Graven Images

by Jane Waterhouse

  By the time I caught up to her, she’d already swiped her jacket off the coatrack near the kitchen door. “Where are you going?”

  “To the beach.”

  “This late?” I cringed at my own shrillness.

  “You do it,” my daughter told me, slamming the door.

  Cilda sat at the table keeping her eyes averted in a rare, gracious gesture that was supposed to allow me to save face. I crossed to the window, watching Temple traverse the uneven ground outside, as though it cost her young legs nothing. Light rain was still falling, and there was no moon. I flicked on the switches that triggered the outdoor floods. Flat-domed lights popped up in neat rows from the house to the sea. Spotlights played over the outlines of heavy machinery—the crane, the backhoe, the bulldozer, and some additional equipment I hadn’t noticed before.

  “I didn’t know they’d started work again.”

  “Man come by today.” Cilda shuffled over to the dishwasher. “Say they can’t wait until spring on account of what ’appened with that last storm.”

  Temple had climbed the rickety metal ladder up the seawall, and was now walking across its rocky shoulder. She’d pulled up the hood of her jacket. From this distance she looked so small.

  I thought about the scrapbook she’d filled with Dane Blackmoor’s pictures. Then I thought again about Torie Wood. I wondered if her mother had stood like this, watching the back of her rebellious daughter retreating from her—spine stiff and straight, eyes pinned forward—so young, and yet so determined to walk ahead, on a hard path of her own choosing.

  FOUR

  Diana Gold had the kind of skinny, sculpted legs that screamed Personal Trainer. She belonged to that elite group of women who could wear light-colored hose with a dewy sheen without looking either elephantine, or as though she were about to launch into a sugarplum-fairy dance. Her suit jacket was celery green, cut broad at the shoulders. The matching cashmere sweater skimmed her hips, successfully masking the fact that she, like most women, in my experience, with good, skinny legs, had no waist to speak of. This slight flaw was more than made up for by an incredible butt, with no hint of hiney hang, swathed within an inch of its muscle tone by a short, cream-colored skirt slit up the back, stopping just shy of provocative.

  When the Honorable Julia Fallon summoned the attorneys to the bench, you could almost feel the watchers in the courtroom shift forward in their seats. I knew it was as much to catch an eyeful of Diana Gold from behind as it was to catch an earful of the judge’s instructions.

  “I see where you’re going with this, Mr. Richardson,” the judge told the prosecuting attorney, eyes straying to her watch, “but save it for the trial, shall we? At this point, the evidence connecting Mr. Blackmoor to the murder is purely circumstantial, and you know it.”

  Gold and the unfortunate Richardson walked back to their seats.

  She was born looking smug, I thought. A jury—particularly a predominantly male jury, which the PA would no doubt be trying for—might lust for her, but they wouldn’t like her.

  The judge tapped her gavel twice.

  “Bail is set at one million dollars. The defendant is released on his own recognizance until jury selection begins”—she consulted her calendar—“eight weeks from this day.”

  I glanced at Avery Richardson, who seemed about to object, and then thought better of it. Eight weeks was not a hell of a lot of time to build a case against someone like Dane Blackmoor, but Richardson must have known it was all he was going to get.

  During the hearing, Blackmoor had sat with his hands folded on the table in front of him. Whenever anyone spoke, he turned ever so slightly in their direction, a polite but detached onlooker of events. There had been no sign that he’d noticed me; yet a split second after the hearing was adjourned, I felt a shoulder tap.

  “Dane wants to know whether you’ll be riding back with us, in the limo?” Elizabeth Rice inquired politely.

  “I have some business here,” I told her. I could have said, No, I’m having lunch with his attorney; but I enjoyed being evasive around curious people.

  Rice pulled a folder from her smart, thin shoulder bag. “Here are those employee names you wanted. It’s as complete a list as I could compile. Before I came on the scene, the personnel records were pretty spotty.”

  “Thanks. It’ll give me a place to start.” I took the file from her. “By the way, what time does the sitting begin tomorrow?”

  “That depends on how Dane’s feeling.” As if on cue, Blackmoor walked up behind her. Rice sensed his presence before she actually saw him. The tension that was ever present in her face dropped suddenly, sensuously, as though an invisible hand had snipped a knot of muscles at the top of her skull.

  “Well, that’s over with,” he said. “Are these things always this boring?”

  I said, “I’m sure the trial will keep you on the edge of your seat.”

  “Garner won’t be riding back with us to the studio,” Elizabeth told him. “She has another engagement.”

  Diana Gold stepped into the small space between Blackmoor and me. “I won’t be able to make lunch, Quinn,” she announced, “but I might be able to squeeze you in for tea.”

  I bowed from the waist. “I live to accommodate,” I said.

  “How about the Yale Club at, say, three?” Gold put her arm under her client’s and steered him away. Two or three steps later, Blackmoor shook the attorney off as impatiently as one would a flea. The gesture was enough to make me almost like him.

  If anyone had asked, I would have probably said I’d met Arvin Meek on a case. It would flush, him being a librarian at the Library of Legal Medicine over on First, where all the forensic journals are kept. But the truth was, I’d met Arvin at the opera, years before I wrote my first book.

  One of Andy’s clients had given us the tickets. I hadn’t wanted to go. We were fighting every other night at that point, mostly because it was only every other night that he made it back to our apartment. Each day—pushing Temple’s stroller in the park, lining up at the grocery store, walking down the street—my exquisitely reasoned and perfectly argued case against his behavior, and for our marriage, played like a long-playing record through my head. But every evening, after the baby was in bed, all those brilliant thoughts shattered into the same strident, hard-edged questions: Where were you? Why didn’t you call? What’s happening to us? Questions to which Andy very shrewdly pleaded the Fifth.

  Yet, for some reason, he’d liked the idea of these tickets. We should go, he’d said. We’d never been to an opera together. We never went out at all anymore. (Go ahead, say it. I dare you. Say, since the baby.)

  “It’ll be good, Garn,” Andy had said. And, in the end, I’d gone because I desperately wanted something to be good between us.

  He never showed.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d stood me up, but it seemed the most humiliating. I felt as if every one of the smug, stylish people sitting around me had been in on it from the start. I imagined them tittering behind their playbills, shaking their heads over the empty seat that told the tale, like a gaping grave.

  The tears started the minute the lights went down, washing brand-new mascara down my cheeks. On the tube it had said water-resistant. Water-resistant, maybe, but not Andy-resistant. I rubbed my face with the back of my hand. The black smear on my knuckles was enough to make me sob.

  I felt the nudge of an elbow. The man sitting in the next seat handed me a handkerchief. He was very short, and quite old, and seemed neither smug nor stylish. I took it and blew my nose.

  At the intermission, I sat in my seat, crying. “I’m sorry,” I sniffled to the little old man, “it’s just that I think I’m going to have to get a divorce.”

  Everyone in our row had risen. They wanted to use the bathroom, or have champagne and strawberries, or whatever the hell people did at these high-toned halftimes. They started in my direction, saw me there, and backed up, taking the long way out to the aisle.

  “I,
I guess I’ve known for a long time it wasn’t working,” I confided to this complete stranger, “but it didn’t hit me until just now that I was going to be…a…a…a…lone. And, and that’s why I’m crying.”

  He nodded. “I didn’t think it was the opera,” he said gently. “Carmen is really relatively happy, as they go.” We sat together not speaking until the interval buzzer went off.

  “By the way, my name is Arvin.” He produced a small white card from out of his pocket. Arvin Meek, Librarian, it said.

  “Nice to meet you, Arvin. Are you a…a…a…lone, too?” My voice sounded garbled from crying.

  “Oh, no,” he said, quite happily. “My wife is here.” I looked around for a little old lady, but there didn’t appear to be one. Great. Arvin Meek, Librarian. One book short of a stack.

  “On stage,” Mr. Meek explained. He smiled broadly, an elfin smile that made his eyes sparkle. “The third old gypsy from the left.”

  I pressed the elevator button for the sixth floor. The car paused on three and two women and one man, all wearing white jackets, got on. They stood in silence, hungrily eyeing the bags I had clutched in my hand. Maybe they didn’t feed them, here in the Forensics Institute. Or maybe they’d assumed I was carrying a different kind of treat—a body part floating in a jar of preservatives, or some vials of human secretion. Who knew what these people went in for? When they got off on the fifth floor, I was relieved.

  At the sixth-floor reception desk, I told the guard who I wanted to see. There was nowhere to sit. No coffee table stacked with old issues of Consumer Reports and Newsweek. It wasn’t that kind of place. Still, having a friend who worked here had proved useful to me over the years.

  Arvin Meek knew more about the science of killing than just about anyone I’d ever met. Poisoning, gang rape, garrotting, decapitation, mutilation, gunshot wounds—if it had to do with the medical or legal issues of dying, Arvin had the answers.

  “Garner!” he cried, opening his arms for a hug. When we embraced, the top of his head brushed my nose. It was bald and whitish-gray, like undusted milk glass. “Would you mind sharing lunch in the stacks? We can be private there.” We always shared lunch in the stacks.

  He led the way. From behind he could have been taken for a young boy in his father’s suit. Jacket sleeves covered his knuckles and his trousers skimmed the floor. We stopped in an alcove, totally enclosed by shelves of bound books. I sat at the wooden table, across from him, and began unwrapping sandwiches. “You still like pastrami, don’t you?”

  “Oh my, oh yes,” Arvin sighed. “Although I’m afraid it doesn’t much like me.”

  “How’s Sylvie?” I asked, removing the lids from several plastic containers of potato salad.

  “Fine, fine,” he replied, his mouth already full.

  “Enjoying La Bohème?”

  “It’s one of our favorites.” Arvin nodded enthusiastically. “She gets to do a little bit in the café scene, you know, when the lovers meet”—he hummed a few bars while moving his hands—“and then there’s that marvelous break…” He sighed, momentarily transported.

  “I’d love to see her.”

  “Oh, you must,” Arvin agreed. “Especially since this will be her last performance of the season.” The other productions were smaller, he told me, and nonsinging roles—old gypsies, bohemians, and beggars, the supers, who were nothing more than human scenery for the immense stage—were the first to go. But for Sylvie Meek, who did it for free, just to hear the music up close, there would always be a next season, I supposed.

  “How’s Temple?”

  “You won’t believe it.” I showed him the photograph in my wallet.

  “Beautiful,” he exclaimed, “just like her mother.” Old men were so gallant. The pace of our eating had slowed. I removed the tops from two Styrofoam cups of coffee and passed one over. Arvin lowered his head over it, breathing in the cooped-up steam. “It’s the Blackmoor case, isn’t it?”

  “How’d you know?”

  He smiled. “When I first heard, I said to Sylvie, that’s one for our Garner.” He took a sip of coffee. “You’ve seen the ME report?”

  I nodded, feeling vaguely guilty. My connections were high up these days. “What do you make of it?” I asked.

  “Troubling.” His eyes drifted off into space, then back, bright as buttons. “There are several problems one would encounter in hiding a body, or a body part, within a piece of sculpture such as the ones Mr. Blackmoor creates. First, is the process itself.” Arvin stirred his coffee slowly. “Have you seen him work?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I imagine it’s all quite performance-oriented,” he said. “The plaster he uses dries quickly. Minutes at most.

  “The victim would have been wrapped while still alive. After the plaster hardened, seams were cut in the cast. That’s probably when she was killed—although the means of death, as I understand, are not presently known.” Arvin looked up at me for confirmation. “Ah well. Then the severed portions of her body were re-encased in the plaster shell.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work.”

  “Oh, it isn’t just the work,” Arvin said cheerfully. “It’s the planning. You see, Blackmoor is famous for two different styles of sculpting.” He took a pen out of his pocket and began making little drawings on the empty paper bag. “With some of the pieces, the so-called plaster-bandage figures, what you’re really looking at is the outside mold.

  “For his more lifelike, painted pieces Blackmoor has developed a high-tech version of the lost-wax technique, which sculptors have been using since ancient times.” Arvin tossed this out as if it were everyday knowledge, like the price of eggs.

  “The outside cast is filled with a flexible mold material, and reinforced by something like fiberglass, I believe.” He sketched a diagram with his pen. “Then the positive mold is removed from the negative mold, thereby being destroyed in the process.”

  “In other words”—I tried to follow—“he couldn’t hide a body part in one of the painted pieces, because there’s no outside casing.”

  Arvin nodded. “Even the positive-mold figures are probably eventually filled with some sort of quick-drying industrial material to strengthen them. But since they’re most likely worked upon piece by piece, it’s not inconceivable that a body part could be substituted for the filler.” He looked up from his paper-bag drawings. “Does Blackmoor do all the casting himself?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “A lot of people work with him. Still, if he wanted to get rid of someone—”

  “But was being rid of the body the point?” he challenged softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the trunk and legs have never been found. Nor have the upper arms, for that matter.” Arvin’s whisper hung eerily between the silent shelves of books. “Just a severed head and a hand.”

  He shook his head. “If getting rid of the body was the reason for putting them in the sculptures, where is the rest of the corpus delicti?”

  “Maybe they just haven’t found it yet,” I suggested.

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Or maybe the reason for putting them in there in the first place was so that they would be found. They’d been treated with an acrylic fixative, you know. It prevented the natural decomposition of the body from seeping through the plaster surface of the sculpture.”

  I jumped on this. “So whoever did it wanted to make sure no one knew what was underneath, right?”

  Arvin Meek neatly refolded his paper napkin. “Perhaps,” he said. “Although there was some seepage from the head, which, as I understand, led to the opening of that particular work.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that fixative may have been used less to prevent the body from being found, than to preserve the identity of the victim.”

  According to Blackmoor, Torie had a good head. I wondered how far he would have gone to see that it remained—at least in some way—intact.

  FIVE
>
  At the Yale Club, waiters of color served tea with white-gloved hands to suited men of a certain age who tried to pretend that they didn’t resent the presence of women in their quiet, paneled, old-boy midst. A few of them nodded to me, patronizingly, as though I were here to join Daddy for tea.

  I’m old enough to be your ex-wife, I thought, shooting one of the codgers a black look. Dudley had occasionally brought me to these kinds of places. That was probably why I disliked them so much.

  Diana Gold breezed in, fifteen minutes late: short of flat-out rude, but enough to show who was in charge. She sat down at the linen-clothed table, so in sync with the hovering waiter who held out, then pushed in her chair, they might have been dance partners. “Sorry,” Gold said, remorselessly.

  “That’s okay,” I replied. “I was just soaking in the ambience.” Bitch.

  Diana turned brightly to Mr. White Gloves. “I’ll have a pot of tea and some scones, please.” He looked at me and I shook my head.

  “By the way, congratulations on this morning.”

  Gold brushed off the nice-nice. “Oh, that was a skirmish I knew I’d win,” she said. I noted the I. “The war is just beginning.” She leveled a celery-green gaze (God, she color-coordinates with her eyeballs). “And I’m going to win that, too. Make no doubt about it.”

  I had a choice here. I could ignore the implication. Or I could meet it head on. I waited until the waiter had poured her tea. “You know, there’s this nasty little stereotype about two strong women not being able to work with each other.” I gestured around the room with what was left of my tea biscuit. “Come to think of it, it was probably started by some of the boys in this room—” I smiled. “I don’t much believe it myself.”

  Diana Gold buttered, elegantly. “Strong men. Strong women”—saying a word with every little swipe—“they’re all the same to me.” She put the rounded knife down, like an exclamation point. “As long as we’re working toward the same end.”

  “The truth, right?”

  “Fuck the truth, Quinn,” the attorney said bluntly. “The only end I’m fighting for is seeing my client walk away a free man.”