tightly. In the silence Kate heard a faint sound from outside the door, but no one appeared. In a minute he resumed, his voice calm to the point of dullness.
'I don't believe now that there was anything I could have done. She had to work it out herself, whatever she was doing with him, but I tell you it was like sunshine breaking through when Vaunie began to reappear in April. I'm not a religious man, but Becky went down to church and prayed her thanks, and I knew how she felt. I wanted to sing the first time I saw funny little Vaunie looking out at me again, curious and half smiling and not cold any more. We had three or four weeks of her, before she was arrested.'
'Do you think she killed Jemima Brand?' The bald question made him wince, but he turned the chair's wheels to meet her eyes and did not hesitate.
'I did then. I was sure she had. Nothing would have surprised me out of that other Vaun, not even, I had to admit, murder. She just wasn't anyone I knew, and when they said she'd had a flashback of the LSD and done that, I could believe it. I'd seen her in the hospital, when she was going crazy and attacking the nurses and trying to hurt herself. Vaun said she couldn't remember anything but painting that night the child was killed, but she agreed that she must have done it. I was convinced she had.'
'And now?'
'Now, I don't know. I've had a lot of time to read and think in the last ten years, since my accident, and I have to admit, I'm no longer so sure of it. If I'd felt then the way I do now, I'd have fought for her a lot harder than I did. It would have meant losing the farm—we nearly did, anyway—but I would have done it, no matter what evidence they had. But that was eighteen years ago, and I was a different man. I have regrets, but I can't change what happened.'
'Do you blame her state of mind during those months on the drugs she was taking?'
'No, I blame Andy Lewis. I'm no expert on how the human mind works, or the brain itself, for that matter, but smoking marijuana, and even taking that other poison, doesn't turn a person like Vaun into what she was. It was Lewis. He had control of her, somehow, like some filthy virus that infected everything she did. He was such a big man, claimed to have killed men in Vietnam, you know? He probably spent the time mugging old ladies in Los Angeles. God knows why, but Vaun was susceptible to him. I know he was good-looking and he chose her out of the whole school and she was no longer a leftover but the big man's girl, but it was more than that. Something in him latched onto her and wouldn't let go. Hypnotized her, if that doesn't sound too melodramatic. I think she was breaking free, but whether or not she killed Jemma, and if she did whether it was the chemical in her brain or his hold over her that made her do it, I do not know. I wish to God I did.'
Jameson had come to an end, and he stopped and let the silence settle over them. Kate felt drained, and the thought of rousing herself for the next set of questions raised by this extraordinary interview made her residual aches, which were considerably greater than she'd let on to Hawkin, take possession of her will. There were more questions to be asked, but she needed a pause, and Jameson seemed content.
There was a sound of stirring outside, followed by the hollow thump of feet on the wooden steps next to the ramp, and the shed darkened. Kate looked up to see Hawkin outlined dramatically in the light that came streaming in the door, and Vaun's charcoal sketch flashed vividly into her mind.
'Mrs. Jameson asked me to check and see if everything was all right, and to say that lunch would be in half an hour.' His eyes took in the room, paused to consider Kate's face, smiled at the metal windows, and went to the pair of paintings resting on the floor. He stepped forward to look at them, and the room brightened.
'Interesting,' he said after a few minutes. 'I take it that the larger one was done during the time she was with Andrew Lewis?'
'In March,' Kate confirmed. 'The other one is from the previous October.'
'Yes, very interesting,' he repeated, his eyes flicking from one to the other. 'Do you mind if I take a look at these other ones, Mr. Jameson?'
'Of course not, help yourself. Just so they go back into the same slots. Vaun has them in order.'
'Right, we'll keep track of them. I'll put these two out of the way,' and he laid them on the bed next to Kate. 'No, don't get up, Casey. I just want to have a peep. I spent part of the day yesterday looking at the ones in her studio.' And the rest of the day recovering, he added to himself. He walked over to the far end and slid the first of the canvases from its berth. He checked the back before he set it up against the wall, and stepped back.
'Done four months after her parents died. She was thirteen.'
The order was chronological, the cumulative effect shattering, an intense, intimate portrait of the artist as a very young woman. There were a few paintings of animals and two landscapes, but most of the forty-odd canvases were Vaun's vision of her neighbors and her family. Three images of a younger, whole Red Jameson jumped out at them, and two of his wife. Jameson kept up a commentary, identifying each figure and most of the locations. Finally there were two canvases left. Hawkin pulled them out together and stood them next to each other.
They formed a pair like the two on the bed behind Kate, though not so striking. The earlier one here, dated early November, was of a young, ginger-haired boy-man of about fourteen, identified by Jameson as his son Ned, Vaun's cousin. He was splitting logs with his shirt off, and she had caught an expression half embarrassed, half proud, on his young face. The second of the pair, dated February, was of a slightly older boy. He was dressed in jeans and an army jacket, and was sprawled back on a bench with an utterly expressionless face. It was a disturbing painting, with that utter blankness, and Kate found herself trying to put some emotion into it—insolence, contempt, disgust—anything human to fill it in.
'That's Timothy Bauer, lived down the road. He was one of Lewis's followers. He died a couple years later, higher'n a kite on something and ran his car off the levee into the canal.'
'No paintings of Lewis, then?' asked Hawkin.
'Isn't there one?' Jameson sounded very surprised, and wheeled himself forward to look. 'There isn't, is there? Used to be one. Vaun must have taken it,' he said doubtfully. Hawkin shot a glance at Kate, who felt her tiredness abruptly leave her.
'Was it in here, Mr. Jameson?' asked Hawkin, sounding only slightly curious.
'Yes, between the one you took out and the one over there. I know, because I used to look at these sometimes, and I used to avoid that slot—I didn't like to see his sleazy face. Maybe Vaun didn't either and finally burned it.' He sounded as if he found that a more likely possibility than his niece wanting it. Hawkin knelt down to replace the two he had removed and looked closely at the adjoining two slots. The odd bits of carpet that lined the bottom of the case were indented wherever a painting had rested over the years. The pile was notched clearly in the slot from which he had taken the young man and in the one where the young woman putting on her makeup had rested. Between them was a gap, one of several in the storage wall, and an indentation showed that a canvas had indeed rested here, although a thin layer of dust had had time to drift across the matted pile.
'Pity it's not here, said Hawkin easily. 'I'd have liked to see his face, and how she saw it.'
'You didn't see it in her studio, then?' asked Jameson.
'Do you remember what it looked like?'
'I sure do. He was sitting in a turned-around chair, his arms along the back of it, his chin on his forearms. Shirtless. He had a tattoo, I remember, on his upper arm, a snake or something. He looked sweaty, and when I first saw it all I could think was, Thank God he put his pants back on before she painted it.'
'It had sexual overtones, then?'
'Yes. I don't know why, something in his face, I guess. It was awful. But it wasn't there, then? In her house?'
'I may have missed it; there's a lot of paintings. When did you see it last?'
'Years. It's years since I actually looked at it—like I told you, I didn't like to see him. I think it was here last summer, but I couldn't swear to it.'
'No problem—just curiosity. Mr. Jameson, I'd like to borrow a few of these paintings, if I may.'
'Which ones?'
'The two final ones, and two or three of the earlier ones. I'd be interested in having someone more knowledgeable than myself look at them and tell me about her state of mind when they were done. It could be very helpful,' he added.
'Oh, well, sure, if it'd help you. You'll have to be careful of them.'
'We will. I'll get them back to you as soon as I can,' he said. He retrieved the last pair, rested them next to the first pair that Jameson had shown Kate, and then went back and unerringly pulled out the second one of Jameson, squinting into the sun from the seat of a tractor. He put it next to the other four, and Jameson turned
