Color Blind (12 page)

H
e squints at the newspapers scattered on his studio floor beside the beat-up couch. How could they have gotten it so wrong?
A still life with a blue-striped bowl?
No way.

And a man? He doesn’t remember a man.

Was he hallucinating? Maybe. Sometimes it all seems like a dream.

He flattens his palms against his aching eyes.

He is certain of the others, how and why they had been selected. But not the man. Maybe the newspapers are trying to trick him.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you—

He regards the two paintings made of hair and blood that he has tacked to the wall. There have been other such paintings, all of them thrown away in frustration, and of course the ones he had made from the animals, which he could only keep a day or two before they began to stink.

But right now he is sure there would be a third painting if he had done the man, and there is not.

No, he didn’t do it. He would have remembered. He isn’t crazy.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes—

“You said it!”

He closes his eyes and pictures the girl standing under the street lamp tugging at her mini, and thinks, yes, it was real, but what did he learn other than the fact that he was not prepared—and that he will have to stick to the indoors? Sure there was a moment, that beautiful moment. But the idea is to make it last—to see if he is right.

He glances over at the other newspaper that tells of the nameless girl found floating in the river, no clues about her—or him. That part is good.

No, it’s grrrrrrrreat, grrrrrrrreat, grrrrrrrreat!

“Not now, Tony! I’m trying to think!” he shouts, then apologizes. “Sorry, Tony.” He does not want to offend his friend, who has been with him for such a long time. He relies on Tony, as he does on Brenda and Brandon and Dylan and Donna and sometimes Steve, but never David, who he believes might be a little like him and so he despises him.

From his pocket he slides the small high-intensity magnifying glass he always keeps with him; inky-black words march across the newspaper page like giant ants as he scans the stories. He is surprised that they care about those two women.
Who would care about them?

Maybe, he thinks, they care because of the man—the attorney, a lawyer, it says. A rich man.

He goes over the
Post
story carefully, then switches to the
New York Times,
and studies the small photo whose caption reads: “Richard and Kate Rothstein.” He studies the man and the woman, his magnifier fragmenting their already grainy images into abstract patterns of black dots, and feels a tug of familiarity, then slowly reads the story until he comes to a part that interests him—the part about the dead man’s wife, an art historian they call her. Hi-stori-an.
His
-story-n. Aren’t they making a mistake? After all, she’s a woman. Shouldn’t it be
her
-story-n?

See, he isn’t stupid.

Sometimes you feel like a—

“Shut up!”

He tries to blot out the noise, slides his magnifier back over the paper.

Ms. McKinnon-Rothstein is best known as an art world figure, an expert on contemporary art…

He closes his eyes, imagines the art
her-story-n
looking at his paintings, and smiles.

R
ectangles of smudged morning light streamed through the windows and painted themselves onto the evidence room’s dingy tiled floor, illuminating the faded checkerboard pattern, the cracks and dirt.

“This is Special Agent Marty Grange,” Floyd Brown said.

Kate put the guy at no more than five feet eight, solid build, starched collar buttoned around a yellow tie causing his thick neck to redden, sleeves rolled up, hugging Popeye-like arms. He stood ramrod-straight, bulky chest out, as if prepared for a military inspection, and narrowed his small dark eyes in Kate’s direction. “Heard about you.” He cleared his throat. It sounded like a growl.

“All true.” Kate linked her hands together and held them out. “Better cuff me now.” She added a smile, which the FBI agent did not return.

Perlmutter coughed to conceal a laugh.

Grange’s dark eyes laser-beamed in the detective’s direction, and Perlmutter froze.

“Agent Grange is from FBI Manhattan,” said Brown. “He’s just joined us, and will be working the case, as well as liaising with FBI Washington.”

Kate said, “Great,” like she almost meant it.

Grange’s eyes, two opaque black marbles, rolled toward Kate, though she wasn’t exactly sure if he was looking at her.

He was.

Agent Marty Grange focused on a spot just to the left of Kate, though he could take her in perfectly, a technique he had developed and used on his personnel as well as suspects, and it worked well. People, he had learned, were unnerved if they could not tell where you were looking.

In less than a minute he had determined that Kate’s clothes were expensive, that she was smart, and that she exuded way too much confidence. Of course he had pulled her FBI dossier and knew her history—every case she had ever worked in Astoria, the fact that she’d been expelled from two Catholic high schools, even the names of her elementary school teachers. He’d also pulled files on her father, uncles, all the ones who were cops, and knew details of Kate’s mother’s suicide that she did not.

Marty Grange’s favorite motto was “Knowledge is power.”

Grange glanced at Kate again and decided she had another strike against her—
way too good-looking
.

The evidence room of the Sixth Precinct had been readied for the group. The three paintings, encased in clear plastic, lay faceup on a narrow table in the center of the room for viewing from all sides, a card beside each indicating the specific case numbers. The only other item on the table was the magnifying glass Kate had requested. She tugged a book out of her tote and laid it on the table.

Mitch Freeman burst through the door a bit breathless and disheveled, graying sandy hair falling into his eyes, shirt-sleeves rolled up, overstuffed briefcase tucked under his arm. “Am I late?”

“Yes,” said Agent Grange.

The FBI shrink turned to Kate. “It’s good to see you. I mean—” His smile turned into a frown. “I’m really sorry—”

“Good to see you too,” said Kate, stopping him. She turned immediately to the paintings, particularly the painting from Richard’s scene, which she was seeing for the first time.

My God. This is it. The painting left beside my dying husband.

No. She absolutely could not think like that. She had to detach. Immediately.

It’s a painting. That’s all. A painting. A painting. A painting.

She could feel Grange watching her. She cleared her throat. “Well, first off—” She was surprised at the calm in her voice.
Yes, I can do this.
“They’re totally different. I mean, the Bronx paintings and uh, this one—” A quick breath. “Different—in many ways, some more obvious than others. First, the two Bronx paintings are unstretched, just pieces of loose canvas. But the—” She faltered a moment. How to refer to the painting from Richard’s crime scene? “…the
Midtown
painting is on a stretcher.” Kate held the painting by its plastic-wrapped edges and turned it over for all to see. “Stretcher bars,” she said, indicating the wooden rectangle that supported the canvas. “These are store-bought stretchers. You can see they’re uniform and stamped with a size. But the artist has cut the canvas himself, and stapled it on. And he’s prepared the canvas himself. Notice that the canvas edges are tannish where the gesso has not completely covered it.”

“The
what
?” asked Grange.

“The gesso,” said Kate. “It’s an acrylic mix of titanium white and water that artists use to prep the canvas for paint. You can’t use oil paint directly on unprimed canvas or the oil paint will not only bleed through but eventually rot the canvas. The gesso prevents that.”

“So we have an artist who knows something about his craft,” said Brown.

“Yes,” said Kate. “But it’s fairly standard.” She inspected the gesso more carefully along the edges where it was not covered by paint. “In the past, artists used lead white as a primer, but it’s deadly poisonous and not too many use it anymore. I’m assuming this is gesso, but we should have the lab test it to be sure. If it
is
lead white, that would significantly narrow the field.”

Perlmutter made a note. “Are there different brands of gesso?”

“I think the main difference between one gesso and another is the amount of water—the cheaper ones add more. But there may be other additives that differentiate the brands. You should check.” She exchanged the Midtown painting for one of the Bronx paintings, the still life, and flipped the loose canvas over.

“No stretcher bars, obviously—just a piece of canvas. And this is commercially made canvas that’s been preprimed. The artist bought it exactly as it is, ready to paint on. It’s cheap stuff.”

“Why would an artist go to the trouble of doing it themselves, using that gesso stuff, if they can just buy it ready-made?” asked Grange.

“Because it’s a lot better when you do it yourself. You choose your own canvas. Decide how many coats of gesso. Sand it between coats if you want it really smooth. Most professional artists do their own gessoing, or have a studio assistant do it—if they’re successful enough to employ one.” Kate swapped the Bronx still life for the street scene. “Same thing here. Unstretched and on ready-made, preprimed canvas.”

Grange continued his thought. “So why wouldn’t our unsub go to the trouble for these two Bronx paintings, just the other one?”

“Excellent question, Agent Grange.” Kate stopped a moment, eyes moving from the Bronx paintings to the one from Richard’s scene. “I’d have to say…because they have
not
been painted by the same person.”

“Are you saying there are two different unsubs?” Grange’s stony face got stonier.

“What I’m saying is that we have two different
painters
.” Kate paced in front of the three crime scene paintings, using the magnifying glass as a pointer. “Aside from the differences with the stretchers and the type of canvas, there are other glaring differences. One, the paint handling.” She indicated the Midtown painting. “There are no visible brush strokes here. The paint is thin and has been put on either with very soft brushes, sables, perhaps, maybe even foam brushes or sponges. Whereas in these”—she gestured toward the two Bronx paintings—“the painter is using stiff bristle brushes. The paint is laid on heavily, the brush strokes obvious.” She paused briefly while the men studied the paintings. “Of course the most glaring difference is the color. In the Midtown painting the color is realistic. The bananas are yellow. The apple red.” She looked from the Midtown still life to the two Bronx paintings. “But in these two the color is totally unrealistic.”

Kate plucked the book she had brought with her off the table,
The Art of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
. She opened it to one of the several pages she had flagged and held up the image for the men to see.

“Kirchner was the first artist who came to mind when I saw the Bronx paintings. You can see the similarity in the use of color.” The picture Kate displayed,
Struggles (The Torments of Love),
was bold and wildly colored—a harsh portrait, half black-and-white, half bright blue and blood-red.

“Why the blue face?” asked Brown.

“Kirchner was part of a group of German expressionist painters who called themselves Die Brücke, which means The Bridge. They exaggerated forms and used unrealistic color to portray their innermost feelings. They stressed working at a fever pitch, accepting ugliness and deformity.”

“Mission accomplished,” said Brown.

“I’m not here to make you like German expressionist painting,” said Kate. “I simply wanted to show you a painter who the Bronx unsub brings to mind in his work. They both paint directly, that is, the paint has been put on fast and hard, and they both use unrealistic color. I also wanted you to see that it’s not necessarily unusual for artists to experiment with color.”

“Could our unsub have seen this German guy’s paintings?” Grange asked.

“Yes. There are several in New York museums. But I’m not necessarily saying our unsub is emulating him. Kirchner’s paintings have an unschooled look, but he’s really a very sophisticated artist.” She glanced at the Bronx paintings. “These have the hot, wild color of Kirchner, but they feel unschooled to me. Plus they have the odd framing element, the way the guy has built up a heavy scribble design around the edges that does not exist in the Midtown painting—instead, that one’s realistic, sophisticated, and cool. It just can’t be the work of the same painter.”

“You’re sure about that?” asked Grange.

“It’s my opinion. But do they look the same to you, Agent Grange?”

Grange did not like the challenge he thought he detected in McKinnon’s tone, but he let it go—for now.

Kate leaned closer to the two Bronx paintings and the men followed her, all five heads only millimeters apart. “Notice the bits of charcoal around the forms. You can see them around the clouds in one, the fruit in the other? I think the artist sketches the objects with charcoal first, then paints them in.” She shifted to the Midtown painting and their heads followed her. “But there’s no charcoal in this painting. No presketching. It looks rather tossed off, like the artist didn’t spend a whole lot of time with it, but it’s assured. I’d say this painter knows what he’s doing.” Kate shifted back to the Bronx paintings once again, the heads tagging along. “Whereas these two are…raw. I’d have to say these two Bronx paintings are the work of an amateur, an unschooled
outsider,
and the other is painted by a pro.”