Twice

The cop at the door checked his list for Lydia and Jeffrey’s names and found them. He stood up and stepped aside as the three of them entered Julian Ross’s room.

Julian Ross was a ghost of the woman Lydia had seen in the photograph back at the gallery. She sat on the small twin bed in the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, hugging her knees to her chest. She was pale, her eyes glassy and wet. All the light had drained from her. Lydia imagined that she could be picked up and tossed to the floor like a rag doll.

Lydia tried to reconcile the frail woman before them with the gruesome images in the crime scene photographs Ford had given them. She tried to imagine Julian’s tiny, delicate hands wielding a serrated knife and committing the carnage that had been wrought in her Park Avenue duplex. It didn’t work for her. Physically it didn’t seem possible. But more than that, Lydia just couldn’t envision it, though she couldn’t say why. Lydia pulled up a metal chair beside Julian’s bed and tried to look into her eyes. But they were like the eyes of a cat, flat and without depth. It was as if her soul, the essence of who she was, had floated away, leaving only a breathing human shell.

Lydia was not uncomfortable with mentally ill people. She’d interviewed more than one in the past. In fact, she was more comfortable with them than she was with most “sane” people. There was often a logic to their thoughts that made a kind of sense if you listened carefully. There was no artifice to their personalities, nothing put on. It was crazy but it was real.

“Julian,” said the doctor as if she were talking to a child. “This is Lydia Strong and Jeffrey Mark. They are here to see you at your mother’s request.”

There was no sign that she had heard.

“Julian,” said Lydia, “we want to help you.”

She turned bright green eyes on Lydia. Lydia felt a little jolt of shock inside as she saw clearly the eyes from the portrait in Orlando DiMarco’s gallery. She wondered if, as in the painting, there was another side to the wispy woman before her, another side that only Tad Jenson and Richard Stratton had seen. Someone that she had hidden from others and maybe even from herself. In the hard fluorescent light of the room, Lydia could see that Julian’s pupils were dilated. Her long dark hair was highlighted with strands of red and was pulled back into a loose ponytail. Several strands had escaped and hung listlessly around her frail shoulders and in front of her eyes.

“You can’t help me,” she said softly, her voice thick and slow. “No one can.”

“Is she heavily medicated?” asked Lydia, looking at the doctor.

“Oh, yes,” answered the doctor. “She was hysterical, a danger to herself.”

“We can help you, Julian,” said Lydia softly, leaning in slightly. “If you can tell us what you remember.”

The doctor sighed, agitated suddenly behind Lydia. “I don’t think you’re going to have much luck, Ms. Strong. She’s not going to be able to remember anything at this point.”

Jeffrey held up his hand. “Just give her a minute.”

Julian held Lydia’s eyes. “My children,” she said, her tone not quite a question, more a musing.

“They’re fine,” answered Lydia. “They’re with your mother.”

Julian gave a little laugh and rolled her eyes dramatically. “Oh, well then… they’ll be fine,” she said, her voice suddenly tight with sarcasm and anger. “Look how well I turned out.”

She scribbled something in the air with an invisible pen and looked at Lydia with a wink, as if she thought Lydia were in on some private joke. “My mother, the queen. The queen of the damned. Evil bitch.”

“She’s ranting,” said the doctor.

“I can see that,” said Lydia, turning to look at her with annoyance.

“Why are you so angry at your mother?” asked Lydia. Julian didn’t answer. She just kept writing in the air furiously.

The room was so silent, Lydia could hear the buzz of the fluorescent lights above their heads and Julian’s quick and shallow breathing. A moth fluttered above them, knocking itself into the light with a succession of soft taps.

“Julian, do you know where you are?”

“Do you know where you are?” Julian answered with a childish giggle. “Does anyone?”

“Some of us have a pretty good idea,” Lydia answered gently.

“I’m hiding,” she said with a vigorous nod, as if this answered everyone’s questions.

“Who are you hiding from?” asked Lydia.

Julian slid down on the bed suddenly, as if invisible strings that had been holding her upright had snapped. She curled up into a ball facing Lydia, holding herself tight. She was so thin that Lydia could see her shoulder bones poking through her pale skin.

“From my other half,” she said, closing her eyes. Lydia thought of the painting again, the man’s face divided into two parts, the two women.

“What do you mean, Julian?”

But Julian turned her back on them. She lay facing the wall, her breathing becoming slow and heavy. Lydia asked her question again but got no response.

“I’m going to have to cut you off, Ms. Strong,” said the doctor. “You can see how exhausted she’s become. You can try again in a couple of days.”

Lydia looked reluctantly at the small form of Julian Ross. From behind she looked like a child. She got up to leave, pushing the chair back to the place where she’d found it. She’d seen something dancing in Julian’s eyes, something reachable. Lydia thought if she could only come up with the right trigger, she could rescue Julian from her own mind. The three of them walked toward the door.

“Lydia?” said Julian, without turning around.

“Yes, Julian.”

“He’s come for me, again. No one can stop him now.”

Lydia stood staring at Julian, remembering again the canvas, that monster’s face. As the doctor put her hand on Lydia’s arm and led her from the room, she felt a chill move down her spine. She felt an odd connection to the artist. Maybe it was because Lydia felt hunted, too.

From above his copy of the New York Times, he saw them leave the Payne Whitney Clinic on West Sixty-eighth Street. He could smell the honey-roasted cashews from the vending cart on the corner and it made his stomach rumble. Lydia hadn’t eaten yet and neither had he.

She was radiant today, truly glorious, and it filled his heart with love just to be near her. There was something so flushed and creamy about her skin. He would do anything to reach out and touch it. But she was surrounded, always. If it wasn’t Jeffrey Mark, it was that other monkey, the burly Australian. Just the thought of him made his blood pressure rise, caused a tightness in his throat. He wouldn’t forget the way he had been treated by Dax Chicago.

Jed McIntyre wiped the newsprint from his fingers onto the long black wool coat he’d picked up for ten dollars at a thrift store in the East Village and adjusted the plaid golfer’s cap.

Today he was an old man reading a paper at a bus stop. Yesterday he had been a homeless woman pushing a cart down her block. Tomorrow… well, who knew? Every day was a creative challenge. The world was looking for him. He was hiding in plain sight. People never really saw what was right in front of them; you could always count on that.

Luckily for him, before Dax Chicago had put a major kink in his plans, he’d stowed the duffel bag given to him by Alexander Harriman, Esq., in a locker in Grand Central Station. The key hung on a chain around his neck. So he was flush. No money worries, though he had lost his vehicle. Anyway, in the city, a car was more a pain in the ass than it was worth.

He watched her, through the round gold rims of his glasses that had no lenses, as she stood on the corner with Jeffrey. He watched the way she draped a hand casually on his arm as she talked. She was animated, leaning into him, her eyes bright. Jeffrey Mark hailed a cab and then opened the door for Lydia. He slid in behind her and then they took off.

Jed stood and watched until the cab was out of sight. The crosstown bus hissed to a stop in front of him and he got on, slid his card through the slot, and took a seat at the back. He saw a white van pull from its spot on the