Vikki stopped struggling, not that her squirmings were getting her anywhere. Jack's calm, conversational tone convinced her that she was dealing with the real thing, a government man. Hoodlums and hard guys of the Bourbon Street variety that she was used to dealing with rarely bothered to be polite.
Jack set her down on her feet, keeping his grip on her wrist. 'Don't run. Where would you go to, anyhow?'
She said, 'Don't turn me over to Dooley and Buttrick… '
Pete Malo stepped up, said, 'You belong to CTU now.' He bent down, picking up the butcher knife. 'Nice.'
Vikki said, 'I was only going to use it in self-defense.'
Pete said, 'Let's all go inside, hmm?'
Vikki started to struggle again, but Jack held her wrist in a police-style come-along, controlling her movements. She said, 'No — no, not inside… '
Jack said, 'Why not?'
Pete told her, 'Don't get frantic, Vikki.'
'I don't want to go back in there!'
Pete said, 'I do. I'm getting wet out here.'
He opened one of the French doors wide, crossing the threshold and stepping inside, halting almost immediately. 'Uh-oh,' he said.
He padded around in the studio area lit by the headlights' glare, finding a wall switch and flipping it on, turning on an overhead light.
Jack followed, escorting Vikki inside. His nostrils caught a whiff of decay, a stench of corruption. He knew that smell.
Pete said, 'We don't want to leave our police friends out in the rain.' He crossed the studio into the front room, opening the front door and standing in the doorway. 'Come on in, men.'
Dooley and Buttrick hurried across the front yard, up the three front stairs and inside, eager to be out of the rain, now falling somewhat steadily. As soon as he stepped inside, Dooley made a face, nostrils crinkling in disgust. Buttrick said, 'What up and died in here?'
Pete said, 'Guess.'
He turned and went into the studio, the two cops following.
An easel was positioned to take advantage of the natural light that would come shining through the French doors in daytime. Mounted on the easel was a half-finished painting of a nude female. Not Vikki, but some other femme, one who presumably didn't figure in the case, but — who knew for sure?
The draftsmanship was adequate but the enthusiasm unmistakable. The technique identified the artist as the painter of the life-sized nude portrait of Vikki that hung above her bed in the apartment over the Golden Pole club.
The wooden floor was marked with red stains that weren't paint. Bloodstains.
Off to one side of the room, against the wall, was a man-sized object wrapped in canvas. Jack, Pete, Dooley, and Buttrick all stood there silently for a moment, looking at it.
Vikki said, 'I didn't do it!'
Jack absently patted her shoulder. 'You've held up fine so far, don't get hysterical now.'
He crossed to the big bundle, crouching down beside it. He peeled the canvas back from the head area, unmasking it down to the neck.
The corpse was that of a middle-aged man with a roosterlike shock of black hair and a long, bony face. He had a mustache and a scruffy three-day beard. A single bullet hole had been drilled through the middle of his forehead. His eyebrows were lifted, as if in surprise at being dead.
Dooley sidled up alongside, peering down at the body. 'Yep. That's him, all right. That's that artist fellow, Marcel.'
Jack rose, straightening up. As the others were doing, he turned his gaze on Vikki. She said, 'I didn't do it, I swear!'
He said, 'Who did?'
'I don't know! Maybe Marty, or some of Beltran's people!'
'You'd better tell us all about it.'
Pete said, 'Tell us outside, in the car. We could all use some fresh air.'
They all sat in the SUV, which was roomier than the Crown Victoria. Jack had the idea that Vikki would be more forthcoming in the CTU vehicle than she would be in the police car. Possession being nine-tenths of ownership. She was CTU's now.
That was okay with Dooley and Buttrick. They didn't care who had possession of Vikki, as long as they got credit for her discovery. This was going to make them the fair-haired boys of the NOPD. Which was fine with Jack and Pete.
The vital lead had been furnished earlier that night by Dorinda, the busty, brunette exotic dancer second- billed after Vikki on the Golden Pole lineup. Being detained for questioning at CTU Center since early morning had helped concentrate Dorinda's recollection. She finally volunteered information about a male friend of Vikki's, some 'crazy artist' who hung around on the fringes of the star dancer's orbit.
Dorinda had barely remembered him because he was a down-at-the-heels bohemian type who didn't have much money, making him a less than negligible figure in her eyes. After being questioned and cross-questioned about Vikki's associates by CTU interrogators, Dorinda had at last recalled the artist.
All she knew of his name was that it was 'Alan, Alan something.' One item that stood out in her memory was that he was always trying to get the dancers to pose in the nude for him, so he could paint their pictures.
She claimed she wasn't interested: 'Honey, I could never sit still that long.'
But Vikki's narcissism had overcome her fidgetiness, according to Dorinda, long enough for Alan to paint her portrait, 'in the altogether.' Armed with that clue, CTU investigators had examined Vikki's portrait in her apartment, signed by the artist, 'A. Marcel.'
They were in the process of checking with gallery owners and art dealers to track down his name and address right around the time that Dooley and Buttrick had showed up at the Kwik-Up mini-mall in the aftermath of the van bombing and shootout.
That was a little off their bailiwick, which was generally centered around the strip joints and dives of Bourbon Street, but the events of the day, starting with the Golden Pole massacre, had quickened their interest in the fast- developing big picture. And its promise of big publicity for those who played their cards right.
Nothing if not live-wire opportunists, they had hastened to the scene when the police dispatcher began broadcasting a general alert about the action at the Kwik-Up.
There, as Colonel Paz and Hector Beltran were being carried away dead on stretchers, the two cops had encountered Jack and Pete.
Dooley said, 'Whoo-whee! You boys are sure cutting a swath through town, I don't mind telling you.'
The CTU agents let that pass without comment. Word had just reached them from Center about one 'A. Marcel,' and Pete gave the lawmen a quick sketch of the artist's background and asked them if they'd ever heard of him.
Dooley said, 'Now that you mention it, that does ring a bell.' He knew all the characters on Bourbon Street; he didn't know Marcel's name, but he did have a vague recollection of a painter who hung around on the fringes of the Golden Pole and other like establishments, who was always trying to hustle the girls into posing nude for him.
'That's his come-on,' Dooley said. 'Hell, once he's got 'em in his place with their clothes off, he's more than halfway there, eh?'
He didn't know where Marcel lived, but he knew someone who knew someone who did; a short time later, the Crown Victoria was pulling up in front of the Belle Reve address, with the SUV containing Jack and Pete right behind.
Dooley had used the police vehicle's public address system to call out Vikki because, as he put it, 'it beats walking in there without knowing if she's half out of her head and has a gun or whatever.'
He had no objection to Jack and Pete taking the lead in that department, however.
