The Death Artist (40 page)

“We’re getting there, Natie. Hang on.” He’s breathing heavy, the weight of the old man getting to him. “Just a little bit more. It’s not quite there yet.”

He strains to lift Nathan Sachs higher, to get the old guy’s stumps up into a clean white area of wall. “That’s it. Just there. We’ve got to concentrate now, Nate. We’ve gotta make it perfectly clear.” The blood, spurting out of the man’s wrists a minute ago, is starting to slow down. He hauls the old man back and forth, back and forth. There’s a puddle of blood on the floor. The old man’s canvas deck shoes drag through it, whipping it up, creating bubbles of bloody foam.

“It’s looking good,” he says, then almost stumbles over one of Nathan Sachs’s hands. He kicks the amputated appendage away in disgust. “Who needs that,” he says. “I’m painting with the body. The
body
!”

He stands back for a view of his painting, the weight of the old man growing heavy in his arms. He drops Nathan Sachs into the crimson river at their feet. The old man curls into a fetal position, his bloody stumps tight against his body. He shudders once. Then lies stock-still.

Where is she
? He checks his watch. He can’t wait much longer. He’ll have to move fast.

He looks over at the other white wall, the inferior-quality painting he’s taken down to make room for the masterpiece he is going to create with Bea Sachs.
Damn her.
Leave it to a woman to screw up his perfect plan, his duet. He plucks Nathan Sachs’s other hand off the floor, dips the index finger in blood, then prints his initials–a large
D,
then an
A
–in the lower right corner of the wall. But a moment later, he reconsiders. It’s not quite right. He rubs them out with the back of the hand, dips Nathan’s finger in some fresh blood, replaces the letters with a small
d
and large
K.

Yes, that’s it.

He stares at Nathan’s severed limb–an interesting prolongation of his own hand–one more way to make a painting as an extension of the body. He should have thought of it sooner. It would have been a lot easier than lugging the old man around.

But he wanted to be clear. Literal. And a body is a body, no getting around it. This way he is certain he will not disappoint Kate.

He’s feeling so close to her, as though she were here, in this room, watching him work, viewing the finished painting with him, making aesthetic judgments. What would she say?

A bit too red?

Perhaps.

He scans the room for something, anything he might be able to use, finds it in the fireplace, a few shards of burned wood, homemade charcoal.

Now, with a few bold strokes, he suggests the outline of a female form, nothing too specific, then draws a pair of large circular breasts, the hardwood charcoal biting into the still-wet blood on the wall.

He moves back, takes it in, absentmindedly using Nathan Sachs’s hand to scratch his itchy nose.

My God, the painting is even better than he expected. She will be so impressed.

He tucks the hand into the pocket of his coverall. He’s decided to keep it.

He checks his watch. Should he wait another minute for the wife? No, he’d better not. If Kate has figured it out as he imagines, they will be here soon.

He doesn’t bother taking the portable electric jigsaw lying on the floor beside Sachs’s body. There’s no need. He’s left no prints on it.

Once outside, he pulls the plastic bags off his shoes, strips out of the jumpsuit, stuffs them all into the easy-to-carry gym bag he’s left by the Sachs’s back door.

A minute later he is running past the swimming pool, scaling the picket fence, disappearing into the arbor of trees. There are sirens shrieking in the distance, but he’s almost at the car now.

Bea Sachs trembled. Kate laid her sweater over the woman’s thin shoulders.

Mead was huddled with the chief of the Sag Harbor Police Department and three of his local detectives. They’d arrived at the scene just as Bea Sachs was putting her key in the front door. Crime scene cops were now crawling all over the Sachs’s home like pigs sniffing out truffles.

Kate, Brown, Slattery, and Mead had been in the same car for over two hours, Mead driving ninety miles an hour, the siren blaring the whole way out on the Long Island Expressway. Kate’s head was aching, her nerves on edge.

Bea Sachs had been over the events of the day five or six times. Her hands were shaking. Her lips trembled as she spoke. She’d left the house around noon to play tennis at the club. She had called Nathan just after to see how he was feeling. He said he was feeling a bit worse, that he was going to take a nap, that she should make the studio visit without him. Bea had promised to pick up the cold remedies he’d requested. Their last communication. Then she drove to East Hampton, to the artist’s studio. After that, to the Sag Harbor Pharmacy.

The Suffolk detectives were making the usual inquiries–any enemies, anyone who was seeking retribution?–but Kate and the squad knew those were worthless questions. The death artist had chosen the couple–his symbol for art collectors–purely out of convenience. They fit the bill, and their house was isolated.

“At least we saved the wife,” said Mead, after they got Bea Sachs sedated and off to the hospital. He nodded at Kate, mumbled, “Good work.”

Kate just barely nodded back.

“The alarm was still on,” said one of the Suffolk County detectives. “The vic obviously let the unsub in.”

“So Sachs knew his assailant,” said Brown. “Or the guy just didn’t seem like a threat.”

One of the Suffolk tech team photographed the wall several times, came in for a close-up on the initials in the lower right-hand corner.

“I get the
d
for death,” said Brown. “But what about the
K
?”

“He’s not using his initials this time,” said Kate. “He’s signing for the artist whose work he is emulating–for de Kooning–small
d,
capital
K.
He’s being clear, remember.” She shook her head.
Damn it, what good is figuring it out if I’m always too late
? She watched a cop bag the severed hand.

“You find the other one?” he shouted to a crime scene cop across the room.

“You won’t find it,” said Kate, totally flat. “He took it with him.”

Mead turned away from the Suffolk chief of police. “How do you know that, McKinnon?”

“I just know.” She closed her eyes, could see the death artist using Nathan Sachs’s hand to add the initials, then not wanting to give it up, his newly discovered, perverse paint-brush.
Jesus.
She was so fucking plugged into this guy, it sickened her.

“Too bad he didn’t hang around a few minutes more,” said one of the Suffolk detectives.

“He knew how much time he had,” said Kate.

The guy looked at her, his face screwed up. “How?”

“Never mind,” said Brown, answering for Kate, who had already turned out of the room, was lighting a cigarette on the back porch. Brown saw the match, then the tip of her cigarette, glowing. He hoped to God she didn’t crack. He knew what it was like to be inside one of these psychos’ heads. He’d been there. Couldn’t wait to get out.

Kate pulled up a chair in Liz’s small FBI Manhattan cubicle, watched as a file number, then a name, PRINGLE, RUBY, appeared on Liz’s computer screen. Her eyes felt itchy, irritated from lack of sleep.

It had taken almost three hours to get back from Sag Harbor last night with Kate, Mead, Brown, and Slattery, going over and over Nathan Sachs’s murder–if only they had figured out the clues faster, if only they had gotten there an hour earlier, if only . . .

Then the FBI needed to hear every single detail. The only reason they hadn’t taken over the case was because Mitch Freeman had convinced them that Kate and her team were close. Kate wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse.

By the time she got home, all Kate was capable of doing was kicking off her shoes and falling into bed. She was glad Richard had been called back to Chicago for more depositions. No way she’d have been able to answer any questions.

“I’d like any crime scene photos, any lab reports,” said Kate, focusing on Liz’s screen. “And there should be something about a fingerprint we were trying to type way back when, but couldn’t.”

“Did you try AFIS?”

“Yes. But the fingerprint didn’t appear. It may have been before the system was put into effect.”

“Hold on.” Liz scrolled through the document.

A series of black-and-white images took turns filling the screen: The Dumpster. Garbage. That poor dead kid. All of it so vivid in Kate’s mind, she could even feel the heat of that summer day.

“I can make the resolution better.” Liz hit a few keys. The picture’s details sharpened so that Kate could make out the chips in Ruby Pringle’s powder-pink fingernail polish, a similar color on the girl’s lips, smudged across her cheek. Ruby Pringle’s eyes were wide open, staring back at Kate now as they did then. On the screen they looked dark, but Kate remembered they were blue.

A moment later, Liz was lifting images out of the laser printer, handing them to Kate.

“Jesus.” Kate took a deep breath. “I never wanted to see any of this again.” But she took in the details–the halolike aluminum foil crumpled over the girl’s head, the wavy plastic wings. “She really does look like an angel. It
could
be the death artist’s work.” Kate glanced back at the screen, thought a minute. “Would you see if there’s a note in the file? A sort of ransom note? I’m pretty sure it was documented.”

Liz scrolled through the case file. There it was:

I know where she is because I know where I put her.

“That’s it,” said Kate. She stared at the writing on the screen, then pictured the actual note on the seat of her car, directing her, drawing her to that hideous scene so many years before.

Kate’s fingers trembled as she unfolded the newspaper photo of herself with wings and halo, and the word HELLO written across it. “Obviously, the FBI has a handwriting department.”

“Sure. But not here,” said Liz. “I can fax them to Quantico’s handwriting analysis.”

“How long would that take?”

“Depends. If my pal Marie is working today, you could have an answer back in no time.” Liz fed both writing samples into her fax machine, then turned back to the Ruby Pringle file on her computer. “Here’s the lab stuff. And your fingerprint, large as life. I’ll print it on Mylar so it can be overlaid with any of the recent prints you’ve got in your lab, to see if they match.”

Kate watched the fingerprint spit out of the printer. Would it lead her to him–or to another body? Kate practiced a few of those deep-cleansing yoga breaths.

“You have gotten good at this, Liz.”

“Thanks.” Liz handed over the Mylar fingerprint. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything from Quantico on the handwriting.”

All the way back to the station house Kate couldn’t stop thinking about it. Had he written HELLO as a clue, to let her know how long he had been a part of her life, or was it simply a mistake? No. The death artist was too clever, too meticulous for that. He wanted her to know.

Okay, so he was leading her. But this time she knew she was being led.

“Dead-on match,” said Hernandez.

Now Kate was staring at another computer screen, one into which had been fed the Mylar print supplied by Liz. It had been flipping fingerprints over and under each other for about ninety seconds until the two had wed, and the screen flashed MATCH.

“What’s the match?” asked Kate. “Which case?”

“It’s from the Stein scene,” said Hernandez, checking her records. “Let’s see. According to this, the print was pulled off a painting–one that had that little violin picture stuck onto it.”

Thank God she had sent them back for it, that she recognized the violin was a prop, part of the death artist’s staging of Titian’s
The Flaying of Marsyas.

“Your unsub must have taken off his gloves to stick the violin picture onto the painting and accidentally leaned his finger into the painting while he was doing it. He wiped the little violin print clean, but not the painting.”

“Even if he’d wiped the painting,” said Kate, “the tacky oil-paint surface would be very sensitive to fingerprints, wouldn’t it?”

“Right.”

“So this is the only match to any of the prints we have from
all
the death artist’s crime scenes?” asked Kate.

“So far,” said Hernandez. She handed Kate the Mylar fingerprint along with another set of Quantico faxes. “These came for you.”

Minutes later, Kate had the Ruby Pringle crime scene photocopies spread out on the conference table in front of the squad, along with the results of the lab’s fingerprint search, Quantico’s handwriting analysis, and two large art books–
Renaissance Painting
and
Early Christian Art.

Behind her, pinned up on the wall, were technicolor pictures of the Nathan Sachs crime scene–lurid and bloody. Beside them were the de Kooning paintings from Kate’s books.

The entire squad looked exhausted, including Mitch Freeman–dark circles under their eyes, lines around then-mouths from constant frowning.

“With the fingerprint match and Quantico’s handwriting people saying the notes are a seventy-percent match, it makes it pretty damn conclusive that it’s the death artist’s work,” said Kate.

“Who supplied the info?” Freeman squinted at the FBI documents.

“The Bureau,” said Kate with an offhand “Who else?” sort of shrug.

Freeman didn’t push, just nodded.

“Jesus,” said Chief of Police Tapell. “This guy’s been on your tail since Astoria.”

“But he disappeared for years,” said Mead.

“He disappeared on McKinnon,” said Freeman. “But he could have been working all along, undetected.”

“And then I wrote the art book, made the TV series, and came back onto his radar screen,” said Kate. She flipped a few pages in the art books. “There are angels in practically every one of these paintings. They’re called putto.” She showed a few examples to the group. “I can’t find anything specific, but you can see what he must have been going for with Ruby Pringle. This was an early attempt. He hadn’t perfected his ritual yet.”