“Chandler,” she said, walking down the hall. It was after six and there were a few people in the building, but it was mostly empty.
“Julia, it’s Dillon Kincaid. Faye Kessler committed suicide.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Garrett Bowen’s nephew, Tristan Lord, lived in a converted warehouse on the edge of the renovated cultural district. The three-story loft stood on a short cliff near the ocean, up the hill from the Art Center where his paintings were shown. Will knocked on the metal door.
“What are you thinking?” Connor asked Will.
“Maybe Eric Bowen was leading us down the wrong path. Did you really see something in that picture?”
Connor sheepishly admitted it. “A woman cutting herself.”
“Huh. All I saw were bright splotches.”
Will called dispatch and learned that the loft was owned by Garrett Bowen. All utilities and taxes were paid by him. Tristan Lord had no record, not even a parking ticket. He had a driver’s license and a passport. Will had another detective looking into his travel history. “And while you’re at it, put a hold on his passport. I don’t want him skipping out on us before we get a chance to talk to him.”
They knocked again, but heard no movement inside. They walked around the side. The cliffs went straight down thirty feet to a rocky beach. Connor glanced up at the deck above them; no one was there.
“Why don’t you put a BOLO on him?” Connor suggested.
Will put in the be-on-the-lookout order as they walked back to the car. “Questioning only. I don’t want him totally spooked.”
They drove down the hill to Tristan Lord’s art studio. Tristan wasn’t there either, but they went in and looked around.
“They call this art?” Will said. “I can’t tell what anything is supposed to be.”
“You’re supposed to use your imagination,” Connor said.
“I’d never have taken you for the arty type,” Will said.
“And I always thought you were.”
While Will talked to the studio’s art director, Connor looked at the paintings. One in particular disturbed him, and he didn’t know why.
“Haunting, isn’t it?” The curator approached. “Tristan Lord is immensely talented. His work is displayed at the Washington, D.C., Museum of Art and we’re honored that he opened a studio here. His presence will help build our center.”
“Hmm.” Connor didn’t want the small talk. He wanted to figure out why this particular painting bothered him.
Like the painting in Eric Bowen’s town house, this was predominantly red, pink, and orange, with dark slashes at random intervals. Slashes, but maybe not random. He tilted his head. Saw something. He couldn’t figure it out. Maybe it was his imagination and there was really nothing there.
“Tristan’s uniqueness comes from perspective,” the curator continued as if Connor hadn’t been ignoring him. “From one angle you see one thing, from another you see something completely different.”
Connor glanced around. The art studio was a three-story open warehouse with multiple levels that displayed different works of art under premium lighting conditions. Connor ran across the floor, almost knocked over a statue, and ran up a spiral staircase that led to the third-floor balcony.
The distance brought clarity. The dark slashes made up another female body, naked, this one hanging from a chandelier. An eye had been drawn into her back. In the corner was a football with a faint number 10.
Jason Ridge had been number 10.
Another layer coated the painting. Connor changed perspective by moving several feet to the right and saw the hanging image was now a man. He also had an eye in his back.
An eye for an eye.
Vengeance. Revenge. Garrett Bowen for Shannon Chase.
Who would care about the suicide death of a young cheerleader? They’d already ruled out her father, three thousand miles away in Maine with an alibi. But her mother was nowhere to be found. And what about that Cami he’d encountered at Bowen’s house?
But where did Tristan Lord fit into this? He was a mere relative, the son of Garrett’s sister.
Was it Connor’s imagination that saw something in the paintings, things that wouldn’t be admissible in court?
“Hey, Kincaid!” Will shouted from the bottom floor. “Get your ass down here.” He was animatedly talking into his cell phone.
Connor ran down the stairs two at a time. “What?”
“Faye Kessler. She’s dead. Someone smuggled in a knife.”
Julia pictured the scars all over Faye’s body, scars the girl had put there or allowed to be carved into her skin. Faye had been self-mutilating for years; she had problems long before she got wrapped up with Michelle O’Dell and the others, long before she killed.
Julia pulled up in front of the hospital at a vacant meter and glanced at the hours of operation. It was after six, but the meter ran until seven p.m., so she fumbled for a couple of quarters. She knew how the meter maids worked-wait until five minutes before the meter day ran out and ticket everyone. Julia had gotten a half-dozen tickets that way.
She was about to put two quarters in when she sensed someone rapidly approaching her from behind. Before she could turn around, scream, or run, one hand covered her mouth while the other jabbed something sharp into her neck.
She kicked violently backward, but then her limbs grew suddenly heavy as her head grew light.
THIRTY-ONE
“What the hell happened?” Dillon arrived at the hospital just as Connor and Will ran up the stairs to Faye Kessler’s room. Connor could see his brother was extremely upset.
Officer Diaz looked distraught. “I–I don’t know how she did it.”
“Tell me everyone who went into that room after I left.”
“Only two nurses!”
“
“One nurse about fifteen minutes after you left. Her ID checked out. She was in there for about seven minutes, then left. She signed the log here.”
“And the other?”
“Her,” Diaz nodded toward the nurse sitting in the nurses’ station, her head in her hands. “She came in thirty minutes ago and found Miss Kessler.”
Rena Klein, RN, was shaken. “I make my rounds every two hours. No patient is left alone for more than two hours. We check their vitals, talk to them. We have everyone on 24/7 surveillance.”
“Where are the tapes kept?” Will asked.
“At the central security desk in the basement.”
The three men went down to the basement. The security chief was already there, expecting them.
“I have the tape from Ms. Kessler’s room.”
“Run it,” Dillon said, tight-lipped.
He started the black-and-white tape from the time Dillon and Julia left. There were three angles of tape into the room. One showed the view from the observation area, which showed most of the room plus the patient. The second was above the patient, showing only the bed. The third focused on the door.
The door opened and a young nurse came in.
“What did her ID say?” Will asked.
“Isabel Younger,” said Officer Diaz. “But I found out Younger’s supposed to be off-duty today.”
“Pull her employment files and photograph.”
