Next of Kin

by James Tucker

  Buddy said, “Will you hit a woman ever again?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  A solitary figure waited in the storage room at the back of Porter Gallery.

  He stood in the high-ceilinged space with white walls and concrete floors, behind a rack that held a large painting upright. He didn’t move. He breathed silently. A few moments ago he’d intentionally banged two large racks together to create a fierce metallic sound. He wanted to draw Mei away from the exhibition space where anyone might enter, where the security cameras recorded everything, where the bodyguard waited out on the sidewalk. He’d been here before, having visited the gallery on Mei’s day off. He’d seen the security cameras in the exhibition space and then asked to use the restroom and come back into the hallway that ran between the offices and the large storage room. He’d found the locked door between the end of the hallway and the alley outside. In the hallway he’d seen no cameras, and his plan had taken shape.

  He heard the click of Mei’s heels on the concrete. The sound grew nearer, sharper, louder. He fastened more tightly the Velcro of his leather gloves. To an art gallery open to the public, he hadn’t brought his favored tool. Instead he’d rely on his hands. It would be a more immediate, a more direct pleasure to watch Ben’s life squeezed out of him like nectar from a peach. And the attractive woman approaching him along the hallway? Well, it couldn’t be avoided. Her crime had been offering help to the doomed boy.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Mei continued along the back hallway. She glanced through the window into Anta Safar’s office and saw Ben watching a movie. He was so intent on his laptop screen, he didn’t see her. Remaining in the hallway, she stopped and listened but heard nothing. She was being silly and worrying too much, she thought. Nobody would try something at a Midtown art gallery on a weekday. She smiled as she walked into the office. Now Ben noticed her. He looked up, paused his movie, and removed his headphones.

  He said, “Hi, Mei.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I guess I’m thirsty.”

  She said, “Don’t tell anyone I did this,” and then went around Anta Safar’s desk, opened the small refrigerator behind it, and took out a lime mineral water for him and another for herself.

  He opened it and sipped. In his right hand was Anta Safar’s cigarette lighter. He was playing with the wheel, making the flame shoot out.

  “Let’s put the lighter in the top drawer, all right? It’s not a toy.”

  He looked at her, hesitated, and complied.

  “I’ll be up front,” she told him. “Come get me if you need anything.”

  “Okay,” he said, and put on his headphones.

  She opened her water and began walking toward the door.

  Then she heard another clang—similar to the one she’d heard a minute ago but louder. It sounded as if one of the storage racks was rolling around the storage room. Her body flooded with heat. Her hands began to shake.

  She reached into her handbag for the revolver. Touching it, she found it heavy and its metal cool. Her hand was steadied as she took hold of the gunstock and lifted the revolver out of the handbag. She dropped the handbag on the floor, set down her can of water, and moved to the doorway.

  “Hello?” she called. “Ms. Safar? Jessica?”

  But there was no answer.

  She stepped into the hallway. Looked right toward the exhibition space and left toward the storage room. Saw no one.

  Reaching down, she removed the sling back off one of her heels, then the other. Now that she stood in bare feet, she could move quickly on the concrete.

  “Mei?”

  It was Ben’s voice from behind her. He must have seen her take out the gun and drop the handbag. But she didn’t look back at him, only put a hand behind her to indicate he should stay by the desk.

  He obeyed, slipping out of view.

  Slowly she proceeded down the hallway, keeping the gun at her side. She didn’t want to shoot Anta Safar or Jessica by accident. On the right side of the hallway was the door to the storage room. She approached it cautiously, her right hand gripping the revolver tightly.

  The storage room door was open. She peeked into the opening, but she couldn’t see much. The room was dark, the lights out.

  Reaching her hand around the door, she switched on the lights.

  Immediately the entire room was illuminated.

  She saw that one of the large racks had rolled into the center of the room. It held a large canvas that hid most of the room from view, but otherwise nothing seemed wrong.

  Standing very still, she heard nothing, saw nothing.

  Sighing, she relaxed and reasoned the rack must have drifted into the center of the room, as there was a gentle slope toward a drain in the floor slab. She entered the room and walked around the rack holding the canvas that blocked her view. Behind it she saw only more racks of paintings, all in their proper places. With her free hand she grabbed the rack’s side bar and pulled it against the wall to the left.

  The door to the storage room slammed shut.

  She jumped in surprise. She moved around the rack, rushed to the door, tried the handle.

  Locked.

  “Ben?” she called. “Ben!”

  She heard nothing on the other side of the door. She was locked in the storage room while Ben watched a movie in Anta Safar’s office. But he wasn’t alone. Someone else was out there in the hallway.

  Beginning to panic, she realized she couldn’t protect Ben. Couldn’t save him. And if he were cornered in Anta Safar’s office, he’d have no way to escape. He’d be killed.

  No! No. She’d find a way.

  But the storage room locked from the outside. She knew she had one option. It might not work yet she’d try.

  She stepped back eight feet, and with both hands, aimed the gun at the door lock. Remembering she had only three shots, she held her breath and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Ben stood when he heard the gunshots.

  Bang! Bang!

  Guessing they’d come from Mei’s revolver, he feared someone had taken her gun and shot her. For a moment he didn’t know what to do. He’d run or hide, he thought. But he didn’t trust the hallway. Someone must be waiting for him just outside the door, ready to grab and kill him if he left the office.

  Yet he moved toward the door. One step. Two.

  He listened. Heard nothing except Mei’s faint voice calling for him, urging him to run just as his mother had urged him to run on New Year’s Eve.

  He saw the lock on the office door. He reached out and pressed the button to set it, then pushed the door with all his strength so it slammed shut.

  On Anta Safar’s desk was a telephone. He could call the police, but they wouldn’t be here soon enough. Looking around the room, he searched for another way to stop the killer. But he saw nothing except a smoke detector on the ceiling.

  This gave him an idea.

  He grabbed Anta Safar’s cigarette lighter and a piece of paper. After climbing up on the desk, he flicked the lighter’s wheel and held down the button to keep the flame going. Then he held the flame to the piece of paper.

  The paper ignited.

  He held the burning paper up to the ceiling.

  Five seconds later a piercing siren rang out through the gallery.

  Dropping to his knees, he climbed down, stamped out the paper on the floor, and knelt behind the desk.

  Knowing he couldn’t be seen from the office window, he didn’t look up. He tried not to move, but he trembled. He hoped Mei was all right, but he believed she’d die and the killer would search for him.

  The siren wailed. It hurt his ears. He wanted to cover them, but he needed to hear Mei if she came for him.

  He didn’
t look up. He put his hands together as if in prayer.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  She’d fired two shots, but the lock held. Each second mattered. Each second she was stuck in this room, Ben was unprotected.

  The siren shrieked. She didn’t know if it was the security system or a fire alarm.

  Oh, God!

  She tried to think clearly: two shots, one shot remaining.

  Taking a step forward, she crouched to lower her center of gravity. She slowed her breathing and counted to five. Then she squinted, aimed the barrel of the revolver at the stainless steel lock, and fired.

  Bang!

  A crisp, overwhelmingly loud noise.

  The lock blew apart.

  Ears ringing, she jumped forward and pulled away the lock’s remnants. Once again she raised the gun and with her free hand opened the door.

  The siren was louder. Screeching.

  Carefully she looked out into the hallway. To her right, disappearing through the door into the back alley, she saw a figure in black wearing a black hat. And then the figure was gone. She thought she was too late, but still she rushed to her left to find Ben.

  Looking through the window into Anta Safar’s office, she couldn’t see him. Her heart was in her throat. She tried the handle but it wouldn’t move.

  She pounded on the door.

  No response.

  Again she knocked, this time calling his name. “Ben! Are you there? Ben, it’s Mei. Ben! ”

  A shock of black hair rose above Anta Safar’s white desk, followed by Ben’s eyes. He saw her, stood, and ran forward. After he’d opened the door, she put her arms around him and drew him close. She inhaled the clean smell of his hair mixed with the mint shampoo he’d used.

  Thank God, she thought.

  He didn’t let go immediately, just held her.

  The siren stopped abruptly. They heard voices in the exhibition space. One of them sounded like Ward’s guard.

  In the office she could hear both of them breathing.

  Her pulse beat so fast she felt weak.

  Now she recalled the figure in black. Had it been only a delivery guy? She tried to compare the figure with the one she’d glimpsed at Ward’s house, but her memory of the man she’d seen vault through her bedroom window was too fuzzy. At least this time she’d a sense of the man’s shape, if not his face or any other characteristic. She thought she might have seen him before. Perhaps he wasn’t someone she knew, but someone not entirely unfamiliar.

  And yet she wasn’t sure she’d been attacked, not sure she was in any danger at all. Perhaps she’d been spooked by the door closing in the storage room, and the man who’d disappeared was only a deliveryman. Disengaging from Ben, she looked once again out into the hallway. There by the alley door was a package from FedEx.

  “I think I overreacted,” she said aloud.

  Ben looked up at her. “But you fired the gun,” he said. “Three times.”

  “I was stuck in the storage room and I thought we were under attack, but maybe there wasn’t any danger. Maybe my brain is playing tricks on me and I’m seeing things.”

  She walked barefoot back down the hallway to the alley door. It was locked.

  “See,” she said, “nobody could have gotten in.”

  But as she said this, she wondered how the FedEx guy had entered the gallery.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Buddy pulled the Charger in front of Porter Gallery. He climbed out, ignored the bodyguard Ward had posted by the door, and walked inside.

  Mei and Ben were standing behind her desk at the far end of the exhibition space. When they saw him, they rushed over.

  After kissing Mei’s cheek, he knelt and gave Ben a hug.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  Ben said, “I think so.” But his voice was tentative and small.

  Buddy stood and looked at Mei. “I’m glad you called. Sounds like the revolver saved you. Or the fire alarm.”

  Mei said, “I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t expect me to have a gun. Or maybe it was only the FedEx man and we weren’t in any danger.”

  Buddy shook his head. “It wasn’t FedEx. Not if things happened the way you told me. So I’m having CSU come over here, but we’re leaving.”

  Lines formed on Mei’s forehead. “I can’t leave. Anta Safar and Jessica aren’t back yet.”

  “We’re leaving,” Buddy insisted. “Ward’s guard can watch the gallery until whoever gets back. Don’t argue about this—Ben isn’t safe here.”

  Chapter Eighty

  That evening Buddy forced normality on them, and they ordered Chinese. Although Buddy was exhausted from not sleeping the night before and deeply disturbed after seeing the brutalized bodies of Carl Brook and his family, he tried to be upbeat. He couldn’t let them see how he felt. He couldn’t let them know. He needed to be the rock for their little family.

  After dinner he avoided switching on the television, in case there was news about Ben’s family. Instead he got behind the piano and began to play Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in A Minor. It wasn’t long before he was lost in the music, almost forgetting the woman and boy who’d come to mean more to him than anything else. From the corner of his eye, he saw Ben slide over toward Mei, lie down on the sofa, and rest his head on her leg. She ran a hand through his hair. He closed his eyes.

  Buddy thought he’d failed as a concert pianist before he’d even started, but maybe those years of practice and stress had been worth something if the music would soothe a traumatized boy.

  At the end of the piece, he stopped for a moment and then began Chopin’s Nocturne no. 18. Yet just as his mood regained some buoyancy, he felt anew the anguished loss of Carl Brook, Rebecca Brook, John Brook, and Ariel Brook. It took all his concentration just to continue playing. He closed his eyes and tried to think of something better: Mei’s happy tears as she’d accepted his proposal, Ben’s clapping in that moment. But when he’d finished the short piece, he realized he couldn’t keep going. The darkness had lodged in his soul and wouldn’t release him.

  He got up from the piano, went over and knelt by Ben, and embraced him. Briefly. Firmly.

  Then he left the room. Went to the kitchen for a beer. Didn’t return.

  The photocopies of the bills of sale remained spread out on the counter. He separated from the others the three bills of sale he’d marked as having sellers who’d survived Auschwitz or had children or relatives who’d done so, but who also had family members who’d died at the death camp.

  He studied them. And waited for Ben to go to bed.

  After a while he heard Mei and Ben leave the living room and go into the hallway. A few minutes later she returned.

  She said, “He’s in bed. You won’t say good night to him?”

  Buddy nodded but didn’t move. “I can’t tonight.”

  Her face showed disappointment, confusion. “Why not?”

  “I’m struggling,” he told her. “It was a bad night.”

  “What happened?”

  “At about three thirty this morning, the killer struck again.”

  Mei put her hand to her mouth.

  Buddy said, “Carl Brook, his wife, his two children.”

  Her eyes watered. “No!”

  “Yeah. The worst thing I ever saw. The daughter . . .”

  He turned from her, stared at the papers on the counter.

  She touched his shoulder but didn’t speak.

  He sensed that he was about to double over in grief, but he placed his palms on the counter and clenched his teeth until the feeling passed.

  She watched him but was quiet.

  After a long breath he said, “Don’t tell Ben. Not yet. We’re keeping it out of the news for a couple of days.”

  “All right.”

  “And Mei, I need your help.”

  “Whatever I can do.”

  Spreading the three bills of sale over the counter, he said, “Tell me about the paintings described in these. And then”—he took h
is phone out of his pocket, found the video he’d taken in Carl’s gallery, and pressed “Play”—“tell me who made this small painting at the six-second mark.”

  She took the phone from him, held it close, and watched the video. When it was finished, she played it a second time. And a third. Then she played it a fourth time before stopping it at the six-second mark.

  After squinting at the half-blurred image, she returned the phone to Buddy. Bending low over the counter, she studied the bills of sale. “They’re in German,” she said.

  “Yeah. That’s what I assumed.”

  “One of them is for a Michelangelo. Wow. I didn’t know anyone actually owned a Michelangelo. The other is for a Rembrandt. The third is for . . .” Her voice halted. “May I see the image on the phone?”

  He handed it to her. She watched the video a fifth time.

  “This one,” she said, pointing at the bill of sale in her hands, “is for the small painting in the video.”

  “Who painted it?”

  “Caravaggio.”

  Buddy said, “How valuable?”

  “Priceless, really. Extraordinarily rare. Caravaggio is considered one of the greatest painters in history. It’s a version of Bacchus, the god of wine, similar to the one that hangs in the Borghese Museum.”

  Buddy nodded. He took the bill of sale from her and slid all the papers into the manila envelope. “Thank you.”

  She faced him and put her hands on her hips. “But I also need your help.”

  He sipped from his beer. “What can I do?”

  “Take Ben to school tomorrow.”

  He considered all the arguments for keeping him home, but home hadn’t turned out to be safe—and it wasn’t even his home. Today they’d learned the gallery wasn’t safe, either. CSU had spent hours there and turned up nothing. At the school there was tight security, children were never alone, and adults other than teachers and staff were prohibited. “All right,” he said. “I’ll drop him off on the way to searching Dietrich Brook’s home.”