The Bloody Canvas

by KJ Kalis

  Kat watched as Carson glanced around the room. He didn’t say anything. He walked over to the windows and looked carefully. Kat guessed that he was trying to see if there had been forced entry. He walked back to the group, shaking his head. “I don’t know what happened here, but this seems strange to me.” Just as he finished the sentence, his phone rang. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  Kat stood with Missy for a few minutes waiting for Carson to come back. She couldn’t hear what he was talking about, but she had bigger problems. Missy was shaking. As she comforted the girl, Kat overheard Carson answer whomever he was speaking to in short, clipped sentences. Carson came back into the room, his shoes padding on the carpet that ran down the hallway, “There’s been a development in the case. We just found the psychiatrist for Miles, the child whose fingerprints we found on the knife that stabbed Hailey. He’s been beaten. He’s in bad shape. I have to get over to the hospital.” He looked at Kat, “Do you want to come, or should I drop you at the office?”

  Kat could tell he’d rather leave her at the police station, but she quickly said, “I’d like to come to the hospital.” She felt a combination of excitement and trepidation as she followed Carson out of the apartment. They said a quick goodbye to Missy with the promise that Carson would send more officers and an investigative unit over to the apartment to see what else they could find and what evidence they could gather. She was on the phone with friends already.

  Kat followed Carson out to the car and got in without saying a word. Once he pulled out of the parking lot Carson glanced at her, “Do you always help the police departments when you follow a story?”

  “That’s how I prefer to work. My husband was a Marine and I was deployed to Afghanistan as an embedded journalist. It’s a tough job to work in law enforcement. But my job is no different from yours. I’m out to get the facts. You just get to prosecute them.”

  Carson nodded and smiled. “That’s good to hear.”

  “So, what happened with Miles’ psychiatrist?”

  “I don’t have all the details yet. What I do know is that he was found beaten in front of our local hospital. Someone rolled him out of a van and dumped him right on the front sidewalk. Sounds like his injuries are pretty bad. I’m not sure if he has any connection to the case but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does.”

  Kat nodded. All of a sudden it seemed that the case was starting to come into focus. Hailey's side job, her locked room, the boy that was accused of stabbing her and now the beating of his psychiatrist — it all seemed to be linked. The motive was still a question, though. “If you had to guess, what do you think is going on here?”

  “Off the record?”

  Kat nodded, “Yes, of course.” She could tell Carson didn’t want to answer, but he was trapped in the car with her.

  Carson sighed, gripping the wheel a little tighter. “I don’t have all the pieces figured out in my head yet. I think I still have more questions than answers. But it doesn’t seem like Hailey’s death was an accident.”

  “I thought you had already established that her death was a murder?” Kat didn’t understand what Carson was driving at.

  “Sorry. That’s not what I meant. What I meant to say is that Hailey’s death was a murder. The question that I have in my mind is why? Other than a random act of cruelty why would a ten-year-old child kill a college student? It just doesn’t seem to make sense.”

  Kat stared out the window. The streets of Savannah weren’t very full yet. She imagined families still waking up on vacation taking their time and eating breakfast together. Her thoughts drifted toward home. She wondered what Jack and Van were doing. She turned to Carson, “You think there is a connection between Hailey’s death and the art being stolen?”

  “It certainly seems that way.” Carson frowned, “I feel like an IRS auditor that is trying to make sense of a million receipts tossed around in a paper bag. We have facts, but they don’t seem to make any sense. Maybe things will come into better focus when we hear a bit more about what happened to Oskar.”

  Kat nodded. The fact that Miles’ psychiatrist had been beaten and dumped in front of the local hospital added something to the story that she didn’t quite know how to process. More questions than answers flooded her mind. Why would Oskar be a target? Did he have any connection to the case? Or maybe it was a random act of violence and unrelated to Hailey’s murder? Kat didn’t know.

  Carson pulled the police unit up to the front of the hospital and parked in a spot that was marked for emergency vehicles only. Kat got out and followed him into the emergency room. The call had only come a few minutes before they arrived, but by the looks of the hustle and bustle in the emergency room, it was a busy morning. Nurses and doctors seem to be darting everywhere in the white hallways of the hospital. Carson walked to the front desk and showed his badge. “I’m here to talk to Oskar Kellum, please.”

  The triage nurse, dressed in light blue scrubs wearing a pen on a string and an ID around her neck pointed down the hallway, “I’ll open the doors for you come on back. He’s in bay seven.”

  Kat followed Carson down the hallway. The hospital smell and the shiny linoleum floors reminded her of when her mother-in-law, Laura, was in the hospital being treated for cancer. For some reason, all hospitals seem to smell the same. Kat shook the thought from her head, not wanting to remember what she had been through, the blackmailer kidnapping Jack and Kat having to kill him in order to save her son. The only good thing that had come out of the incident was that she and Van had developed a deep relationship that led to marriage. For that, she was grateful.

  “Do you know anything about Oskar’s condition?” she asked Carson.

  “Nothing, really. Just that Oskar was dumped. The rest we need to figure out.”

  Kat nodded. There was a tightness in her chest and stomach she couldn’t explain. Was she nervous? Excited that things were starting to move in a better direction? She couldn’t tell. Carson led her to Oskar’s room. By the looks of it, the doctors had moved quickly once Oskar was dumped on the sidewalk. He was wearing a light blue hospital gown covered in a small diamond pattern. Blankets had been pulled up to his chest and an IV and oxygen were attached to him.

  “Oskar? I’m Detective Carson Martino. I wanted to come and ask you a few questions about what happened to you.”

  Oskar turned his head to the side. “I don’t have anything to say.”

  “Can you at least tell me how you ended up here?” Carson asked, pulling a pad of paper out of his pocket.

  “I don’t know.”

  Kat didn’t know if she should speak. It was Carson’s case after all. She sat down on the chair next to Oskar’s bed and pulled close to his face. “Oskar, I’m Kat Beckman. I’m a journalist.” She glanced at Carson, hoping he wouldn’t be angry with her. “You took a pretty severe beating. What happened?”

  Before Oskar could answer, a doctor came to his bedside. He looked at Kat and Carson, “I heard there were people here looking into Oskar’s case. Could I have a minute?” The doctor nodded his head as though he wanted them to step away from the bed. Carson nodded, and he and Kat followed the doctor away from Oskar.

  “You’re treating Oskar? Carson asked.

  The doctor nodded. “I’m Dr. Blake. I’m the head of the emergency department here.” He pulled up images from a tablet he was carrying and pointed to them. “Normally, I wouldn’t be quite so forthcoming with the information on a patient, especially without a subpoena, but this is a pretty severe case. Since you are doing the investigation, I wanted to give you a heads up on what you are looking at.” Dr. Blake pointed to his tablet. “From what we can tell from the surveillance video, a blue van pulled up in front of the hospital and barely stopped. They slowed down enough just to open the door and toss Oskar out onto the front sidewalk. Luckily, our security guard was standing right there and was able to quickly get medical help for him.

  “Was a security guard able to get a license plate?” Carson was holding his
pad and paper at the ready. Kat could tell he was hoping for more information.

  The doctor shook his head. “Unfortunately, the van was unmarked. There were no license plates our security guard could see. You can, of course, go and talk to our chief of security and look at our front door surveillance.”

  Carson nodded, “That would be helpful.”

  The doctor nodded, “I’m hoping that you can see by the x-rays I have here, that Oskar’s injuries are fairly significant. He has four broken ribs, a lung contusion, bruised spleen and many lacerations to his face. We are waiting for the swelling to go down in his left eye to see if there’s been any retinal damage.” The doctor turned the tablet off. “I have to be honest. I haven’t seen a beating like this in many years. Whoever did this had a bone to pick with him.” The doctor shook his head, “I’m just telling you this because I don’t want to see more patients like this show up at my hospital.” With that, the doctor walked away.

  Kat didn’t say anything. It was clear that Dr. Blake was frustrated by the fact that Oskar was dumped right in front of the hospital. His turf. It was a bold move by whoever had done it, one that she wasn’t sure how Carson would handle.

  Kat waited for a moment while Carson jotted a few notes in his notebook. He looked at her, “Let’s go back and see if we can get Oskar to tell us anything more.”

  Kat followed Carson back to Oskar’s bedside. “The doctor tells us that you have quite a few injuries,” Carson said. “I won’t take a lot of your time, but I do need to let you know that your name came up in another case.”

  The way that Carson said it, Kat knew that he was trying to get a reaction out of Oskar. It worked. Oskar turned and looked at Carson, his one eye nothing more than a bloated red ball on his face. “What case is that?”

  “I’ll bet you can guess.” Carson stared at Oskar. “I’ll save you some time since I’m sure you’re in a lot of pain. The Hailey Park murder. Your name came up as connected to the suspect we are looking at.”

  “And who would that be?” As Oskar tried to push himself up in the bed a little bit, his face shrunk into a mask of pain.

  “Miles Nobesky.”

  “Miles? Why would Miles be involved in your murder case?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Carson said. “I heard he was a patient of yours.”

  “I can’t talk about it unless you have a court order.” Oskar adjusted himself in the bed again and turned on his side, away from them. Kat could tell that he was tired of talking already. She wasn’t sure how much more they would get out of him.

  Carson took a breath. It seemed he wanted to say something else. As he did, a nurse came into the room and said, “I’m sorry. This patient needs to go downstairs for additional testing. You’ll have to come back later.”

  13

  The fact that they had to wait to talk to Oskar while he was in testing sent a surge of frustration through Kat. She stepped out of the way as his bed rolled by. Just as she did her phone rang. “Hello?”

  “Kat? This is Eli.”

  “Eli? What’s going on?”

  “I was wondering if we could meet? I have some more information I think might be helpful.”

  “Sure,” Kat wondered what he could possibly have found out, but was curious. “Are you at the store?”

  “Yes. Can you come now?”

  “Yes. Right now, I’m at the hospital. I’ll be there in the next twenty minutes.”

  “Are you okay?” Eli sounded panicked. “You aren’t injured, are you?”

  “No, no. I’m fine. I’m just here following up on a lead with Carson, the detective that’s working on the case.”

  “Oh, okay. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  Kat looked at Carson. He had moved down the hallway a bit, furiously scratching notes into his notebook, a frown on his face. She could tell that he was as confused by this case as she was. There seemed to be too many stories happening at the same time. It was almost impossible to see how they were tied together. A surge of frustration drove its way through her chest. She pushed it aside, hoping that Eli would be able to shed some light on what was going on. It seemed unlikely that he would be able to. After all, he was just an antique dealer here in Savannah. What could he possibly know? “I just got a call from my art source,” Kat said. “He wanted to meet with me. He said he has news on the case.” Carson had stopped writing and was staring at her. “Want to come?”

  “Well, since I drove you to the hospital, I guess I’ll have to,” Carson said, shoving the notebook back into his pocket and tugging on the front of his sport coat. As Kat followed him out of the hospital, she noticed that everything Carson did was with a certain level of precision. His haircut, his clothes, even the way his badge hung around his neck showed that he cared about his appearance. Details seemed to matter to Carson. Like Carson, Kat hoped Eli could provide a layer of details that would help them figure out the next step in the case.

  They were both silent on the way over to Eli’s art gallery. Kat watched the traffic pass and saw more people walking on the sidewalks. It seemed there was a never-ending stream of people touring through the city no matter whether it was morning or night. It didn’t take long for them to drive over to Eli’s gallery. As soon as Kat pushed the door open, she could smell tea brewing. If nothing else Eli was hospitable. “Eli?”

  “Back here!”

  Kat wove her way through pieces of old furniture, easels with musty paintings on top of them, and shelves of everything from old brass tea kettles to clocks that no longer worked. She walked behind the counter and pushed aside the curtain. Eli stood at the makeshift kitchenette in the back, pouring tea into three mismatched cups, “Hey Eli.” A new tablecloth had been smoothed on top of the old table. There was a small plate of what looked to be Russian tea cakes in the center of the table with bowls of creamer and sugar and small silver spoons at each place setting.

  “Thank you for coming,” Eli put two cups of tea on the table and then reached for a third before sitting down. He looked at Carson, “You must be the detective working on the case.” Eli extended his hand.

  “Yes. Carson Martino. Nice to meet you.”

  “Make yourself at home.”

  Carson sat down across from Kat. Eli sat at the head of the small table. Kat said, “You said you had information?”

  “When you work in the art business for as long as I have, you develop relationships all over the world. Out of curiosity, I made a couple of calls about the art that we saw at Hailey’s apartment. I think I found out something interesting.”

  Carson pulled his notebook out of his pocket and set it on the table. He placed a pen right next to it. “What would that be?”

  I heard from a contact in New York that a large shipment of old master’s art was headed for London. It should be landing there sometime today.”

  Carson furrowed his brow. “And, why would that be interesting? How does that relate to Hailey’s murder?”

  Eli threw his hands up in the air. “I’m not the detective, but the fact that an entire load of old master’s art is headed to England isn’t normal.”

  Kat chewed her lip. “What do you mean, Eli?”

  Eli used wrinkled fingers to smooth the fabric he had laid across the table. “There just aren’t that many pieces of old masters art. I asked my friend if he knew who the collector was and that was the strange thing, he didn’t.”

  “It would be normal for someone’s name to be attached to a collection like that?” Kat tapped her fingers on the table.

  Eli nodded. “While there are some collectors who are private about what they own and where they display it, the vast majority of collectors want to be seen and known. The art world is filled with braggarts.” Eli looked away for a moment and then looked back, “It’s strange for such a large number of pieces to be in one place.”

  Carson flipped open his notebook. “How many pieces were in the shipment? Did your friend say?”

  “Thirty.”
/>
  “How many would be normal?”

  Eli scratched his head. “In my experience? Three to five.”

  Kat stopped to think. There had been about thirty pieces in the pile that had been left in Hailey’s apartment. Now they were gone. She looked at Carson, “Do you think there’s a connection between this large shipment and the missing artwork from Hailey’s apartment?”

  “Missing artwork?” Eli asked. “The artwork that was in Hailey’s apartment is gone?”

  Kat nodded.

  “Well, that changes things. I thought we were talking about another shipment, but it’s pretty apparent what happened,” Eli said.

  Carson stood up and started pacing near the small table where he had been sipping a cup of tea that Eli had given him. “I’m not sure I understand. You think Hailey’s art was stolen out of her apartment and now it’s on the way across the world?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

  Kat furrowed her brow. “Afraid of? What do you mean?”

  Eli stood up and walked over to the sink. Kat could hear the sound of water being poured into his teacup even though his back was turned. When he turned back, she could hear the clink of the spoon hitting the sides of the inside of the cup as he stirred. “There’s a lot that goes on in the art world that is good and pure. There is also a lot in the art world that isn’t.”

  “Like what?” Kat asked.

  Eli turned back. “For centuries, people have been killed, kidnapped and punished on the darker side of the art world. It makes sense if you think about it. When a piece of art goes on the market – particularly from someone who’s famous – it’s priceless. Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Michelangelo. The list goes on and on. There are a lot of things that people are willing to do to get their hands on something that valuable.”

  Kat’s mind started to turn with questions. She folded her hands on the table and looked down at her lap searching for their next move. Carson interrupted her thoughts. “If what you’re saying is true, Eli, then this is a much bigger case than simply the murder of an art student here in Savannah.”