The near-dead and the dying fear the sadistically lying,
Through torturous days of violence in waves,
And shivering nights spent praying for light,
Until dawn arrives and the red door yawns wide,
And the mad, sly grin of the one who tallies the sin,
Dashes the hopes of not yielding the ghost,
And though acceptance is surely the hardest,
In here, it’s clear, we all belong to the Artist.
Her freshman year English professor would’ve flunked her for rhyming, but since Mr. Vaughn had never been tortured in a dungeon, he needed to cut her some slack. She was a survivor and she would do whatever it took to stay alive. The Artist could take her body. He could take her dignity. But he could never take her mind. And despite the gravity of her situation, she refused to go gently into the night.
Mr. Vaughn also would’ve frowned upon her failure to attribute that last thought to whatever author, poet, or war hero first coined the phrase. But it didn’t matter. It was hers now. She owned it. Just like she owned the night. Like she owned the Artist.
It seemed strange to make such a bold claim, especially since she was chained to the wall, but it was the truth. The Artist had loved her once. She would see to it that he loved her again. Somewhere beneath the delusions of grandeur, the psychotic tendencies, and the warped perception of justice, was a sad little boy crying out for love.
So, for now, she would be the perfect inmate, the perfect prize. She would earn his trust. She would stroke his ego. She would use her feminine charms to tame the beast that raged inside of him.
And when he was finally calm—when that sad little boy at last felt safe and fulfilled—she would strike him down. And dance upon his grave.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Salty Dean’s Tattoo Parlor shared a wall with a bait and tackle shop across from the Jodrey Fish Pier in Gloucester. Behind the building, the Atlantic loomed ash gray under an overcast sky, the sound of rolling waves pierced by the angry squawk of gulls fighting for scraps left behind by fishermen.
Inside the shop, a weathered brunette with multiple face piercings sat hunched over a laptop, the wall behind her cluttered with framed photos of tattoo designs. Past the reception desk, a bearded tattoo artist with arms like pythons put the finishing touches on a tattoo of a black dragon coiled around the spine of an Asian customer with spiky orange hair. It was an intricate design that captured the dragon in motion, its iridescent scales reflecting the light, its sinewy wings flexed for takeoff.
The artist glanced over his shoulder at Ray and Billy, who had just entered the shop and triggered the door chime. “Be right with you,” he said. A few minutes later, the artist stripped off his latex gloves and escorted the customer to the front desk for checkout. After a brief discussion about post-procedure care, the artist turned toward Ray and Billy.
He was an imposing figure—six-three or six-four—with tousled black hair and a bushy beard streaked with gray. He looked like he could’ve been the leader of an outlaw biker gang, except that his eyes lacked the requisite degree of malice.
“What can I help you with?”
“Are you Dean Saunders?” Ray said.
“That depends on who’s asking.”
Ray and Billy flashed their badges. “I’m Detective Hanley and this is my partner, Detective Devlin. We’re with the Boston Police.”
“You’re a bit out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”
“We want to ask you a few questions,” Ray said.
Saunders eyed the door and waited for his customer to exit. “Is this about Barry Finkleton?”
“What do you know about him?” Billy asked.
“I’m one of his artists. Veronica told me what happened.”
“How would you describe your relationship with Finkleton?” Ray asked.
“We got along fine. He helped launch my career. I’ve sold more than a hundred sculptures through his gallery.”
“You ever paint?” Billy asked.
“Just on bodies.”
“Does this look familiar to you?” Ray showed him a picture of The Suffering of Ages.
Saunders shook his head. “I don’t know many other artists. I just do my own thing, you know?”
“What do you think of the painting?” Billy asked. “Is it good, or what?”
“It’s not my taste.”
“Would you say the artist is talented?” Billy asked.
Saunders shrugged. “I wouldn’t hire him as a tattoo artist.”
“Why did you say he?” Ray asked. “We never said the artist was a man.”
Saunders raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “I just assumed. Maybe that means I’m sexist, but last time I checked that wasn’t a crime.”
“Oh, he’s sexist alright,” the woman at the front desk said. “Expects me to cook and clean when we get home, as if I wasn’t here working beside him all day long.”
Saunders rolled his eyes. “You spend fifteen minutes a day waiting on customers and about eight hours messing around on that computer.”
“He’s got a point,” Billy said. “You barely looked at us when we came in. Not even so much as a hello.”
The woman gave Billy the finger. “Maybe I don’t talk to assholes.”
“Sorry,” Saunders said, “she’s been in a mood today.”
“Don’t worry,” Ray said. “He gets that a lot. Back to Finkleton. Do you have any idea who might’ve killed him?”
“Like I said, I don’t get involved in that scene. I just do my sculptures and deliver them to the gallery. When something sells, he cuts me a check. Or he used to, anyway.”
“Did he pay you fairly?” Ray asked.
“To be honest, I don’t know. It always seemed fair to me, but I’m new to the business. Barry had all the connections to the rich buyers, so without him I’d just have hunks of bronze cluttering my garage.”
“Do you have anyone who’ll vouch for your whereabouts this past week?” Billy asked.
Saunders cocked a thumb toward the front desk. “Brenda.”
Billy met her gaze from across the room. “Has he been around this week?”
“Yeah,” Brenda said. “And I’d know, because he’s a constant pain in my ass.”
“Is there anyone else who can vouch for you?” Ray asked.
“I go to an AA meeting at the Methodist church on East Main every night at eight. Anyone there can vouch for me.”
“What about last Sunday night?” Ray asked. “You go to a meeting then?”
“Yeah, and afterward I went to a buddy’s house to play cards.”
“How many people were there?”
“About five.”
“We’re gonna need names,” Ray said. “What time did you leave?”
“It was a late night. I didn’t get home until after one.”
“Alright,” Ray said. “One last question. Is that your truck parked in the lot? The silver F-150?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You mind if we take a look?”
***
The tracks they’d discovered at Stony Brook Reservation were made by 265-millimeter Wranglers, which didn’t match the larger variety Firestones on Saunders’s truck. His girlfriend drove a yellow VW bug—perhaps to match her sunny disposition—but Ray doubted it would be an effective means of transporting a giant humanoid spider.
“Talk about coming up empty,” Billy said as they rode back into the city. “We literally struck out on all counts.”
Ray squeezed the wheel and said nothing.
Before interviewing Saunders, they’d visited Don Martinez, the artist who’d accused Finkleton of ripping him off. According to Veronica, Martinez had violated his contract by removing his works from Finkleton’s gallery. He was also the artist whose name was inside the egg that appeared half-devoured, presumably by Finkleton.
Despite being a promising suspect, and the only one with a real motive, it turned out that Martinez ha
d undergone knee surgery a couple days prior to Finkleton’s murder. When Billy pressed him for proof, Martinez unbandaged his knee to reveal the wound, which was sufficiently nasty to support his claim. He also presented them with a stack of medical bills from Mass General that corroborated the date of his surgery.
When Ray and Billy arrived at the precinct, the weekly diss had vanished from the wall and Henry was standing in the parking lot, rinsing off a scrub brush. “Nice work,” Ray said, patting Henry on the shoulder.
Henry flashed them his trademark grin, which erased years from his face. “It only took four hours, three bottles of cleaner, and a shit-ton of elbow grease.”
Billy chuckled as he reached for the door to the building. “Too bad Spinonni will still find something to bitch about.”
The 11th Precinct consisted of multiple units, including homicide, gang, and narcotics, and given its proximity to the rougher side of the city, the place buzzed with activity pretty much 24/7. The area known as the bullpen contained twenty-four desks, which were occupied by officers and analysts talking on the phone and pecking away at their keyboards, drafting incident reports in a two-fingered approach that would’ve made Ray’s high school typing teacher cringe.
Ray spotted Trooper Garrison standing in the booking area talking to Sergeant Callahan. “Welcome back,” Ray said, shaking Garrison’s hand. “How you feeling?”
Garrison patted his stomach. “It takes more than a couple bullets to hurt these abs of steel.”
Ray grinned. “Still as cocky as ever.”
“A few inches lower,” Billy said, “and his cocky would’ve gone splat.”
Garrison winced. “Man, I don’t even want to think about that.”
“Come on,” Callahan said, “let’s head into the briefing room.”
They followed Callahan through the bullpen and into the briefing room, where the back wall had been commandeered for the case. A whiteboard displayed the timeline of events, accompanied by names and dates of the suspects they’d interviewed. A poster-sized photo of The Suffering of Ages hung beside the whiteboard like a madman’s nightmare, surrounded by dozens of crime scene photos depicting Danny’s waterlogged corpse and Finkleton’s freakish impersonation of a spider.
Ray studied the surrealistic landscape of the painting, which offered a rare glimpse into the killer’s mind. “Did Gary find any trace evidence on the painting?”
Callahan shook his head. “The paint is too coarse to hold a print.”
“What about fibers?” Garrison asked.
“They’ve got to shave the paint off one flake at a time,” Callahan said. “It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“What about that egg I brought in?” Ray said.
“Came back negative.”
“Christ,” Ray said. “We can’t catch a break.” He studied the whiteboard and reviewed what they knew about the Artist, including what the department’s profiler had inferred about his psyche.
–White male, aged 25-30, medium build, dark hair
–Aspiring painter, calls himself The Artist
–Call sign is two interlocking infinity symbols forming an X
–Painted The Suffering of Ages displayed in The Particle Bean coffee shop (Cambridge)
–Drives a truck with 265-millimeter Wrangler tires
–Medical training (med school, EMT?)
–Disfigures victims via amputation / body modification
–Makes victims into something new (spider, elephant)
–Leaves object in rectum (matchbox car, plastic egg)
–Keeps victims alive to prolong suffering
–Motive / choice of victims may be revenge based
–Danny the Mule (molestation) / Finkleton (rejection of
art)
–Probable loner and past victim of sexual abuse
–Likely bullied as a child
–Likely suffers from delusions of grandeur / inflated
ego
–Probable sociopath with high IQ
–Likely lives and works within city limits
–Mother may have been a stripper (Angie T) with ties
to Jack Flaherty
–Might’ve grown up in East Boston
Ray folded his arms and stared at the board, hoping some new connection would jump out at him. But nothing did.
Callahan turned to Detective Greene, who’d just entered the room. “How’d it go at the library?”
Greene shifted his weight from one leg to the other, something he tended to do when all eyes were upon him. He spoke in a habitual monotone, reporting events in a just-the-facts Joe Friday sort of way. “We found two terminals with a browsing history that included deaddumbandbizzare.com. The site was last accessed on May 18 with the username The Artist.”
“What’s Gary say about prints?” Ray asked.
“His team is still analyzing prints lifted from the keyboards, monitors, and desks. So far, they’ve found twenty-seven prints that are usable, but Gary says those were likely from the most recent users. I’ll review the results when they become available, but according to the librarian, a typical day draws several hundred users on those computers.”
“Seriously?” Billy said. “That many people go to the library?”
“If the Artist last posted two days ago,” Garrison said, “his prints would’ve gotten smudged off by now.”
“Quite possibly,” Greene said, “but if he touched somewhere other than the keyboard, like the chair leg or the monitor, then our odds increase.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Ray said. “This guy’s been careful to a fault. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wore gloves.”
“That occurred to me as well,” Greene said. “I asked the librarian if he observed anyone with gloves accessing the computers recently. He responded that they get so many weirdos and germaphobes wandering through the place that he hardly takes notice anymore.”
Callahan shifted his gaze to Ray and Billy. “Anything promising come out of questioning those artists today?”
Billy folded his arms. “We struck out.”
“One of them just had surgery,” Ray said, “and the other one’s got no motive and has a solid alibi.”
“So more dead ends?” Callahan asked.
“Yeah,” Billy said. “More dead ends.”
Ray approached the whiteboard and pointed to a list of names under the heading Competitors. He turned to Greene. “You interviewed some of these guys when Finkleton first went missing. Any of them worth another visit?”
Greene shook his head. “Ridley spoke with them before he got called to active duty. I reviewed his notes and followed up with them, but I don’t think there’s anything there. They all appear to be upstanding citizens with solid alibis.”
“Where do we stand on the surveillance video?” Callahan asked.
“There’s no cameras within two blocks of The Particle Bean,” Greene said. “There’s a couple on Boylston Street with a limited view of people entering the library, but we can trace anyone of interest back to other cameras farther down the street.”
“That’s true,” Garrison said, “except there’s dozens of white guys in their mid-twenties coming and going around the time the Artist posted. And we’ve found no physical evidence that would help narrow the field.”
Ray looked at Callahan. “I think our best lead is the painting. I say we release it to the media and open up the tip line.”
“Did we show the painting to Finkleton’s competitors?” Callahan asked.
Greene nodded. “None of them recognized it.”
“Alright,” Callahan said, “then I agree that releasing it seems like the next logical move. The Artist already knows we have the painting, so we wouldn’t be showing our hand. What else do you guys have?”
“We’ve still got a lead on that stripper,” Billy said.
Garrison chuckled. “You never forget a stripper, do you, Billy?”
“You should’ve seen him at the Pum
a,” Ray said. “I was standing toe-to-toe with Flaherty, about to go a few rounds, his bouncers swarming around me, and there’s Billy at the main stage chatting up some third-rate stripper.”
“I happened to be conducting my own interview,” Billy said. “And for the record, she had first-rate tits.”
“I call bullshit,” Garrison said. “On both counts. You and I have very different definitions of first-rate.”
Greene folded his arms and frowned, uncomfortable with the banter.
“Let’s get Clint in here,” Ray said, referring to the analyst he’d tasked with tracking down the stripper. He reached for the phone hanging beside the whiteboard and punched in a four-digit extension.
Clint arrived a few moments later with a stack of papers. He was a soft-spoken man who bore a strong resemblance to George Costanza from Seinfeld, so the guys at the precinct naturally called him that. But since Clint didn’t care much for the nickname or for the inference that he was short, balding, and overweight, Ray was one of the few people who called him by his real name.
“There he is,” Billy said. “Georgie-boy.”
Clint nodded in Billy’s direction but said nothing.
“What did you find?” Ray asked.
“I ran the information through the database and identified twenty-three women who lived in East Boston in the past ten years with a last name beginning with T and a first name that might be associated with the name Angie.”
“What’s that cover?” Ray asked. “Angela, Angelina, Angelica?”
“I ran it wider than that,” Clint said. “I included any woman whose name begins with a-n-g.”
“And how many are dead now, but would’ve been around sixty if still alive?” Ray asked.
Clint shuffled his papers. “Just two, but one of them never had children and the other one only had a daughter.”
Ray groaned. “What do you have on the woman with the daughter?”
“She was an elementary school teacher who also worked part time for the local church. Her records show pretty much constant employment.”
“Doesn’t sound like a stripper,” Garrison said.
“And unless her daughter had a sex change, she’s not the Artist,” Callahan said.
The Art of Dying: A Ray Hanley Crime Thriller Page 17
