Insidious (21 page)

It was better than being dead. He would stop on the way at a Walmart, buy whatever he needed, maybe change into something nicer in the men’s room. It wouldn’t be a problem.

As he slowly pulled on his seedy clothes, he turned on the television again. They were talking about another actress the lunatic had killed, in Los Angeles. Her name was Deborah Connelly and she’d lived in Santa Monica, this followed by another plea for him to come forward. He was safe, then—the lunatic had gone back to his old hunting grounds. They even gave the name of the lead agent in L.A.—Special Agent Cam Wittier. Should he call her, get the FBI off his back? Talk about a bad joke, as if that would ever happen.

When he walked out of his motel room, he saw a man getting off a motorcycle, like the one he’d seen that night at Molly’s house. He flattened himself against the dirty stucco wall. Even though his brain knew it couldn’t be the killer, he was still, breath held, and watched until the man walked into the Coyote Diner. His breath whooshed out. He had to get a grip, that lunatic was nowhere close. He was safe. Soon he’d be driving across the border into California and get himself lost in the Sierras by nightfall, maybe in Tahoe City.

Again, he saw Molly front and center in his mind’s eye, first smiling, then dancing in her outrageous costume, and then as she looked when she was dead, gone, the slash in her throat open wide, like a bloody mouth.

His hand throbbed. He dry-swallowed two more aspirin, cursed and held his stitched hand close to his chest, worried it, and found he simply couldn’t let it go. Then he knew what he was going to do. Maybe he could help avenge Molly, help get that lunatic who killed her without ending up in jail. Get the FBI off his back, too.

He pulled out his cell and punched in Reggie Nash’s number. Reggie owed him a favor.

36

ON THE WAY TO MILLSTOCK, MARYLAND

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

Savich turned the Porsche onto I-95, heading north to Millstock, Maryland, to interview Ms. Marsia Gay in her studio. “I know, we could have asked her to come to the Hoover Building, but—”

“But she’s an artist, you’re an artist, and you want to see where and how she works.”

“I’m not really an— Well, yeah, you might be partially right.”

Sherlock sat back and closed her eyes.

Savich sighed. “It’s been a long day and what do we have to show for it? Another actress murdered in Santa Monica, and our prime weasel dead. Officer Golinowski didn’t remember anything at all, thanks to all the propofol and ketamine the killer put in that syringe.”

“It’s the middle of the night, he’s trying to stay awake, sees the tech coming, asks for ID, and the killer gets close enough to stick the needle in his jugular vein before he can react. He must have been out fast.”

“At least the killer didn’t murder Golinowski, too,” Savich said. “Ben is pretty steamed at him. I bet he won’t like the write-up he gets in his file.”

“He deserves it,” Sherlock said. “Now we’ve got no possible ace in the hole. It’s depressing.”

“Let it go for now, Sherlock. We’ve got Marsia Gay to think about.”

“I’ve got to admit I’m curious about her metal sculpting. She seemed straightforward and very nice last night at the mansion, dealt well with Venus and the family. I liked her. I found it interesting she knew about your grandmother, worshipped her, in fact, even noticed the scars on your fingers. Do you think she did her research on your grandmother to suck up, or was her appreciation for real?”

“If she’d wanted to suck up, she would have checked me out,” Savich said, and grinned at her. “But why? It’s Venus she should care about.”

“And she appeared to. She’s good-looking, talented, probably makes a lot of money. She certainly seems to think highly of Rob.”

But what did Rob think about her, Savich wondered, clearly remembering the stunned look on his face when he’d seen Delsey Freestone. He said, “Now we’ll see how she behaves in her own environment.”

Sherlock looked over at a lime-green car with a teenager singing at the top of his lungs, fingers tapping on the steering wheel.

Savich maneuvered the Porsche around an SUV filled with small children, all of them laughing and yelling like hyenas, felt a moment of sympathy for the woman driving. As he went past her, she gave him a smile, with dimples. So she liked chaos, did she? He said, “It’d be simple if it was Alexander who was behind Willig’s killing, but you know, I don’t think it is. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that you’ve got to work to really know another person, what ignites them, what enrages them, to figure out what they’re really like at their core.”

“I know your core, Dillon. It’s solid. Maybe even awesome.”

He laughed. “Same goes for yours, sweetheart. But what do we
know about Alexander? He can behave like a self-absorbed egotist, all me me me. But is there maybe a spark of decency? A bit of love for someone other than himself? And Veronica, does she really love Venus as much as it appears she does, as much as she says she does?”

“I really like Veronica, always have. I do hope she’s for real. As for Alexander, after our interview with him, I’m inclined to say what you see is what you get—a selfish man.”

Sherlock felt the familiar g-force when Dillon pulled out around a white Impala and gave the Porsche the go-ahead. The Impala driver, a natty-looking octogenarian, looked pissed until he saw the Porsche, then he gave them a thumbs-up and a smile lit up by big white false teeth.

Savich gave the Impala driver a nod. “Maybe it could be Alexander, except for the shooting. That still makes no sense to me. I know our killer realized the jig was up with the arsenic, but why would Alexander up the ante by hiring Willig to shoot Venus in broad daylight?”

“Don’t forget he could have gotten away with it if we hadn’t delayed leaving. So maybe it was reckless, but not all that stupid. On the other hand, he failed, and it signed his death warrant.”

Savich sighed. “Yeah, there is that.”

37

MARSIA GAY’S STUDIO

MILLSTOCK, MARYLAND

WEDNESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON

Savich turned off I-95 at the Millstock exit. Neither he nor Sherlock had ever visited this bedroom community. They saw quickly enough that it was a hub with a tangle of crossing and crisscrossing concrete highways curving off in every direction. They heard horns honking before they saw a long line of stopped cars. Rush-hour traffic? No, something else, probably an accident. Savich smelled frustration and impatience thick in the air. Sure enough there was a pileup maybe a quarter of a mile ahead. Everyone was blocked.

Sherlock said, “Take that right, Dillon, let’s see if we can go around.”

Savich pulled the Porsche off onto Buckley Street, and continued on side streets until they came to a small warehouse district. A good dozen warehouses faced one another in a long line. They weren’t abandoned and decrepit like some of their counterparts in Washington, D.C., with homeless people and drug addicts huddled in doorways. These warehouses looked like they’d been taken over by yuppies and the artist crowd for many years now, and gentrified.

Savich stopped the Porsche in front of the very last warehouse on the right. Unlike its neighbors, this warehouse exterior was stained
aluminum siding, looked old enough to be condemned. Until they stepped inside and beheld a miracle—modern and shiny white walls, two art deco boxes containing palm trees, happy as could be, given the broad light coming in from the high windows. There was a brand-new elevator, mailboxes by the door, and three mirrors reflecting a big expanse of tile floor.

“Why do they keep the outside looking so derelict?” Sherlock wondered as they stepped onto the elevator and punched the third, and top, floor.

“Maybe it’s as simple as running out of money. Or maybe they want to keep the salesmen away.”

She laughed. “Or the management company. If they haven’t bothered to check out the interior, the rent might stay low.”

Savich thought she might be right. The elevator took them swiftly to the third floor and its three suites, the end one, 666—wasn’t that a kick—Marsia Gay’s studio. They heard a hammer pound in rhythmic time, then the low buzz of a welder.

Sherlock knocked, but the welder kept buzzing. He tried the door. Not locked. He and Sherlock walked into a large space filled with light from four enormous windows. At least a dozen metal sculptures of what could possibly be representations of men and women, in various stages of construction, stood like contorted and twisted sentinels along the walls. The sculptures looked oddly graceful, and drew the eye.

They saw Marsia Gay surrounded by machinery and a table of tools in the far corner wearing a welding apron, a welding mask, and thick gloves. She was welding two pieces of metal that looked like copper and aluminum, but Savich couldn’t be sure. It would have been stifling in the room were it not for several large fans that churned the air and dissipated the heat, making a huge noise. Marsia Gay still hadn’t seen or heard them.

Savich saw she was using an arc welder, the metal she was working on held by a clamp handle at the positive lead. Sparks flew around her. She was steady-handed, completely focused on what she was doing. They said nothing, only walked around the studio, studying her work. The smell of burned metal was strong, and bits of metal detritus hung in the sunlit air. The large room was ruthlessly organized. They saw bins filled with various sizes and shapes of scrap metal, each labeled: steel, brass and bronze, carbide, aluminum, and copper. Larger pieces of scrap metal, likewise labeled, stood in large bins against the wall.

Sherlock stopped to stare up at an eight-foot-tall figure with muscles of raw steel and prominent pecs, almost like breasts, long muscled steel legs at twisted angles, and a protruding tangle of bulging thick copper pipes banding the middle. “A pregnant man?”

“Actually, it’s a figure spun in a dream, and the dreamer is visualizing fecundity.” Marsia stepped forward and lightly touched her hand to the sculpture’s steel arm. “Her name is Helen—
A Dream Vision
. She was quite a challenge. For example, those copper ribs? I had to weld them to steel, but because the two metals aren’t mutually soluble, I used nickel as an intermediary metal. That way I could weld them and end up with a strong joint.”

Marsia pulled off her welding mask and set it carefully onto a countertop covered with tools and more even smaller containers of scrap metal. She ran her hands through her hair, smiled at them, took off her welding apron to show a long white artist shirt over black leggings. She wore Doc Martens on her long narrow feet. “Helen is going to be the focal point in the lobby of a fertility clinic in Baltimore.” She stripped off her welding gloves as she spoke, laid them beside the mask. They shook hands. Hers were strong, her fingers and palms callused.

She said, “Agent Savich, I have to admit, I visited the Raleigh Gallery in Georgetown this morning to see your pieces. I guess I wanted
to see if you had really inherited some of your grandmother’s talent. It’s obvious you did. I particularly like the dolphin you whittled in rosewood. It’s marvelous really, so fluid you can almost see the dolphin moving.

“Mr. Raleigh also told me about your sister, Lily Russo. I realized soon enough that I read her in the
Washington Post
every Sunday. Her political cartoon featuring No Wrinkles Remus—he’s quite a personage, always has me laughing and shaking my head. Both of you are quite accomplished. Ah, I see that makes you uncomfortable. And you, Agent Sherlock, Mr. Raleigh told me you’re an accomplished pianist.”

Sherlock shook her head. “Not so much anymore, since I don’t practice enough. Now I tend to cruise the keys for pleasure.”

“I would enjoy hearing you play. Come have a cold drink and you can tell me what I can do for you. Sorry it’s so hot in here, but it’ll cool down quickly with the welder shut off. I’ll turn off a couple of fans so we can hear each other without shouting.”

Marsia turned off two of the four fans. Sherlock said, “Yes, that’s better. You have quite a setup here, Ms. Gay. All those bins—so many different metals.”

“Yes, most of it scrap metal. Sometimes I think the folk who sell scrap metal online make more money than I do. They scrounge through dump sites, carry away tossed-out washers, TVs, toasters, whatever—and strip them down for scrap metal to sell. Come, sit down.”

Savich and Sherlock were soon sitting on an old love seat beneath one of the large windows, glasses of water in their hands. Marsia on the floor facing them, her knees drawn up to her chin.

Sherlock said, “Ms. Gay, how long after you met Rob Rasmussen did you realize who he was? Or did you find out who he was and that’s why you hired him?”

38

Marsia’s head snapped back. “You come out of the gate fast, don’t you, Agent Sherlock? Let me think. I didn’t know his grandmother is
the
Venus Rasmussen until after he had lunch with her. I remember asking him why he’d broken our date and he told me about seeing his grandmother for the first time in ten years. Then he told me his history, the severed relationships with his family, how it turned out both he and his grandmother wanted to see each other again at nearly the same time. A quite wonderful story, really. As you know, I met her for the first time last night. She’s a grand old lady. I’ve got to say she has quite a flare. I loved her Dior suit.”

Savich said, “When Rob told you about her, you knew who she was?”

“Of course I knew who she was. I’m not deaf or blind. I occasionally watch the news, read the paper. The woman is practically an institution. What amazes me, though, is that someone is trying to kill her. Why? She’s getting up there, maybe another five years at most before she passes the reins to one in her family.”

Savich said, “Alexander is being groomed, yes, but I can see Venus
driving the bus for more than just another five years. I think she’ll know when it’s time to hand over the reins.”