He pulled off his gloves and slapped them down on the body which had done nothing to offend him. She held her ground. No emotion whatsoever, and that never failed to disturb him. He suspected this was her method of getting a rise out of him, forcing him to fill the emotional void from his own store of frustration.
“Just a few questions,” she said. “Did Markowitz ever ask you how much time it would take to cut up the two bodies?”
How in hell did she know that? He turned away from her as he pulled off the bloody surgical gown. “Yes, he did ask. But I was angry with him. I told him to buy a leg of beef and figure it out for himself.”
“That’s just what he did.” She pulled a yellow napkin out of her pocket. “It took him a long time to cut through that leg. That gave him a lot of trouble with the time frame of the murder. It looks like there had to be more than one person working on the bodies. I think that was another reason he wouldn’t close out the case, another thing that wouldn’t fit.”
He took the napkin from her hand and read the log of cutting meat and bone. “Poor bastard. I could have helped him with that. But you were right, we weren’t speaking then.” He handed the napkin back to her. “The killer worked the limbs at the joint. Easier that way, though I couldn’t tell you how much time was saved.”
“Can you think of anything else that might help?”
“I suppose you could say the joint cuts were an oddity, and I should have told him that, too. In most dismemberment cases, the fool takes the leg off at the bottom of the torso, not the hip joint-cuts through the bone when he doesn’t have to. The bones at the joints weren’t cut, but I did report the damage from the axe. He might have misread that. And I suppose I misled him with that leg of beef.”
“So would the joint cuts indicate some knowledge of anatomy? Like art school anatomy?”
“It might.”
“Oren Watt never went to art school.”
Slope thought she delivered that line with entirely too much smugness. He could fix that. “It might also indicate that the killer had simply carved his share of Thanksgiving turkeys. Nobody cuts the bone of the drumstick. But Helen always served a roast for Thanksgiving, didn’t she? So I can understand how that one got by you. But you’re so stubborn. I have to worry about what else you might be missing. You just can’t admit that Oren Watt could’ve-”
“One more question,” she said. “Why did you back up Quinn? You told him Aubry was the most likely target.”
“Yes, I did. I also told him I thought Oren Watt was the most likely suspect. I still believe that little bastard did it. Why must you go back into that case again?”
“Why did you support the idea that the girl was the real target?”
“Because she was the only one to suffer. The other one was hacked up postmortem. I know you read the report. You could probably recite it by heart. But it’s only a collection of data to you, isn’t it? Try to imagine it. She was crawling when the attacker followed her along the length of the floor, inflicting blow after blow. That was something that bothered Markowitz a lot. The girl was the victim of unmistakable savage rage.”
“It’s a pity you and Markowitz weren’t on speaking terms after the autopsy. Markowitz questioned Watt on Aubry. Watt didn’t know her at all, not the first thing about her.”
“So he didn’t know her. So? Perhaps he hated all women. It was a lunatic act and a crime of rage. You have the evidence of madness in my original report. He took a damn souvenir, her brain, for Christ’s sake!”
“You still don’t get it, do you? It was the brain that Markowitz used to rule out Watt’s confession.”
“You don’t know that.” He knew she was running a bluff. Sometimes she forgot he had been playing poker for decades before she was ever born. “You’re only guessing.”
“Yeah, but I’m real good at that. Call it a gift. And I know my old man’s style. You weren’t talking to Markowitz. You were angry with him. You never talked about the case again. It would have been a bad subject after what he asked you to do. Now suppose Peter Ariel was the primary target. What then? If Markowitz was alive, standing here right now, would you have anything else to tell him? Would you change anything?”
In a way, Slope felt that Markowitz was alive. He sensed the man’s presence every time she was near. She was a living reminder of a lifelong friendship. Even in death, Markowitz stubbornly refused to abandon her, forcing everyone who had loved him, to love his daughter too.
“No, Kathy, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“Mallory,” she said with insistence.
“Kathy,” he said with great deliberation. “One day your father’s friends will all be dead, and there’ll be no one to call you Kathy. That’s my biggest fear for you. Terrible thing being loved, isn’t it? It’s like a debt hanging over your head, and it pisses you off, doesn’t it? Well, good.”
She was angry now, and that was good too. Her anger was his only method of ferreting out her humanity in what limited range of emotion she possessed. She returned his broad smile with an icy glare. She advanced on him, gathering size as she closed in on his person, one hand rising to within striking distance of his face.
After she had gone, and the door was closing behind her on its slow hydraulic, he muttered, “Perverse little monster.” For she had touched his face so gently and kissed his cheek. She had left him disoriented, flailing for understanding in her disturbing wake, and she had done that to a purpose. He knew it-for he truly believed it was her mission in life to confuse him.
The photographer set up the tripod on the sidewalk, facing the plaza of Gregor Gilette’s new building. Workmen were pulling down the last section of the wooden wall to reveal the graceful stone arch. This gateway to the plaza mimicked the shape of the building’s lower windows.
When the photographer was done, the workmen would replace the wooden panels, and they would remain in place until the plaza sculpture was installed for the dedication ceremony.
Emma Sue Hollaran stood by the pile of wood sections, her face red and pinched, railing at the workmen, who only shrugged their shoulders and said they had their orders. Emma Sue, mover and shaker of the Public Works Committee, turned ungainly and charged on the young photographer, who took her for an infuriated bull, cleverly disguised as a smaller, dumber animal.
“I never authorized any of this!” she yelled.
The photographer screwed a filter onto a lens and bent over the camera, making adjustments that didn’t need to be made, hoping that she would simply go away. Stupid idea. Looking down at the camera, he could also see her legs, sturdy little fireplugs rooted firmly to the pavement.
“Young man, I’m talking to you.”
Gilette waved the photographer back, and now the architect stepped forward to loom over her. Gilette smiled as he looked into the angry slits of her eyes, with an intensity that forced her to step back a pace. “The photographer takes his orders from me.”
She had been planning to say something to him. What was it? She could only stare. He was so close. She couldn’t think.
Emma Sue had always been protected from her own mirror by a doting father who had insisted that she was truly beautiful. She was protected also by her father’s land and money, never suffering the plight of the homely girl at the school dance. Considered by every farmer in the county to be a good catch, landwise and moneywise, she was sought after by every landowner who had a son of marriageable age. She had always danced every dance and happily trod on the feet of the handsome, wild boys who feared their matchmaking fathers.
And money had protected her from her own dull-wittedness, with a generous endowment to an Ivy League college. Money could do anything. With money enough, black could become white and a bleating barnyard animal could become a peer of the art community in the art center of the world.