by Chris Carter
‘No, Laura wasn’t raped,’ Hunter said with unflinching eyes and without an ounce of hesitation. Certain lies were worth telling.
Twenty-One
The uncomfortable moment stretched until Denise broke eye contact with Hunter, returning her stare to the photographs on the desk. She picked up a small silver frame.
‘Laura was always talented, you know? Always very artistic.’ She walked over and handed Hunter the frame. The photograph showed a little girl of about eight surrounded by crayons and tiny pots of watercolor paint. She looked so happy and her smile was so contagious, Hunter couldn’t help but smile back, for a second forgetting that that little girl was gone and in the most horrifying manner possible.
‘In school, every year without fail, she was awarded an honors certificate in arts,’ Denise said proudly.
Hunter listened.
A sad grin threatened to part Denise’s lips but she held it back. ‘She only started painting professionally late on, but she’d always loved it. It was her refuge from all things bad. Every time she got hurt, she went back to the brushes. It was what cured her when she was a child.’
‘Cured her?’ Hunter’s expression tightened and his gaze bounced between Denise and Roy.
‘One day when Laura was eight, for no apparent reason, she had some sort of seizure,’ Denise explained. ‘She couldn’t move or breathe properly, her eyes disappeared into her head and she almost choked to death. It petrified us.’
Roy nodded and then took over. ‘We took her to four different doctors. Experts, they said.’ He shook his head as if irritated. ‘But none of them could diagnose what had happened. In fact, they didn’t have a clue.’
‘Did it happen again?’
‘Yes, a few more times.’ Denise again. ‘She went through every possible examination, including CAT scans. They found nothing. No one knew what was wrong. No one could tell us what was triggering her seizures. About a week after her last episode, Laura picked up a brush for the first time. And that was it. The seizures never came back.’ Denise touched the edge of her right eye with the tip of her fingers, trying to stop the new tear that had just formed from rolling down her cheek. ‘No matter what anyone says, I know her painting is what made them stop. It’s what made her well again.’
‘You said her seizures made her choke?’
Denise nodded. ‘It terrified us every time. She couldn’t breathe. Her skin changed color.’ She paused and looked away. ‘She could’ve died so many times.’
‘And the seizures simply stopped all together?’
‘Yes,’ Roy continued. ‘Right after she started painting.’
Hunter got up and handed the frame back to Denise. ‘Was Laura in a relationship?’
Denise let out a deep sigh. ‘Laura didn’t really get deeply involved with anyone. Another of her self-defense mechanisms.’ She walked over to the bar by the large bookcase. ‘If you read any of the articles about her and how she got her career started, you’ll read about her pain of being cheated on by her fiancé. She found him in bed with another woman. It destroyed her inside.’ Denise poured herself a double dose of whiskey from a decanter and dropped two ice cubes in it. ‘Would you like one?’ She raised her glass.
Hunter’s biggest passion was single malt Scotch whiskey, but unlike most, he knew how to appreciate its flavor and quality instead of simply getting drunk on it.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Roy?’ She faced her husband.
He shook his head.
Denise shrugged, took a small sip and closed her eyes as the liquid traveled down her throat.
‘To drown her pain, Laura went straight back to painting. Something that she hadn’t done for several years. By chance, a gallery curator saw one of her canvases, and that was how her new career started. But not before she suffered a great deal.’
‘From a broken heart?’ Hunter said.
Denise nodded and looked away. ‘Patrick was the one who insisted they moved in together after only four months,’ she continued. ‘He told Laura he couldn’t stand being away from her, that he loved her more than anything. He was one of those who had a way with words. A charmer who usually got what he wanted. I’m sure you know the type. And Laura believed him. She fell desperately in love with him and his seductive charm.’
‘You said his name is Patrick?’
Denise nodded. ‘Patrick Barlett.’
Hunter wrote the name down in his notebook.
‘Laura used to work in a bank. Patrick was a big investor. That’s how they met. She found out about his affair because that day she felt unwell just after lunch,’ Denise recalled. ‘Something she’d eaten. Her boss told her to take the rest of the day off and she went home. Patrick was in their bed with his slut secretary or PA or something.’ She shook her head. ‘For someone who was supposed to be intelligent, you’d thought that he would’ve at least gone to a motel.’ She chuckled nervously. ‘So much for loving Laura more than anything, huh? That was only three months after they’d moved in together. Since then, relationships became a thing of the past for Laura. She had flings, affairs, but nothing serious.’
‘Any recent ones?’
‘No one Laura thought was worth mentioning.’
‘So after Laura split from Patrick, was that it between them?’
‘For her, yes.’
‘And for him?’
‘Ha!’ Denise said with contempt. ‘He never let go. He tried apologizing with flowers and gifts and phone calls and whatever else he could think of, but Laura didn’t wanna know any more.’
‘How long did he carry on all that for?’
‘He never stopped.’
Hunter’s eyebrows arched in surprise.
‘He visited her exhibition last month and begged her to have him back yet again. She obviously told him where to go.’
‘So he’s been after her, asking for forgiveness and trying to get her back for . . . ?’
‘Four years,’ Roy confirmed. ‘Patrick is not the sort of man who takes no for an answer. He’s the sort of man who gets what he wants, no matter the price.’
Twenty-Two
The word obsession flashed at the back of Hunter’s mind. Four years was more than enough time for most people to take the hint and move on. Denise told him how possessive and jealous Patrick used to be of Laura, and though during the time they were together he’d never been violent towards her, he did have a problem with his temper.
‘Do you know if anyone other than you had an extra set of keys to Laura’s apartment?’
Denise had another sip of her drink and thought about it for a minute before looking at Roy.
‘Not that we know of,’ he said.
‘Laura never mentioned if she’d given the keys to anyone else?’
A firm shake of the head from Denise. ‘Laura never allowed anyone to go into her apartment or her studio. Her work was very private to her. Even though she was successful, she never did it for the money. She painted for herself. It was a way of expressing what was going on inside her. She didn’t even like exhibiting that much, and that’s what most artists live for. As far as I know, she never took any dates back to her apartment. And she never, never got emotionally involved.’
‘How about any close friends?’
‘I was her closest friend.’ A slight quiver came into her voice.
‘Anyone other than family?’
‘Painters are very lonely people, Detective. They spend most of their time by themselves, working on a piece. She had acquaintances, but no one she could really call a close friend.’
‘She didn’t keep in touch with any of her old school, university or work friends?’
Denise shrugged. ‘Maybe, by phone or the odd drink, but I couldn’t tell you who.’ She paused. ‘The only other person I can think of is Calvin Lange, the curator of the Daniel Rossdale Art Gallery. The person who kick-started her career. He was very fond of her, and she of him. They talked on the phone and met quite frequently.’
<
br /> Roy nodded his agreement.
Hunter noted Calvin Lange’s name down and his eyes returned to the photo frames on the wooden desk. ‘Being a successful artist consequently means having fans, I suppose.’
Denise nodded proudly. ‘Her work was admired and loved by many.’
‘Did Laura ever mention any . . .’ he searched for the right words, ‘ . . . insistent fans?’
‘You mean . . . like a stalker?’ Her voice faltered for an instant.
Hunter nodded.
Denise finished the rest of her whiskey in one gulp. ‘I never thought of it, but she did mention something a few months ago.’
Hunter put down the picture frame he was holding and took a step in Denise’s direction. ‘What exactly did she tell you?’
Denise’s gaze moved to a neutral point on the white Nepalese rug in the center of the room as her memory struggled to remember. ‘Just that she’d started receiving some emails from someone who said he was in love with her work.’
‘Did she ever show you any of these emails?’
‘No.’
Hunter looked at Roy questioningly, who shook his head.
‘Did she tell you what they said?’
Denise shook her head. ‘Laura played it down, saying that it was just a fan being flattering of her work. But I did get the feeling that something about it had spooked her.’
Hunter wrote again in his notebook.
Denise moved closer, stopping at an arm’s reach from Hunter. She looked into his eyes. ‘How good are you and your team, Detective?’
Hunter frowned as if he hadn’t understood the question.
‘I wanna know if you can catch the sonofabitch who hurt my daughter and took her from me.’ The grief in her voice was gone, substituted by undeniable anger. ‘Don’t tell me you’re gonna do the best you can. The police are always doing the best they can, and their best is rarely good enough. I know you’re gonna do your best, Detective. What I want you to do is look me in the eyes and tell me your best will be good enough. Tell me you’ll catch this sonofabitch. And tell me you will make this sack of shit pay.’
Twenty-Three
Whitney Myers used the little gadget Leonid Kudrov had given her to activate the gates to the underground garage in Katia’s apartment block. As she drove in, she immediately spotted Katia’s torch red V6 convertible Mustang parked in one of the two spaces reserved for her penthouse apartment. Myers took the empty spot next to it, got out and placed her right palm on the Mustang’s hood. Stone cold. Through the window, she checked its interior. All seemed fine. The car alarm light was blinking on the dashboard, indicating that it was active. Myers paused and allowed her eyes to roam the whole of the garage. The place was well lit, but there were many dark spots and corners where someone could hide. She noticed only one security camera, on the ceiling, facing the garage’s entrance door.
Myers retrieved a pair of latex gloves from the box in the back seat of her car and rode the elevator up to the penthouse. There, she used the keys Leonid Kudrov had given her to gain access to Katia’s apartment. No alarm. No signs of forced entry.
She softly closed the door behind her and paused for an instant. The living room was immense and decorated with a lot of style. Myers took her time looking around. Nothing seemed out of place. No signs of a fight or struggle.
She made her way to the spiral stairwell in the corner and moved up to the top floor. On the mezzanine landing, she found Katia’s car keys in a tray on a tall chest of drawers crowded with family photographs.
Myers moved on down the corridor and entered Katia’s bedroom. The walls were painted in pink and white, and there were enough stuffed toys on the perfectly made king-size bed to keep a crèche occupied for weeks. Myers checked the pillows on it. No smell. No one had slept in that bed last night.
Katia’s two suitcases lay on the end of the bed seat. They were both open, but it looked like she hadn’t had time to unpack them. The bedroom’s balcony door was locked from the inside. Again, no signs of forced entry.
Myers moved on to the walk-in closet. Katia’s collection of dresses, shoes and purses took her breath away.
‘Wow.’ She ran her hand down the front of a Giambattista Valli dress. ‘A dream wardrobe,’ she whispered. ‘Katia had taste.’
In the en-suite bathroom, she noticed a hair towel was missing from the rail.
Myers moved out of the bedroom and into the next room along – Katia’s practice den. The room was spacious but simple. A stereo system on a wooden sideboard, a couple of music stands, a mini fridge on the corner and a comfortable armchair pushed up against a wall. Katia’s violin case was on a small coffee table by the door. Her priceless Lorenzo Guadagnini was lying inside it.
Leonid had told her that Katia was obsessed with her Guadagnini violin. If it weren’t by her side, it’d be in her safe behind the large painting of Tchaikovsky on the wall, no exceptions.
Myers found the painting and checked the safe. Locked. Despite her previous confidence that Katia had just skipped town for a few days, she was getting a very bad feeling about this.
Myers returned downstairs and walked into the kitchen. It was as big as most studio apartments in Los Angeles. Black marble worktops and floors, polished steel appliances and enough pots and pans hanging from a center island that could give any small restaurant a run for their money.
The first thing Myers noticed was the missing hair towel from the en-suite bathroom upstairs. It was lying on the floor a few steps away from the fridge. She picked it up and brought it to her nose – a sweet, fruity smell that matched the bottle of designer hair conditioner in Katia’s bathroom.
Myers looked around. There was a bottle of white wine on the breakfast table. No glasses were out. No corkscrew either. But what really caught her attention was the blinking red light on the answerphone at the far end of the worktop. She walked over and looked at the screen.
Sixty messages.
‘I guess Katia is a popular woman.’
Myers pressed play.
‘You have sixty new messages,’ announced the prerecorded woman’s voice. ‘Message one.’
Absolute silence.
Myers frowned.
At the end of it there was a beep, and the machine moved on to the next message.
Silence.
And the next.
Silence.
And the next.
Silence.
‘What the hell?’ Myers took a seat on the barstool next to her. Her eyes settled on the large clock hanging from the wall above the door.
The messages kept on playing, not a whisper in any of them. After maybe the fifteenth or twentieth message, Myers picked up on something that made her skin crawl.
‘No fucking way.’ She pressed the stop button and then rewound the messages back to the very first one. She started from the beginning again. Her eyes returned to the clock above the door, and this time she let them play all the way to the fifty-ninth message. Silence in every single one of them, but the pattern she found told her that that silence had its own chilling meaning.
‘I’ll be goddamned.’
The last message started playing, and suddenly the silence was substituted by a long stretch of static, catching Myers by surprise and making her jump.
‘Jesus . . .’ She brought a hand up to her thumping heart. ‘What the hell was that?’ She rewound it, leaned closer to the machine, and played the message again.
Static noise blasted through the tiny answerphone speaker.
Myers moved even closer.
And what she heard, half-hidden by the static sound, sent a cold shiver down her entire body.
Twenty-Four
From the car, even before leaving the Mitchells’ driveway, Hunter called the Office of Operations and asked them to gather all the information they could on Patrick Barlett, Laura’s ex-fiancé. He’d just become a priority person of interest in the investigation.
Hunter disconnected and speed-dialed Garcia’s
number. He gave him the lowdown on everything he’d found out from the Mitchells and they met half an hour later at the entrance to an old warehouse turned apartment block in Lakewood, minutes away from Long Beach.
Hunter looked subdued but Garcia didn’t have to ask. He knew that breaking the news to parents that their daughter had been the victim of a monstrous killer was already hard enough. But to have to tell them that they couldn’t even give her a proper burial because the body had been blown to pieces was really the stuff of nightmares.
They rode the elevator up to the top floor in silence.
Laura Mitchell’s apartment was an astonishing two thousand square feet loft conversion. The living area was simple but stylish with black leather furniture and sumptuous rugs. The kitchen was to the right of the entrance door and the sleeping area to the left – both modern, spacious and decorated with taste. But the bulk of the apartment was taken by her art studio.
Set at the far end and surrounded by large windows, including two skylights, it was filled with canvases of all sizes. The largest one was at least twelve foot by six.
‘Wow, I always loved loft conversions,’ Garcia said looking around. ‘I could fit four of my apartment in here.’ He paused and checked the door. ‘No forced entry. You said that her parents told you that they last heard from her two and a half weeks ago?’
Hunter nodded. ‘Laura and her mother were close. They called or met each other almost every other day. The last time they talked was on the 2nd of this month. A Wednesday. That was just a couple of days after the last night of Laura’s latest exhibition in a gallery in West Hollywood. Her mother tried to contact her again on the 5th, and that’s when alarm bells started ringing.’
‘In between the 2nd and the 5th?’ Garcia said, his eyes narrowing. ‘That’s around two weeks ago.’