by S. J. Rozan
Or was I getting carried away? Maybe Oakhurst hadn’t seen the murder. Maybe he’d just stumbled on Pike’s body, and all he was guilty of was not reporting it. If he didn’t know who the killer was, that wasn’t even a crime in New York State.
Though if he did, it was.
At the door to Oakhurst’s studio, Amara peered at me from under sleepy eyelids. “Yes?”
“Tony called me and asked me to come over.”
“Oh?” Silver rings lifted as her pierced eyebrows rose. “He didn’t tell me. Just a minute.” She left me in the vestibule while she wafted away to make sure this was true. It wasn’t, but I had faith. “Okay,” she breathed when she came back. “Come on in.”
Oakhurst was already striding toward the door as I entered. “Hey,” he said, reaching out a hand. I shook it and he said, “What’s up? Come on.” He led me to the leather-benched seating area. Amara floated back to her computer. “Want a drink?” Oakhurst said. “Sit down. I didn’t call you, why the bullshit?” He was grinning.
“I just had one, thanks. Coke?”
“Soda? Or blow?”
At my headshake, he leaned toward the drinks cabinet and retrieved the scotch and, from a small fridge, a can of Coke.
“I needed to talk to you,” I said, popping the lid. “I didn’t want to have a slow-motion fight with your spacey gatekeeper. I figured you’d want to know why the bullshit.”
“Goddamn it. I’m that easy?” He poured himself two fingers of scotch.
“Afraid so. I just came from Franklin Monroe’s place. We were discussing your newest work.”
“Ah, Franklin.” Oakhurst smiled, his tone noncommittal. He lifted his glass to me. “He let you up?”
“It seems to be a rare privilege.”
“It is. He’s proud of that collection. Though he usually has the sense to keep it… pretty private.” Oakhurst took a swig of his drink.
“I imagine most of them do. Your collectors. In the end, though, he decided I was a candy-ass and threw me out.”
“Because?”
“I asked him if he thought last night’s work was staged.”
“Last night’s.”
“He thought I’d seen it.”
“He did?”
I’d suddenly had it. “You have a death-mask photo of Kimberly Pike,” I said. “Were you there when she was killed?”
He took some time over this, sipping scotch. “No,” he finally answered, a small smile on his lips. “Just after.”
“Who killed her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know it was just after? Not hours later?”
“The body was warm. The truck was cold, but her body was warm.”
“What the hell made you look in the truck? Jesus Christ, am I going to have to yank this out of you?”
“Or,” he said, still smiling, looking me in the eye, “I could just tell you to leave.”
“And I might or might not. I might make such a stink you’d have to call the cops. How would that work out for you?”
He shrugged. “I’d tell them you were a crazy man who lied his way in here.”
“I’d tell them you’re a crazy man who takes pictures of dead women. Look, if you don’t know who killed her, you’re a creep but not a criminal. Let’s knock off this shit. How did you know? About the truck?”
If it bothered Oakhurst to be called a creep by a candy-ass, he didn’t show it. He drank some more scotch, and though I figured he was trying to decide what to tell me, I gave him the time. I was banking on his artist’s pride overwhelming his caution. It already had: caution would have told him to take a couple of days between the murder and calling Monroe. Pride had wanted to show off the work right away.
I was half right. “Deal?” he said. “I’ll tell you about the truck if you tell me how you knew to go to Franklin in the first place.”
“That’s it? Hell, I’ll even go first. You called Monroe to come over and see new work this morning. But he’d been here seeing new work yesterday. So the newest work had to be from last night. I’m sure you have glamour shots from the party, but Monroe wouldn’t give a damn about that. So you must have made something last night that would appeal to your private collectors.” I tried to keep my voice neutral so “private collectors” wouldn’t come out sounding like “ghouls.”
Oakhurst nodded slowly. “It couldn’t have been work I just finished from photos I took a while ago?”
“Sure, it could, but then when I called, he wouldn’t have bitten. I specifically said ‘last night’s work’ and he invited me right up.”
Oakhurst nodded. “Pretty good,” he said. “Pretty subtle. I like it.”
“I’m thrilled. Now, you.”
“Now, me.” He poured himself another drink. “What people don’t know,” he said, “is that the best images at high-stakes events come afterwards. Awards ceremonies, championship games, riots, battlefields. When the adrenaline’s gone and people are…” He trailed off.
“Naked turtles?” I supplied.
“Yeah.” He nodded in appreciation, probably not of my memory but of his own metaphor. “So I always hang around. Last night after the action at the back of the Whitney was over, I went to the front and kept shooting until the cops dispersed what was left of the crowd there. Then I came back to the back. I was shooting shoes, hats, water bottles—the shit people had lost, dropped, left behind. I saw someone leaving the truck.”
“Who?”
“I couldn’t tell. Just a silhouette in the headlights from the highway.”
“Man or woman? Fat or thin? Tall or short?”
“Just a silhouette. Elongated, from the lights. Looked like an alien, you want the truth.”
“Did you photograph it?”
“I tried. It made good art and bad journalism. Can’t tell a thing about it.”
“So then you checked out the truck.”
“Oh, come on. You wouldn’t have?”
“And you found?”
Again, the tiny smile. “Her body. Warm. Oh, she was dead, I’d have called nine-one-one if she wasn’t.”
Maybe, maybe not; but what would be gained now if I got in his face about that?
“You shot the photos and closed the truck up again,” I said. “Why not call 911 then?”
No answer. I worked it out myself.
“Because you thought it was your buddy Sam. Sam the serial killer. That’s why you went looking for him. That’s why you didn’t answer my texts, my calls.”
Oakhurst shrugged. “I’m his friend. The least I could do was wait and ask him.”
“Did you?”
“Now that is a stupid question. You hauled him out of there before I had the chance.” He looked up. “Hey, did you ask him?”
“I didn’t know until this morning that she’d been killed. I don’t think he did, either, but of course he says he killed her. So do the cops. I want to see the photo.”
“What?”
“The goddamn photo, of her in the truck. The silhouette, too.”
“The hell you do. Can I say fuck off?”
“Say whatever you damn please. I want to see the photo.”
He blew out a breath, put down his glass, and stood. “What the hell.” Pride for the win, again. He led me to the table in the back. “I haven’t printed any of these yet.” He gave me some smug side-eye. “Franklin’s already reserved one.”
“Based on the raw photo. Which he also reserved. He told me.”
“God, he’s an ass.”
I made no argument. Oakhurst flicked on a large monitor that took up the left side of the table. He clicked through a series of lists, found what he was looking for, allowed an image to settle and rest.
There she was. Kimberly Pike, looking both better and worse than in the NYPD photos on Grimaldi’s board. Those were lit with a crime scene tech’s clinically bright flash. This was much lower light, with planes, shadows, and angles carefully considered, shot with a steady hand
. In Grimaldi’s she was dead, long cold, everything she had been gone. Here, she still looked scared, and shocked.
I took it in, then said, “Now the silhouette.”
After a glance at me, Oakhurst clicked some more. On the monitor the bright glare of headlights swallowed the edges of a person-shaped figure in motion. He’d said it looked like an alien, and he was right. Also, that it was good art and bad journalism.
“You tried working on it, right? To see if you could make out who it was?”
“Oh, for crap’s sake, of course I did. I tried every trick I knew. Nada.”
Nada, except a murderer leaving the scene. I said, “Show me the others.”
“What others?”
“The other silhouettes.”
“I only had time for the one.” He clicked again and the silhouette shrank into a grid of thumbnails. I couldn’t make them out, but there were no others like it.
“All right, now everything else.”
“What do you mean?”
“All these. Everything you shot in the truck last night.”
“I don’t show my outtakes.”
“Christ, I’m not asking as a critic! Show me the goddamn photos.”
My voice held a note that surprised even me. Oakhurst must have heard it, too. After a long look at me, he started swiping through dozens of images. Different angles, different ranges of focus, different exposures. Details, long shots. Her face, her hands, the stab wounds in her chest. The walls and floor of the truck, shiny with the remains of other, nonhuman carcasses. I looked, absorbed, said nothing. Finally he came to the end.
“The rest are just the party,” he said. “And the riot.” He clicked the monitor off.
“Jesus,” I muttered, stepping back.
Oakhurst regarded me and grinned. “You know what? You are a candy-ass.”
Maybe, but I had the strength to keep myself from decking him in his own studio. Instead I turned and headed for the door.
30
I lit a cigarette as soon as I hit the fresh midtown air outside Oakhurst’s studio. I called Lydia but only got her voice mail. “News,” I told it. “Call me.”
Next, I called Grimaldi. Oakhurst’s photos had bothered me, but not as much as I’d played it. I wanted him to think of me as a wuss, and so not a threat. That, plus the great man’s pride in his work, reduced the risk that he’d erase any of those images before Grimaldi saw them. I didn’t know if they held any evidence that she didn’t already have, but they pinpointed time of death to a good eight hours earlier, and that was something.
“Grimaldi.”
“Smith. I’ve got something for you.”
“Tell me it’s the other earring.”
“No. But you’ll like it.” I told her where I was and what I’d seen.
When I was done, she said slowly, “That son of a bitch.”
“I’m betting he won’t let you in without a warrant.”
“I’m pissed enough to call in a SWAT team.”
“You can do that?”
“If the guy’s not an immediate threat, my captain would have my head. But a warrant’ll take hours. Maybe not until morning.”
“Not telling you how to do your job—”
“I’m so glad to hear that.”
“—but if it were me, I wouldn’t get him nervous by trying to go there until you have one,” I said. “If he knows you care, he could erase the photos. If he doesn’t, his ego means they’ll still be there. And it’s not like I saw anything in them that could help.”
“In your opinion.”
“Yeah, but I’m not neutral. I’d love to be able to nail him for something. I was looking.”
“You don’t get to nail people, Smith. I do. Remember that.”
“Right. I will. And when you do see Oakhurst, tell him I sent you.”
I hung up and headed across town. In half a block, the phone rang again. Peter Tabor. “Peter,” I said. “What’s up? Feeling better?”
“I feel like shit. Les and I are trying to do goddamn damage control here. Susan Tulis said you talked to the detective.”
“The one who arrested Sam?”
“Of course, her. Who the hell else?”
Well, Ike Cavanaugh, but I didn’t say that. “Yes, I did. Why?”
“We want to know what kind of evidence they have.”
“I thought Susan told you. A few hairs, that’s all. Even with Sam’s constant confessing, it won’t amount to anything.”
“Why not?”
“There’s nothing else, and hairs don’t have time stamps. He keeps confessing, but he can’t tell them anything about the crime or the victim, and no one can connect him up with her.”
In most criminal cases, if that was everything, the defense would get an easy dismissal. Given Sam’s tenuous hold on reality and his insistence on his own guilt, though, an ambitious ADA might try this case anyway, and a jury might want to put Sam away just to be on the safe side. I didn’t say that to Peter. He’d already said he felt like shit, and he sounded like it.
“You sure that’s all they have?” Peter said. “If it is and the case is as tenuous as you say, why did they even charge him? Leslie says they must have something else.”
“No, I’m not sure, but Grimaldi was pretty straight with me. Peter, this is standard. They want their suspect off the streets while they look for more evidence. If they don’t find it, they’ll drop the charges. Also,” I added, “it’s pretty clear now he wasn’t at the scene.”
“What the hell do you mean, wasn’t at the scene? She was killed at the Whitney. He was there until you lost him. Or if it was later, whatever time it was, Susan said the cops think he might have gone back there when you were asleep.” The accusation in his tone was unmistakable.
“He ran like a greyhound when the riot was just getting started. She was alive, screaming, ‘It’s him,’ when he took off, and his movements can be tracked after that. She died while he was going from bar to bar trying to get a drink.”
“Susan said they can’t nail down the time of death.”
“They thought they couldn’t. There’s a witness now, though. Just after the action outside ended, he saw someone leave the truck. He went inside and found Pike’s body.”
“Jesus, really? Who’s the witness? Who did he see?”
“He says he doesn’t know. Just a figure in the oncoming headlights. But Sam’s movements from the time he ran to the time I found him can be verified. If the witness’s story is true, it can’t have been Sam.”
“If it’s true. What if he’s lying? Who’s the witness? Why didn’t he report it right away? Maybe he’s the killer.”
“I can’t tell you, Peter, I’m sorry.” Technically, there was no reason I couldn’t, except I was pretty sure that if I outed Oakhurst before Grimaldi got to him, she’d shoot me. “But I don’t think he’s lying. And I don’t think he’s the killer. The police will work all that out.”
A long pause. “Good God,” Peter breathed. “What a nightmare this whole thing is.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“So now that they have this witness, when will Sam be released?” Peter didn’t acknowledge my sympathy, but he also didn’t tell me to go to hell.
“I don’t know. Has he been arraigned?”
“Tonight, Susan says. Unless they drop the charges.”
“If they set bail, can you cover it?”
“How do I know? Depends how much they want.”
“Well, once the cops have checked out the witness’s account, and if there’s no new evidence, it shouldn’t be long before the charges are dropped.”
“What if there is new evidence?”
“Why would there be? If Sam didn’t do it?”
That was that. We promised to keep one another updated, and cut the call. Whether Peter was reassured, I didn’t know, but I had nothing else to offer. I lit another cigarette and thought about art.
31
I was sitting
over a cup of coffee in a Ninth Avenue diner when Lydia called back. “You have news?” she asked.
“Yes, I do. You?”
“Nothing. I think I’d better come back tomorrow morning. You know, get the dog-walking crowd.” That was investigative shorthand for people who go out at the same time every day, people who might have seen something out of the ordinary. Sam’s apartment had been broken into in the late morning. The neighborhood streets at that same time tomorrow might offer more than the nothing she’d just found in today’s late afternoon.
“Unless,” she said, “whatever you have makes me superfluous.”
“Bite your tongue.”
“Then I’ll be superfluous and bleeding.”
“And you won’t be able to say ‘superfluous.’ No, I still think we’d better find out who broke into Sam’s apartment. There’s a lot still up in the air. What I have, though, pretty much proves Sam didn’t kill Kimberly Pike. Also, that Tony Oakhurst is a ghoul.”
“Did that second part need proving? So tell me.”
“How about I tell you over dinner?”
“Are you kidding? It’ll take me an hour to get back. You can prove Sam didn’t do it and you expect me to wait?”
“I’m thinking it’ll raise the anticipation of seeing me to a fever pitch.”
“And the danger of my clobbering you when I do. Tell me.”
So, from a diner booth, with Johnny Mathis on the jukebox on my end and car horns and conversations on hers, I told her where I’d been and what I’d seen.
“Oh my God,” she said when I was through. “Ghoul doesn’t begin to cover it. I thought artists…” She trailed off.
“What about them?”
“I don’t know. I guess I always thought of artists as people with, I don’t know, souls. I mean, his work is supposed to be great, isn’t it?”
“Oakhurst? It is great. He has a soul. It’s just rotten.”
“I’m disillusioned.”
“Then let me buy you dinner. I know a place where the pasta is no illusion.”
“We’re done for the day?”
“I think we are. Grimaldi might not get her warrant until morning, or at best later tonight. That would mean Sam won’t be out until tomorrow at the earliest, unless he’s arraigned tonight and Peter and Leslie make his bail, which I’m not sure they can.”
