by M. Z. Kelly
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Three hours later, after calling Hollywood High School and getting Barbara Dunlop to look at another copy of the yearbook, the veteran history teacher told me something that we hadn’t expected.
After ending the call, I went back into the conference room where I showed the others the yearbook photograph of the band again. I pointed to a young man in the back row. “The kid with the clarinet is Jason McCray. Dunlop’s sure of it.”
Dawson rubbed his big forehead. “We’ll have to check the records but that must mean that Hugh McCray and his family lived in Hollywood at one time.”
“Let’s go over this again,” I said, needing to process the facts as we now knew them. “Ten years ago, the Hollywood High School music teacher, Ellian Lofton, took a group of high school kids on a school sponsored program to study art in Italy. One of those kids, Jason McCray became obsessed with an outside artist, Pablo de Gaul. De Gaul’s most famous work is, The Maidens of Eternal Sorrow. Many experts believe that the artist was mentally ill and the painting represents his hatred of women.
“The day after McCray returns from the trip he murders Joanne Vreeland, one of the students who had also gone to Italy. After dressing her in a gown and expensive designer shoes, her body is found posed with the eyes removed. Joanne became the first victim in the physical re-creation of de Gaul’s most famous work.”
“And maybe he also murdered the music teacher and began using his identity and credit to purchase the shoes,” Dawson speculated.
I shook my head. “According to Barbara Dunlop, Ellian Lofton committed suicide in that same year. She said she was certain because she attended the funeral services with a couple of other teachers. I called the Los Angeles County Department of Vital Records and confirmed that Lofton died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in October of 2004.”
“We need to trace the credit card information and set up on the mail drop.”
“Dunlop also gave me the names of a couple of other kids who were in the photograph, but was unsure about the others. She promised to call me back after she makes a few calls.”
“There has to be a third party involved who became The Artist,” Dawson said. “He and McCrazy used the killing cave on his ranch until The Artist turned on him about a month ago for some unknown reason and killed him.”
“So the question becomes,” I said. “Is The Artist one of the other kids who was in the school band, somebody McCray met in Italy, or someone else?”
“Maybe the key is the victims,” Zender said, running a hand through his curly brown hair. “We know they were all young with dark hair and light skin. They were also virgins and they all studied some form of the arts.” His eyes held on me. “Joanne Vreeland’s mother told you that her daughter was musically gifted. Maybe The Artist somehow sees the girls as being perfect, paragons of the artistic endeavor they each pursued.”
“Can we go back to something? “Haas asked, stroking his big jaw. “This thing about the victim’s eyes being cut out, does anyone have a theory about why he’s doing that?”
“The Artist is recreating de Gaul’s painting,” Zender said, making it sound like the big Tulsa cop was an idiot for asking.
“Yeah,” Haas said. “I get that, but why did this de Gaul guy paint the girls without eyes?”
I summarized what I knew from reading about the artwork. “No one knows for sure. As I said before many experts believe it might just be a matter of de Gaul suffering from a mental illness. Others have suggested that the removal of the eyes signify the artist’s way of showing that the girls were too good or too pure to be in a world full of sorrow.”
“There could also be a religious significance,” Zender said, “As in the biblical reference to plucking out thine eye if it offends thee. It’s a symbolic allusion to the value of things that are eternal as opposed to the temporal nature of reality.”
Dawson and I shared a moment, shaking our heads at Zender’s pedantic speech and manner.
“Spare us the Sunday school sermon, professor,” Dawson growled. He turned to Haas. “The bottom line is de Gaul was a whack job so nobody knows for sure why he painted the girls that way.” Zender started to protest but Dawson cut him off. “Let’s get back to the facts and decide where we go from here.”
“First, we’re going to need to identify all the kids in the school photograph,” I said. “Then we need to research the summer trip to Italy that Lofton, McCray, and Joanne Vreeland made. We need to determine who went with them and if they met up with any other students on the trip. Once we have all the names, we can start the process of seeing if one of those subjects had any ties to McCray or Lofton during or after the trip. It’s going to take some time.”
Dawson glanced at the clock. “Something we don’t have. Let’s move on this.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The body is finished.
Red is the dominant color choice for the night. The paint begins at The Artist’s hairline, the treatment consisting of a thin base coat followed by several heavier, textured applications. The result gives the impression that blood is flowing from his head, covering his face, and then dripping down the naked body.
The body.
He breathes, inhaling the odor of paint and solvents as his creation dries beneath the glow of a heat lamp. He glances in the mirror, his gaze lowering.
“Don’t look,” he says. He repeats the command, his voice rising. “DO NOT LOOK.”
The command fails him. He is unable to resist letting his gaze wander down to examine the body. He takes a moment, touching the places that have finally healed from being caught in the storm.
By some miracle his injuries were minor. He had escaped in the chaos and destruction that followed the tornado. But the girl—his work of art had been destroyed. The exhibition was a failure. Ellian was displeased.
His hand lingers on his chest, his fingers lightly brushing against his nipple. The areola is pink, a bit tender. He feels it harden as he makes a circular movement. He sighs, pushing down the anguish and disgust that he feels.
“You must stop,” he tells himself, but now the command is weak, temptation taking over.
Even though it is forbidden, he sees his hand moving lower. It touches his flat stomach, feeling the soft, delicate hairs of the body, until it rests on that place he never touches. There’s a spark of excitement as the blood rushes down, filling him with warmth and…
“WHORE.”
The Artist jumps when he hears Ellian’s voice. He instantly moves his hand away, tears stinging his face. “I…I am s…sorry,” he stammers.
Ellian’s voice is harsh, angry. “You are vile, disgusting, not worthy of my guidance.”
“I will try harder,” he says, sobbing. “I promise.”
“This time there can be no mistakes. The exhibition must be perfect.”
“I will make sure you are pleased.”
“The headdress, then,” the voice commands. “It’s almost time to take the girl.”
The Artist reaches down and removes the covering from the drawer. He fastens the horned headpiece, his crowning glory, barely noticing the smell. The scent of the skull covering has faded with time, the kill now just a fleeting memory.
As he turns and heads for the door the voice calls out to him for a final time. “I can see and hear everything you do,” Ellian says. “Never forget that.”
The words barely register. The Artist now has a single purpose, the bloodlust taking over and removing all other thoughts from his mind. The creature, painted in hues of red that streak down his face and shimmer beneath the bright lights, is no longer human. His eyes, dark and forbidding beneath the exotic headpiece, survey his surroundings like an alien beast in search of prey. Even his gait has changed. When he walks, the body jumps, bounding from one step to the next.
The transformed monster called The Artist has been unleashed on the world again. He is on the hunt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was eveni
ng by the time we got the names and backgrounds on all the band members, as well as the other students who had gone to Italy in June of 2004 with Ellian Lofton. There were a total of thirty-two students that had made the trip, including five other students besides Vreeland and McCray who were in their school band. I was in a hallway, asking the taskforce to reassemble, when I saw Joe Dawson with Chief Dewey Gallagher.
“You do another fucking press conference tomorrow morning and I’ll go in there myself and tell them you’re The Artist,” Dawson said to Gallagher.
“But…but the public…they have a right to know,” Chief Gallagher said. “People are frightened.
“Stirring up the press isn’t going to make anyone feel safer, Gilligan. Why don’t you just put out a statement that we’re following up on every lead possible and expect to make an arrest soon.”
The police chief used a handkerchief to mop his brow. “But that’s not true.”
“Sure it is,” Dawson said, turning away from him and waving to me. “We’ll have the bastard by morning.”
I heard the chief saying that he’d put the conference on hold for twenty-four hours before Dawson came over to me. “Why do idiots always run organizations?” Dawson asked me.
“It’s something called the Brazilian Nut Effect,” I said as we walked over to the conference room. “I’ll tell you all about it one of these days.” Before we took seats at the table, I said, “You really expect we’ll make an arrest by morning?”
“The power of positive thinking, Buttercup.” His lips turned up. “Maybe you should try it sometime.”
We brought in a half-dozen other cops to help us, briefing them on the task at hand. As the meeting began, I summarized what we needed. “As you already know, the music teacher, Ellian Lofton, made an annual summer trip with students from different schools in the Los Angeles area who were studying art. He usually went to Paris, but sometimes he took the kids to Italy.
“In the summer of 2004 he took thirty-two students to Rome. We need to go through the list and look for anyone who might have had ties to Jason McCray, Joanne Vreeland, or the music teacher. We need to find anything that might tie them together either before, during, or after the trip.”
“It’s gonna take forever to go through the names, try and make a connection,” Marcel Reed complained, after I handed out the names of the students.
“We’ve got exactly two hours until The Artist takes another victim, Henrietta,” Dawson said to the heavyset cop. “Let’s start by breaking up the list, look at addresses in proximity to the McCray’s ranch, and anyone who has a criminal record.”
Kent Zender stood up and began leaving the room. “Where are you going?” Dawson asked.
“I’m a profiler. I don’t map addresses or run record checks. When you’ve got a viable suspect I’ll be back.”
After he left the room Dawson looked at the gathering, smiled, and in the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “I’ll be back.”
In a moment we all heard screaming and shouting in the hallway. A few minutes later, Dawson returned, straightened his tie, and said to one of the officers working the list, “Give me a name, I’ll make some calls.”
As the officer handed the list to him, I said, “Are we going to need an ambulance?”
He shook his head. “Just another profiler.”
I glanced at my watch, noticing it was approaching midnight. “We’re out of time. He probably has another girl by now. And, so far, there’s no letter from him to a newspaper.”
“Then we’ve got just a few hours before he makes an exhibit of her. Let’s get busy.”
By dawn we’d learned the group of students that went to Rome, for the most part, stayed together and didn’t meet up with other students. Despite that, we’d given up on finding any significant link any of the students had to either McCray or Vreeland. That included the five other band members.
We decided next to focus solely on any criminal record the subjects had and the proximity of where they lived to the McCray ranch. Based upon that criteria we narrowed our list to five individuals. One of those subjects had attended Hollywood High with Vreeland and McCray but was not in the band. He was married now, had a steady job, a couple of kids, and didn’t have a criminal record.
“Let’s put him on the back burner,” Dawson said to me. “What about the other four?”
“We’ve got Charlene Michaels and Danny Dreason. They both live on the east coast now. Michaels has a conviction in 2009 for petty theft, no criminal record on Dreason. There’s also a Penny Richards living in San Diego, and Albert Martin in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Richards has a DUI, she’s on probation. Martin’s got a couple of recent convictions for possession of meth.”
“Anything on what Richards and Martin do for a living?”
I glanced at my paperwork. “Penny Richards looks like she’s unemployed, maybe a housewife. Martin’s worked different jobs, everything from working in a convenience store to truck driving.”
Dawson heaved a breath, looked at me. “I never even considered that our suspect might be female. What are your thoughts?”
“I’ve been wrong before but it doesn’t seem to fit with what we know about The Artist’s profile.”
“Then it’s a helluva long shot but maybe when Martin isn’t doing the tweeker tango, he’s driving a truck around the country, carving up girls, and putting them on display.”
I checked the information I had on Albert Martin. “He was attending Glendale High when he went on the school trip, so it’s possible that he connected with McCray while in Italy.”
“Do we know where his meth arrests occurred?”
I glanced at the paperwork again. “One was in Atlanta, the other in Kansas City. Looks like they happened when he was working for the trucking company.”
Dawson raised an eyebrow. “KC’s not far from here.” He glanced at the clock on the wall above us, back at me. “If Martin’s good for it and he took a girl at midnight, then he’d likely be arriving home in Santa Fe in the next couple of hours.”
We were making arrangements for a flight to Santa Fe when Chief Gallagher poked his head in the door. He was perspiring and breathing heavily. It occurred to me that he might be on the verge of having a heart attack.
“We’ve got another victim,” the chief said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
It was just after ten when we arrived at the victim’s home in a neighborhood south of Tulsa. Gail Shay was a single mother who told us that she lived alone with her daughter, Patty, age sixteen. Shay looked to be about thirty-five. She was pretty with sun-kissed skin and sapphire eyes that, under different circumstances, were probably beautiful. This morning, they were sunken and watery.
“Patty’s basically a shy girl who loves music and dance,” Gail Shay said, through her tears. “She’s never been in any trouble.”
“What about boyfriends, friends, relatives, anyone who she might have gone to spend the night with?” I asked.
She shook her head. “We both watched the news last night. I was worried about the man, the one they call The Artist, taking someone. I asked Patty to sleep with me but she refused. When I went to wake her up this morning she was gone.”
Shay then broke down crying, unable to respond to my questions. I went over to Dawson who was with one of the uniformed Tulsa cops. I saw that he had a plastic evidence envelope.
Dawson took it from the cop and showed it to me. “Found on the bedroom floor.”
It was the Chinese death symbol. The drawing appeared identical to the others. I handed it back to the uniform and said, “Let’s get it over to your crime lab, dust it for prints.”
After a quick check of the girl’s bedroom we regrouped back on the street. “I want a knock and talk with everyone in the neighborhood,” Dawson said to a half-dozen uniformed Tulsa cops. He then turned to me, Hass, and Reed. “We’ve got a plane waiting to take us to Santa Fe. If nothing else, we clear Martin as a suspect and move on from there.”
We were at the airport, boarding a small plane leased by the FBI when I got a call from one of the Tulsa police officers canvassing the street where the Shays lived.
“We just talked to a neighbor,” the cop said. “She told us she couldn’t sleep and happened to see a car parked up the block from the Shay’s house around midnight last night. When she checked the street again a couple of hours later it was gone.”
“Did she see anyone?”
“No, but she did remember the car was an older model brown Honda with out of state plates that were yellow and red. I checked the Internet. That’s the color of license plates in New Mexico.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Our flight to Santa Fe took just over an hour. After landing we rented a car and headed for the address the New Mexico Department of Motor Vehicles had on file for Albert Martin. The little bungalow was on the outskirts of the city in an area of rundown houses and empty commercial buildings. I noticed there was a lot of gang graffiti on a fence across from the house as we pulled up to the curb.
“We do this just like before,” Dawson said to me. “Me and farm boy will take the front, while you and the toolbox cover the back.”
Reed and I were waiting at the back door for the go signal when we heard screaming inside the house. We found the backdoor unlocked and went in with our guns drawn. Dawson and Haas had a girl on the couch who was crying. I checked the rest of the house with Reed. No one else was home, but we did find a large quantity of meth in one of the bedrooms.
“Where’s Albert?” Dawson asked the girl after we told him what we’d found.
She shook her head and wiped snot from her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. Her gaze darted around the room as she crossed and uncrossed her arms. Even from six feet away I could smell her rotting teeth. “Don’t know. Maybe with some friends.” She ran a hand through her hair, over the crank craters on her face. “He might be working.” Her gaze moved away, before jumping back to Dawson. “Are you his P.O?”