'What was it you wanted to know?'
'I want to know what kind of person did these.'
'A woman with the eyes of a witch and the hands of an angel.' She was talking to herself, and Hawkin gave a bark of derisive laughter.
'Is that what they're teaching in the psych department at Cal these days? Don't burden me with so much technical jargon, please, Dr. Cooper.'
Lee flushed in anger, and swung around to face him.
'What particular aspect of the artist's personality interests you? An analysis of the change in her sexual state over the time these cover? The degree of psychosis exhibited? Perhaps a Freudian statement regarding her relationship with her parents?'
'I want to know if she could have committed murder.'
'Anyone can commit murder, given a strong enough motivation. You should know that.'
They glared at each other, and a faint smell as of burning hair reached Kate's nostrils. Hawkin spoke again, precisely, through clenched teeth.
'In your professional opinion,
Lee pulled her eyes back to the row of images and seemed to draw up a barrier as she collected her thoughts, eyes narrowed.
'In my professional opinion, no. I am not an expert diagnostician, but I would have thought that this woman would be more likely to commit a devastating murder of someone's self-image on canvas than she would an actual, physical murder, particularly of an innocent. As for the LSD, it's an unpredictable drug, especially the street kind, but I have participated in sessions of LSD therapy and studied its long-term effects, and I'd say that kind of violent 'flashback' would be extremely unlikely. But as I say, I'm no expert. I could give you some names, if you like, of people to see.'
'Who would you suggest?'
She reeled off half a dozen names. 'Those are Bay Area people, of course. There's a man in Los Angeles —'
'No, that'll do. I've seen all of them except for Kohlberg. She's in France.' He started to gather the paintings together and wrap them in Becky Jameson's old curtain. Lee watched, and handed him the last one reluctantly.
'What did the experts say?' Kate asked.
'Pretty much the same thing.' He tucked the thick bundle under his arm, paused, then shook his head in frustration, and left.
Kate had felt a sudden rush of exhaustion when he had gone, but Lee had seemed in great good spirits, and burst into snatches of song at odd moments during the rest of the day.
She was in the same aggressively cheerful mood now, Kate could tell, from the line of her back and the rapid, dramatic sweeps of the knife on the cutting board. She was using her self-assurance as a weapon, and Hawkin could only sit sourly and wait for his chance. He turned deliberately to Kate, fished a manila envelope from inside his jacket, and handed it to her.
She pressed open the metal wings and slid four glossy black-and-white photographs and three drawings out onto the tablecloth. Hawkin reached over and arranged them in two lines like some arcane variety of solitaire. She picked up the first photograph and looked closely at the young face, its mouth open in a shout. It had obviously been cropped from a group action shot, with a shoulder across one corner and a leg in the foreground wearing tight white leggings and a cleated shoe.
'Coach Shapiro's?' she asked.
'Finally. The photographer did a good job on those.'
She concentrated on the other three prints, which showed the same face touched up first to show middle age, then with a moustache added, and finally with a full beard. She puzzled over this last one.
'It doesn't look quite right,' she said finally. 'I only saw him for a minute, but the nose was different, and the shape of the eyebrows.'
'Well done, considering the circumstances. Angie and Tyler agree with you. Susan took the photograph and worked it into the drawing she did last week, and came up with those,' he said, pointing. Susan Chin had also done a good job. The drawing with the beard was the man Kate had seen at Vaun's house ten days before. Susan had then removed the beard and left the moustache, using the jawbones of the high school picture, and finally shaven him clean.
'That's him. He must have had a nose job, and something done to his eyebrows.'
'We also know who Tony Dodson is. Or was.'
'It's not just a false ID then?' She was surprised.
'Apparently not. There was a man named Anthony Dodson who worked with Lewis, and even resembled him quite a bit: same hair color, eyes, height, only fifteen or twenty pounds heavier. Lewis went north after high school, spent some time in Seattle, then got a job in Alaska on the pipeline. He met Dodson there, they became friends, spent several weekends in Anchorage. After a few months the two of them went off for a week in Seattle and didn't show up for work again. Lewis wrote a letter to say they'd both got jobs in New Orleans, they were sick of the cold, that their clothes and equipment should be given away, so long. Nothing more is heard of Andy Lewis—nothing—but Tony Dodson, who was from Montana originally, gets a driver's license in Nevada two months later.'
'And the photo?'
'Is the same man who went to high school as Andy Lewis, given that the photograph on the license is lousy, he's ten years older and has had facial surgery.'
Food began to move from stove to table to plates— avocado and mushroom omelet and hot buttery toast and orange juice fresh from the machine on the sink and mugs of thick coffee. Kate took a mouthful of the hot liquid and swirled it around her teeth, feeling the distinctive bite of the Yemen Mocha. She raised a mental eyebrow at this but didn't comment. Lee would not like it pointed out that a special effort was being made at this meal.
The cook sat down with a cup but no plate and picked up the original photograph. Several hundred calories later Kate looked over at her.
'You're not eating?'
'I had something a while ago. I thought I'd wait and keep Vaun company.'
'That picture bothers you,' Kate noted. Hawkin glanced up sharply and then looked more closely at Lee, whose face revealed nothing other than a slight curiosity.
'It does. I was just wondering if it would bother me if I didn't know who it was. It reminds me of someone I knew when I was in New York. Not one of my clients, though I'd seen him around the clinic. One day he told his therapist that he'd been beating up drunks, just for the fun of it, and one of them had died. She was really upset after he left, but managed to finish out the day. That night he waited for her and followed her home and killed her. He later said he'd decided it was unwise to have told her, but she'd already reported him to the police, and they were waiting for him when he got home. He didn't actually look anything like this,' she waved the picture. 'Maybe around the eyes.' She gazed at it for another long moment, then with a slight shudder put it away from her. When she looked up it was directly into Hawkin's eyes, no swordplay now.
'As a therapist I am required to deny the possibility of such a thing as innate evil. There are reasons why people become twisted. As a human being, however, I recognize its presence. This man Lewis must be stopped. I believe that my being here might help you catch him. If I see that I am in the way, I will leave. Immediately.'
It was not put as an offer, a compromise, but Hawkin chose to take it as such. The two women waited as he finished his toast, placed his fork and knife across his plate, took a swallow of coffee. When he spoke it was to Kate.
'All right. I am still very unhappy about having a civilian involved, and if I thought for a minute there was a chance Lewis would get into the house, I'd scrap it now. Yes, it will look more normal to have Lee in the house. Yes, Lee will help with Vaun, and yes, it will, in theory, free up your eyes to have Lee looking after Vaun. I have to trust you on that, that you won't be distracted by Lee. And I have to trust you,' he jabbed a finger at Lee, 'to watch for that, and get out fast if she's looking out for you instead of Vaun. I don't like trusting too many people at once, but if we go with this it'll be your show,' back to Kate, 'and your judgment. If you decide to put your friend here at
