The Bloody Canvas

by KJ Kalis

  William took one of the peanuts and laid it on the work surface inside the box. Using the scalpel, he sliced it from end to end, opening it like it was an exceedingly small submarine sandwich. As soon as he sliced it open, Kat could see that the inside of the peanut was actually hollow. White powder came pouring out.

  Kat leaned forward, “What is that?”

  “That, my dear, is the more powerful cousin of fentanyl. It’s carfentanil.”

  Silence covered the room for a moment. Kat knew that carfentanil was the much more potent big brother to fentanyl that was sold on the streets. There had been cases of police officers in the United States who had approached an abandoned car only to be overwhelmed by the drug the minute they opened the door. “So, what you are saying is that someone is shipping carfentanil inside of packing peanuts?”

  Before William could answer, Henry said, “How many packing peanuts have drugs inside of them?”

  “One question at a time. Yes, Kat, someone has taken a lot of care to get the drugs inside of the packing peanuts. And yes, Henry, all of them to date. The total number could be in the thousands.”

  Kat realized that if someone was shipping drugs with the art that changed the equation of what they were chasing substantially. Her mind raced back to the process they must have used to get the drugs inside of the peanuts. “William, how would they have gotten the powder inside of these packing peanuts?”

  William sighed, “That part, I haven’t exactly figured out yet. I am guessing they injected it.”

  Mary said, “Aren’t packing peanuts usually solid?”

  William nodded. “Indeed. They generally are. My theory is that they had this batch specially manufactured for them.” He pointed inside the Plexiglas box. “Take a look at this.” With gloved hands, he tapped out all the powder that was inside of the single peanut that he had cut in half. “Do you see how there is a hollow section in the center?” Everyone in the group nodded. “What I haven’t determined yet is if they were manufactured this way or if somehow the powder was heated to make the inside of the Styrofoam melt as it was injected. That will require additional testing.”

  Kat leaned forward, staring into the box, trying to see as best she could what William was talking about. William picked up a small brush, much like one that might be used for painting, and dusted the interior of the peanut he had sliced from end to end. “See, the texture of the inside of the peanut looks different than the exterior. I’ll have to run some additional tests, but it’s possible they melted the interior and injected the drugs.” He tilted his head to the side, “This is a new one, for sure. Brilliant plan, really.”

  Mary led the group out of the investigation room, leaving William with his hands still in the box. As soon as the door closed behind them, the group stopped. Mary looked at Henry, “I’m assuming that Scotland Yard will be following up on this?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll get some of our narcotics officers down here shortly.”

  Mary walked off, the three of them left standing to absorb the information they had heard. Eli had been silent the entire time. Kat looked at him, “Eli, do you have any thoughts? You were awfully quiet.”

  Eli cleared his throat, “I was just thinking. I was wondering what was more important to the criminals, was it the art or was the art just a way to transport the drugs?”

  Kat bit her lip. “That’s a good question. Knowing that Hailey’s murder has to do with drugs puts a different spin on it, doesn’t it, Henry?”

  “To the British government, it will. I need to go make a call. Excuse me.” Henry walked off. Kat imagined that he was calling his office to get more investigators involved in the case.

  Nearby, there were two small crates set off to the side. Kat walked over and sat on one. Eli sat on the other. “We have to figure out how all of this works together,” Kat said.

  Eli nodded, seeming discouraged. “I just don’t understand…”

  “What is it that you don’t understand?” Kat said.

  Eli rubbed his forehead with his short, stocky fingers. “There is no order to what’s happening.”

  Kat understood how he was feeling. She felt the same. Henry walked back to the two of them a moment later. Kat looked up at him from her perch on the crate, “Everything okay?”

  Henry nodded. “Yes. There will be some additional officers arriving here shortly. In the meantime, I think we need a new plan.”

  Kat pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I think we better loop Carson in on this, don’t you?” Henry nodded.

  Carson answered after the first ring, “Kat? Everything okay?”

  “Well, we’ve had a new wrinkle to the case.” Kat went on to tell him about the packing peanuts, the drugs, and the theories that William was working on. The rest of them listened, Kat’s phone on speaker.

  “That does make things more complicated, doesn’t it?” Carson said. “Henry, what’s the next step for Scotland Yard?”

  Henry leaned over so he could speak into Kat’s phone, “Some of the narcotics team members are on their way over. I’ll confer with them when they get here, but my assumption is they will open an investigation. The customs investigators will do exactly the same thing. We can’t have these drugs on our streets.”

  “Carson? Any idea how this fits with Hailey’s murder?” Kat asked. She could almost hear his head shake as he responded.

  “None, but that’s what we have to figure out before someone else dies.”

  29

  Stella Rusu sat in her favorite chair by a fire in her living room. She had a cup of tea that warming her hands, the last thing the housekeeper did before she went home for the night.

  She stretched her legs out in front of her and then curled them back up underneath the white cashmere afghan that she had pulled across her lap. Though the weather was starting to get warmer, there was still dampness in the air. Typical for London, she thought.

  As she took a sip of the bitter tea, her phone chirped. She picked it up, her brows knitting together. Instead of texting, she called. “What happened?” she asked, knowing they were on a secure line that could not be traced.

  A male voice answered. It was Bobby, one of her lieutenants. “I’m just getting information about it now, ma’am.”

  Stella felt the pain of anger surged through her body. She needed to keep it under control so that she could think clearly, “Tell me what you know.”

  “From what my source and the customs building said, the drug dog alerted on the packages that were received this morning.”

  “Why was there a drug dog?” Stella got up and started to pace. Her long blonde hair was piled up on top of her head, her face coated with a thick moisturizer that cost more than she paid her housekeeper for a month of work. She wore an oversized sweater that exposed one of her shoulders and a pair of leggings.

  Stella Rusu was used to getting what she wanted when she wanted it. The daughter of billionaire Marcus Rusu, Stella had been given the import-export business to run on her own. Her father, Marcus, had made his mark already, and was in his later years living in a chalet in Switzerland, surrounded by a protective detail and a team of nurses and a hand-selected doctor that stayed with him no matter where he went. Stella had two older brothers, John and Stefan. They were in charge of the majority of her father’s business now.

  When she was eighteen, her father had sent her to London to go to university. She was a gymnast and graduated with a degree in philosophy. Not that she would have ever used it; the family business was the focus of everything they did.

  Every time Stella went to Switzerland to see her father, she came home disappointed. He would greet her warmly, ask her questions about work, and then immediately launch into stories about the old days. He never asked how she was or what was going on in her personal life. Not that she had much of one.

  After college, her father had walked her into the main offices of the import business and told her that he wanted her to learn the ropes, to take it over. He would
pay her handsomely, more than she could ever hope to make it any other job. She remembered that moment, her feelings swinging back and forth between elation at having part of the family business and sadness knowing that there was no other option for her.

  There had been no option for her mother, Christina, either. Stella looked a lot like her mother, blonde and thin. At times, she wondered if she reminded her father of his late wife.

  Marcus, her father, had fallen in love with Christina when he watched her dance. She had been a ballerina. They had married quickly and had her oldest brother John just a year after that. Stefan was born two years later, but there was a five-year gap between Stefan and Stella.

  Growing up, Stella had noticed that she spent more time with the nannies than she did with her mother. She had memories of running into her mother’s bedroom, finding her mom laying on her side staring out the window, saying nothing. Her mother had fallen into a deep depression after she had Stella, and never quite recovered. When Stella was twelve, Christina had gone down to Marcus' gun cabinet while he was on a hunting trip, stood in front of it, and shot herself. The house manager called Marcus, who ordered the room to be cleaned, the body to be removed, and the entire room to be redecorated by the time he got home twenty-four hours later. There was no funeral.

  Stella tried to control the memories that were flashing in her mind and concentrate on the problem in front of her. “I thought you told me that there would be no search for drugs.”

  “That was my impression, ma’am. Apparently, my source got it wrong.”

  “This is unacceptable. Fix it.” She threw the phone against one of the pillows on the couch. Bobby had been someone who’d been with his family since he was a boy, starting by running errands in the neighborhood where her family lived. Not that you could really call it a neighborhood -- there were just a smattering of small houses dotted across the valley floor. Marcus and his family lived above all of them in an estate perched on a Romanian mountainside. That was before her father had bought a second home in Switzerland.

  Now, Bobby was in London with Stella. He had come to work with her once her father had given her the import-export business. He said it was for advice and protection. Stella knew it was more than that. She was sure Bobby was updating her father on exactly what she was doing, probably on a moment by moment basis.

  She started to pace in front of the fireplace. A drug dog alerting on her newest way to ship drugs through Europe could represent a significant impact on her work. In her position, she couldn’t have any failures.

  Growing up with two older brothers who were destined for the family business had been difficult. No matter what Stella did, no matter how hard she worked or what she accomplished, it wasn’t enough for her father. Their nightly dinners growing up were a rundown of what everyone had done for the day, even before the boys started working for their father. John would talk about his success at school, while Stefan told of the wrestling moves he’d learned at practice. Her father would laugh and instruct and praise the boys, while all she got was, “How was your day, honey? Did you and your friends have fun?”

  The feeling of being minimized stuck with Stella from the time her mother died. It never left her, except for the moment that Marcus had given her control of the import-export business. John had taken over the real estate business, the family holding properties all over Europe and South America. Stefan was working with Marcus on the gambling side of the business.

  The day came when Marcus told Stella to get ready. They had somewhere to go. She got in the car with his driver and Bobby in tow. At the warehouse, a dusty, old building that had barely been used for the last decade, Marcus walked her to the office. “This is now yours. Honestly, I haven’t done much with it in a long time. You can make it something.” She could still feel the warmth of his hand on her cheek, “You are a smart girl. You’ve done well at school.” Marcus glanced over at Bobby, “You’ll help her.”

  Bobby nodded, “Yes, sir. Whatever she needs.”

  Stella was starstruck for a moment, walking around the building. She had been in it many times as a child, sitting in the corner of the office while her dad did some work, getting shooed out if a business associate came to visit. Stella could still hear the sounds of the forklifts and men working, the smell of their lunches as they stopped midday, pulling out paper sacks their wives had packed for them.

  Stella felt excitement growing within her as she walked away from her father and Bobby. She’d redecorate the office first and get an assistant. She’d travel, looking for new opportunities her father had never found. She’d rebuild the business. She was sure of it.

  Marcus and Bobby were talking when she walked back. She came up behind them. “It’s just something to keep her occupied. Keep an eye on her…” her father said.

  Stella stopped and swallowed. The truth crashed down over her. Her father hadn’t woken up and started believing in her. Nothing had changed. As her father turned, she smiled, “Papa, thank you. I’m so excited!” She gave him a kiss on the cheek, though her lips felt cold and bloodless.

  He patted her on the arm. “Of course, honey. This will keep you busy until you are ready to have babies.”

  A rage she had never felt before bloomed inside of her. He hadn’t changed. What would happen if she fell in love and got married? Did he think she’d walk away from the business so she could be at home caring for her children day and night? A coldness passed over her. Any love that she had for her father disappeared at that moment. The feeling of respect and duty lingered, but that was all.

  Stella stopped in the middle of the living room, the warmth from the fire soaking through her legs. In the distance, she could see the lights from Big Ben. She had gotten used to dealing with problems on her own. The first couple of times that issues with the business rose up, she tried to call her father for advice. He told her not to worry about it. The problems disappeared without her doing a thing. When she had an issue with an employee or a contractor, they tended to disappear or came to apologize as if their life depended on it. She knew Marcus was pulling the puppet strings behind the scenes. He was a master manipulator.

  She walked into the kitchen, considering her options. Out of the refrigerator, she pulled a bottle of white wine. She needed something stronger than a cup of tea. From a cabinet above the sink, she reached for a long-stemmed wine glass, filling it up nearly to the top. She took a sip, the liquid warming her insides better than the tea.

  The drug dog could be a problem, she thought, sitting down on a chair facing the fire, covering her legs with the afghan again. The bigger problem was if they could find the drugs. She sighed. The drugs themselves were worth more than a million dollars on their own. They had started with a small shipment, not much more than a kilogram, because there was no guarantee if they would be able to get it through. Either way, she didn’t want to lose that amount of money. Stella took a long sip of wine, the alcohol burning the back of her throat.

  The art was another issue entirely. On their own, the canvases she had acquired through Christopher were worth nothing. They were the work of a gifted, but unknown, art student. But sold on the market as real pieces, they were each worth hundreds of millions.

  Art wasn’t something that her father had ever been involved in. Marcus had stuck to more traditional imports and exports. In the early days, he smuggled things like alcohol and other prohibited items into the Eastern Bloc countries of Europe. People would pay a huge premium in order to get the things that they wanted. Rationing and governmental requirements never allowed cigarettes, cigars and alcohol to hit the market. The black market was the only place to get them.

  As times changed and the Eastern Bloc countries opened up, everyone had to evolve. That included the importers and exporters. Stella twirled the wine glass in her fingers, the light of the fire shimmering through the amber liquid, thinking about her first days running the business. She learned to follow her instincts quickly. Her father assigned her crew to clean up, pa
int and redecorate the office. It had been done in just a couple of days. Stella, unlike other members of her family, wasn’t that interested in the trappings that the business brought. She was more interested in the business itself. That was something she discovered as she started to work. Though her father had said that the business was working, one quick look at the books told her that there was nothing there that could be leveraged. Though she had been a philosophy major at university, she had taken some classes in economics. The basic principles of the market served her well. Supply. Demand. That’s how all businesses ran. In fact, Stella learned quickly that was how the world ran, too. If you had something that someone wanted and there wasn’t much of it available, you could command whatever price you wanted.

  Stella stood up and paced, taking another sip of wine. She remembered right after Marcus had handed the business over to her. One night, she was at the warehouse late. It was only about two months after her father had given her the business. The floors had been swept, the lights updated, and she had people who were in the building all day long every day to protect the things that were coming in and out. The imports and exports had started up like a trickle, but it wasn’t enough. She knew she wanted a bigger business, but how?