“Which one?”
“The one who was skinned.”
Immediately Richard froze. “Was this another body-painted model?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all. At least not that we could tell.”
“Do we have an ID on the victim?”
“Not yet. The face is intact though, and I’ve got photos.” He brought it up on his cell phone.
Richard took a look, shook his head, and said, “I don’t know him, that’s for sure.”
“Might be interesting to know if your artist knows though,” he said, “because this guy had his torso skinned off too.”
“That makes no sense,” he said, frowning.
“Says you. Always some copycat is out there.”
“Well, that makes more sense than anything. Send me the photo, will ya?” He stepped a few feet away, picked up his phone, and called Cayce back.
When she answered the phone, her tone exasperated, she said, “I’ve just barely had a shower, dammit. Now what?”
“We have a new body,” he said tersely.
Silence. “And that means what to me?”
But he could hear the horror underlying her tone. “It may mean nothing,” he said, “and it might mean everything because his body was also skinned.”
“Everything?” Her voice rose in horror.
“No. Just the front midsection.” He stared at the alleyway. “I have a photo I want you to look at.”
“Do I have to?” she asked.
“Yes. I need to know if you recognize the victim.”
Her voice was soft as she said, “Okay. Send it to me.” And she hung up.
He quickly sent the photo to her. He waited all of one minute; then he called her back. “Do you know him?”
“Yes,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “He’s one of the men who worked on painting the backdrops on the big installations.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday afternoon. I think maybe four-ish,” she said. “I’m not really sure. I was already working on the children then.”
“Would he have been there last night?”
“Well, he could have been,” she said. “How am I to know? A lot of people attended last night.”
He nodded, giving her that point.
“Was he skinned the same as Elena?”
“Yes,” he said. “Can you explain why?”
“How the hell would I know?” she cried out. “I never body-painted him.”
“Is there any reason that he would have something that would appeal to somebody doing this?”
She took a slow, deep breath. “Meaning?”
“Do you know if he has a tattoo? Something that somebody might have taken for a collection? That’s what I was thinking,” he said honestly. “But anything that could possibly make sense out of this would help.”
“I have seen him without a shirt, yet I don’t recall any tattoos to speak of,” she said, “but I’m not certain.”
“No, of course not,” he said. “Do you have any other relationship with him, other than him painting your backdrops?”
“He works for a company called Mediacorp,” she said, “and they work with me on a lot of my big installations. Other than that, I can’t tell you any more. He was a lovely young man. I think his name was Thorne. Thorne, hmmm, Watson, maybe. No, Matson,” she said with relief, as if finding that piece of information was everything.
And he understood because he heard suspects, or other people who he had to interview all the time, trying to be helpful, coming up with something that would hopefully make a difference. “I’ll follow up with Mediacorp. See if we can find out his last movements last night. I’ll need a list of who was there.”
“Anita will get you the invites list. But that won’t tell you about everyone who was there.” Her voice broke, and she whispered, “Please tell me that they’re dead when this is being done to them.”
“I haven’t got an autopsy report on them yet,” he said, “so I can’t tell you for sure, but, yes, I would dearly hope to God they were.”
He could hear the tears choking her voice when she said, “Detective, is somebody targeting me or the people around me?”
“That is something we have yet to figure out,” he said.
“I just don’t understand,” she whispered. Then she paused and said, “Unless he’s trying to do something similar.”
“As in, body-paint, like you do?”
“Yes, but that wouldn’t make much sense in Thorne’s case.”
Her frown was easily picked up through the phone. But that didn’t mean he didn’t wish he could see her face. Matter of fact, he wished he could see her regardless. “What do you mean?”
“Thorne was hairy,” she said. “And, even shaved, it’s very hard to get a smooth stroke of paint. A lot of models go through laser hair removal in order to have the skin that we need to paint on.”
“So, as far as you were concerned, he wouldn’t have made a good model for what you do?”
“No,” she said, “and laser surgery would take quite a while.”
“What about if he was freshly shaved?”
She frowned at that. “Potentially, but the hair comes through within a few hours.”
He thought about that, nodded, and said, “Okay, if you think of anything else, keep in touch.”
“I wish I could say the same to you,” she said, “because this is driving me nuts. Now that there’s another victim I know, that just feels so very wrong. When it was just Elena, I thought maybe it was one of her friends or somebody who would target her because she’s so beautiful, but what purpose could Elena’s killer have for targeting Thorne?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, “but I guarantee you that we’ll get to the bottom of it.” He thought she’d hung up, and then she said in a broken whisper, “Thanks.” He winced as he hung up his phone. But he turned to face the others and shook his head. “She knows him. His name is Thorne Matson. He worked on the installation, through a company called Mediacorp. Actually on several of her installations.” He looked at his phone. “I forgot to ask if he worked on the same one that Elena was the model for. I’ll send her a quick text. She has no reason why or
