“Thanks for the two-bit analysis, Doctor, but let’s try to keep this as uncomplicated as possible. Just answer my question.”
Tolan was at a loss. Wasn’t sure what the caller was referring to. Then it hit him. “About the computer?”
“You are listening after all.”
Tolan sighed. “Then, yes, I do have one. A laptop, sitting right here in front of me.”
“Are you connected to the Internet?”
“Yes.” Where was this going?
“Open your favorite search engine and do a search on the name Han van Meegeren.”
Tolan frowned. “Who?”
“Han van Meegeren,” the caller said, then spelled it out for him. “Go ahead, I’ll wait.”
He thought about hanging up again, but curiosity had gotten ahold of him, and he hesitated only a moment before flipping open his laptop. Hitting a button to take it out of hibernation, he waited for his wireless card to find the connection, then called up his Google screen, typed in the name, and jabbed the return button.
The screen blossomed with the familiar blue typeface listing dozens of websites.
Scanning the site summaries, he saw that the main theme of each centered around the subject of art forgery. Apparently van Meegeren was an infamous practitioner of the craft.
“As you can see,” the caller said, “good old Han was quite the faker. If you get a chance to explore further, you’ll find that the Dutch authorities once arrested him for collaborating with the Nazis. They traced a painting in Hermann Göring’s collection to him and threatened to charge him with treason.”
“How unfortunate,” Tolan said, thinking again of the sleep he needed. “What does this have to do with me?”
“Patience,” the caller said. “Your bedside manner is severely lacking.”
“It’s been a bad morning. Get to the point, if you have one.”
“Oh, I have one. One I’m sure you’ll find quite interesting. But back to van Meegeren for a moment. The painting in question was a work supposedly done by Johannes Vermeer in the 1600s, but it turned out that van Meegeren himself had painted it. He was a forger, not a traitor.”
“That seems to be the general theme here, but again—what does it have to do with me?”
“I think you already know, Doctor, but let’s move on to another website, shall we?”
This was getting ridiculous. He’d let it go on far too long.
As if sensing his hesitation, the caller said: “Don’t worry, we’re almost done. Just indulge me this one last time. If this next website doesn’t satisfy your curiosity, feel free to hang up on me again.”
He was toying with Tolan, but the hook was securely in place now. Tolan waited for him to give him the website address, then typed it in.
“Keep in mind,” the caller said, “that this is a one-time-only URL. I’m running it on an anonymous server that can’t be traced back to me.”
This gave Tolan pause. “Where are you sending me?”
“The simple press of a key will tell you.”
True enough, he thought, and hit the enter key. A moment later, what filled the page made him rise out of his chair involuntarily and back away from the computer. He dropped his phone to the desk as if it were contaminated.
“Dr. Tolan?”
He stared at the screen.
Photographs. A dozen or more. But nothing like the photos of Abby he had just been looking through.
Each one featured a brutally dismembered body. A killer’s knife had carved its way through flesh and bone, severing limbs, mutilating them, leaving pools of coagulating blood. The parts had then been rearranged in a kind of sick mosaic. A cubist nightmare.
Tolan wondered if these were crime scene photos that the caller had somehow managed to pilfer from an evidence locker. Such a find might trigger a fantasy and fuel the building of this website. Yet, despite the subject matter, there was an artistic quality to the photographs, a sense of form and composition that no crime scene photographer was likely to bother with. Or care about.
“Dr. Tolan?”
Choking back a wad of bile, he picked up the phone. His hand was shaking. “Who the fuck are you?”
“This is my abstract collection. Quite remarkable, don’t you think? Notice the way I used texture to enhance the line, and the subtle contrast of bone against flesh.”
Tolan glanced at his land line. Was there a way to conference this call and somehow get Blackburn involved? He didn’t think so.
Staring at the computer screen, he sat down again, then quickly jabbed Ctrl+P, sending the pages to his printer. When he did contact Blackburn, he wanted evidence to show him.
“Dr. Tolan?”
The printer whirred behind him and he felt his whole body tighten, as if he’d been caught doing something unseemly. He swallowed, nearly choking on his response. “What?”
“One last question: Do you know what’s missing from this collection?”
“Other than your sanity?”
Another soft laugh. “Nice. I’ll have to remember that one.” The caller paused. “I worked very hard to achieve this level of perfection, Doctor. Many artists simply rely on luck and instinct to create their work, but this collection took careful planning and execution. Gacy, Gein, BTK, Dahmer — they were all amateurs. Paint-by-number wannabes, every one of them. But I ask you again: Do you know what’s missing?”
“I have no earthly idea,” Tolan told him, but the moment he said it, it hit him like a brick to the side of the head, and he wondered why he hadn’t put it together the instant he’d seen these photos.
Vincent.
He was talking to Vincent.
A wave of nausea swept over him with such ferocity that he immediately leaned toward his waste basket, struggling to keep from throwing up. He hovered over it, not realizing that he’d put the phone down again until he heard the tinny voice on the line.
“Doctor?” A pause. “Dr. Tolan?”
Tolan waited for the nausea to ease up, then righted himself and picked up the phone. “You fucking monster.”
“I take it you now understand what I’m talking about. But for the sake of clarity, I’ll spell it out for you.”
“Shut up,” Tolan said.
“If you click the link at the bottom of the page—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“—you’ll see it for yourself. What I consider one of the most egregious cases of forgery I’ve ever encountered.”
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll—”
“What?” the caller said. “What will you do, Doctor? Turn me into the police? Call my mother and have her spank me? Just click the link. You know you want to.”
What he wanted to do was throw his phone against the wall, but for some unfathomable reason he didn’t. The caller was right.
Despite his rage, and the nausea continuing to crawl through his stomach, he grabbed the mouse, scrolled down to the bottom of the page and saw the underlined blue link waiting for him:
Abby Tolan
“I went to a lot of trouble to procure the photos behind that link, Doctor. Had to hack straight into the OCPD crime scene database to get them. But whether or not you click it is unimportant to me. The work is substandard. Crude.” He paused as if taking a moment to calm his own anger. “Your dear departed wife isn’t in the collection above for one simple reason: She was never part of it.”
Tolan just stared at the link, unable to respond, his finger frozen above the mouse.
“She’s a forgery. A fake. A vile pornographer’s talentless approximation of my work. And I don’t like that, Doctor. I don’t appreciate being credited for such obvious hackery — if you’ll excuse the pun.”
“What are you trying to tell me, you sick son of a bitch?”
“The police got it wrong. The police, the papers, everyone. I didn’t kill your wife. But I think you know that, don’t you? You and Han van Meegeren have something in common.” Another pause. Tolan could almost feel the rage transmitted through the line. “And when I get you alone,” the caller finally said, “you’ll find out what true artistry is.”
Then the line clicked.