by M. Z. Kelly
“Facts,” Salvatore reiterated. “You’re telling me nothing worthwhile.”
My phone rang as Dawson and Salvatore went at it. “You might want to find a television,” I heard Pearl say after I answered. “The Herald-Press received a letter this evening and their reporter just went live with it.”
I ended the call, stood up, and came over to where Salvatore was sitting. “God damn you. Where’s the letter?” Dawson looked at me as the egghead smirked. I said to him, “Their reporter just went live with the letter on the local TV stations. They’ve had it all this time.”
I walked away, trying to find a TV, as Dawson confronted Salvatore. There was lots of yelling behind me. I thought I heard something crashing, maybe furniture being thrown against a wall. I found a deserted break room with a TV down a corridor. In a moment I had Haley Tristan’s smiling face on the screen. The smarmy reporter said something about a victim and then recapped what she knew.
“This man, the one who calls himself The Artist, sent a letter to the editor of the Herald-Press this evening. It announces that he’s taken a girl and plans what he calls an exhibition. As I mentioned earlier, this same subject has been at work in other cities around the country, killing young women and exhibiting their bodies in public places.”
As she went on I knew that a media firestorm was being unleashed, not to mention public hysteria.
Tristan continued, “The victim in this latest abduction is an intern at one of our competitor’s stations. Her name is Sarah Meyer, age seventeen.”
“Oh my god,” I said, seeing the photograph of the girl on the screen. The victim was the same girl Jack and I had seen a few days earlier raising funds for a sick child. I looked up, realizing that Dawson was at my side. He was holding a piece of paper.
“What’s going on?” Dawson asked.
“The girl he’s taken, she does fundraising for children who are... she’s…” I couldn’t continue. I realized there were tears in my eyes. The monster who had taken his latest victim had chosen someone who was beautiful, kind, and full of compassion.
I brushed my tears, hearing Dawson’s voice like it was coming from someplace far away. “You okay?”
I looked back at him, motioned to the letter in his hand. “What’s it say?”
“The girl’s the final display. He’s finishing what he started, right where he started.”
At that moment Dominick Salvatore appeared in the doorway. His face looked like a piece of raw meat with an egg perched on top of it. He screamed, “I’m going to sue.”
“Better watch those stairs, egghead,” Dawson said. “Wouldn’t want you falling again.”
I ignored Salvatore, turning back to the television, as he went on blubbering. They continued to show footage of Sarah Meyer.
In that moment it all began to crystalize for me. All of the victims were young and beautiful. They were also very pure and innocent. But there was something else about what was happening that I thought I now understood.
This wasn’t about one victim or one girl. Maybe it was from being around too many profilers, but I had a sense that in his insanity The Artist somehow believed he was taking all the girls inside of him, they were becoming a window to his soul. At the same time he was making himself into the one true, perfect vision of what he thought a work of art should be. That was the tableau that I now understood and I’d tried to tell Dawson about a few weeks ago. The Artist was consuming the girls’ very essence, making himself the ultimate display.
He was becoming the perfect woman.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The Artist focuses his mind, concentrating on the girl who is drugged and wrapped in plastic in the back of his rented van. He has pushed the memories of his night with Zach out of his thoughts. Loretta Martin has gone away, receding into the dark regions of his mind. Until his magnificent creation is complete he will remain The Artist, the taker of souls.
He had worked quickly, entering the girl’s home while everyone was asleep. The painted creature had sat on the edge of Sarah Meyer’s bed for several minutes, watching her breathe. Kind, beautiful Sarah. He had seen her on a local TV station with one of those bald kids undergoing chemotherapy. The segment had featured Sarah singing to the child. She had the voice of an angel. He knew then that she was the one. Sarah would complete him and it would all happen without the screaming rage of Ellian directing his every move.
He remembers brushing his painted hand against Sarah’s face, stroking her until she began to stir. When she’d awakened and saw him studying her, the look on her face was priceless. It even reminded him of a painting he’d seen somewhere. At first her eyes had been half closed, the lids slowly coming open as she tried to focus. In a single instant of horror her eyes had become wide, her mouth rounding, as she looked at him in shock and disbelief.
“Hello Sarah,” he’d said.
She’d made no attempt to scream, maybe frozen by the terror seizing her body. “What’s happening?” she had finally asked.
“I’m going to make you even more beautiful and then…you’ll see…or…” He’d smiled. “Then again, maybe you won’t.”
He’d then brought the syringe up, pushing it into her arm. The maiden was instantly asleep, awaiting her transformation.
The rented van drives slowly through the city, arriving in downtown Los Angeles behind the Hall of Records. He sees there’s a scattering of homeless people here. Most of them are asleep in the shadows. A few wander along the street looking in trash cans. None of them seem concerned about a man dressed as a city maintenance worker pushing a cart over to an elevator. After a short ride he’s beneath the city in a series of underground tunnels built and abandoned decades earlier that hardly anyone knows about.
He moves quickly now, following the pathway he’d scouted out a few days earlier. After a series of twists and turns, he moves past an iron grate designed to keep intruders out of the tunnels that have been deemed unsafe because of an earthquake fault. He pauses there, turning and listening. Maybe it’s his imagination but he thinks he hears something…
After a moment he decides there’s nothing to be concerned about and pushes on, going deeper into the labyrinth until he finds the small chamber. He’s been in the room before, equipping it with everything he needs: a chair, a makeup mirror, portable lighting, and the paints he needs to transform Sarah.
After removing his own clothing, The Artist goes to work, beginning his transformation of the girl. He removes her nightgown and undergarments, hesitating as he examines her body. He runs his hand over her breasts, down to the mound of flesh between her legs. A jolt of excitement moves through him. Soon this body, Sarah’s body, will be part of his body. He will finally be perfect and complete.
Moments later he has Sarah tied to the chair. He bends down to her, his breath coming faster and his nostrils flaring. “It’s time to awaken my beloved.”
After several minutes, Sarah Meyer’s eyelids flutter, her blue eyes open and try to focus on him. He thinks she is about to speak when he realizes there’s someone standing in the shadows of the room.
The awareness of what’s happening hits him like a jolt of electricity, sending waves of fear crashing through his naked body. In the darkness of the passageway beyond the light-filled chamber, The Artist can barely make out the silhouette of a man. But as the figure steps forward the image becomes all too familiar.
The Artist brings his hands up to his ears and begins rocking back and forth, begging Ellian to stop even before the screaming begins.
“YOU BETRAYED ME.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Dawson had me drive to Sarah Meyer’s parents’ house since I knew the area. I said what we were probably both thinking, “Her mom and dad might still be asleep, not even know their daughter’s been kidnapped.”
His phone beeped and he said, “Yeah, unless Big Bird’s already sent his Muppets to Sesame Street.”
“We need to get there first.”
I turned the corne
r onto La Brea Avenue and slowed down, not believing what I was seeing. There was a large billboard of me and my roommates with a caption that read, Save the Bananas. I was dressed in the dominatrix outfit my friends had made me wear a few weeks earlier, and not much else, except for the mask Natalie had loaned me. I was mortified.
“YOLO, Buttercup,” Dawson said, apparently unaware of my public humiliation looming over the streets of Hollywood. “Put up the landing gear and make this bird fly.” He glanced down at his phone, adding, “I just got a digital file. I think it’s the hospital records on Ellian Lofton’s dead daddy.” He looked at me, released a breath. “It’s a couple hundred pages. I’ll go blind if I try and read this on my phone.”
I tried to put the billboard out of my mind and said, “I can take a look at it when we stop. I just hope it’s not a big waste of time.”
Dawson put his phone on the console. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. Every now and then the sun shines on a dog’s ass.”
Or maybe even a dominatrix.
When we pulled up in front of the Meyer residence in North Hollywood, we saw there was a news van in the street and a reporter knocking on the front door. “Shit, they’re already here,” I said.
I was still rolling to a stop as Dawson bolted from the car and made a bee line for the reporter. I arrived just in time to hear him say, “This is a crime scene, Geraldo. Get your dumb ass down the road.”
“I have a first amendment right to be here,” the reporter protested. “You can’t…”
Dawson grabbed the young man by his belt loop and dragged him off the porch. “Get lost or I’ll use the second amendment to protect the first.”
A light came on and a man opened the door as the reporter left. “What’s going on here?”
Dawson showed his badge. “We’re with the FBI. We need to come in and talk.”
We spent the next hour processing the crime scene in Sarah Meyer’s bedroom. The Chinese death symbol was on the dresser but otherwise nothing had been disturbed. I then sat with the Meyer’s in their living room while they cried, grieved, and tried to process what was happening. Meanwhile, the street outside their home was filled with the press and the cops trying to do crowd control.
Brenda Meyer looked to be about forty. I saw the resemblance to Sarah in her eyes and delicate facial features. Her husband, Bob, was older, probably in his fifties, with silver hair. He was handsome in that way some men get as they age.
“Is there anyone who might have been bothering Sarah or maybe someone you’ve seen around her or in the neighborhood that seemed suspicious?” Dawson asked.
Sarah’s mother shook her head. “No one. Sarah’s almost always home when she isn’t at school or working at the station. She hardly even dates.”
“What about at the television station?” I asked, at the same time glancing through the hospital records that had been sent to Dawson’s phone. There were lots of notes, summaries of Robert Lofton’s treatment, and shrink reports about his supposed progress, but nothing that looked worthwhile.
“Sarah just worked at the station off and on a few days a month.” Bob Meyer said. “It was something set up through her church for kids who thought they might someday want to go into journalism.”
“What church does Sarah attend?” I asked, looking up from the digital file on Dawson’s phone.
“The Universal Light Church in Hollywood,” Brenda Meyer said, fighting back tears again. “She has a friend who got her involved and…”
I looked over at Dawson as she broke down again, my skin prickling. Our first victim, Joanne Vreeland, had attended the same church. It had to be more than just a coincidence. When she recovered enough to talk again Dawson went on, asking her about Sarah’s school and classmates while I glanced down at the hospital records again. Something caught my eye. I skimmed the information a second time just to be sure, then motioned for Dawson to follow me into another room.
I showed him what was on his phone. “The hospital did a long term study on some of their patients, including Robert Lofton. According to one of the follow-up reports, completed years after his release from the hospital, Lofton had a grandson who he was also suspected of molesting but nothing was ever proved.”
Dawson glanced at the phone, back at me. “We did a record check on Ellian Lofton. He never married, lived alone.”
“What if he had a child out of wedlock?”
Dawson shrugged, brushed a hand through his graying hair. “It’s possible.”
“There’s something else. The first victim, Joanne Vreeland, attended the same church that Sarah’s parents just told us she attended.” I glanced over at the grieving couple. They were crying again, holding onto one another. “I think we should follow up with both the church and on Lofton. What do we have to lose?”
“Let’s do some additional record checks, see what we can turn up. I think we’ve done about as much damage here as we can.”
I went over to the couple and told them we were leaving but would be in touch. Brenda Meyer stood up and held onto me pleading, “Please. You’ve got to find her. She’s everything…” Her body began to convulse with sobs until I thought she might fall down. I held onto her trembling body.
In that moment I realized we were both grieving in different ways. Brenda Meyer was grieving for the loss of her daughter. I was grieving for the loss of a father and a mother. I also knew that in some ways I’d spent my entire life grieving for the lost innocence of a four year-old girl who never really knew either of them.
When she finally controlled her emotions, I took a step back, looked into Brenda Meyer’s watery eyes and said, “I’m going to find Sarah and bring her home to you. I promise.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“What the hell was that all about?” Dawson growled when we got to the car. “You can’t make a promise to the girl’s parents like that.”
I breathed, noticing the sun of a new day was turning the horizon into hues of gold. I also saw there were barricades at each end of the street, keeping the press and spectators at bay. “We’ve got to find her.” We were being waved through the police line as I met Dawson’s eyes. “No other option is acceptable.”
He drove on, mumbling something about promises and the press. I had no doubt that his concerns about the press were warranted. Sarah Meyer’s parents would be prisoners in their own house until she was located or…
“Let’s grab a bite to eat,” Dawson said, pulling into the parking lot at Denny’s. “We’ve got another long day and night in front of us.”
We got coffee. While waiting for our orders I called Molly Wingate, a records clerk at Hollywood Station. I knew from past experience that Molly was a whiz at gathering information on short notice. I asked her to call me with any criminal or public records she could pull together on Ellian Lofton’s son. I then excused myself and used the restroom where I tried to do something with my hair and applied a little makeup. When I got back to the table I saw that our orders had arrived.
While we ate we went over everything that had happened over the past few hours. We discussed the murder of Zachary Clemson, throwing out possible motives, before I decided to tell Dawson my theory about The Artist. “I probably sound like Romeo and Juliet, or worse, maybe even the professor, but I’m beginning to think these killings are as much about the way The Artist sees himself as they are about his victims.”
“Let’s hear it, Dr. Phil,” Dawson said chewing. “I’ll see if I can get you your own talk show if this is any good.”
I ignored him. “I think the killings have something to do with The Artist seeing himself as flawed and trying to overcome that. Maybe he sees the victims as what he wants to be and that in some psychotic way he believes killing them will allow him to take on that aspect of the girls that he desperately wants. The removal of their eyes might symbolically show that the victims can no longer see what’s in the outer world but at the same time they can see what’s in his own soul.”
I sipped my coffee,
set the cup down, and went on, “Maybe I’m crazy, but I think in some perverted, insane way, The Artist believes his victims are becoming a part of him. Loretta Martin wants to be a woman—the prefect woman.”
Dawson ran a hand over his cheek, then scratched his big head. “I think you’re right.”
My brows lifted. “Really?”
He nodded. “I think we’ve got to solve this case, there’s no other option. If we don’t you’re going to end up drooling into your oatmeal and calling yourself the professor.”
I laughed. “Maybe you’re right. I’m feeling a little…” I searched for the words to explain what I was feeling. “I guess you could say I’m a little down about everything that’s happened lately.”
Dawson regarded me for a long moment. “Remember what I said yesterday about you and me having something in common?”
“We’re survivors.”
He nodded. “This is a fight for survival. And there’s only going to be one survivor.”
“I know.” I raised my coffee cup. “Here’s to the survivors, the good guys.”
“I’m not talking about getting Loretta Marin or The Artist or…” His pale eyes changed. They were softer than before. If I hadn’t known better I might have even thought they were taking on a sheen. “I’m talking about your survival, Kate. This is about you slaying your dragon.”
“You mean Ryan Cooper?”
He shook his head. “Remember when we talked a few weeks ago about what the job can do to you, how all the evil in the world can eventually sneak up on you.”
I nodded. “Blue-eyed soul.” I breathed, looked away from him. I knew that he was right. The dragon was at my door, breathing fire. My eyes found him again and it occurred to me that in many ways Joe Dawson was a mystery. “What about you, Joe? How have you survived all these years?”