inner struggle, which he inferred from the paintings and which he believed to be similar to his own.
Basically, Steven Ackblom was preoccupied with two subjects and produced two types of paintings.
Although only in his mid-thirties, he had been obsessed enough to produce an enormous body of work, consisting half of exceptionally beautiful still lifes. Fruit, vegetables, stones, flowers, pebbles, the contents of a sewing box, buttons, tools, plates, a collection of old bottles, bottle caps — humble and exalted objects alike were rendered in remarkable detail, so realistic that they seemed three-dimensional. In fact, each item attained a hyperreality, appeared to be more real than the object that had served as the model for it, and possessed an eerie beauty. Ackblom never resorted to the forced beauty of sentimentality or unrestrained romanticism; his vision was always convincing, moving, and sometimes breathtaking.
The subjects of the remainder of the paintings were people: portraits of individuals and of groups containing three to seven subjects. More frequently, they were faces rather than full figures, but when they were figures, they were invariably nudes. Sometimes Ackblom’s men, women, and children were ethereally beautiful on the surface, though their comeliness was always tainted by a subtle but terrible pressure within them, as if some monstrous possessing spirit might explode from their fragile flesh at any moment. This pressure distorted a feature here and there, not dramatically but just enough to rob them of perfect beauty. And sometimes the artist portrayed ugly — even grotesque — individuals, within whom there was also fearful pressure, though its effect was to force a feature here and there to conform to an ideal of beauty. Their malformed countenances were all the more chilling for being, in some aspects, lightly touched by grace. As a consequence of the conflict between inner and outer realities, the people in both types of portraits were enormously expressive, although their expressions were more mysterious and haunting than any that enlivened the faces of real human beings.
Seizing on those portraits, the news media had been quick to make the most obvious interpretation. They claimed that the artist — himself a handsome man — had been painting his own demon within, crying out for help or issuing a warning regarding his true nature.
Although he was only sixteen, Roy Miro understood that Ackblom’s paintings were not about the artist himself, but about the world as he perceived it. Ackblom had no need to cry out for help or to warn anyone, for he didn’t see himself as demonic. Taken as a whole, what his art said was that no human being could ever achieve the perfect beauty of even the humblest object in the inanimate world.
Ackblom’s great paintings helped young Roy to understand why he was delighted to be alone with the artistic works of human beings, yet was often unhappy in the company of human beings themselves. No work of art could be flawless, because an imperfect human being had created it. Yet art was the distillation of the best in humanity. Therefore, works of art were closer to perfection than those who created them.
Favoring the inanimate over the animate was all right. It was acceptable to value art above people.
That was the first lesson he learned from Steven Ackblom.
Wanting to know more about the man, Roy had discovered that the artist was, not surprisingly, extremely private and seldom spoke to anyone for publication. Roy managed to find two interviews. In one, Ackblom held forth with great feeling and compassion about the misery of the human condition. One quotation seemed to leap from the text: “Love is the most human of all emotions because love is messy. And of all the things we can feel with our minds and bodies, severe pain is the purest, for it drives everything else from our awareness and focuses us as perfectly as we can ever be focused.”
Ackblom had pleaded guilty to the murders of his wife and forty-one others, rather than face a lengthy trial that he couldn’t win. In the courtroom, entering his plea, the painter had disgusted and angered the judge by saying, of his forty-two victims: “They were all so beautiful in their pain, and all like angels when they died.”
Roy began to understand what Ackblom had been doing in those rooms under the barn. In subjecting his victims to torture, the artist was trying to focus them toward a moment of perfection, when they would briefly shine — even though still alive — with a beauty equal to that of inanimate objects.
Purity and beauty were the same thing. Pure lines, pure forms, pure light, pure color, pure sound, pure emotion, pure thought, pure faith, pure ideals. However, human beings were capable of achieving purity, in any thought or endeavor, only rarely and only in extreme circumstances — which made the human condition pitiable.
That was the second lesson he learned from Steven Ackblom.
For a few years, Roy’s heartfelt pity for humanity intensified and matured. One day shortly after his twentieth birthday, as a bud suddenly blossoms into a full-blown rose, his pity became compassion. He considered the latter to be a purer emotion than the former. Pity often entailed a subtle element of disgust for the object of pity or a sense of superiority on the part of the person who felt pity for another. But compassion was an unpolluted, crystalline, piercing empathy for other people, a perfect understanding of their suffering.
Guided by compassion, acting on frequent opportunities to make the world a better place, confident of the purity of his motivation, Roy had then become a more enlightened man than Steven Ackblom. He had found his destiny.
Now, thirteen years later, sitting in the back of the executive helicopter as it carried him toward Utah, Roy smiled at the photograph of the artist in swarming shadows.
Funny how everything in life seemed connected to everything else. A forgotten moment or half-remembered face from the past could suddenly become important again.
The artist had never been so central a figure in Roy’s life that he could have been called a mentor or even an inspiration. Roy had never believed that Ackblom was a madman — as the media had portrayed him — but saw him as merely misguided. The best answer to the hopelessness of the human condition was not to grant one moment of pure beauty to each imperfect soul by the elevating effect of severe pain. That was a pathetically transient triumph. The better answer was to identify those most in need of release — then, with dignity and compassion and merciful speed, set them free of their imperfect human condition.
Nevertheless, at a crucial time, the artist had unknowingly taught a few vital truths to a confused boy. Though Steven Ackblom was a misguided and tragic figure, Roy owed him a debt.
It was ironic — and an intriguing example of cosmic justice — that Roy should be the one to rid the world of the troubled and thankless son who had betrayed Ackblom. The artist’s quest for human perfection had been misguided but, in Roy’s view, well meaning. Their sorry world would inch closer to an ideal state with Michael (now Spencer) removed from it. And pure justice seemed to require that Spencer be removed only subsequent to being subjected to prolonged and severe pain, in a manner that would adequately honor his visionary father.
As Roy took off the telephone headset, he heard the pilot making an announcement on the public-address system. “…according to Vegas control, allowing for the target’s current speed, we’re approximately sixteen minutes from rendezvous. Sixteen minutes to the target.”
A sky like blue glass.
Seventeen miles to Cedar City.
They began to encounter more traffic on the two-lane highway. Ellie used the horn to encourage slow vehicles to get out of her way. When the drivers were stubborn, she took nail-biting risks to get around them in no- passing zones or even passed them to the right when the shoulder of the highway was wide enough.
Their speed dropped because of the interference that the traffic posed, but the need for increased recklessness made it seem as though they were actually going faster than ever. Spencer held on to one edge of his seat. In the back, Rocky was bobbing his head again.
“Even without proof,” Spencer suggested, “you could go to the press. You could point them in the right direction, put Summerton on the defensive—”
“Tried that twice. First a
“The reporter?”
“Dead. Along with fourteen other people in there.”
“Dear God.”
“Then, a week later, a guy from the
