Vaun looked curiously at her hands, which were trembling. 'I haven't told anyone this story in fifteen years.
'I just stood there in the corner of the kitchen for the next hour, totally stunned. The doctor and police came, then more police, detectives, and then somebody thought to look at my painting.
'Have you ever had a leech on you? No? It's the most desperately revolting feeling, to find this horrible, slimy, slow-moving thing attached to your skin, sucking away at you. That's exactly how the policemen looked at me after seeing the canvas. I saw that look a lot in the next few months.
'That painting convicted me. Oh, there were a lot of other things, of course, from my history of psychiatric treatment to my use of LSD and what I'd done in March, which came out early on. But the painting clinched it. If I'd had a decent lawyer I might have tried to plead insanity, but as it was, the painting stood there for all to see, evidence that I was a coldhearted and ruthless murderer, a mad, artistic, murdering cuckoo in their nest.
'You see, what I'd been working on was a picture of Jemma as I'd actually seen her the week before. I had been out walking, thinking about what I wanted to do for the scholarship portfolio, when Jemma appeared. She didn't see me. She'd obviously been down in the pond catching pollywogs, which she wasn't supposed to do, and had her dress and underpants off so she wouldn't get mud on them, and she looked so amazing, like some pale wood sprite, totally at ease with her nakedness. She spotted a butterfly and dropped her clothes to go racing up the hill after it, and at the top of the hill the new green grass was so soft looking, you could just see her decide to roll in it. I knew I'd have to tell her that she mustn't do that any more, for her own protection, but for a few minutes I just enjoyed the sight of this nature child. At the end of it she just lay there, all alone in the universe, head back in the grass, looking at the clouds, and I knew I had my main piece for the portfolio. The colors were perfect, the position technically challenging, and there was this subtle innocent exuberance that I knew I could capture. And I did. It was a good, solid painting, one of the best I'd ever done, and it sent me to prison for ten years because she was found in exactly that position, arms sprawled, head back, and naked.
'I know now that the whole trial was a farce. There wasn't enough money for a proper lawyer, so I had a public defender, who was a total incompetent, but what did I know? I couldn't imagine those twelve people would actually believe the prosecuter's accusations, they seemed so utterly absurd. Once when he was going on and on about Timothy Leary and the hippie movement being anti-Church and the painting being a crucifixion scene because Jemma's father was a deacon in the local church, I actually laughed, it was so ridiculous. That was a big mistake, I realized later, but by then the verdict was in.
'The first few months in prison were pretty hellish, but after that things calmed down. They let me paint for a few hours every day, and my aunt sent endless supplies of pastels and Conte crayons and paper. I learned to walk very quietly around certain inmates, and I made a lot of flattering drawings. That was my first taste of prostitution.' Her smile was gentle, and ugly.
'I had been in for just short of three years when there was a riot at some low-security prison in the Midwest, and all of a sudden the press was full of stories about how prisoners were being coddled instead of punished, and the law-and-order people grabbed onto us. Our prison had a reputation of being more humane than some, which I suppose was why I was sent there, because of my age. Some newspaper decided to run an expose of the place, as an example, and the powers-that-be were forced to crack down on us. I learned all that afterwards. The first thing I knew about it was when my painting privileges were taken away. Two days later there was a sweep through the cells and all my supplies disappeared. It was like when I was seven, only now I had no parents who I knew, underneath the confusion, loved me. Now I had nothing.
'And you know the funny thing? The relief was tremendous. I had carried the burden of this gift since I was two years old, and it had ruined my whole world. Now it was all over, it had been taken away from me, and I had no control any more, none whatsoever. I felt as if I were floating, and I could let go. So I did. At first they thought I was, as they called it, 'being difficult,' instigating a hunger strike I suppose, and they slapped me into solitary confinement. When they came to get me out, I was catatonic.
'The rest of it you've seen in my records, I'm sure. I used to wonder what would have happened to me if Gerry Bruckner hadn't decided to volunteer one afternoon a week at the prison, or if he'd been an ignoramus about art, or if the prison's warden and governing board had been less cooperative. What if, what if… So many opportunities for that little game in a life like mine, aren't there? What if he hadn't thought to put a crayon in my hand, and what if two years later he hadn't had a good friend with a gallery in New York, and what if the pieces hadn't sold so well, and what if he hadn't been willing to fight for me…
'I owe him my life. I dedicated the show to him, last year, the one you saw.' She drained the glass, her third, and set it carefully on the table. 'He is the only person I've ever fully, wholeheartedly loved. And I've never even slept with him.' She smiled at Kate, a crooked smile that touched her eyes. 'Except, I suppose, that night at the hospital last week. God, I'm so tired. Will I ever feel rested again? And now I'm half drunk as well. I think I'll take my dreary self off to bed before I begin to weep crocodile tears on this nice sofa.'
'May I ask you something?' Kate interrupted.
'Only one thing? Must be something of a record for a detective, only one question.'
'Two somethings, then, but one of them I have no business asking, and you're welcome to tell me that.'
'All right.'
'Why didn't you make an appeal?'
'I—I didn't think there'd be much point. The jury was only out for a few hours before they returned the verdict, and the lawyer—'
'Come on,' Kate chided. 'You're far from stupid, and you certainly had plenty of time to think about it. Why didn't you appeal?'
Vaun sighed and looked faintly embarrassed.
'Because by then I wasn't sure that I hadn't done it. I only took acid twice, but it's strange stuff, like stirring your brains with a spoon. Even after the first time I had half a dozen flashbacks. Like hiccoughs of the brain. Things would shift, somehow, and go unreal for a few seconds, or minutes. And the second time, after I'd tried to strangle two or three people… Well, even during the trial I began to wonder if maybe I actually had done it while I was having a flashback or hiccough or whatever you want to call it, and it scared me. The whole thing scared me, the thought of having to go through all those leech-looks all over again. I crawled into prison and pulled it around me like a shell, and I found that it wasn't as awful as I'd thought it would be. When my uncle came to visit me he offered to begin an appeal, but I could see what it would do to him, and I think he was relieved when I told him that I couldn't see much point. It was easier to forget it, to just get on and deal with what was in front of me. That sounds so feeble now, so stupid, but—in some ways I was a very young eighteen.'
Kate looked dubious, Lee waited, and Vaun fiddled with a small seashell from the table while something struggled to push its way to the surface. She opened her mouth, changed her mind, started again, and the third time got it out.
'And I… There was also the fact that I was guilty, if not of killing Jemma then of enough other things to make me feel that prison was the place for me. I know,' she said, though Lee had not actually spoken, 'Gerry and I spent a lot of time on free-floating guilt complexes. At the time, though, it seemed… appropriate, that I should be locked away from society.' She put down the shell and seemed to push the subject away. 'What was your other question?'
'You don't have to tell me—'
'I didn't have to tell you the other one either.'
'True. And I'm glad to see that your ego has recovered.' She grinned at Vaun, who grinned back. 'It's curiosity. Why Andy Lewis? What did you see in him?'
'A lot of things. He was very attractive, sexy, dark and dangerous, aloof. He exuded an aura of secret power. And he was an outsider, but by choice, rather than being left out. That was a feeling I craved, that self-assurance. Together we could look down on everyone else. I felt chosen, powerful, unafraid—even pretty, for those few months. With Andy, the whole mess of my life made a kind of sense.'
'But it didn't last.'
'No, it didn't last. I couldn't paint, with Andy. There was no room for it around him, I couldn't pull away from him far enough to paint. It was tearing me apart, and when I realized that my work was becoming crap because of it, I had to choose, and I chose my brushes.'
'What did he do when you told him?'
