Savage Art (A Chilling Suspense Novel)

by Danielle Girard

  "Bringing out the wife and kids, are you? How many do you have?"

  "Just one daughter."

  "Me, too. Mine's twelve in May."

  "Amy just turned twelve in February," Michael answered.

  "Tough age, isn't it?"

  "It is. I never would've imagined."

  "You know why they're so tough, don't you?"

  Michael laughed. "Why?"

  "They're basically women. And we know how rough they can be," he prompted, sounding like the men he heard sitting around the lobby of the building where he had worked. They'd unbutton the top buttons of their dress shirts, pull their ties loose, and complain about their wives. It was a ritual he didn't understand at all.

  "That's the truth," Michael agreed.

  "Is your daughter staying on while you're up here?"

  "She is, actually."

  "We'll have to get her and Jeanette together," he said, using his mother's name. It seemed wonderfully ironic, since Amy's death would be in her honor.

  "That would be nice."

  He nodded and felt it was time to get down to business. A little polite talk was good, but Michael billed at seven hundred dollars an hour. No CEO was going to waste too much time chattering with a man that expensive. And he was playing the part too well to screw it up now. "Wanted to discuss a few last-minute details with you. Is now okay?"

  "Perfect."

  "Have you received my check, then?"

  "Got it in today's mail."

  "Good, good." He was surprised it had arrived so soon. The check looked legit enough to last a few days through the system—long enough to get Michael and Amy to California, for sure. That was all that mattered to him. "I'm going to be out of town when you arrive. Looking at acquiring a small company in San Diego. It shouldn't take me long to wrap up the deal—I'll be back by Wednesday at the latest."

  "That's no problem at all, Al. I'm meeting an investigator to help with some background on Electron. It will help us prepare the case."

  He gave a Texan laugh. "Know thine enemy."

  "That's what they say," Michael agreed.

  The irony was so rich. "My secretary sent all the background, didn't she?"

  "Yes. And it was very helpful. But what I need now isn't public information, since Electron is privately held. I want to know how the company is performing, its revenue stream and bottom line. If they're struggling and your technology would save them, it's easier to show motive."

  He laughed. "Sounds like you're going to charge them with murder."

  Michael chuckled like a smooth businessman. "It's a lot like a criminal case in some respects. Proving how and why they would steal a process or design from StarTech makes it easier to show damage, and sometimes that's all you need—especially in a jury trial.

  "And there's a lot more we'll search for as well. For instance, if the company has ever been indicted for theft like this before. Information like that will be very valuable in bringing a case against them. And if we do decide to press them to settle, past infringements will help us get a much heftier settlement."

  "Good thinking, Michael. Have that investigator's bill sent directly to me." He paused and made a clicking sound with his tongue. He'd heard more than one businessman do it, though it sounded stupid to him. "Now, remember, I've brought this directly to you. Even my top people don't know about this stealing business.

  "Electron is practically a neighbor. A lot of our employees are married to theirs. I need to keep this zipped up. You know what I'm saying?"

  "Absolutely," Michael said, his voice confident and reassuring. "My investigator is very trustworthy."

  "Good, good. And I don't want you working with anyone other than me. You know how these top managers can be. They say they're discreet, and then they go home and tell their wives while they're screwing." He smiled at himself. God, he was good.

  Michael agreed. "I'll wait for your call, then. I faxed my hotel information to you. Did you get it?"

  "Got it right here. I'll call you at the Hyatt as soon as I'm back in town, and we can meet for dinner to discuss what you've got."

  "I'll need access to some of your records in order to draw up the suit and so on."

  "I'd prefer you wait until I get back. It's only three days, and I want to keep this as quiet as possible."

  "Fine. I'll wait to hear from you, Al."

  "Perfect. And if you need anything, leave me a message at this number. It's my private line, and only I pick up the messages."

  "Got it."

  "Have a safe trip, and I'll look forward to meeting you and your daughter."

  He hung up and looked at the picture of Amy he had pinned to his wall. He had taken the four-by-six photo and had it blown up on a color copier to eleven-by-seventeen. He had spent hours studying her face, separating it into quadrants and committing each characteristic to memory. In honor of his sister, the plastic surgeon, Leonardo planned to operate on Amy's face. Perhaps he'd start around the eyes.

  She had her mother's eyes—his mother's eyes—almond-shaped and green, though Amy's were a bit darker than Casey's. The thin patrician nose came from Michael, the high rounded cheekbones from Casey. Her thin blond hair was Casey's color and Michael's texture.

  Several months ago, he had posed as a reporter writing a follow-up piece on the attack. From phone conversations with the McKinley's friends and neighbors, he had learned that Amy was Casey's daughter—rebellious and strong-willed. The thought of holding her excited him no end. Casey was sidetracked with Billy's illness for the moment, but soon, he would have her full attention back.

  He stared back at the picture, rubbing his hand against the bulge in his work pants. The small mole above her right eyebrow was shaped like a tiny star. He closed his eyes, and the image of her face flashed in his mind. He would know her anywhere.

  Pulling his hand from his pants, he turned back to the table and his work. The finale was coming so soon he had to stay concentrated.

  Yes, this would be the most exciting capture of his life. And he knew he should savor it. After Amy, he would need to leave California. Too many people would be looking for him. It wouldn't be safe to stay.

  He'd heard Arizona was nice, or maybe New Mexico. There would be lots of time to think about it later. He would choose somewhere nice and begin the road to medical school again. He was a perfect candidate. Only he would know how much experience he really had.

  He looked over the disguises laid out on the far table. The studio makeup class he'd taken had made all the difference. It was amazing how good he'd become. But, for this last kill, he was going to come as himself.

  Drawing the small leather kit out of his doctor's bag, he unzipped it and glanced at the shiny scalpels inside. The sight of them created a wave of pulsating excitement in his groin. It was almost more than he could handle just to restrain his hand from rubbing at the aching pressure against his zipper.

  With a deep breath, he forced the wave to roll over him and turned his attention back to his tools.

  One by one, he pulled them out of the case and laid them on the table to be cleaned and sharpened.

  Chapter 24

  Emily squirmed in her arms as Elizabeth Weisman trudged up the cement stairs to the San Francisco Police Department on Bryant off of Fifth. It was out of the way to come to the station, but after seeing that poor little girl's picture in the paper... she shuddered. She'd had to come.

  "Hush, baby. Mommy has to talk to someone. It will only take a minute, and then we'll go home."

  Emily responded by squirming even more.

  The station felt cooler than the outside air, and Elizabeth shivered again, holding Emily tight to her chest and trying to suppress the chill that seemed to whip right through her thin cotton sweater.

  At the front desk, Elizabeth explained what she'd seen at Nordstrom. A tall man with a mustache and beard listened intently and then excused himself to make a phone call. When he returned, he handed her a visitor badge and directed her through
a glass door to an Inspector Jordan Gray.

  Passing through the security station, Elizabeth wondered what they knew about the killer. Was hers the first lead? Surely someone else had seen him in that mall. The little girl's face flashed in Elizabeth's mind.

  Dead. That girl was dead. She was just about Aaron's age, and he had stolen her and killed her. Elizabeth squeezed her eyes closed, shutting the vision out of her mind.

  A tall black man met her in the hallway. "Ms. Weisman?"

  She nodded.

  "I'm Inspector Gray."

  Shifting Emily to her other side, she offered her hand.

  "I appreciate you taking the time to come down." He led them to a small office halfway down a long white linoleum hallway. The office walls were bare and though the desk and shelves were piled with books and papers, it was hard to determine who was the rightful occupant of the space.

  Through a narrow window in the boxlike office, Elizabeth could see a sliver of the street outside. After offering her a seat, the inspector sat behind the desk, crossing a foot over one knee. "What can I do for you?"

  "I was in the Nordstrom Mall last—" What day would it have been? Aaron wasn't in school. No, it was after school. Damn. How could she have forgotten the day? She concentrated a moment. "Monday," she blurted. "No. Monday Aaron had a dentist's appointment. So it was Tuesday. I was getting a present for—" She stopped herself. She didn't want to tell the inspector about her husband's secretary. How ridiculous would that sound? "I was with my son Aaron and Emily."

  She motioned to Emily, who seemed to be content for the moment to stare at her new surroundings. Emily's quiet reminded Elizabeth that she needed to talk as fast as possible because Emily wouldn't sit still for long. "There was a man walking with a little girl. We were coming off the escalator and had stopped to look at the long rows of lights hanging from the ceiling. The man bumped into us—" She shook her head. "We probably bumped into him."

  The inspector nodded. Elizabeth noticed the ring on his finger. Maybe he had a crazy wife at home, too. That was how she felt right now. Crazy. And overwhelmed. She shook her head. Nothing was as overwhelming as what that poor girl's parents must be feeling.

  "He said hello. He was a nice-looking man." She thought about who she was talking about and shuddered. Holding Emily tightly, she shook her head. "I had no idea, of course."

  The inspector nodded, and Elizabeth wondered how he could stand his job. "How did you realize it was the same little girl?" he asked.

  "It's the strangest thing, actually. My son, Aaron, came home from a friend's house Saturday morning after a sleep over and said he'd seen the girl from the mall on TV. He asked me if she was famous.

  "I hardly even remembered who he was talking about. But ten-year-old boys are just starting to notice little girls, and I think Aaron thought she was cute." She paused as she thought again that the little girl was dead. Elizabeth had been the last person to see the girl alive. Smoothing her pant leg, she shook her head.

  "Ms. Weisman. Are you all right?"

  Blinking hard, she nodded. "I just—I can't believe it. I was standing with that little girl. She didn't cry or scream. I had no idea. I keep thinking back to her face, to try to remember if there were any signs, but she didn't look upset or anything."

  "Was it like she knew him?"

  Elizabeth frowned, thinking. "No, it wasn't like that. It was like she had gotten in trouble. She looked ashamed."

  The inspector wrote something on his notepad.

  "I just can't believe I didn't realize anything was wrong. All weekend I've thought about it. Why didn't I ask?" She touched Emily's curls and felt on the edge of tears.

  "You couldn't have known, Ms. Weisman."

  She looked at the inspector, wondering if he meant it.

  "It's not your fault."

  "But to think he was right there. So close to my children. He actually touched Emily, told me how beautiful she was." Elizabeth felt herself choking.

  The inspector stood and brought her a cup of water from a dispenser outside his door.

  "Thank you." With a sip, she set it on the edge of the desk and commanded herself to gain control. She wiped her hand on her pant leg again and then tucked a tiny curly lock of Emily's hair behind her ear. "I've told Aaron a thousand times to scream at the top of his lungs if someone tries to take him, even if it's someone who says they know us."

  "It's very important to teach your children safe habits."

  Elizabeth nodded, kissing Emily's head. Emily was too young still. She had always wished the children were closer in age, but suddenly, she was glad Aaron would be old enough to watch out for his sister by the time she was five or six.

  She blinked and tried to focus. "Aaron said he'd seen her on TV. I told him it was probably just a girl who looked like her, but he insisted. Well, I didn't argue. I didn't know who the girl was, but she looked normal enough to me.

  "The next morning, Aaron points to the cover of the paper. 'See, Mom. She's famous.'" Elizabeth pressed her hand to her chest, remembering the way she'd felt when she read the headline. "Child Slayings Terrorize San Francisco Area Malls."

  "I nearly died when I saw. I must've read the article ten times."

  "Can you tell me more about him?"

  She nodded. "He was tall with straight sandy-blond hair; pretty nice-looking. He sounded like my cousins."

  "Your cousins?"

  "My mother was from Indiana. People say Midwesterners don't have accents, but I disagree. I can always tell someone from Indiana."

  "And this guy sounded like he was from Indiana?"

  She nodded, hesitant. "He sounded like it."

  The inspector made a note. "What else?"

  "He was wearing a uniform."

  The inspector leaned forward and asked, "What kind of uniform?"

  She nodded, thinking. "Aaron called him a policeman, but I think it was a security outfit—navy with an emblem—" She squeezed her eyes and tried to picture it. "I want to say it looked like an eagle." What did she know about eagles? "It was some sort of bird, anyway."

  The inspector made another note, and Elizabeth glanced at the page. It was much too far away for her to read what he'd written. Maybe she was wasting his time. She shifted Emily's weight to the other side, her arm sore from holding her daughter in place.

  "This is very helpful, Ms. Weisman."

  She pushed the stray hairs off her face and nodded.

  "Can you tell me anything more about the uniform?"

  Emily started to fuss, and Elizabeth bobbed her up and down, hoping she would settle down again. "I remember his badge said 'Obsgarten.' "

  "Can you spell that?"

  Emily began to cry. Bucking her head backward, Emily almost smashed Elizabeth in the chin as she fought to break free. Frustrated, Elizabeth let her down. Emily began to crawl around the room, and Elizabeth could sense the inspector watching her daughter as he spoke.

  "The spelling of the name?"

  "O-B-S-G-A-R-T-E-N." Elizabeth watched as Emily tottered along the edge of a bookshelf and then moved back toward her. "Obsgarten is my maiden name, and it's very uncommon. I remember commenting on it. Now that I think about it, he pronounced the name strangely."

  "How so?"

  "He said it, Aub-sgarten. Everyone in my family says, O-bsgarten. It isn't a big difference, but I hadn't ever heard it pronounced that way."

  "If I showed you pictures of some uniforms, do you think you would recognize the one he was wearing?"

  "I think so."

  One of the officers sat with Emily, encouraging her to draw with a series of highlighters as Elizabeth looked through the third book of uniforms. Emily started to fuss again, and Elizabeth was ready to give up on the uniform search anyway. It had taken a half hour to do the police sketch, and she'd been looking through the books of uniforms for at least another hour. It was already after noon, and she had to get home before Aaron got out of school.

  She turned the page, and there it
was. "Here," she said, as relieved to be finished as she was to have found it.

  The inspector stood and peered over her shoulder.

  "That's an eagle, isn't it?" she asked.

  "Looks like an eagle to me."

  "Sterling Security," she said. "Never heard of them."

  The inspector shook his head. "Me, neither." He took the book from her lap and set it on the desk. "Thank you very much for coming in, Ms. Weisman. I know it's a long way out of your way."

  "You think you'll find him?"

  The inspector nodded. "I'm set on it."

  She exhaled. "Thank goodness." She hadn't slept in two nights, picturing his face. He had been so normal-looking—not at all the monster she wanted to imagine. She had almost thought he was attractive. It made her sick to think about it.

  When she was growing up, killers were evil, slobbering monsters. Now they were handsome men in uniforms. She picked up her daughter and looked at her innocent brown eyes. It could have been her in that mall—or Aaron.

  How did a mother teach her children to beware of such evil when the man didn't look so different from their own daddy?

  Chapter 25

  For the third day in a row, Casey awoke at the foot of Billy's bed. The only time she'd left was to take a cab ride to each of the body dump sites. She'd hoped to learn something more about Leonardo from the location of the bodies. Instead, the evidence of the cases had already been erased by the crime scene team as well as the effects of the weather, animals, and other people. Even when she was in the hospital with Billy, she still couldn't push the case from her mind. In sleep, she dreamt about it.

  In her dreams, she was tied down, flat on her back, and Leonardo stood above her, talking about his crimes, his scalpel poised in the air. Each time she'd tried to get him to reveal a little more about himself, but he grew quickly bored and lowered the knife to her skin. As soon as he made the first incision, she awoke the same way, sweating and close to tears. But each clue, each new idea, made her feel she was further from catching him.

  The crick in her neck shot a sharp pain up her spine as she shifted in the small chair in the corner of Billy's hospital room. Standing, she looked at the beeping machinery around him. He lay silent, seemingly in a deep sleep. Casey wondered how she had even been able to doze with the beeps and clicks of the machines in the room. Exhaustion had won, it seemed. She chastised herself for sleeping, though. She should have been awake, watching over Billy.