Stroke of Death

by Dale Mayer

  Her name is Dr. Maddy. And she does that woo-woo stuff.

  He smiled, wrote the name in his notebook, then headed to his appointment with the shrink.

  As soon as he explained the case to the department shrink, Dr. Willoughby sat back with a long, slow sigh and said, “Wow.”

  “I know. A little bit complicated, a little bit off to the left, a whole lot weird, and very, very sad.”

  “But, at the heart of it all,” he said, “it’s simple. Somebody wanted something, and he took it. So you’ve got a collector who knows there’s no other way to get this, except to do what he’s done. What you don’t know is whether he wanted to collect this because he wanted to own it, wanted to stop somebody else from owning it, wanted to potentially duplicate it—”

  “You’re thinking art forgery?” Richard asked, frowning. “I hadn’t considered that.”

  “I’m not sure it’s even viable in this instance. It’s just one of the factors that has to be dealt with in the art world.”

  “But to kill somebody for it?”

  “It means that the person, the victim, is no longer human. They’ve become a piece of art,” the shrink explained. “So, whether they wanted the person to die or not isn’t even an issue here. They’d been relegated to an art object, and this is what had to be done in order for that object to be taken.”

  “So, somebody who’s on medication, somebody who is a sociopath and/or psychopath, somebody who doesn’t care, and would he likely do this again?”

  “Absolutely,” Dr. Willoughby said. “Think about it. If it gave him what he wanted, then he’ll repeat it. On the other hand, we could be looking at this in a way that is far too complicated. It could just be a serial killer, and that is his souvenir. Maybe he is targeting these models, and that’s the souvenir he wants to keep as a reminder of his kill.”

  “Right,” Richard said, sitting back. “I wasn’t thinking along that line at all either because I had focused on the artwork.”

  “Exactly. But, in this case, I’m not sure that’s something you can do because, in many cases, we know that they take a souvenir. This just happens to be a big souvenir and a very specialized one.”

  “Very specialized. So, what are the other options then?”

  “Well, it’s simple. You’re right back down to the psychopath who doesn’t care about anybody else’s feelings, doesn’t care about anybody else and what they want. It’s all about what he wants. And really, it doesn’t matter if it has anything to do with this individual victim. For all you know, that art piece or souvenir was literally just something that he could look at and remember his victim by.”

  “That’s not helpful.”

  “Nothing’s here that you don’t already know,” he said. “We’ve worked on multiple cases for well over a decade. I understand that this one is a little more disturbing.”

  “Is cannibalism a potential motive?”

  “Was any of the underlying flesh gone with the skin?” the psychologist countered. “Or an organ removed?”

  Richard shook his head. “No, everything is intact.”

  “And how clear and concise was the job?”

  “Decent,” he said, “according to the coroner anyway. Not surgical precision but by someone who was decent with a knife. But he also said, that could be anyone. No training required, just practice.”

  “And the woman, being a model, was presumably lean. Was the fat left on the skin or left on the torso?”

  “The bulk of it was left on the torso, and there wasn’t much at all.”

  “And that’s to be expected. What you really have to consider is what does he do with that skin now? It’s not something that he can keep easily.”

  “So freezing is an easy answer, but it won’t keep the masterpiece intact, if that’s what he wanted.”

  “Exactly.”

  The shrink talked a little bit longer, but Richard didn’t gain a whole lot here. It’s not like he could ask for a profile when they didn’t have very much to go on. He’d already checked on similar cases and had come up blank. He’d also done a run on cannibalism and had come up blank. At least not in the last twenty-five years, which, as far as he was concerned, was a thank God all the way around. But now he was wondering what else to even check out.

  Still musing, he pondered his way back to his desk. When he got there, Andy sat at his desk nearby, frowning.

  “We didn’t find anything in her apartment,” he said, “on our first walk-through, but maybe a second is needed.”

  Richard nodded. “That was the next thing on my list to go back to. We’re so short-staffed right now, it’s like we only get halfway into a case. Then we’re pulled off to a dozen other cases.”

  “We did a quick search on her place but not any deeper than that. I’m not sure we need to go back honestly,” he said.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” Richard said, “but I want to take another walk-through.”

  Andy hesitated and said, “Honestly, I should go to Southside and take care of that gas station report. I’ve got a few more questions to ask the second attendant who came on late.”

  “You do that,” Richard said, reaching for his jacket. “And I’ll head over to Elena’s apartment again.”

  “Any idea what you’re looking for?”

  “No, I just hope I recognize it when I see it.”

  It took a little longer than he wanted to get out of the police station and over to the loft, but, as he had tons of potential witnesses to contact, her apartment could theoretically wait. Still, something nagged at him. He really wanted to take the time to sort through and make sure they didn’t miss anything this time around. As he walked into the loft, he stopped once again, amazed at the light and the airiness. “A prime piece of real estate for sure.”

  He did another quick walk-through the living room, but not much was here. A coffee table, without drawers. A couple couches but the other guys had already lifted the cushions and looked underneath.

  He checked the kitchen—one of those ubercontemporary everything-hidden-away-and-not-on-the-counters kitchens with chrome, gleaming glass, and white wood and walls. He opened all the drawers, but she didn’t even have a junk drawer for manuals or where you’d stick things that you didn’t know where to put otherwise. A place for all the items that just never seemed to have any regular home in a kitchen. She didn’t have a drawer like that.

  Frowning, he stopped and looked at the kitchen. “It’s almost like it’s unused.” He frowned, pulling up his records to see when she’d purchased the place, which was about six months ago.

  Noting that, he headed into the bathroom, and definitely items were there, but it wasn’t full of makeup. It wasn’t full of what he would have expected. He had commented on it the last time he was here. Andy had wondered if she had been away or staying with friends or if this was a secondary house.

  “We didn’t find another piece of property when we did a run on assets, so, if this isn’t where she lived full-time, where did she live?” Richard asked out loud to nobody but himself. “We’ll need to keep looking at more property. If we could find her Last Will and Testament, that would help.”

  He opened all the doors and drawers in the bathroom and found feminine products, cleansers, a stack of towels, and spare toilet paper. Nothing, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

  With that, he headed into the bedroom. And again noted a massive queen-size bed, perfectly set up like at a hotel, with six pillows, as if she were a movie star. Well, she was a model, but did she live this lifestyle? It looked so darn perfect.

  He walked into the closet to find clothes, but it wasn’t stuffed with clothing. That led credence to the fact that she potentially didn’t live here full-time.

  Then he stopped, and something hit him. It was almost like the place was staged. Was she planning on selling it? Had it gotten that far and not gone any farther? He called Cayce. “Elena’s apartment is sterile. As if she didn’t cook or even sleep here.”
/>
  “It’s the way she liked to live. She was a free spirit in relationships, but she kept her home immaculate.”

  “So she wasn’t planning to sell it? It looks staged.”

  “No, she was creating and living the life she wanted. That was just her.”

  After the end of that call, the manager of the building called him. “I have the records you were looking for,” he said.

  “All her visitors in the last six months?”

  “Yes,” he said, “and there’s a lot.”

  “Email them to me, please,” he said.

  “Will do.” The manager hung up.

  Richard refocused on the bedroom. He checked under the bed, under the mattresses, between the mattresses, behind the headboard, but nothing was out of the ordinary. It was just way too clean.

  He checked the night tables, under and around them, but nothing. On the wall were great big paintings, all of herself. And they were stunning. He didn’t know who the artists were who had painted her various portraits, but three were very, very similar, and he’d bet his next week’s paycheck that they were Cayce’s work. He took photos of them and then carefully lifted them off the wall, checking to see if anything was behind them, but again found nothing. Frowning, he went back into the closet and moved the hangers, and, sure enough, he discovered a small hidden cover. He opened that to find a safe. He immediately sent Andy a message and a photo.

  We’ve got to get into that pretty fast, Andy texted back.

  Contact her lawyer, he typed. See if we can get the combination. Otherwise we’ll bring in somebody to break this lock.

  How are your skills?

  They suck, he said.

  Don’t you know somebody who has magical abilities pertaining to locks?

  No.

  The thing was, he did know somebody, and he’d lied twice just now to his partner because Richard was that somebody, but he wanted it on record with his texts that the safe was here, without giving away Richard’s special skills. He looked at the dial and sighed.

  “Well, we said we wouldn’t do this again, but we pretty well have to.”

  He reached up with his fingers, already gloved. Using his inner eye, with his acute hearing locked down on this point, he turned the dial, waiting for the tumblers to click. He’d learned to do this a long time ago, but he couldn’t do it very often with very many things. He’d often wondered if possibly he could do more with his secret abilities but, … so far, nothing yet.

  He followed the energy. And, when that little pin dropped, he could hear, see, or feel when it went. By the time he turned the dial back the other way, he found the next one, and then the last. In less than two minutes. He smiled, stepped back, and pulled it open. Inside was money, as in megabundles of cash. He whistled, pulled them out, took a look at how much was here, and realized hundreds of thousands of dollars were in her safe.

  He turned to look at the place and then at the safe. “Did you really make that kind of money?” He needed to double-check her income tax and see just what the hell she was claiming.

  Underneath the money was an envelope. He pulled that out to see the label, Last Will and Testament, affixed to the envelope, not sealed. He pulled out the document and quickly glanced through it and froze.

  Half of the entire estate went to Cayce. He stared at that damning motive for murder and shook his head. “Wow.”

  He quickly put everything back, checked that nothing else was here, and locked up the safe. When the phone rang, he picked it up and said to Andy, “Well, that took you a while.”

  “Hey, I know you cracked a different safe that we had to get into before.”

  “Yeah, and I just did it again,” Richard said. “But I’m not allowed to, as you well know.”

  “I do know that,” Andy said, “but we are allowed to try. And, having done that, I already contacted the lawyer. He has no idea about a safe.”

  “Of course not,” he said, “but what’s in here is hundreds of thousands of dollars, in cash, and a will.”

  “Could you get into the will?”

  “Absolutely. Half of it goes to Cayce.”

  “The artist?”

  “Yeah, the artist.”

  “That’s easily half a million dollars. That’s motive,” Andy said. “Who gets the other half?”

  “Five other people,” he said. “I don’t know who they are yet, but I took a photo of the will. And I’d say it’s way more than one point five million dollars in Elena’s estate.”

  “Well, we’ve got clearance from the lawyer to open it because he needs to deal with the estate. He’s pulling up his copy of the will and needs that one to compare to, in case she changed it.”

  “Good enough. You can tell him that we’ll get this to him as soon as possible. I think I’ll photograph everything as it is.”

  “How is it you always see that stuff before anybody else does?”

  “Just lucky, I guess,” he said in a noncommittal voice.

  Andy snorted and hung up.

  Richard went back to the safe, using the same method he’d used before to see the slight energy around the edges. What he saw best were small thin lines because they lit up for him, almost like a flashlight would. Anyway, he reopened the safe and carefully unloaded everything, took it out and placed it on the bed, and photographed it all—the money just as bundled but with a close look at the topmost serial number, noting the second one and the last one. All sequential. Then he put it all back into the safe and locked it up again. He wrote down the combination for others, if they needed to come in here and access it, because the lawyer would have to deal with the contents before the property transferred over.

  With that job done, Richard checked again in the bedroom, but nothing else was here. Taking a few photographs, he headed back to the station. What he wanted to do was check with the artist and see if she knew who were these other five people in the will, and he wanted to have a talk with her about how she ended up being the main beneficiary.

  He walked back to his vehicle with one final look at the loft standing prestigiously alone in the setting sun. He shook his head. “That’s a crapload of money for a body model.”

  Chapter 5

  Cayce stood back from the same large installation where she’d been working on the design for the last couple days. The background was about 85 percent there. Frankie’s work was improving as he helped her install the backdrops and did an initial layer of painting.

  Anita walked in and said, “You haven’t taken a break, have you?”

  Cayce looked over at her, smiled, and said, “You know what I’m like when I get in the zone.”

  “You also booked your schedule way too tight,” she said. “And you’re getting stressed out.”

  “Nothing to do with the painting though,” Cayce said with a sad smile. “I can’t stop thinking about Elena.”

  “I know. Do you think what we’re hearing about souls and stuff was real?”

  “No,” she said instantly. Of course some of it was, but she wasn’t in for a long-drawn-out conversation with someone who didn’t understand.

  “Remember that weird guy who came to one of the shows a few months back, saying you shouldn’t be painting the models like that?”

  “Yeah, but he was a whack job,” she said defensively. “A panhandler wanting the free food. Security got him handled pretty quickly.” The fact that this guy had been weirdly right on also bothered her.

  “He said something about you stealing their souls.”

  “And yet what I was doing was trying to enhance their bodies,” Cayce said with a smile. “How could I be stealing souls?” She smiled at her assistant. “It’s words from a nutcase.”

  “I don’t know. It freaked me out.”

  “But he said a lot of stuff,” she said. “We can’t let everything anybody says freak us out.”

  Anita nodded, turning her attention to the painting. “You’re really talented,” she said in amazement, as she stared at the massive w
all. “I couldn’t even begin to paint something like that on a small scale, and here you are doing these massive walls.”

  “It’s not just me though.” She pointed to several laborers, who were doing the backdrop for her.

  “I know they do a lot too, but, jeez, look at this.”

  “Starting to look really good, isn’t it?”

  “It really is.” She shook her head. “Good thing this installation isn’t for at least six months.”

  “We were talking about two years maybe.”

  Anita looked at her in delight.

  She gave her a small smile. “See? Sometimes it does work out.”

  “It’s not the models at all, is it?” Anita noted.

  “Not really, no. Only for opening night,” she said absentmindedly. “It’s just what I’m known for.”

  “Still though—”

  “Still,” she said with a nod, “just because I lost Elena doesn’t mean I stop doing what makes me feel good.”

  “Does what that guy said ever bother you?”

  “No, not really. He was kind of weird.”

  “Did you tell the police about him? They should probably know.”

  Cayce was about to tell her not to worry about it, when a man spoke from behind them.

  “Tell the police about what?”

  Her shoulders sagged as she recognized Detective Henderson’s voice. The fact that she could already see his form in front of her as soon as their energy connected was yet another weird and wonderful fact of the way her mind worked. It wasn’t just her mind; it was her energy that reached out to these things that, to her, were incredible art objects that she desperately wanted to paint. With a heavy sigh, she turned to face the detective. “Good evening.”

  He nodded, his gaze on the painting. “It’s come a long way since I saw it last.”

  “When was that? This morning?” she asked in a caustic tone.

  He turned slowly to look at her. “A lot has happened since then.”

  Immediately hope surged. “Did you find Elena’s killer?”

  “No,” he said quickly.

  Her hopes dashed, she nodded mutely and turned back to the painting. He’d come for more questions, obviously, and that was something she didn’t really want to deal with. “I’m behind schedule,” she said, “so, if you have any questions, please direct them to my assistant.” She looked toward Anita, but her assistant was backing away, her hands up, as if to say, Don’t include me in this conversation.