Dead Sleep

“You’ve seen my paintings. The Sleeping Women. Surely you understand?”

“Understand what?”

“The point. The purpose of the paintings.”

“But I don’t. I never have.”

Wheaton lowers his brush and stares at me with incredulity. “The release. I’ve been painting the release.”

“The release?” I echo. “From what?”

“From the plight.” His face is like that of a monk trying to explain the Holy Trinity to a savage.

“The plight?”

“Femininity. The plight of being a woman.”

A moment ago I felt only grief. Now something harder quickens my blood. A desire to know, to understand.

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“Yes, you do. You’ve tried so hard to live as a man. You work relentlessly, obsessively. You haven’t married, you’ve borne no children. But that’s no escape. Not in the end. And you’re learning that, aren’t you? Every month, the little seed inside you cries out to be fertilized. Louder all the time. Your womb aches to be filled. You’ve let Kaiser use your body, haven’t you? I saw it the morning you came back with him, to the house on Audubon Place.”

So I’m not at Audubon Place. Of course I’m not. If I were, I would have heard the St. Charles streetcar bell by now.

“Do you mean that killing women somehow releases them from pain?”

“Of course. The life of woman is the life of a slave. Lennon said it: Woman is the nigger of the world. From childhood to the grave, she’s used and used again, until she’s but an exhausted shell, broken by childbirth and marriage and housekeeping and-” Wheaton shakes his head as if too angry to further explain the obvious, then dips his brush in paint and goes back to the canvas.

Different voices are speaking in my head. Marcel de Becque, telling me that westerners fight against death while the people of the East accept it: This posture of acceptance is portrayed in the Sleeping Women. John’s voice: All serial murder is sexual murder; that’s axiomatic. Dr. Lenz, saying Wheaton’s mother left home when he was thirteen or fourteen, details unclear. Lenz badgering Wheaton about it at the second interview, Wheaton evading the question. That’s what all this is about – the paintings, the murders, everything – Wheaton’s mother. But I’m not going to question him about her until I’m fairly sure I can survive the asking.

“I do understand that,” I tell him, my eyes settling on Thalia’s inert body. “That’s why I’ve lived the life I have.” How can this man possibly see the ruin Thalia is now as a release? “But the painting you’re doing now must have a different theme.”

He nods, flicking his hand right, then left, his eye leading the strokes with lightning precision.

“It’s my emergence,” he says. “My freedom from the prison of duality.”

“From Roger, you mean?”

“Yes.” Again the strange smile. “Roger’s dead now.”

Roger’s dead? “How did he die?”

“I shed him, like a snake sheds its skin. It took a surprising amount of effort, but it had to be done. He was trying to kill me.”

Now Frank Smith speaks from my memory, confiding that Roger Wheaton wanted his help with suicide. “Roger went to Frank Smith for help, didn’t he?”

Wheaton’s eyes are on me now, trying to gauge the depth of my knowledge. “That’s right.”

“Why go to him? Why not to Conrad Hoffman? Your helper? Hoffman set this place up for you, didn’t he?”

Wheaton looks at me like I’m three years old. “Roger didn’t know Conrad. Except from that first show, which he quickly forgot. Don’t you see?”

I can’t digest the information fast enough. “Does – did-Roger, I mean – did he know about you?”

“Of course not.”

“But how do you hide from him? How have you done all this work without him knowing?”

“It’s not difficult. Conrad and I set up this special place, and this is where I do my work.”

“Is that what you did in New York, too?”

Wheaton cuts his eyes at me, a wolfish look in them. “You know about New York?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“A computer program enhanced the faces in your earlier paintings, and an FBI man recognized one of the victims.”

“Kaiser, I’ll bet.”

“Yes.”

“He’s a sly one, isn’t he?”

I hope so. As Wheaton paints on, I ponder the chances of the FBI finding me here. They know what happened by now, of course. John and Baxter. Lenz. The NOPD. They know Gaines was not the killer. They’ve seen Wheaton’s finger painting, found Agent Aldridge. But what could possibly lead John to this place? The infrared photos? FBI planes shot total coverage of the French Quarter and the Garden District; they have a definite number of houses with courtyards by now. Dozens of agents are probably at the New Orleans courthouse right now, wading through the deeds to those places, searching for any connection to Roger Wheaton or Conrad Frederick Hoffman. Will they include houses with conservatories? Yes. John will be thorough. We talked about houses with skylights; anything that lets in lots of light will be on the list.

How long have they been looking for me? Is this the evening of the day Gaines was shot? Or the next day? Or the next? I suddenly realize that I’m terribly hungry. Thirsty, too.

“I’m starving. Do you have any food?”

Wheaton sighs and looks up at the glass roof, checking the diminishing light. Then he sets down his brush and walks to my left, out of my field of vision. Straining to turn my neck, I see him reach down into a brown grocery bag and bring out a flat narrow package about eight inches long. Beef jerky. Suddenly I’m standing in Mrs. Pitre’s driveway, outside the garage apartment Conrad Hoffman rented, where John found Hoffman’s stash of junk food. Beef jerky was part of it.

Beside the grocery bag stands something else that must have been Hoffman’s. An Igloo ice chest. The standard three-foot-wide plastic model, big enough for two cases of beer. Or IV bags filled with saline and narcotics. It depends on the customer, I suppose.

Wheaton’s gloved hands give him difficulty tearing open the yellow plastic wrapper of the jerky, but he knows I can’t manage it in my present state. At last he pulls it apart and walks over to the tub. With tremendous effort, I raise my hand and take the brown strip from him.

“Very good,” he says.

Ugh, I think as I slide the tacky stuff into my mouth. But when I grind the flat strip between my back teeth, my tongue savors the grease expressed from the meat like creme brulee. If only I had some water to go with it. I could cup some bathwater and drink, but I don’t fancy a mouthful of urine. If I regain my muscular control, I’ll drink from the tap.

“How do you know Roger is dead?” I ask. If I have a potential ally in this room, his name is Roger Wheaton.

The artist laughs softly. “You remember the finger painting on the floor at the gallery?”

“Yes.”

“That was his last gasp. His death throes. An infantile attempt at some sort of confession. Pathetic.”

“And now you don’t need your – his – eyeglasses anymore?”

“You see me painting without them, don’t you?”