“I don’t know where I am.”
“Look at me.”
The woman turned. Her eyes glowed, gray light now dominating whatever color had been there previously. “The bathtub,” she said softly.
Sarah rose, her eyes lingering on the woman briefly. She had tracks up her forearms. Off a hallway on the right was the bathroom. Sarah glanced in but didn’t see anything out of place. She looked back and saw Gio and Bill arguing, so she hurriedly took the stairs to the second floor and searched for another bathroom. She found a large whirlpool tub in the master bedroom. Inside, the woman lay on her back, suds drifting around her in dirty water. Her bowels had let loose, and the overwhelming scent of urine and feces filled the bathroom.
Sarah’s head began to throb as she saw California Bill and his brother arguing. They finally decided on something, lifted the girl out of the tub, and wrapped her in a rug from the bedroom. Sarah walked to the window and could see them outside, shoving the rug into the trunk of one of their cars. The two of them got into the car and drove away.
When Sarah turned back to the tub, it was empty. She caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror and saw droplets of dark black blood dribbling out of her nose. Sitting on the toilet, she pinched her nose and leaned her head back until the bleeding stopped, and the thumping in her head began to slow. Then she went back downstairs.
Gio and Bill were still in the kitchen. Sarah leaned against the island there, staring at Bill.
“She was still alive,” Sarah said.
Bill didn’t say anything and Gio’s brow furrowed. “Who was?” Gio said.
Sarah kept her eyes on Bill. “She was still alive when you took her out of that bathtub. She overdosed, but if you’d taken her to the hospital she would’ve lived.”
Bill’s eyes looked as if they might pop out of his head. He took a step back. It looked inadvertent, as though he was passing out and then caught himself. He purposely took a few more steps away from her and leaned against the fridge, unable to say anything.
Gio looked from one of them to the other. “What girl, Sarah? What’re you talking about?”
Sarah stepped forward. “I can find out where you buried her.”
“How?”
“She’s here. I can just ask her. Do you want me to ask her?”
Bill swallowed and, after a few seconds, shook his head.
“What do you know about that video?” Sarah said.
He didn’t respond at first. He simply closed his eyes and opened them again, fixed on her. “Who told you?”
Sarah stepped closer to him. “Tell me what I want to know.”
He shook his head again. “You’re lying. Someone told you.”
Sarah left the kitchen and went back to the couch. The woman was still there, still staring at the same spot on the wall. Sarah stood in front of her and knelt down, smiling as warmly as she could. The woman looked terrified.
“What’s your name?”
“Heather.”
Sarah looked toward the kitchen, and both men were watching her intently. She said, “It’s nice to meet you, Heather.”
“I don’t know where I am.”
“I know, baby. I’m sorry.”
“Can I leave?”
She hesitated. “No, not yet. Tell me what happened.”
“There was a party… and I… there was a party and I was in the bathtub. And I couldn’t get out. It felt like my heart stopped, and I couldn’t get out, and I was staring at the ceiling, and then it was just dark.”
She nodded. “What did you take?”
“He… heroin. I was doing heroin, and I was in the bathtub.”
“Who gave you the heroin, baby?”
“He did,” she said, her eyes drifting to Bill.
Sarah stood up. The pain was acute, both the physical pain she felt emanating from a spot just behind her forehead, and the pain that came with the fact that she couldn’t do anything for Heather.
“You gave her the heroin,” Sarah said, approaching Bill. “When she was dying in that bathtub, you and your brother wrapped her up in a rug, and I’m guessing buried her somewhere. Maybe left her on the side of the road. That’s murder.” She paused. Her anger had risen, and her words held venom. If she was going to get what she wanted, she had to be threatening but calm. If she pushed him too far he would clam up. “Tell me about that video.”
Bill swallowed. “It’s some dude that made it.”
Gio put his hands on his hips, staring at Bill. “What dude?”
“I don’t know his real name. He made that one and then called around and gave it away.”
“How many others are there?”
“None, man. He just made the one. At least, none that I know.” Bill stared at Sarah. “How did you know all that?”
“I told you, she’s here.”
“Bullshit. My brother cracked, didn’t he? That fucking pussy son of—”
“Where is your brother?” Sarah said.
“Not here.”
“How would he have told us anything?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but he did.”
“How did this guy get in touch with you?” Gio said.
The spell had been broken. Sarah could see it in his eyes clear as day. Bill had convinced himself that his brother had betrayed him, so he decided he wouldn’t be helping anymore.
“Get out of my house,” he said tersely. “And don’t come back without a warrant.”
Gio’s jaw clenched and then released. He looked at Sarah as if to say, Got anything else? When Sarah didn’t respond he turned toward the door.
Sarah looked back at Heather. She sat quietly, staring at the same spot on the wall. Sarah hurried over to her and bent down again. “I have to go, Heather.”
“I don’t know where I am,” she said.
Sarah didn’t know what to say. She’d seen this so many times, so many people who still thought they were alive but couldn’t understand where they were or why, what they were seeing and hearing… it was a nightmare they couldn’t wake up from. She’d seen it mostly with murders and suicides, though there had been times when something could occur to bring peace to them. She didn’t ever know what that thing was and couldn’t even guess in this instance. So she just rose and followed Gio out the door.
Once outside, Gio said, “That little slip of his is enough for a warrant to search the rest of the house, but he let us in willingly. I don’t think he keeps anything here.”
“Can you arrest him?”
He nodded. “Possession of child pornography. It’s weak with just an admission that he knows who made it, but it’s enough to hold him. I need somebody from Naughty Nancy’s to say they got the video from him, but then they’d be admitting to possession of child porn. No one’s going to do that.”
“So what do you want to do?”
He looked at her. “What did you see in there exactly?”
“There was a party, and Bill gave a young woman heroin. She overdosed in his bathtub. Rather than taking her to a hospital, they rolled her up in a rug and shoved her in the trunk of his car before speeding away. I think he buried her somewhere.”
“If we can pinch him for murder, he’ll be so desperate to cut any type of deal that he’ll give up everything he knows about that video.” He paused. “Do you know how long ago it happened?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell stuff like that. Bill didn’t look any different, not really any younger, so it was probably recently.”
“I’m going to get a warrant to search his house on the admission. I’ll drop you at the hotel.”
“No, I want to be here.”
“We’ll be working through the morning without sleep.”
“I know. I want to be here.”
He nodded. “Okay.” He reached out and held her hand as his other hand dialed a number on his phone.
24
Dane Mertz sat on the hood of his car outside the hospital and smoked. It was his th
ird smoke break in three hours, but he just couldn’t handle it anymore. He’d worked a double shift to cover for someone, and the fatigue of being up twenty-four hours straight weighed on him as if he were wearing sandbags, slowing his movements and sapping his energy. He rubbed his forehead with the back of his thumb, the cigarette dangling from his fingers. As a nurse, he made decent money when he was called out, but he wished the work was steadier. He roved from hospital to clinic to hospital and some weeks had no shifts. Still, it wasn’t a bad life. His father had busted his ass as a construction worker for twenty-two years before dying of a heart attack, and Dane was grateful that that wasn’t his lot.
The sunlight shone down on him and heated his face. When he opened his eyes, he saw something red and pink and white on the periphery of his vision. He turned to see a woman with blonde hair. She was stumbling toward the emergency room exit. She collapsed on the ground and then got up and collapsed again. She was nude.
Dane jumped off the hood of the car and ran to her, tossing the cigarette on the ground. As he got closer, he could see that the woman was covered in blood, which stood out vibrantly against her pale, white skin.
She mumbled as she saw him and collapsed again. She was covered in bruises and cuts, so many cuts that he couldn’t tell which ones were still bleeding and which weren’t. The woman opened her mouth, but just mumbling came out again.
“I need help!” he shouted, bending down as she started convulsing.
Dane went about his shift the next couple of hours, but kept his eye on room 111. That was the room Jane Doe was being held in. Several emergency room physicians and trauma nurses were in there right now, doing everything they could to save her life.
Finally, one of the nurses came out and picked up the phone at the nurse’s station.
“What happened to her?” Dane asked.
“She lost almost half her blood. There’s a hole in her leg the size of a quarter, like someone tapped the artery.”
Dane looked back to the room. “What would someone need her blood for?”
25
The canvas was like the universe, existence, the divine and the profane… empty and pure. White canvas with sunlight was about the most perfect thing Farkas had ever seen. The particular canvas he was using was ten feet by six feet and sat in his studio next to the floor-to-ceiling windows. He couldn’t bring himself to put a brush to it and for a moment considered simply calling the white canvas the finished product and signing his name. He recalled vaguely that some New York artist had already done that, and Farkas discarded the idea.
Next to the canvas were various tools and materials he used for his painting. One of his favorites to give the painting depth was sand—pure white sand imported from the white sand dunes of New Mexico. Another favorite was clay… and next to that was the blood.
Blood on canvas looked thin and lacked color. He had long ago found that mixed with a light acrylic paint, the paint and blood complimented each other in a way nothing else could. He took out his palate and mixed a bit of red acrylic with blood, creating a semi-crimson mixture, and then dipped his brush in it.
The first stroke always satisfied him the most. He swept down in an arch from the corner, seemingly slicing the canvas in half. Art is war, he thought. Art is war.
He was about to strip nude and go to work when the doorbell rang. The fury that rose in him could hardly be described. He purposely put a sign on the door that he was not to be disturbed when he painted.
“Damn it,” he said through gritted teeth.
He rested his brush in a plastic container filled with water and set the pallet down on a worktable before cleaning his hands with a wet rag. Whoever was at the door knocked this time, and Farkas shouted, “Coming.”
The studio was the back room of his home, and he opened the studio door and crossed the living room to the front door. Peering through the peephole, he saw two LAPD police officers standing in the hallway.
No shot of adrenaline went through him, no great panic or racing heart. The police were nothing to him. Their intelligence couldn’t compare. They were to him what a monkey was to them: an evolutionary step behind.
Once, Farkas had been at a bar known for the large numbers of police officers that went there to drink after their shifts. He befriended a table of detectives from the Robbery-Homicide Unit, the most prestigious in the LAPD he had read, and the more drinks they got in them, the more war stories they told.
One of the detectives, a young man with curly brown hair, told of a woman who had died in a bar parking lot. A hole had been found in her leg, and the detective thought whoever killed her injected her with something with a large-gauge needle. Farkas, with a smile on his face, said, “Or maybe they needed her blood?”
“For what?”
He shrugged. “To make art.”
The detective stared at him coldly and then burst out laughing, as did a few of the others. Farkas smiled and drank his beer. He had revealed everything they needed, and they laughed at it. They didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. He had taken raw materials, materials that lasted only a handful of decades before withering away and then dying, and made something that could last centuries. Farkas, from that moment forward, no longer feared the police.
“Officers,” he said with a warm smile as he opened the door, “what can I do for you?”
“Are you Oliver Farkas?” one of them said.
“I am indeed.”
“Mr. Farkas, we have a complaint lodged against you and were wondering if we could talk to you about it.”
“Of course. Come in.”
“Actually, the detective leading this investigation would like you to come down to the station. If you have a moment, of course.”
“I don’t, actually. I’m in the middle of working.”
“What d’ya do for work?”
“Artist. Or as my mother used to say, bum with a paintbrush.” He grinned, but the officers didn’t respond. “What is this about exactly, officers? You have me concerned.”
“Where were you last night, sir?”
“At a gallery of mine and then home.”
“Did you see a Natalie Gibb at this gallery of yours?”
He pretended to think a moment. “No, I don’t believe so. I don’t know. A lot of people were there. Let me guess: Ms. Gibb is suing me for stealing one of her ideas? That’s happened twice to me, and you should know that both times—”
“No, we don’t notify people of lawsuits.” He glanced at the other officer. “Mr. Farkas, the detectives would really like to speak with you. Are you willing to come down or not?”
“Am I under arrest for something?”
“At this point, no.”
“Then I must decline, officers. I am quite busy. If you wish to have the detectives discuss it here, stop by anytime.”
“Of course,” the officer said sarcastically. “We wouldn’t want this to get in the way of your art.”
Farkas smiled again and said, “Have a good one,” as he shut the door.
The police were buffoons, he thought. His mind was sharp and clear, all part of the natural process when a man expresses himself to his full capabilities. The creative mind is the most intelligent mind. The police would never catch him. He hadn’t cared about whether Natalie lived or died, but just to be sure, he would pay her a visit and make a few choice threats. He had no plans to kill her. In fact, the thought of her out there, terrified, unable to form relationships any longer, in therapy and perhaps even institutionalized, aroused him. He had no intention of losing that for himself.
Alone again, he stripped nude and stood before the canvas.
26
After spending some time sitting in front of Jay’s home, Stefan went back to his condo. He was too wired for sleep, so he sat on the couch after opening the sliding glass doors of his balcony to let the air in. The darkness calmed him. He thought about turning on the television, but the quiet was so peaceful he decided to sit and smoke a cigarette�
��something he hadn’t done in at least a year. He got one out of a drawer in the kitchen and checked the box, wondering if cigarettes had expiration dates, and then lit it with a match. The match crackled, and he watched it and listened to it burn for a while before running it under cold water and tossing it in the garbage. Then he went back to the couch.
The smoke made him cough. He didn’t mind. All he wanted right now was the joy of having something to do to keep his mind off sleep. He leaned his head back against the couch and stared at the ceiling. By this time in his life, he had pictured kids and a wife. Neither was anywhere near the horizon. In fact, the most in-depth conversation he’d had with a woman in the past couple years had been with Sarah. The thought of her brought a smile to his face. She seemed innocent somehow, as though he wanted to just throw his arms around her and make sure the world didn’t sully her.
Eventually, the morning pierced the night, and bits of orange light cast beams into his condo. He watched the sunrise from his balcony and then got into his car and drove back to Jay’s.
It took another hour of waiting before Jay came out. He drove a black Mercedes, and music blared from his speakers, loud electric guitar. Stefan couldn’t make out a melody. He ducked low in the seat as the Mercedes drove past and waited until he couldn’t hear the engine anymore before sitting up and checking the rearview.
Just to be safe, he waited a few more minutes and then stepped out of the car.
The morning air sent a chill down his back, and he buttoned his suit coat. He realized how silly that must’ve looked, considering how wrinkled it was, unbuttoned it, and continued toward the house. He glanced around before heading to the backyard.
The alarm was an issue but not an insurmountable one. He went to a window near the back door and scanned the sill until he saw the sensor: a white box on the side of the window. The angle didn’t look good. If the connection between the sensor on the sill and the receiver on the window was broken, the alarm would go off.
Murder 42 - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries Book 2) Page 10