Then he realized that the room in the photograph was the room he was at that moment in. And that the bed was the bed that still lay between the two windows, which Ruta Beth and Lamar now so placidly shared. In fact, the photographer had been standing almost exactly where Richard now stood, except that he had been perhaps three or four feet closer to the foot of the bed than Richard now was.
Involuntarily, Richard took the steps over the hardwood floor until he stood in the exact spot. He looked at the bed, which was ever so neatly made, so tidy, with a white bedspread with little rows of red roses on it. He looked at the wall above the bed, white and blank and formless.
He looked back in the picture. It was the same, except that the two people in the bed weren't sleeping, they were dead. Someone had fired something heavy—even Richard knew enough to suspect a shotgun—into them as they slept.
The shells had destroyed their faces and skulls, and the inside of their heads, like fractured melons, lay open for all the world to see.
Jackson Pollock at his most amphetamine crazed had contaminated the wall: flung spray, spatter, gobbets of flesh, patches of skin, a whole death catalog of the contents of the human head displayed on that far wall, which was now so tidily cleaned up and repainted.
Richard felt woozy. Ruta Bern's parents, obviously; the tragedy she had so glumly and vaguely referred to in her letter was a murder.
Someone had broken in and blown Mother and Daddy away. Ruta Beth had probably discovered them like this; that explained her weirdness, her craziness, her strange devotion to a man like Lamar who, whatever else, 'could protect her.
But… she stayed in the same house?
She slept in the same bed?
Richard shivered.
He looked back at the picture. Blood, blood everywhere, a carnivore's feast of blood, the triumph of the lion over its prey.
Something in him seemed to twitch or stir. He noticed that—good heavens!—he was getting an erection.
Quickly, he put the photograph back in the envelope and the envelope back where he had found it. He returned to his desk. The blood sang in his ears.
The lion. The lion.
His pencil flew across the page.
Bud opened his briefcase and spread the three drawings out on Dr. Dickstein's desk: the crude tracing he'd found among Lamar's prison effects, the drawing from the Stepfords, and the doodles on the place mat at the Denny's crime scene.
“He studied at a place called the Baltimore Institute. Is that good?”
“The Maryland Institute. It's a fine school,” said Dick stein.
“You know, this is very unusual. If you study the lives of artists, indeed you find violent and maladjusted men. But almost always their rage is directed at the self.
The ear, you know, Van Gogh, that sort of thing. It's rare that they express their hostility to the world at large. I suppose they're too narcissistic.”
“We ain't sure how much he's in command. He was celled with a tough lifer con, an armed robber by profession.
Very powerful criminal personality. We think Richard just got sucked up in it. Lamar has a way of getting people to do what he wants. He's the real monster.”
The young art doctor stared at the three drawings for a bit.
“This one isn't in his hand?”
“No. It was in an impression I found in a magazine that was in Lamar's possession in the pen.”
“It's traced. The line is heavy, crude, and dead.”
“I believe that's right. Never saw the original. It was etched in a Penthouse. The light caught it right and I brought it out myself.”
“Yes. But clearly the original drawing is Richard's.”
“Yes sir.”
“Yes. I see commonality. And this, this one, it's the one he worked on the hardest.”
“Yes sir. At the Stepfords'. They told me Lamar ordered Richard upstairs, to draw while looking out.”
“So it was an assignment?”
“Yes sir.”
“It represents… Lamar's view of himself?”
“Yes sir.”
“Very roman—look. Sergeant, you don't have to call me sir. Dave would be fine. Everybody around here calls me Dave.”
“Dave it is, then.”
“Good. Anyway… it represents Lamar's view of himself. Men who think they're lions see themselves as powerful, kingly, sexually provocative, very romantic in their own eyes. Incredible un self-cons ious vanity. Typical criminal personality, I'd bet.”
“Sounds pretty familiar.”
“Yes, I thought it might. And… it doesn't quite work. I think you see in the second lion something studied, perhaps too 'cute.” The first one is much cruder, but it's much better. Richard is trying to do too much in Number Two. He has conflicting impulses. It's very Renaissance, actually, very Italian. He's trying to please his patron, the powerful lord who doesn't know much about art except what he likes, and yet his own subversive interests keep breaking through. His talent is betraying him. He knows that the subject matter is beneath him. He sees through it, so he really can't force himself above the level of the commercial hack. He despises the material. It's so coarse: Viking—primordial warrior stuff, the killer elite at play in the fields of the Lord. Hmmm. What is it Arendt says about the banality of evil? This is it in spades, and Richard knows that. He doesn't like drawing it but of course he hasn't the guts to say no. What would happen if he said no?”
“You don't want to know.”
“I'll trust you on that one.”
“Is he any good? As an artist?”
“Well… there's something here, I don't know. He has technical skills, yes. And he doesn't want to do it, but he is doing it and that tension makes it somehow interesting.”
“How about the third one?”
“Ah—lots of vigor, dash, panache. Done offhanded.
With his left brain. Something else was on his mind.”
“He did it just before the robbery. They had him as lookout. If he'd have done his job right, maybe all them people wouldn't have died.”
“You don't like him, do you. Sergeant?”
Bud thought a moment.
“No, not really. He had choices. Lamar and O’Dell, they never had no choices. They were born to be trash. They learned at the toe end of somebody's boot. Richard could have done anything. What happened to him didn't have to happen. He was smart enough for it not to have happened.
That's what I despise about him. He's not even a good goddamned criminal. Lamar's a great criminal. Lamar's a pro. This poor pup, he's just what the convicts call a fuck boy 'I can see how prison would be somewhat hard on him,” said Dr. Dickstein.
“And that's it?”
“Well—yes.”
“Thanks then. You've been some help.”
The museum director's eyes knitted up then, and he seemed to really throw himself at the three drawings.
At last he said, 'You know—I don't know, there's one other thing.”
“Yes sir?”
