A Perfect Eye

by Stephanie Kane

  “Where’s the lady with the parasol?” she said.

  “Ah! That’s the bridge painting everyone thinks of,” Sean said. “I call it Act One in Caillebotte’s morality play. This is Act Two, what happened next.”

  Lily closed her eyes and summoned Act One. Top Hat was the leading man.

  Details, please.

  His hat and frock coat signified status and control. His companion with the parasol wore a fashionable hat and floor-length Edwardian dress with an hourglass silhouette. They appeared to be together. Was he Caillebotte, and she Charlotte Berthier? The youth at the railing with his back to them wore a rough canvas jacket. The dog in the foreground was a spaniel with white markings and silky red hair.

  More.

  Top Hat’s chin bent towards the woman, but he was staring at the working-class boy. Despite his furtive bearing, something about Top Hat suggested he wanted to be noticed—to be recognized. Caillebotte had caught him at the brink, on the cusp of a life-changing decision.

  Now the dog.

  The spaniel trotted towards Top Hat, tail high in the universal sign of canine friendship. His coat was too fine for a stray and he seemed to know the man. But he was a side act. His hind paw was cut off by the frame.

  What’s hiding in plain sight?

  Top Hat was torn between the woman and the boy. Which way would he go? Lily opened her eyes and stepped closer to the Kimbell’s denouement of the drama on the bridge. A security guard approached but Sean waved him back.

  Trust your eye.

  In Act Two—the Kimbell version—Top Hat had moved in. Was the boy in the canvas jacket a stand-in for the mannish Anne-Marie Hagen, the woman Caillebotte reinvented as Charlotte Berthier? The gent exiting the frame was also an aristocrat. All three men looked away from the viewer, as if they wished to be anonymous. Top Hat’s expressiveness centered on his own right hand. Hanging limply from his tapered black coat, it was pale and hairless. The fingers curled like a baby’s.

  “Prostitution was rampant in Paris,” Sean said. “Train stations were where men met.”

  Seven’s man with the brimmed hat was rushing into the storm. Not to safety, but to the anonymity and danger of the trees. If Kurtz’s murder was a morality play, the curtain rose on Pont de l’Europe. Did it fall on Kurtz, was Seven Act Three?

  “Stay at my place tonight.” Sean grinned wickedly. “I’ll show you Fort Worth’s version of the Gare Saint-Lazare….”

  But she was rushing to a cab.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When Lily’s plane landed, the museum was closed. She badged in at the loading dock. Frank, the roly-poly Ops chief, was at his computer eating a meatball grinder.

  “Working late, Ms. Sparks?”

  I’ll miss Frank and our morning coffee.

  “I need to examine the Caillebotte on Level Six. Can one of your guys bring it to me?”

  That solved three problems: disarming Seven without triggering an alarm, taking it down without Gina or Michel getting wind of it, and safely transporting it to her lab. Twenty minutes later, Caillbotte’s masterpiece lay on the heat vacuum table’s tarp.

  Lily unscrewed it from the frame: an Eden frozen in eternity against the violence of the clouds, the moment before all was lost. But the time for illusions was past. She pulled out her loupe.

  Composition first.

  The man with the hat provided a dramatic focus Caillebotte’s other landscapes lacked. Ignoring him for the moment, she transposed Kurtz’s head onto the stand of trees. High-browed and aquiline, grimacing and imperious, with his thinning hair slicked to his skull and made black and glistening by the brilliantine the killer applied. A grotesque fit.

  Brushwork.

  A forger could match an artist’s palette, but not his touch. The cross-hatching of the grasses resembled Caillebotte’s technique in Three. In the foreground the artist had used wet-on-wet, painting on top of an existing layer before it dried. That let him mix his colors on the canvas and work more spontaneously. The overlaid cadmium and vermilion were saturated and brilliant. Atop a fluid layer, his brush could fly like the killer’s knife.

  Now the acid test.

  Eyes closed, Lily ran her fingers lightly over the canvas. The clouds projected in rough, built-up layers, thicker and more textured than Three’s. Grasses moved in the wind, plow marks were as deeply scored. The poppies were painted with larger bristles but the same vigorous… Look for the imperfection, Paul had said a lifetime ago, the tiny space that lets the painting breathe. At the man with the hat, she paused. Did the stroke stiffen, or was it the urgency of an artist at the mercy of his muse?

  The man doesn’t fit.

  Him scurrying into the storm gave the landscape a kind of randomness. Deliberate—and not subtle. Caillebotte’s humility, or a forger’s hubris? You’re a lawyer, prove it. No matter what her gut said, she needed objective evidence.

  Lily turned Seven over. Like Three, the canvas was lined. If the liner was added to strengthen the canvas, and not to make the painting appear older, it should be newer. Maybe even a synthetic.

  Closing her eyes one last time, she ran her fingers over the verso and tried to find where canvas and liner met. The original was a fine, tight weave, the same expensive linen Caillebotte used for Three. She felt for subtle ridges, gently probing for roughness that indicated fraying.

  What the hell?

  Lily went back and forth between canvas and liner. Both were flat and smooth. Not from heat-bonding, but because they were the same weave. She opened her eyes to be sure. Canvas and liner didn’t just feel the same; under the bright light they had the identical sheen.

  The forger had made a mistake.

  If only Paul were here!

  Her eye still worked, she was right, he’d believe her now! But the feeling quickly died. Needing Caillebotte’s Eden to be real had blinded her to the most obvious thing: he didn’t paint figures in his landscapes.

  She touched the canvas again, then jerked her hand back. What she’d felt wasn’t Caillebotte’s touch. It was the killer’s. His vile triumph had reached through the linen and stained her. The little man would never reach shelter. He was Top Hat on the bridge. Rushing into the storm wasn’t his fate. It was his punishment for hubris.

  Call Paul.

  She found her phone in her backpack and hit the speed dial.

  Come on, answer…

  “Lily?”

  Nick stood at the door. Did they have a date tonight? He didn’t know she’d gone to Fort Worth, or that she was fired. She slipped her cell in her pocket. “How’d you get in?”

  “Scout’s motto is Be Prepared.” He held up his lanyard and ID. “I told Frank we had a hot date and showed him the photo from the other night.”

  “Photo?”

  Nick scrolled through his phone to a shot of her in the bungalow’s kitchen, bending to remove the lasagna from the oven. A candid but casual pose, as intimate as the ballerina and anonymous as the men in Pont de l’Europe. “Frank remembered your old man, so I showed him this too.” Dave pouring wine and her father toasting with his water glass—a Spartan abbot and his bawdy monk. Like a good artist, Nick had caught something essential in them both. “I wish your dad liked me more.”

  “He gave you points for trouncing Dave.”

  “I guess…. You shouldn’t be alone here at night.”

  He was right. The museum was a maze of walls that didn’t meet and corridors that appeared to lead nowhere. The lab was particularly isolated. After dark, she had to feel her way down the hall, through two galleries and the elevator lobby, past a supply room and an electrical closet, just to reach the ladies’ room. Apart from its double metal doors, the only access into the lab was the broom closet leading to the roof, and the freight elevators. When she worked late, she heard the elevators wheeze and groan and rattle through the shafts.

  “I tried calling you,” Nick said.

  “I turned off my phone, but Ops knows I’m here.”

  “L
ook how easily I got in. Frank’s a nice guy, but…” The museum’s interior cameras had blind spots, including in the lab. When the lights were off, not even Ops could see. Lily followed Nick out. Call Paul again, or try to reach Michel?

  “What’s with the Caillebotte?” Nick said. The canvas lay face down on the heat vacuum table. Did Nick recognize its frame?

  “Just looking for labels and stamps,” she said, “clues to where it was while it was lost.”

  “Lost doesn’t mean it’s a fake, does it?” He helped her screw Seven back into its frame. “Let’s stop for a bite on the way home.”

  “Give me a second. I need to fix my face.”

  Lily returned to her office and dialed again. Paul’s cell went to voicemail. “Call me—” she began.

  “What’s taking you so long?” Nick said.

  She shoved the phone in her pack and rummaged for her cosmetics bag. “Just looking for my lipstick.” Mascara, lipstick, the compact… The swirling galaxy and crystal stars, her mom’s legacy, was gone. She fought panic. Where did she see it last? The ladies’ room at the airport?

  “Something wrong?” Nick said.

  Paul’s bathroom at the Ritz. If a maid found it, would she turn it in? Suddenly she had to be alone. She’d try Paul again in the morning. And talk to Michel.

  “Lily?”

  “Drop me at my condo?”

  “You sure?”

  “Just drive me home!”

  “Yes ma’am.” He saluted like a good little scout. “Friday can’t come soon enough.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Paul watched the museum’s loading dock. It was 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, and for the past three days he’d been surveilling Nick Lang.

  Nick lived in an historic neighborhood by Cheesman Park. Its residents were a mixed bag of yuppies who could afford to fix up century-old Denver Squares like Nick’s, unrepentant throwbacks to the hippie era who lived off their 401(k)s, and transients who rented by the month in a three-story apartment building cater-corner to his house.

  He was a boring surveillance subject. Or played a boring game.

  At 7:00 a.m. Nick ventured out in a ratty robe, fetched his Post, and waved to the retired guy who drank coffee on his porch across the street. Then he sat at what appeared to be a computer in his enclosed front porch. Around noon he emerged again to water a scraggly rosebush and his doggy patch of grass. Except for those events, and trips to Sprouts and the cleaner’s, he spent his days inside and his nights alone—when he wasn’t with her. This evening he’d departed from his routine. Paul had tailed Nick to the museum and watched him enter at the loading ramp. Now he was waiting for him to emerge. After hours the loading dock, manned by Ops, was the museum’s only exit.

  Except for catnaps when he was sure Nick was in for the night, Paul hadn’t slept since Tuesday. He’d showered and changed his clothes once, and the floor of his rental car was littered with taco wrappers and Starbucks cups. Though the FBI’s Art Theft Team spent more time on computers than in stakeouts, and it was ages since he’d functioned on caffeine and adrenaline, he liked being in the field. But this case had gone sideways from day one.

  Paul glanced at his phone. A couple of calls from Lily, which she’d apparently thought the better of, and three more messages from Susan Grace. As he’d done all week, he ignored them.

  There they are.

  He watched Nick escort Lily down the ramp. Holding hands, the lovebirds circled the pedestrian plaza to the parking garage. When Nick’s vehicle emerged and turned onto the street, Paul was two car lengths behind. He followed them to her condo. He steeled himself for Nick accompanying her in. After a mercifully brief embrace, she went in alone. Would Nick park at his place and return? But Nick headed back through Cheesman Park towards downtown. After tailing him for five minutes, Paul turned around.

  Now or never.

  He parked down the street from Nick’s. He checked his gym bag for his flashlight and tools. Nick’s neighbors had no dogs or security cameras and the house next door was vacant, with a For Sale sign. He sauntered down the block and into Nick’s yard. He was looking for three things: the murder weapon, how Nick got Kurtz to let him into his house, and how he gassed him.

  Nick’s alarm system was strictly Home Depot, not what you’d expect from a hotshot engineer. Paul put on his gloves. He easily disabled the alarm, then broke a window in the side door and unlocked the deadbolt. The door stuck, indicating it was seldom used. A little luck and Nick wouldn’t realize he’d been broken into until it was too late. The first floor was four steps up from the side landing, the basement eight steps down. He had to work fast; there was no telling when Nick would return. He started on the second floor.

  The spare bedroom had a drafting table, a high-intensity lamp, and trays neatly organized into T-squares, compasses, drafting tools, and dividers. A box of Xacto knives with razor-sharp blades. Not the murder weapon, but Paul photographed them with his cell. The shelves were filled with art books: drawing manuals, treatises on materials and techniques, a tome on the restoration of oil paintings, and a mini-library on Gustave Caillebotte, including his catalogue raisonné in French. It was stuffy upstairs. Despite Nick’s artistic pretensions, Nick was too cheap to spring for centralized air conditioning too.

  Paul rifled through the bureau in the master bedroom. He moved to the closet. Inside were one halfway decent suit, two midrange jackets, some laundered and pressed dress shirts and slacks, and a filthy pair of tennis shoes. The brass bed was a tangle of sheets. Picking up a pillow, Paul caught a familiar scent. Bright and astringent, a hint of forest pine—hers. Under the bed were socks and a torn condom wrapper. In the master bath he saw a brush with fine blonde hairs.

  Get a grip. She’s not why you’re here.

  If the rest of Nick’s house was this clean, he was risking his career for nothing. He looked around in frustration. The best place to hide something was in plain sight…. Who stored dirty sneakers in an upstairs closet? Tucked into the toe of one was a thumb drive. He brought it downstairs to Nick’s computer. Like the alarm, surprisingly dinky for an engineer. Where did he keep his real computer, the good stuff? The drive was slow to boot up. When it did, the tease abruptly ended.

  The first image was of her naked on her side in the brass bed, facing away from the camera. Did Lily know she was being filmed? The camera was set on a timer. The next shots showed her waking up, stretching, opening her arms and displaying her breasts to an invisible lover. Nick entered the frame. There were angry red scratch marks on his back. Was the camera in the ceiling? Him mounting her, thrusting… Fast-forwarding was like flipping through a deck of porn cards. Paul turned the computer off. The screen went blank, but Nick was still astride her, pulsing in Paul’s cortex like a bucking bronco in the neon sign of a bar on Colfax.

  Nail him for Kurtz.

  Paul ejected the thumb drive and put it in his pocket. He made quick work of the living room, dining room and kitchen. The clock over the stove said 9:10. He’d spent more time at Nick’s computer than he realized. Was the basement worth a look? If Nick surprised him…

  He opened the refrigerator.

  Takeout containers, moldy bologna, and five forty-ounce tallboys. The cans were unlabeled. He reached for one. It was a bit unwieldy, heavier than he’d expected. The walls didn’t have quite the same give as a twelve-ounce can. Was there liquid inside? He gave it a little shake to see if it sloshed. It didn’t. He pulled the tab. Beer shot up and foamed onto the linoleum floor.

  Shit.

  He mopped up with paper towels. Nick was just squirrelly enough to brew his own beer. On hands and knees, Paul paused.

  Kurtz had a weakness for beer.

  He thought back to his undergraduate chemistry classes—equilibrium and gas. If you sealed methane in a can, how much pressure would it take for it to explode? It didn’t have to be big, just enough to send gas into Kurtz’s mouth or up his nose. Hell, Nick didn’t even need gas. He could fill that can with liqui
d methane, or raw sewage, and spritz in some carbon dioxide to stir things up. A tallboy was even better because the narrowness of the can would increase the pressure. He might have to add something to equalize it or coat the inside with epoxy or a polymer so the can didn’t collapse on itself, but anyone smart enough to design a battery to take down the fossil fuel industry was clever enough to pressurize a can.

  An exploding can of shit.

  What else would Nick need? A syphon, a sealing system… It was 9:25, he could be home any minute. Time to search one more place. Basement, or garage?

  Exiting by the side door, Paul spent a precious moment reconnecting the alarm. He snuck through the backyard, hugging the shadow from the garage wall. There were three ways in: the roof, which had solar panels and some sort of vent; a window covered from the inside with oil paper; and padlocked double doors facing the alley. Moonlight lit the roof like a landing strip. Those solar panels—was Nick running an illegal grow operation? He was drawing a shitload of power and wanted to stay off the municipal grid. The house closest to the garage was vacant. The one across the alley was dark. In the apartment building a couple of lights were on.

  Get a warrant.

  Nick’s house was clean except for the tallboys and thumb drive. Because he’d broken in, nothing he found could be used in court. What he was doing wasn’t just futile. It was illegal. But if Nick used beer to lure and gas Kurtz, he had to produce the can somewhere.

  Is this asshole worth my career?

  Call it a night. Go back to the Ritz, talk to Johnson tomorrow—Nick thrusting into Lily pulsed in his head.

  Fuck it.

  He snapped the padlock with his bolt-cutters. Inside he turned on his flashlight. Table and work stool. Metal cabinets with diamond-shaped hazmat decals—Health, Fire, Instability, Specific Hazard—Paul hadn’t seen all four filled in since his days in the Counterterrorism Unit. Whiteboard with formulae, equations, circuit diagrams, a scribbled map. Industrial sink in one corner; in the other, a mini-fridge. On the far wall a glassed-in laminar flow bench with rubber arms and a hood—high-tech, and you had to know enough to use one—and a serious data-processing computer with a big hard drive. That’s what was drawing the juice. A small safe anchored in cement—more thumb drives or a triggering device inside? How the hell did Nick fit it all in a two-car garage? Paul looked up.