Artist's Proof (4 page)

Chuck was a narrow-faced man with a prominent nose, and he might one day mature into everyone's image of Sherlock Holmes. Not yet. He was smart, but he was green. Several village cops had more seniority than he; Chuck had been anointed acting chief because he was the only college graduate on the force, and he had minored in criminology.

“Lieutenant Shale,” he breathed, almost in relief.

“Afternoon, Chief.”

He waved the phone. “Walter filled me in on your help out front. Thanks.”

He didn't ask what had brought me to the murder scene, and I didn't correct the “Lieutenant” salutation; maybe he needed the weight here an older authority figure would lend him. Behind him in this good-size bedroom in addition to a uniformed cop standing at ease near the windows were two other men.

I recognized Sharanov at once—wide, fleshy face, silvering hair combed straight back from the broad brow, stocky body. The fuzzy surveillance photo hadn't done justice to the impenetrable blue eyes, dead as slate. He had been sprawled across a chaise, dressed in a business suit, but he sprang to his feet when I walked in the room, a jungle cat come suddenly alert. The stocky body didn't appear to be soft.

The other man I recognized as the
shtarke
who held the door for me when I left the Tundra the night I was there. His tux had been replaced by a chauffeur's uniform. He was like something out of a paper doll kit: a parade of costumes could be attached to the same huge body and distinctive yam head. I doubt he recognized me—it had been over two years—but he moved to interpose himself between me and the boss.

“This is the man you spoke of, Chief?” Sharanov murmured. “Can we now move this business along?” Unlike his restaurant employees, he had almost no accent. His voice was mellow, almost soothing.

Chuck said, “No, Mr. Sharanov, we're waiting for Detective Docherty, from County. He should be along any minute.” Proudly, he added, “This is Detective Lieutenant Shale, NYPD.”

“Ex,” I said, my eyes locked on Sharanov's; a closer look told me he was either hung over or had had a sleepless night, maybe both. “Mr. Sharanov, that's my drawing of the village in your living room.” I was looking for a reaction.

Sharanov's dead eyes narrowed; something had registered. He said, “Is it?” He considered. “Very good. So you're what they call a Sunday painter?”

“No, I paint all week.” I looked to Chuck; if he needed my support until County showed up, I wanted him to know he had it. “I'm a Sunday detective.”

Sharanov had no interest in my wordplay. He murmured smoothly, “Either way, if you have some authority here, would you explain to Chief Scully there is no reason for me to remain? This is a tragedy—a young girl, and I believe a good person—but I have told the chief what little I know of what went on here. I intend to go back to the city.”

I said, “To answer your question, no, I have no authority here. I stopped by in answer to a phone call from the chief.”

I had jogged Chuck's memory. “Oh,” he said, “that was about something else. I wanted to ask…”

He trailed off and shifted gears. “Mr. Sharanov is the owner of the house. He came out from the city about an hour ago and found the body.”

“Correction,” Sharanov said mildly. “Nikki discovered the body. I didn't come in the house. When we arrived, Nikki unloaded the car and I drove it into the village. When I came back Nikki had already called the police. He was of course distressed by what he saw.”

I tried to picture Nikki distressed. Couldn't do it.

Scully had chimed in. “Helen, the woman on our switchboard, had a time trying to figure out what he was saying.”

Sharanov was humming like a high-performance car engine. “What more could I tell you? Nothing. If the young lady was the victim of a robbery”—
victim
came out
wictim,
virtually the only clue that he was a foreigner—“it has nothing to do with me.”

Chuck said, “There's no sign of a break in.”

“So, then,” Sharanov continued. “The young lady is local, your neighbor. If she had enemies, and I can't imagine why she would, they would be known to you, not to me.”

Sharanov wanted out of there, but he kept a tight rein on his impatience. “All I know of her is that she was employed by my wife to come in every Friday from nine to two to prepare the house for the weekend. Nikki walked in the door at a little after eleven, when we arrived from the city. There was no sign of the young lady.”

“I don't hear nobuddy clinning,” Nikki volunteered. “Nussing.” I could see where Helen, at the other end of the 911 line, might have had a problem.

“He came down to this floor,” Sharanov went on, “and he found the body in the master bedroom. He touched nothing. He could see at once that the young lady was dead.” I had no doubt Nikki knew dead when he saw it.

“Mr. Sharanov, save your breath,” Chuck said. “I'm afraid you're going to have to stay and tell it all to County. I'm sorry.”

Sharanov's serene face took on a dangerous color. It quickly faded—through an act of will, it seemed—and, serene again, he looked to me for support. When he saw none, he sank back down on his chaise. He was not a man to spend his energy foolishly. But he was not happy.

With Sharanov more or less settled, Chuck asked would I please take a minute and come look at the body? He excused himself to the Russians, and we left the cop with them and walked down the corridor.

I said, “You have a medical examiner on the way?”

“I asked for one, sure.”

At the master bedroom Chuck unstuck the single band of crime scene tape and opened the door. This was a much larger room than the one we had been in, and the wall I faced when I entered was decorated. An arc of dried blood swooped gracefully toward the ceiling. Nature imitating art.

To my left, double-hung windows faced the ocean across a stretch of beach. After that sight of sea and sky I took notice of the king-size bed against the bare wall opposite; it was lugubriously cheery. The lacquered headboard was piled high with oversize throw pillows, most of which matched the bedspread in a riot of bright beach colors. There were two chests of drawers, a single chair, and doors to closets and a bathroom.

“She's on the other side of the bed,” Chuck said quietly; he could have been directing me to a seat in church.

I slipped off my shoes and walked around the bed. My head was filling with images of the rooms I'd entered to eyeball bodies. The last one was nearly two years ago, and I had lost the ability to distance myself from the sight. Paulie Malatesta had said this victim was sixteen. The young are the hardest to take; they inhabit your dreams for years. I felt my muscles tighten.

Chuck had stayed back at the door; he wasn't going to look at this sight again until he had to.

The girl was sprawled on the floor parallel to the bed—a slim, long-waisted girl with a slight curve to her hips, and chestnut hair that splashed across her face. Her face was turned in toward the bed, effectively buried between the cascading hair and the bed skirt. She wore a shirt and a thin cotton skirt that came to midthigh.

Something about this body struck me like a warning blow to the chest. I thought I knew it. If I was right, my hand had been in love with this body, had caressed it. As I bent to find out, my gut clenched.

A river of dried blood flowed from the slashed neck; a carotid artery had doubtless been severed, maybe both. I had to lean across the body and move the bed skirt for a glimpse of the face. But by then I knew.

My dread was instantly confirmed. Inside the thin cotton skirt and blouse was Cassie Brennan. I recoiled in shock and stood up. Maybe too quickly, because I went light-headed for an instant and had to touch the headboard to steady myself.

Chuck said, “You okay, Lieutenant?”

I don't know how many times I had told him not to call me lieutenant.

I said, “I'm okay.”

T
HREE

T
HE PREVIOUS SEPTEMBER
, when the summer people were mostly gone, poor fools (the east end of Long Island is in its full glory in the fall), I went on a nearly nonstop outdoor drawing kick. By the last Sunday in the month I was just about drawn out, and it was then, as if to kick start my motor, that a minor miracle bathed in a nimbus of coconut oil wandered along the beach path at my back door.

I had my giant sketch pad under one arm, and my drawing tools in the opposite hand, and I was trying to get the swollen door open when a young female voice behind me said, “Are you an artist or something?”

The drawing session had gone lousy and I was in a sour mood. “I paint,” I said, “but someone else will have to tell you whether I'm an artist.”

By then I had turned around to face a girl in a hot pink bikini and a towel draped across her shoulders. “Well, la-de-da,” she said. “Maybe what you are is a stuffed shirt.”

It was probably the answer I deserved. “I hope not,” I said. I had the door open by now. “But you may be a better judge of that than me. Nice talking to you.”

I was halfway into the house when her voice came floating after me. “Do you hire models?”

“Not often.” I turned around and took a good look. “I can't really afford models.”

That last was a negotiating ploy: I wanted to draw her. I wanted to draw her real bad. She had a pixie twinkle and a way of moving that was at the same time coltish and graceful. She straddled the line between girl and woman—a flat-as-a-breadboard tummy, smooth legs and arms just past the coltish stage, proud breasts. In a couple of years she would be all woman; prettier, maybe, but more conventional to draw.

She said, “Well, what
can
you afford?” She was also in a negotiating mode.

“Have you ever modeled?”

She shook her head slowly.

“You'd find it boring.”

“Everything I get hired for is boring.”

I kept her dangling for a few seconds. “Okay. This is a one-shot proposition, two hours next Saturday, three to five
P.M
.” I told her what I would pay, somewhat above the local going rate for babysitters; I could see in her face that it was more than she made at anything else she did.

“Deal,” she said, stifling her elation, “but could you make it four to six? I've got a mother's helper job until three on Saturdays.”

“Four to six'll be fine.”

“What should I wear?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Because I'll be naked?” Absolutely deadpan.

“No,” I said firmly. “Because whatever you decide to wear will be fine to draw you in. There's no naked in this deal. How old are you, anyway?”

“Sixteen.”

“As of when?”

“Last Thursday.”

At least she was honest. “Bring me a note from your father stating—”

She laughed; it was light, musical. “Sure. If you find him, let me know.”

“Your mother, then. You live at home?”

“Yes.”

“Stating it's okay for you to pose fully clothed for an artist named Sid Shale.
S-h-a-l-e.
”

“So you do call yourself an artist.”

She had caught me. “It's a kind of shorthand.”

“Uh-huh. See you Saturday.” She skip-hopped down the beach, the triumphant teenager; then, in a conscious effort, she switched to a hip-swaying sashay, although there were hardly hips enough to make the point.

*   *   *

H
ER NAME WAS
Cassie Brennan, and she was a natural; I almost never had to instruct her. She fell into poses without giving them any more thought than she would have to flopping down on a blanket to sunbathe. And it didn't seem to matter to her whether I asked her to hold the pose two minutes, ten minutes, or longer. She held it.

The Saturday session went to a second, a third, a fifth, an eighth; some indoors, some out. Many of the poses were tough. I sometimes thought she was challenging me: handle
this,
Mr. Smart-Ass Artist. I took the challenges. My pencil, my pen, my charcoal, were smitten. They caressed her in jeans, in pedal pushers, in shorts, in a skirt—foreshortened, pretzel-shaped, with the light source behind, low to the side, straight above. It mattered not.

She held the poses, but she did move one thing: her mouth. With nothing to do but stay still, she free-associated teenage profundities, and they poured from her as from an open hydrant. She was only a couple of years younger than Sarah, but Sarah was a barely dripping faucet these days, at least with her old man. I paid attention to Cassie's chatter because I thought it might help inform me as a parent.

And because, since my mind is not engaged when I draw, her monologues gave it something to do. Cassie was ignorant, but she was smart, and she did know when to keep her mouth shut. I was working on
Large I
back then, basically twelve square yards of broken clam and oyster shells, and every time her eye fell on the canvas—how could she avoid it?—her face filled with loathing. But she never said a word.

Some of what she did have to say was entertaining, some touching. She definitely believed in God, she let me know, so long as He saw things her way. Maybe if her mother wasn't so strict about churchgoing, made her
hate
church so much, she'd be willing to listen to some opposing arguments from on high. But then again, maybe if her father wasn't such a no-good runaway drunk, her mother wouldn't be so strict about church and about everything else. She loved her mother—“She's definitely my role model”—but did she have to be so darn
strict?

“Cassie,” I interrupted, “she wasn't strict about letting you sit for me.”

“Believe me, she asked around. She found out you were a genuine artist, not some, you know, pervert.”

“I'm relieved. Thanks.”