THE COPS NEVER came. Qatar busied himself reinstalling software on the new drive, rebuilding his art files from the ZIP disks. He stayed off the porn websites, put away his drawing instruments. An overdue tidying-up; a good time to lie low, and perhaps do a little maintenance on his career.
A new book, perhaps. He'd been toying with the idea of a book on ceramics. He even had a title: Earth, Water, Fire and Air: The Ceramic Arts Revolution in the Upper Midwest, 1960… 1999.
He bought a notebook and made some notes, and made more notes on his office whiteboard. Good for the image, he thought. Nobody here but us intellectuals.
THE ONE FLY in this intellectual ointment was Barstad. She kept calling, distracting him. He'd destroyed all the images of her, but now found that under the pressure of the obvious danger of detection, his mind kept going to her.
The imp of the perverse, isn't that what Poe called it? The irrepressible impulse to do harm to oneself? He had put off another meeting with her, but that night had experienced the most intense fantasies involving Barstad, a camera, and his art.
All his work to this point had involved grafting women's faces to images from the 'Net. Now, it occurred to him, he didn't have to do that. He could get an image of a woman doing anything he wished-at least, he hadn't yet found anything that she wouldn't do-and create a genuinely unique work. An original. He needed to work with the idea. He needed to manipulate the woman to create a new vision.
His drawings continued to come up on the television with the better parts obscured-the TV stations couldn't seem to get enough of them-but after a day went by, and no cops came…
He began to feel safe.
Nobody knew.
If he was careful, he thought, he could begin working again. He began by making another trip to a CompUSA, where he bought a cheap laptop. That night, when Rynkowski Hall had gone dark, when even the janitors had gone home, he walked down the hall to Charlotte Neumann's office and slipped the door lock with a butter knife. All the locks could be done the same way; the professors knew it, as did the brighter undergraduates.
Neumann's office was a simple cube, with a bookcase along one wall. Her copy of Photoshop 6 was in the top left corner, and he lifted it off the shelf, pulled the door closed behind himself, and returned to his office. The installation took no time at all; in an hour, he was walking out of the building. He'd known Rynkowski Hall all of his life, all the nooks and crannies and hiding places. He would hide the computer after each day's work, he thought, and never again contaminate his daily work…
BUT THE NEXT day brought bigger trouble; a dirty day, a grinding, bitter drizzle pounding down. Late in the afternoon, he'd gone down to Neumann's office on a routine errand-classes were about to resume, and a student who didn't have the proper prerequisites had asked permission to attend one of his classes. Qatar simply needed the permission form. Neumann's door was open, and she was sitting at her desk. He knocked on the door frame and said, "Charlotte, I need-"
She heard his voice and turned her head, and her arm spasmodically jerked across her desk, away from him. Her hand held a slip of blue paper; her face was locked with sudden conscious control, which produced a weak smile.
He continued without a break, "-a prerequisite waiver; I don't seem to have any more. I'll need a permission number."
"Of course," she said. "Let me see…"
He looked unwaveringly into her eyes, but he was tracking her hand and the blue paper with his peripheral vision. She casually opened a drawer, slipped her hand in, riffled some papers, and said, "Where did I put those?" When her hand emerged, there was no paper in it. She opened the next drawer down, said, "Ah. Here," and handed him a half-dozen slips.
"The number?"
"Just a second…" She pulled down a file in her computer and said, "Make that 3474/AS."
"Okay," he said. He jotted the number on one of the forms and left the office. Stopped and looked back. Was she hiding something from him?
He was sensitive to the idea because of the discovery of the body, then the images on the television. He cleaned up some last-minute chores around the office, then headed home. He brooded about Neumann. What was she doing? Why did that slip of paper stick in his mind like a thorn?
BARSTAD CALLED, AND he put her off. "I'll try to get over later tonight, but if not tonight, tomorrow for sure. I've got a surprise treat for you."
"A treat?" She sounded delighted. She was a moron. "What kind of treat?"
"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise," he said, thinking of his camera. "I'll call you tonight if I can get away. If I can't, I know I've got time tomorrow afternoon. Can you get away?"
"Anytime," she'd said.
AT SEVEN O'CLOCK that night, with the janitors caucusing in the maintenance room, he went back to Neumann's with his butter knife and a flashlight. Her desk was unlocked, and he opened the drawer and looked inside. No blue paper. He checked the other drawers, nervous, listening for footfalls. Still nothing.
Checked her bulletin board, found nothing blue. Was about to leave, when he saw all the little tag-ends of paper sticking out from under her desk calendar. He lifted it up, one edge, deflected the beam of the flashlight beneath it. Still nothing; and he'd felt so clever when he lifted the pad, a sense of inevitable discovery.
Damnit. He let himself out of the office and walked down to his own, turned on a study light, swiveled his chair so that his face was in shadow, and closed his eyes. He knew that blue…
He might have dozed for a few minutes. When he opened his eyes again, they wandered, almost by their own accord, it seemed, to the bottom drawer of an old wooden file cabinet. Had he seen that blue in his own files?
He dropped to his knees and pulled the drawer out. A half-dozen fat files were stuffed with paper he hadn't expected to look at again until he retired and had to clean out the cabinet. He riffled through them, and the label "Planes on Plains" caught his eye. Notes, letters, comments on his cubism book. He pulled it, opened it, and saw the blue. He slipped it out, turned it, and recognized it instantly.
Jesus. Four years old, and somehow she'd remembered, long after he'd forgotten. An invitation to a publication party for Planes on Plains. The publisher, even cheaper than most of that notoriously penurious breed, hadn't been willing to pay for much of anything, so he'd done the party invitations himself. He'd done a quick little self-portrait for the front page of the blue invitation.
The drawing looked nothing like the drawings on television, really. But his historian's eye felt the resemblance-something in the technique, and the choice of line. Neumann was a historian herself. Qatar closed his eyes, swayed, nearly fell, overcome by the image of Neumann taking the paper to the police. They were that close.
Had she talked to anyone? Maybe not. To make this kind of accusation would be extremely serious, and if she was wrong, could end her career. She'd have to be careful. Sooner or later, though…
"She's gotta go," he mumbled.
Right away. Tonight. He'd seen the logic of it in a flash: If she'd talked to other people about the drawing, he was finished. If he killed her, he might be finished, but then again, he'd killed a lot of people, and the police had never had a sniff of him. If he moved quickly enough, directly enough, he might pull it off again.
He walked straight out of his office, down the stairs, and out to his car. He'd been to her house, twice, and it wasn't far away, just across the river and a little north and east. He drove over, calculating. Park at her house, or down the block? If he parked down the block, he'd have to walk, and that would increase his exposure. If he parked in front, somebody might remember his car when she came up missing. He'd walk, he thought. It was raining. With a raincoat and an umbrella, nobody would recognize him.