The Shadow of Venus

by Judith Van GIeson

  The Bernalillo County prosecutor was convinced that Damon had demonstrated the malice aforethought and cool reflection that made it possible to charge him with murder in the first degree in the death of June Reid. There was no physical evidence to link him, no evidence that June hadn’t brought the heroin into the storage room herself, only the testimony of Paul Begala, Ansia, and eventually Sharon Miller. The prosecutor did not have a great case against Sharon. Her disguises made it difficult for the people she talked to—Ansia, Seth Malcolm, and Linda Butler—to positively identify her, even when dressed appropriately in a police lineup. But the prosecutor chipped away at Sharon’s resolve. Her fear of a long jail sentence proved stronger than her devotion to Damon Fitzgerald and eventually she gave him up, declaring that the plan had been his and that he was the one who purchased the China White in San Francisco. Sharon claimed she didn’t know the heroin was special in any way, that she didn’t know it would kill anyone, that she never knew Damon’s intent was to kill June Reid. She thought he just waned to find her and talk to her.

  When Detective Owen called to tell Claire about Sharon’s testimony, Claire asked if she believed her.

  “I do,” Owen said.

  “Her story seems rather self-serving to me,” Claire said.

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Sharon’s not a very good actress or a very convincing liar. I think she was just dumb enough to fall for the wrong guy. What is it that attracts women to these creative types?”

  “They cat out something the women are unwilling or unable to express themselves.”

  “Maybe Sharon wanted to be a creative person, maybe even a wild person, but we found nothing in her background to indicate she was vicious enough to be a killer. On the other hand, there is plenty of criminal activity in Damon’s background. One thing we see over and over again is that it’s not that big a step from abuser to killer. We’ve got enough on Damon that his career as an abuser is over.”

  “I hope so,” Claire said.

  “Trust me,” Owen said.

  Once Damon was incarcerated in Albuquerque, Sophie Roybal came forward and said she’d be willing to testify against him for criminal sexual penetration in Taos. The Bernalillo County prosecutor said her testimony might be useful in the homicide trial, but Allana Bruno had become far more interested in reopening the case of Veronica Reid’s death than in trying to convict Damon of criminal sexual penetration. If Damon had been involved in the apparent overdose death of June Reid, it was reasonable to ask whether he’d also been involved in the apparent suicide of her mother. Claire thought that in one sense Damon had followed the path of a serial abuser who continued inflicting harm until all the victims were dead. When Allana Bruno began to question members of the Cave Commune, looking for a way to link Damon to Veronica’s death, he said he could produce evidence that would exonerate him. The evidence was a letter postmarked Taos on the day Veronica died.

  “You are responsible for this,” the letter read. “My life is a black hole I can’t climb out of. I don’t want to go on living anymore and I blame you. You are a monster who seduced my daughter and turned her against me. You have ruined her life and you have ruined mine. I hate you. Veronica.”

  The letter wasn’t delivered until the day after Veronica was found dead in the gorge, too late, Damon said, for him to have prevented her from killing herself. He could have solved the mystery of her death and eased people’s minds by releasing the letter when he received it, but that would have been another blow to his battered image. Assisted suicide—helping someone who had chosen to die—was a crime in New Mexico. It wasn’t a crime for a man to be so wantonly cruel that his lovers chose the path of killing themselves.

  There were many who blamed Damon for Veronica’s death even though he was never charged with that crime. Veronica died several years before her daughter so she couldn’t be held responsible for June’s death, but Claire saw blame there, too. She couldn’t disagree with Maureen Prescott’s assessment that Veronica should have hung on for her daughter’s sake. For her to blame everything on Damon and to leave her daughter unprotected was to take the easy way out.

  Damon and Sharon’s house was searched for evidence during the murder investigations, but the original of Summertime was never found. Claire came to believe that one or both of them had destroyed it. It disturbed her that such a beautiful painting could vanish. Having a computer-generated copy was not even close to having the original. Before she called Lisa Teague to tell her the painting had been lost, Claire took her copy of Summertime down from her wall and put it away.

  “I’m sorry to hear it wasn’t at the house,” Lisa said, “but it might turn up somewhere else.”

  “It might,” Claire replied.

  Lisa didn’t sound terribly disappointed. Claire suspected that, as she’d said, she cut her emotional connection to Summertime when she gave the painting over to the Downtown Gallery. Her ability to remove herself from her artwork made Claire wonder if she wouldn’t turn out to be a social worker after all. It was hard to imagine Edward Girard ever disconnecting from the work he created.

  “I’ve decided on a painting I’d like to own,” Claire told Lisa.

  “Excellent. Which one?”

  When Claire told her, Lisa asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I have a class tomorrow. I can bring it to your office in the afternoon.”

  Lisa showed up with the painting wrapped in brown paper. Before she began to unwrap it, she looked at the white space on Claire’s wall and said, “You could use a painting in here,” she said, “but are you sure this is the one you want?”

  “I’m sure,” Claire said.

  “Okay. The gallery originally put a price on it of seven hundred and fifty dollars. Even at that price it didn’t sell, so they marked it down to five hundred dollars.”

  “That had nothing to do with the quality of the painting.”

  “I know. It’s the subject that turns people off. If you want to pay the gallery the markdown price, that’ll be all right. I can drop the check off on my way home.”

  Claire took out her checkbook and wrote out a check for twenty-five hundred dollars to the gallery while Lisa unwrapped the painting.

  “That’s very generous,” Lisa said when she saw the amount. “Chris will be thrilled.”

  “It’s worth it,” Claire replied.

  They found the perfect spot on the white wall and hung the painting there, adjusting it until it was symmetrical. Then Lisa said good-bye and rushed off to her class.

  Claire was left with an image of a woman in a gauzy white dress hugging the curves of a river like smoke with her red hair floating behind her. She knew Harrison wouldn’t approve, but she didn’t let that stop her. It was her life. Her office. Her wall.

  It took time to get used to Ansia’s presence. Claire would forget about the painting when she was working, then look up to see the cherry red hair, the sinuous river, the attenuated body. It was an image that incorporated elements of escapism, but it was also raw, bold, and honest.

  “Did I hang that?” Claire asked herself.

  “You did,” she answered.

  “Whoa!” Celia said the first time she walked through the doorway and saw it on the wall. “Where did that come from?”

  “I bought it from Lisa Teague. The money goes to Hope Central Shelter.”

  “Has Harrison complained?”

  “Not yet, but he scowls every time he walks by and looks in my window, and Harrison never walks down the hall without looking in my window.”

  “It’s Ansia on drugs, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, at least she’s not wearing your dress. Of all of Lisa’s paintings, why did you pick that one? It’s going to be hard to forget what happened with that on the wall.”

  “I don’t want to forget,” Claire said. “I want to be reminded of how raw life can be outside our ivory tower.” It was her hope that one day, whe
n Ansia was released from prison, she would come by and take pride in visiting her image on the wall. She hoped that Ansia would be cleaned up, odor free, and off drugs at that time, but she would be welcome even if she was not.

  Celia gave Claire the kind of penetrating stare she had come to expect from Detective Owen. Claire stared back at her until Celia shrugged and said, “Okay. It’s your wall. What are you planning to do with the Spiral Rocks illustration once the police return it?”

  “It will be inserted into Ancient Sites, but the book won’t be the same, which raises the question of what to do with the book. If we put it back on the shelf it will just be another damaged first edition.”

  “Now it’s a book with a story connected to it, a story that could eventually become a legend. That should make it even more valuable,” Celia said.

  “I’m going to suggest we put it in a glass case and display it with other legendary books.”

  “Sounds good.” Celia picked up a paperweight from Claire’s desk and balanced it in the palm of her hand. “The security committee had a meeting with Harrison and came to a decision about Seth.”

  Claire suspected that decision had been a foregone conclusion, but she waited to hear what Celia had to say.

  She put the paperweight down and made the motion of a blade slicing across her neck. “He’s out of here,” Celia said. “He broke the rules. His code has been retired for good. Seth can no longer do research at CSWR. He lost his fellowship. He will not be getting his doctorate on Tobiah James at UNM. All the work he has done so far has gone for naught.”

  “He stopped by to ask if there was anything I could do to help,” Claire said.

  “There wasn’t,” Celia replied. “Harrison’s mind was made up.”

  “I know.” Claire was left with more sympathy for Seth than anyone else at CSWR had.

  ******

  Damon Fitzgerald was in prison and all the pieces seemed to be in place to keep him there for a long time. Claire was glad that her persistence in standing up for Maia had helped. It relieved some of the guilt she had carried around about not exposing George Hogan. She should have been sleeping well but she woke up in the middle of the night hearing moths fluttering in the darkness—the spirits of the dead, she thought, no longer the unnotified next of kin. The DNA test proved Edward Girard was June’s father. He buried her in a sad little ceremony at Spiral Rocks.

  It bothered Claire that unlike her mother, June had left no note. No one would ever know what her last thoughts and words were. Did she know or suspect that Damon was the one responsible for locking her in with the China White? Did she inject the drug intending to kill herself or only to escape from the claustrophobic room? What were her final thoughts about her mother, her father, and Damon Fitzgerald, the adults who should have put her best interests first but never did.

  In the middle of a clear night when the stars were diamonds in the sky, Claire took her leather-bound journal from her nightstand and composed a note on June’s behalf.

  I’m alone. The door is locked. No one can hear my screams. The walls are closing in. The people who should have looked out for me didn’t. It will be so hard to go back to Taos and testify against Damon. I wish Bill Hartley had never tracked me down and asked me. Damon didn’t rape me. I was willing but I was young and stupid. Damon ruled at Cave Commune. The ultimate responsibility is his. He needs to be stopped before he can hurt any more girls, and I am the only one who can stop him. I have to do it for all the girls. I’m going to take this heroin so I can stay calm until someone comes to rescue me. June Reid.

  It was a possible note, but not the only one. In the middle of another, darker night, when only the brightest stars were visible and clouds scudded across the moon, Claire wrote:

  Damon became a bear who assaulted me. I can’t face him ever again. Bill Hartley has no right to ask me to do it. I’ll tell him I can never go back to Taos. Someone deliberately put heroin in the food bag and it didn’t come from Albuquerque. It’s too white, too pure, too dangerous. It will kill me if I take it. Sooner or later someone will open the door and let me out.

  But time passed, nobody came, and that changed to:

  No one’s coming. I can’t stand it anymore. I am going to be with my mother.

  After she wrote that ending Claire got up and paced around her house with the lights off.

  The morning after she wrote the second note she made herself a cup of coffee, went into her office, and checked her E-mail to find a short but lovely note from Pietro Antonelli.

  Clara, My daughter and I are planning a trip to California next month to look at schools for her. Could we visit you in Albuquerque while we are in the West? It would be wonderful to see you again. Love, Pietro.

  “Of course you can visit,” Claire wrote back. “I’d be delighted. I’m looking forward to seeing you again and to meeting your daughter. Love, Clara.”

  ******

  The upcoming visit from Pietro and his daughter gave life an anticipatory buzz. Claire still woke up in the middle of the night, but she had something light to look forward to as well as something dark to forget.

  One evening as she watched Star Gazer with Jack Horkheimer on PBS she learned that the constellation Pleiades could be seen at the tip of the horn of Taurus, the bull, near Orion, the hunter. The horns of Taurus were easy to find that particular night because they were wrapped around the new moon.

  “Keep looking up!” Jack Horkheimer advised at the end of the show.

  Claire turned off the TV and went outside. With guidance from Jack she was able to locate the cluster of the seven sisters who huddled together as they roamed the sky. If the night skies were totally black and the stars had never existed, she believed that human beings would have had to invent them. The constellations symbolized so perfectly the passions and imperfections of human beings. Claire felt that if she wrote one more note before she went to bed, she might be able to sleep through the night. On Maia’s behalf she wrote in her journal:

  I have been sleeping here for months, but no one has ever locked the door on me. I am terrified, but I have my illustration with the rocks pointing toward the sky. There is white to smooth the way. I am Maia. I am leaving this place to join my beautiful sisters. We are the stars who light the sky.

  THE END

  You can find more of Judith Van Gieson’s mysteries as ebooks:

  The Stolen Blue: A Claire Reynier Mystery (#1)

  Vanishing Point: A Claire Reynier Mystery (#2)

  Confidence Woman: A Claire Reynier Mystery (#3)

  Land of Burning Heat: A Claire Reynier Mystery (#4)

  The Shadow of Venus: A Claire Reynier Mystery (#5)

  North of the Border: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#1)

  Raptor: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#2)

  The Other Side of Death: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#3)

  The Wolf Path: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#4)

  Lies that Bind: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#5)

  Parrot Blues: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#6)

  Hotshots: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#7)

  Ditch Rider: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#8)