back of her mind, the tantrums, beatings. No way she wanted to think about that now. She pulled away, gently asked, “Are you okay?”

  He nodded, though she worried that he didn’t feel quite as good as he looked. Recent trips to the doctor and talk of a pacemaker had made her painfully aware of the man’s age, and the inevitable fact that this man who she loved would not be running the foundation forever.

  “Have you seen this?” His fist came down so hard on the New York Post article, his desk shook.

  SCHOLARSHIP GIRL SLAUGHTERED!

  James started to cough, the veins in his forehead standing in high relief against his reddening face.

  “Please, Arlen. Take it easy.”

  “I will not!” He snatched up the Post. “Listen to this . . . ‘The victim, Elena Solana, was a graduate of the educational foundation Let There Be a Future, brainchild of high-flying billionaire-philanthropist Arlen James.’ ” He shook his head. “ ‘High-flying?’ Me? And I’m not a billionaire, for Christ’s sake. Where do they come off writing this?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Arlen. It’s just some writer—”

  “And here . . . ‘Police have no motive for the crime as yet, but it looks as if it might be a case of bad luck. One of those Looking for Mr. Goodbar stories. Woman picks up man. The wrong man.’ ”

  “What?!” It was Kate’s turn to explode.

  “Wait,” he said. “There’s more. ‘The only suspect the police have is another foundation graduate, but his identity is being withheld. The suspect is no longer in police custody, the police claiming there is not enough evidence to detain him. It has been suggested, by an unnamed source at police head-quarters, that the do-good foundation has stepped in to protect one of its own.’ ”

  “ ‘The do-good foundation’? Let me see that.” Kate snatched the article from Arlen’s hands, picked up from where Arlen left off. “ ‘Or could it be that our new mayor has put a lid on the case, now that he’s been funding the foundation as part of the city budget?’ ” Kate threw the paper on the desk. “Jesus.”

  Arlen James sighed. “And I hear this is nothing compared to the News.”

  PERFORMANCE ARTIST’S LAST GIG

  No way. Her eyes must be playing tricks on her, thought Kate, staring at the Daily News clipped to the top edge of the kiosk. But no, it was real. Headlines, no less. Whoever said that a culture gets what it deserves was really onto something.

  She knew she shouldn’t buy it, but what the hell, her day was already ruined.

  Below the banner: “Young Woman in East Village Stabbed to Death. Story on page 5.”

  Kate turned the flimsy sheets of newsprint.

  Three grainy pictures, side by side: Elena’s high school graduation, Arlen James in a publicity shot, and one from the back of Kate’s book. “Katherine McKinnon Rothstein,” read the small print, “well-known art and philanthropic figure.” Then a couple of lines copied off the dust jacket of Artists’ Lives, a mention of her PBS series and the fact that it was Kate who discovered Elena’s body. But the real surprise was that the reporter had done some homework, come up with Kate’s past life as a cop, even her specialty, missing kids.

  Oh, yes. Her day could get worse.

  He drags a finger across the steel tabletop to create a path in the thick dust.

  How thoughtful, considerate, really, that this should be left here, as though someone were watching over him, thinking about his needs. A guardian angel. He likes the sound of that, the image, too. He looks up—thin shafts of light stream through the cracked ceiling—pictures a naked winged angel riding the ray like a rodeo cowboy, smiles.

  He spreads all three New York newspapers out on the long steel tabletop, opens them to the story of Elena Solana’s murder, which, he would say, not one of them has gotten right. He flips from one paper to the other, looking to see if anyone has commented on his signature. He sits back, disappointed.

  Fools!

  But a moment later, he’s got his X-Acto knife in hand, carefully cutting out the newspaper photo of Kate, turning the grainy image this way and that. Then, with his cheap disposable auto pencil, he begins to sketch a pair of crude wings onto Kate’s back. After a moment’s consideration, he adds a halo. He pins it to the wall with a steel pushpin, stops a moment to admire his work.

  A guardian angel. Indeed.

  He sets his books onto the table, thinks about the girl.

  He’d been watching her. The way she moved. Her extraordinary voice. That’s when it came to him. Not exactly a plan. More of an improvisation. But he was getting so good at it. The way he had to improvise with the man, too. Good? No. Great.

  But has Kate understood his message?

  He wonders, pictures her on those brownstone steps looking so bruised, destroying her lungs with all that tar and nicotine.

  It’s time he stopped improvising, began planning, taking himself seriously, as others surely would.

  He empties the shopping bags onto the steel table, begins to organize his tools.

  The place is damp. He shivers, stares into the cavernous space past beams and pitted walls, the light from the river beautiful, peaceful.

  A rat scampers acro
ss the dank floorboards. A flick of the wrist. The X-Acto knife in flight, and—Gotcha!—the squealing rodent is pinned to the floor.

  His reflexes have always been good.

  He watches the rat’s tiny claws twitching, tail sweeping up a mini dust storm. Always fascinating, the loss of life.

  But enough. There’s work to be done.

  He wants to create another message, something bold, something to convince her that they are in this . . . together.

  He props his latest souvenir, the small altarpiece, against a couple of books, loads the film.

  With each pop of the flashbulb he’s blinded, an image winking in the back of his mind—a knife through a woman’s flesh, a man’s dying gasp, a young girl’s scream. They fade to the Polaroids laid out in front of him, a new set of images developing before his impatient eyes. The last picture’s details are just filling in, but he’s already cutting them into tiny fragments, rearranging them haphazardly, gluing them down so that the original image is unrecognizable.

  He plucks the finished work up with gloved fingers. Should he actually send it? The idea so seductive, it gives him a thrill to tease like this.

  Of course he’s sending it. No way he’s going to stop now.

  He slides the collage into an envelope, sits back, stares at the newspaper photo with wings and halo until the grainy gray dots that make up Kate’s face blur.

  Lucille swirled a paper towel over framed Mapplethorpe photographs that lined the taupe-colored hallway—flowers so seductive the maid avoided looking at them. “A very good evening,” she said in her singsong island accent. “I made some lemon chicken for you and Mr. Rothstein. And some cold orzo salad. I wasn’t sure if you were eating in tonight.”

  Kate thanked her housekeeper warmly, then noticed the large FedEx package from Liz, slipped it under her arm, and headed directly into her home office.

  By the time Lucille poked her head in to say she was leaving, the sky outside Kate’s office window had gone blue-black. Kate had already read two of the monographs Liz had sent over: Nicholas Groth’s Men Who Rape and Robert R. Hazelwood’s The Behavioral-Oriented Interview of Rape Victims: The Key to Profiling. She’d filled half a yellow legal pad with notes.