“If he’s painting the women outdoors, that would mean a really secluded place. There’s lots of woods and swamp, but getting there with a prisoner or body could be tough.”
“A courtyard,” I tell him. “New Orleans is full of walled gardens and courtyards. I think that’s what we’re looking for.”
Kaiser squeezes my upper arm. “You’d have done well at Quantico. Let’s get on board.”
I don’t move. “You know, you weren’t very helpful back there. What was all that crap about France?”
He shrugs. “You don’t learn anything about a man in a short time by having a polite conversation with him. You push buttons and see what pops out.”
“De Becque just wanted to stroll down memory lane.”
“No. It was more than that.”
“Tell me.”
“Let’s get on board first.”
He hustles me onto the Lear, then goes forward to confer with the pilots. After a moment, he walks back to my seat.
“I’ve got to call Baxter. It may take a while.”
“Tell me about de Becque first.”
“He was making some kind of decision about you.”
“What kind of decision?”
“I don’t know. He was trying to read you, to understand you.”
“He knows a lot about my father, I know that.”
“He knows a lot about more than that. He’s in this thing up to his neck. I can feel it.”
“Maybe the women really
“Moved there on de Becque’s jet, you mean?”
“Maybe. Have you traced its movements over the past year?”
“We’re having some trouble with that. But Baxter will stay on it. He’s a bulldog with that kind of thing.”
Kaiser walks forward, takes the seat by the bulkhead, and in moments is holding a special scrambled phone to his ear. I can’t make out his exact words, but as the conversation progresses, I see a certain tension developing in his neck and arm. The jet begins to roll, and soon we’re hurtling north toward Cuba again. After about ten minutes, Kaiser hangs up and comes back to the seat facing me. There’s an excitement in his eyes that he can’t conceal.
“What’s happened? It’s something good, isn’t it?”
“We hit the jackpot. The D.C. lab traced those two brush hairs they took from the paintings. They’re unique, the best you can buy. They come from a rare type of Kolinsky sable, and the brushes are handmade in one small factory in Manchuria. There’s only one American importer, based in New York. He buys two lots a year, and they’re sold before he gets them. He has specific customers. Repeat customers. Most are in New York, but there are several sprinkled around the country.”
“Any in New Orleans?”
Kaiser smiles. “The biggest order outside New York went to New Orleans. The art department of Tulane University.”
“My God.”
“It’s the third order that’s gone there in the past year and a half. Baxter’s meeting with the president of the university right now. By the time we land, he’ll have a list of everyone who’s had access to those brushes in the past eighteen months.”
“Wasn’t one of the victims kidnapped on the Tulane campus?”
“Two. Another from Audubon park, near the zoo. Which is very close to Tulane.”
“That’s only three out of eleven. The grid analysis alone didn’t point to Tulane. But this definitely changes things.”
“Where was the next closest order of these brushes to New Orleans?”
“Taos, New Mexico. After that, San Francisco.”
My stomach feels hollow. “This might really be it.”
Kaiser nods. “Lenz told us the paintings would lead us to suspects. I was skeptical, but the son of a bitch was right.”
“You were more right than he was. You told me yesterday you thought the killer or kidnapper was based in New Orleans. That the selections were being made there, and that the killer might be the painter. Lenz had the painter in New York.”
Kaiser sighs like a man whose premonitions are often borne out but bring little pleasure when they are. “You know something?”
“What?”
“De Becque lied to us in there.”
“How?”
“He told us he never saw the painting of Jane. This is a guy who can get on his private jet and fly to Asia anytime he wants. He’s pissed at Wingate for selling the later Sleeping Women out from under him, to Asian collectors. Even if he didn’t see those paintings when they were offered for sale, you think he didn’t fly to Hong Kong the minute they went on exhibition there?”
“It’s hard to imagine him not doing that.”
“And did you notice that he sent Li with us to see the paintings? He didn’t come himself?”
“Yes. You’d think he would have wanted to show off his collection.”
“And to watch your reaction. He’s got a thing about those paintings. And a thing about
“So, what are you saying?”
Kaiser looks out the porthole window, his face blue in the thickly filtered sunlight. “This is like digging up a huge statue buried in sand. You uncover a shoulder, then a knee. You think you know what’s down there, but you don’t. Not until it’s all out of the ground.” He cuts his eyes at me. “You know what feeling this gives me? The conspiracy angle, I mean. What it makes me think of?”
“What?”
“White slavery. Women kidnapped from their home-towns, sent far away, and forced into prostitution. It still happens in various ways, even in America. But it’s big business in Asia, especially Thailand. Crime syndicates steal young girls from the mountain villages and take them down to the cities. They lock them in small rooms, advertise them as virgins, and force them to service dozens of clients a day.”
I close my eyes and press down a wave of nausea. The mere mention of this horror forces me to accept that it is one of Jane’s possible fates. But even if it isn’t, the image created by Kaiser’s words makes me shiver with fear and outrage. I can walk through a corpse-littered battlefield and hold in my lunch, but the thought of a terrified young girl locked in some cubicle of hell until she contracts AIDS is too much for me.
“I’m sorry,” Kaiser says, lightly touching my knee. “My head is full of stuff like that, and sometimes I forget.”
“It’s all right. It’s just… of all the bad things, that’s the toughest for me.”
Though he tries to conceal it, the question in his mind shines through his eyes.
“Don’t ask. Okay?”
“Okay. Look, we’re a lot closer to finding him. Closer to stopping him. Focus on that.”
“Okay.”
“Can I get you some water or something?”
“Yes… please.”
He gets up and goes forward, and I snatch up a copy of the jet’s safety card from the seat back across the aisle. Anything to focus on, to keep my mind from following its own dark course.
