The Murder Artist

by John Case

  “We climbed up ropes, too,” Kai says, with some animation. “Right to the ceiling. We did that a lot. It was hard. It was for making you strong.”

  “What kind of ropes?”

  Kai and Brandon look at each other and shrug. “Just ropes,” Kai says. “They were thick and they hung down from hooks in the ceiling.”

  “The knotted ones were more easy.”

  “Yeah, the plain ones were really hard to climb at first. ’Member, Bran? – we could just about get a couple feet off the floor.”

  “We got better.”

  “So this was… where, in a gym… in this big house?”

  “Yeah – it was in the basement. It was a really, really giant room.”

  They nod earnestly. “Yeah. Like the Y or something.”

  “How high were these ropes?”

  They look at each other. “Real high.”

  “As tall as this ceiling, or…?” The rooms in Emma’s apartment might have eight-foot ceilings.

  “No,” Brandon protests. “Much higher… like really high.”

  “Hunh. So, did this man… did he… do anything to you?”

  “Like what do you mean?”

  I’m not sure how to put it, and Emma dives in. “No,” she says. “None of that.”

  “None of what?” Kai demands.

  She hesitates. “You told me he didn’t hurt you.”

  Brandon shakes his head. “He didn’t hurt us. He liked us.”

  “He liked you. So… was he… friendly?” I ask.

  Emma shoots me a look, but lets it go. The boys shake their heads, bored now, beginning to fidget. “Nah,” Kai says, “he was just… he was just…” He looks at his brother, but Brandon shrugs. Neither one of them seems able to characterize their captor’s manner. “He was just kind of regular,” Kai says finally. “Mostly, he left us alone except when we were training.”

  “So what made you stop trusting him?” I ask Kai. “At the mall. What made you try to call your mom’s friend?”

  “I don’t know,” Kai says, frowning. “He just – I don’t know.” He shakes his head.

  “Kai’s very intuitive and a little wary,” Emma says with a wan smile. “Brandon’s more of an optimist.”

  “What’s that mean, Mom?” Brandon asks.

  “It means you hope for the best, sweetie.”

  “Is… tootive good, too?” Kai asks.

  “Intuitive. Yes, K-man, it means you’re smart and alert, not to what people say, but to the way things feel to you.” She turns to me: “They’ve been in care a lot, and there’s a lot of BS in the system. It doesn’t exactly foster trust.” She shrugs. “Brandon’s the exception.”

  “Ooooooh,” Brandon says. “Mom said BS.”

  The fact that their captor didn’t exploit the boys is a huge relief, but I can’t get any kind of fix on his intentions toward them. Did he kidnap… a family? Sons? What kind of a relationship did they have with him? “This guy Doc – did he eat with you?” I ask.

  “Nah – we got our own cereal and stuff for breakfast, and for lunch we made our own sandwiches. He made dinner – stuff in plastic boxes that he heated up in the microwave.”

  “It was okay,” Kai says. “The food. Healthy stuff. No junk food.”

  “And you never saw anyone else?”

  Brandon swings his head back and forth. “Nope.”

  I’m trying to think of what else to ask when Kai volunteers something. “Sometimes he did tricks for us, remember, Bran? In the beginning?”

  “Tricks?” Emma frowns. This seems to be new to her. “What kind of tricks?”

  “Yeah, with cards and stuff,” Brandon says. “You know – magic tricks.”

  “And coins.”

  Coins.

  “Did he… line up the coins?” Emma asks.

  Brandon makes a face. “Noooooo. He like… pulled them out of the air, made them disappear.”

  Kai claps his hands. “Like that.”

  Emma taps her watch. The reminder propels me into the kind of question I never ask as a reporter, an open, expansive question that almost always draws a shrug.

  “Can you think of anything else… about the house or the man or… I don’t know… anything that happened while you were there?”

  “We told the police,” Brandon says, really bored now. “Over and over and over.”

  “I know, but if there’s anything that might help me find the man again – could you tell me?”

  “He lied,” Kai says. “Mommy never told him to take us. She was just in line getting our food.”

  “I know. So if there’s anything-”

  Kai heaves a sigh. “Okay. Concentrate, okay, Bran?”

  They both shut their eyes and screw up their faces in exaggerated expressions of deep concentration.

  Kai opens his eyes and shrugs.

  “I think that’s enough,” Emma says.

  Brandon opens his eyes and turns to his brother. “Did we ever say about the dogs?”

  Kai shrugs.

  “Dogs?” I ask.

  “Skinny ones,” Brandon says. “You could see the bones. But they weren’t hungry. He said they were supposed to be like that.”

  I thank Emma at the door, so profusely that she’s almost embarrassed. “I don’t see how it helped much,” she says. She bites her lower lip. “I hope it helped. I hope you find them.”

  I can hear the boys in the room behind us, and the sound of their voices sets off a throb of loss. I can’t seem to move and there’s a kind of awkward silence. Emma clears her throat. Obviously she doesn’t want to close the door in my face, but she’s got homework to do and boys to get to bed. “Well,” she says, “good luck.”

  “They’re lucky to have you,” I say at last. “They’re lucky to have you for a mother.”

  She scratches an eyebrow with her pinky, then gives me a wry look. “Thanks,” she says, and shifts from foot to foot, “but they were born addicted to smack, you know – so I’ve got some ground to make up.”

  “Well, for my money you’ll do it and then some,” I say.

  This avuncular platitude seems to make her nervous. She wants me to leave. The truth is I’m having trouble moving because I’m depressed by the prospect of heading back to the Drop Anchor.

  “Well,” Emma says. My hesitation on her doorstep is only adding to her second thoughts.

  It’s with some effort that I toss a little salute and turn away from her door. Yes, I’ve confirmed my guess that the abductor of the Sandling boys is the same man who took my sons, but where does it get me? Am I any closer to finding them?

  CHAPTER 19

  Back in D.C., I consult my notebooks and throw myself into the pursuit of my “leads,” such as they are.

  The dimes. If Emma’s friend Amalia was correct about the connection with voodoo, I know where to start. One of the producers at the station – Scott – did a piece about voodoo last year. He was somewhere down in Florida, where there’s a significant Haitian population.

  “Hey, Alex! Miss you, man. How’s it going?”

  “I’m hanging in.”

  “If I can do anything, you-”

  “Matter of fact, that’s why I called. Remember that piece on voodoo? I have a question and I thought you could tell me where to go with it.”

  “A voodoo question? Sure. If I can’t answer, I’ll know where to point you.”

  “The person who took the kids left some mementos behind in my house.”

  “Wait. Weren’t your kids abducted from some fair?”

  “The kidnapper brought them back to the house and he left some things behind. I’m not sure the police ever released any of this.”

  “Voodoo mementos?”

  “Some of them. I think so, anyway.”

  “Jesus! Dolls?”

  “No. Coins. A row of coins. And a bowl of water, placed up high.”

  “You know – that reminds me of this case at a nursing home in Cocoa Beach. The SEIU was trying to organize som
e of the help in a series of nursing homes down in that area. In one of them, the nursing home management retaliated by leaving voodoo… messages, I guess you’d call them… all over the facility. The janitorial staff was mostly Haitian, right? And these warnings, or whatever they were, took the form of patterns of coins and bowls of water in weird places. Ended up the management was charged with unfair labor practices! Intimidating the workforce, you know? Because those coins – they were curses. And those bowls of water – those were for the spirits to drink – implying that there were spirits around, you know. Thirsty ones.”

  “No kidding.”

  “The coins in your house – were they dimes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Winged Liberty dimes – with the wings sort of coming out of Liberty’s head?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because those dimes are the coin of the realm in voodoo. I couldn’t squeeze any of this into the program, but it was fascinating stuff. First off, because of those little wings, most people call the things Mercury dimes. So it’s possible all of these superstitions are based on a misunderstanding. Because the head on that dime is supposed to be Lady Liberty. Anyway – Mercury was the Roman god of crossroads, of messages, of games of chance and sleight of hand. The god of magic. The way that fits is that Haitians believe some of the houngans have supernatural power – can do magic, in other words.”

  “What’s a houngan?”

  “That’s a priest, a voodoo priest. Getting back to those Mercury dimes, the voodoo equivalent of Mercury is called Legba.”

  “The voodoo equivalent? There’s an equivalent?”

  “Voodoo’s a very syncretic religion. It just appropriates bits and pieces from everywhere. Probably why it’s still rolling on. So Legba, he’s also related to St. Peter – guardian of the gates, right? This figure – Mercury, Legba, St. Peter – it’s all about access and thresholds.”

  “So how do these coins get to be curses?”

  “Now that, I don’t really know, but those nursing home workers would not even go into some of the rooms, they were that spooked.”

  “Hunh.”

  “I guess the Mercury dime can go either way luckwise, because people down in Louisiana and Florida wear the things around their necks on chains. Supposed to attract money.”

  “Really.”

  “Plus the dimes are used in mojo bags.”

  “Mojo bags?”

  “Don’t knock it. I got one made up when I did the story and maybe it’s coincidence, but my life’s been happening ever since. So for a mojo bag, you need a Mercury dime. You need a couple of roots – the kind would depend on what the houngan decides. Mine had a St. John the Conqueror root. I remember because I liked the name.”

  “Hunh.”

  “Anyway, the houngans, they know the right kinds of roots. So you get the Mercury dime, the roots, some sugar; you wrap it all up in a two-dollar bill; you wrap that up in a red flannel bag; you tie it all tight. Then to get your mojo workin’, as it were, you have to anoint the bag with the menstrual blood or urine of the woman you love. That part was a little tricky with Christine.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  We talk a little longer, and I thank him, and in case I need to know more about voodoo, he gives me the name of an academic at Florida State.

  I compile a list of medieval festivals. I know from previous forays that there are more of these things than you might think.

  Lucky for me, the very first site Google kicks out – a Directorie of Faires – turns out to be a huge help. By clicking on the center of the elaborately tooled leather cover of the “book” that constitutes the homepage, I get access to an extensive list of events: Faires, Festivals, Reenactments, Feasts, Pageants, Jousts, and so on. Listed in chronological order, the faux parchment pages inside the “book” provide a wealth of information. Each separate fair or festival has links that contain details about the year in which the event or festival is “set” (1567, 1601, etc.), how long the particular venue has been in operation, the number of stages for performances, the number of booths selling goods and food, maps, weather information, hours, and admission prices – along with telephone numbers and other contact information about the management. There is even a “weapons policy” for each event, declaring whether or not weapons should be “peace-tied” (whatever that means).

  Apart from two hundred and nine “major events,” the directory also lists the artists and companies that drive these festivals, a mind-blowing catalog that encompasses everything from “birds of prey demonstrations” to fire-eaters and “baudy” comics.

  Craftsmen and vendors have their own “page”; among the listings are purveyors of leather drinking vessels, “chaine maille,” and juggling sticks.

  Using the directory as a guide, my routine is to spend a few hours every day on the telephone with people who run the events. Most have to be won over, coaxed away from the instinct to be defensive and uncooperative. I understand why they don’t want to talk to me. I’d definitely dodge calls from some desperate guy floating the notion that my fantasy world is the stalking ground of a kidnapper.

  But mostly, I win them over, at least to the extent that they agree to post the Wanted poster in private employee areas.

  I made the poster at Kinko’s. Under the classic banner WANTED, it displays an array of the different sketches of the Piper (including the one created by the police artist who worked with the Sandling twins). Beneath the sketches is a brief description of the abduction of my sons, the circumstances and date, along with what’s known of the Piper’s physique, costume, and dog. Finally, there’s contact information and the promise of a reward.

  I send several packets a day – a cover letter and several copies of the poster. I use FedEx – even though it’s expensive – for the sense of urgency implied by overnight delivery. I log the mailings into my computer, in which I’ve set up a file for each venue, so I can track follow-up calls and e-mails, responses, and the actions taken. Links to my calendar remind me when to follow up.

  As soon as I finish with all of the events in the Directorie, I plan to tackle the vendor and artist lists. In the meantime, I take breaks from the medieval world to plan a similar campaign in the canine realm.

  Maybe I can get to the Piper via his dog. I’m shocked when my first Google search – whippet – produces more than thirty-seven thousand cites. Lots of redundancies, but still, there are more whippet breeders, whippet clubs, and whippet fanciers than I’d ever imagined.

  “Oh, yes,” gurgles the woman from Whippet World, “they’re wonderful pets, energetic but pliant, and so… just great looking, don’t you think? Can I help you find a puppy? Is that why you called?”

  My simple explanation – that I’m trying to find someone who was seen with a whippet – just confuses and worries her.

  “This is all you know about the man, then – that he had a dog? Did the dog attack you?”

  I explain who I am and why I’m trying to locate someone via his whippet.

  “Oh,” she says, her voice gone flat, all the enthusiasm evaporated. “Oh, dear. Well – I don’t know. If the man doesn’t compete, it will be awfully tough to find him. If he does compete, or even if he once did, then maybe there’s a chance. But if he just bought a whippet from a puppy mill or even from a breeder, or acquired one through adoption – I don’t know.”

  “Compete? You mean at dog shows?”

  “Well, that’s a possibility. Whippets are really, really on the upswing in hounds. We have great hopes for one of the boys at this year’s Westminster, as a matter of fact.”

  “How many dog shows are there?”

  “Oh, my dear, you can’t imagine. But I think you’d be wasting your time looking in that direction. I wouldn’t guess that an individual such as you’re describing – well, one wouldn’t think he’d seek out the spotlight by going to dog shows, particularly if he used the dog as – it’s so painful to even think of this – as some kind of lure.”

/>   “So-”

  “What might be worth a go is to look at other types of competition. No danger of press coverage there. Lots of whippet owners compete – we just seem to relish the battle, you know! And if your fellow was one of the these, someone might recognize him. You did say you had a sketch you could distribute?”

  “Yes.”

  “You might try that, circulate it amongst some of these groups.”

  “What are we talking about? You mean racing around a track?”

  A fruity laugh. “Good Lord, not much of that going on these days. Mind you, I don’t say you can’t find old-fashioned oval racing if you really look for it, but coursing is far more popular – that’s a form of racing in which the dogs chase lures. They’re sight hounds, you know – whippets are – they chase on visual cue. Coursing usually involves obstacles and a convoluted path. We use white plastic bags for lures – mundane but humane, as we say. Whippets are also great Frisbee dogs, and they truly excel at flyball and flygility and…”

  I let her go on… and on… and at the end she promises to put a link to my poster on her website and to send me a list of whippet groups and breeders.

  The packet arrives two days later by Priority Mail. The list inside provides the names of four hundred thirty-four groups and more than two hundred websites she suggests I might contact. There will be some overlap, of course, she notes on a Post-it. Whippet owners are real joiners!

  I’ve still progressed through only forty-two events in my list of the medieval events. Now it would seem that exploring the whippet angle will require another huge effort. I feel overwhelmed, daunted, depressed. This is obviously the kind of manpower-intensive activity the police should do. Should have done. In my opinion.

  The Elizabethan neck ornament known as the ruff provides another avenue for research. From my roster of vendors, I pull down a list of those involved in sewing and selling Renaissance garb – ruffs, bumrolls, doublets, farthingales. The catalog of dealers expands every time I talk to one of them. The market for ruffs extends beyond Renaissance festivals to drama companies, minstrels, troubadours, jesters, choirs, and circuses (where clowns and various animals wear ruffs). Not unlike the amazing number of medieval festivals and whippet fanciers, ruff-making turns out to be a cottage industry in its own right. You can buy them by mail or over the Internet or at the festivals themselves.