“Have any other agents come to see you?” George asked.
“No, why would they?”
“I received a visit early this morning. The agents were asking questions about Water’s Edge Academy. It seems the drug case that’s been in the news is somehow connected to it. The Stokler name came up when they researched the property, so they came by to ask questions.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That I haven’t been back since I graduated. You know how much I hated that place.”
“So that’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“Then what’s the big deal?” Ashley said.
“I don’t know. Too many bad memories,” George said.
Ashley heard his voice trail off as if he didn’t realize he said it out loud. She was quiet for a moment, then stood up and straightened her skirt. “That part of our lives is over. It died with Miranda. Now put a smile on that pretty little face of yours and go sell some of the crap dear old Mom painted before her timely departure.”
19
Ash drove over the Rickenbacker Causeway and onto the pristine, palm tree-fringed streets of Key Biscayne. He edged his way through morning traffic getting more frustrated by the second.
“If these pompous fools knew what you were carrying in back, they wouldn’t look so uppity,” she shrilled. Her bantering was making him anxious. He clenched his jaw and ground his teeth—a nervous habit from his youth—trying to stem the tide of panic.
It had been a few hours since he had choked the life from his canvas, and he wanted to start transforming his canvas before decomposition began.
Traffic thinned and his anxiety lessened as he pulled off Crandon Boulevard and onto a winding one-lane dirt road heading east toward the water. The road abruptly ended at an ornate, rusted gate which bore the insignia of the Water’s Edge Academy. Using the key he kept around his neck, Ash opened the gates and made his way to the back of the complex.
In the late eighties, when the Academy faced hard times, the Board of Governors rented one of its buildings out to a school of mortuary science. It was a building he knew well.
This once elite boarding school was closed permanently in 2004 and remembered by no one but alumni. Ash referred to it as “the compound” because that’s what she always called it.
He drove to the familiar building and backed his truck up to the now defunct ghoul school. It made for easier unloading of his canvas. He unlocked the accordion-style steel delivery door and, wasting no time, backed the vehicle into the building. Using the long chain at the side of the entrance, he closed and relocked the door. It was only after he was securely locked inside that Ash turned on the interior lights. He felt at ease inside this particular building. It was his home—his real home—and his studio.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” she screeched. “If you want your work noticed, it needs to be perfect. You can’t create a perfect piece on a poorly prepared canvas.”
Ash balled up his fist and cracked his knuckles, quelling the irritation.
I know what I’m doing you crazy cow, it was ingrained in me since I was a kid. Ash looked down at his fist—red and inflamed—and slowly unfolded his scarred fingers, a reminder of some of the “corrections” he’d sustained during his youth.
Ash moved methodically yet with speed as he carefully transported Sylvia from box to lab table. He needed Sylvia Lang’s skin to be as pliable and as life-like as possible, so he worked quickly stripping her clothing and cleaning her skin.
Her voice persisted through every step. With every word she spewed, his anger grew palpable.
His hands quivered with rage when she started her ever-present mantra.
“Cruelty has a human heart, and jealousy a human face . . .”
Ash closed his eyes and breathed in through his nostrils, attempting to subdue his emotions. Inhaling the scent of formaldehyde always seemed to calm him. The smell brought him back to an earlier time. As a child, this is where he would come to hide from the other students, the world, but mostly from her.
Hiding now was absolutely impossible. Ash could feel her presence right next to him; an albatross that was set in stone around his neck.
He could hear her whisper, “It’s the face.”
He cringed as he sensed her acrid breath.
“It’s the face,” she repeated. She languished over each word, and her voice grew louder until the pitch and volume became shrill and painful. “The heart, the form, the dress…they mean nothing without the goddamn face!”
Ash was in a hurry to present his newest creation, so he bypassed the embalming process. He spent the next ten hours working. The stages were tedious. The base color had to be mixed to perfection if he was to match Sylvia’s skin tone. Once dried, he was able to place accent colors, the colors that would transform the ugly duckling into the swan.
Finished, Ash felt energized. He checked the time and still had a handful of hours before he needed to leave.
He moved from his studio into the adjacent room where he kept his power tools. He sifted through the scrap metal he’d collected over time, picked up his welding equipment, and began the next part of his masterpiece.
An hour later, sweat-soaked and tired, Ash stood back and admired his work.
Back in the studio, he covered the canvas and went about putting everything else in its rightful place—as if he hadn’t been there at all. Looking around the room, he thought about his next move.
The staging of his work would start hours before sunrise. He needed to get some sleep.
Eyeing his creation one more time, he mumbled as he opened the delivery door, “The human face a furnace sealed.”
20
Sin was awoken by the irritating sound of her phone ringing a little before seven a.m. Vision blurred from lack
