Color Blind (36 page)

S
irens cut through the night and arcs of police beacons swept the street, intensifying the scarlet of the dying fire as Kate gazed across at the Gallery of Outsider Art, water pouring over blackened brick, half the facade gone, dark gray smoke and mist belching out of the ruins.

One of the Crime Scene crew handed Floyd Brown a Baggie with a heavy chain coiled inside. “Necklace we took off the body. You wanted to see it, Chief?”

Brown nodded at Kate. “Wanted
her
to see it.”

Kate gripped the bag, held it up toward a street lamp, stared through the plastic.

“Kid was wearing it,” said Brown. “Think it fits the description of the chain missing from Boyd Werther’s neck?”

Kate pictured the artist in his studio, running his paint-stained fingers under the chain, displaying it for her, the individual links like crosses. She slid the chain back and forth inside the bag, felt as though she were trying to channel the dead artist, and it made her want to cry. “Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s the one. But you should contact Werther’s first wife for an absolute ID.” Kate reached for the chain around her own neck and grasped Richard’s wedding ring in her fingers.

“Not all that much left of the body,” said Brown. “Face is a mess, sunglasses melted right into flesh. Weapon in his hand ended up in better condition than the rest of him. At least someone got off a solid punch or kick—knocked half the kid’s teeth out.” Brown sighed. “It’s not gonna be an easy ID.” He stroked his forehead, thought about the two young rookies dead, Brennan and Carvalier, also dead, and the agent. “Fucking mess.” The last of the fire was reflected in his dark eyes, but it didn’t mask the pain. “Did he come in shooting? Catch them off guard? I’m trying to see it,” he said. “He comes down the street, shoots Agent Homeless, then shoots the two in the car, then what? Walks across the street to the gallery, knocks on the gate, and they just open up?” He dragged a hand over his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Wouldn’t the cops inside have heard the shots and come running out of the gallery?” asked Perlmutter.

“Gun had a silencer,” said Brown. “Crime Scene says the gate was halfway up, so they must have let him in. Either they didn’t know who he was, or they thought they could handle it. Obviously they didn’t know Brennan and Carvalier were dead.”

“Did either of them call in?” asked Kate.

“At midnight. To say everything was quiet.”

Tapell headed toward them, backlit by the glow of the dying fire. “Press conference in the morning, Floyd.”

Brown nodded.

“Sorry about the men.” She started away, then turned back. “You going to call the families, or—”

“Already did,” said Brown. “Couldn’t take the chance of them seeing it on the news.” He motioned toward two camera crews filming the fire, newscasters standing in front of the gallery broadcasting, appropriate frowns in place along with every hair.

“Right.” She turned away, dodged a couple of reporters.

“Too bad we didn’t have the chance to interrogate him,” said Kate as they headed toward Perlmutter’s car. She was feeling incomplete and anxious and sad all at once.

“Guess it will remain a mystery,” said Perlmutter.

T
here wasn’t much reason for Kate to come into the precinct in the morning, but when the daylight cut in through her bedroom windows after three hours of nonsleep, the last thing she wanted to do was hang around her apartment and think about what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

Clean out her locker? A lame excuse. But she used it.

At the station, she and Perlmutter watched the press conference on a TV in the briefing room; Tapell presenting the good news—that the serial killer was dead, Brown left with the not so good news of lost lives, “heroes”; then the two of them fielding questions, trying to put the thing to rest. The press had obviously gotten some information because they kept referring to the kid as the
color-blind killer
.

“Do we know who he was yet?” Kate asked, as Perlmutter shut off the television.

“Prelims show the kid was a user, heroin. But they haven’t been able to ID him. I can’t imagine anyone coming forward to claim the body. Would you, if he was your kid?”

“Good point,” said Kate, though she thought she would.

“The Bad Seed,”
said Perlmutter. “A fifties howler about an evil little girl. You ever see it?”

“No. Think I’ll pass too.”

“Tired?” asked Perlmutter.

“Aren’t you?”

“Dead Man Walking,”
he said. “Now there’s a movie that proves two things. One, that a good-looking actress is assured an Oscar if she plays a part without makeup, and two, it makes me happy that our psycho is dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“No trial. No bleeding hearts to say he shouldn’t be put to death.”

“You’re in favor of the death penalty?”

“Suppose we’d brought him in alive. No question he cops an insanity plea. They subpoena the therapist from Pilgrim State. The lawyer brings the jury to tears over the way the poor kid was just a victim himself, right? He spends maybe a dozen years in a
facility
zonked out on Thorazine. Gets out, stops taking his meds, kills again.”

“You’re oversimplifying,” said Kate. “No way they’d have ever let him walk the streets again.”

“Maybe not.”

“And you know what—and don’t call me a bleeding heart—but he probably
was
a victim. Sure, he’s a monster, but it takes a lot of work to create a monster like that.”

“Lots of people overcome really bad shit,” said Perlmutter.

“No question,” said Kate, thinking of most of the kids who had managed under incredible hardship to get through Let There Be a Future and create amazing lives for themselves. “I’m just saying that you never know. Plus there’s always the chance that you might execute the wrong man.”

“Another great flick, Hitchcock’s
The Wrong Man.
”

“Very smooth. The way you changed the subject.”

“Me?” Perlmutter’s blue eyes widened with innocence. “No. Just like to think of life as fiction. It’s easier that way.”

Life as fiction.
Kate wondered if that phrase might define her life?

“You with me?”

“Yes. Sorry. I think I’ll clean out my stuff—for the second time. Then head home.” Though she wasn’t quite ready to go home or give up her NYPD status, not with so many questions about Richard’s death unanswered.

Perlmutter walked her toward the women’s locker room. Halfway there they met up with Marty Grange and they all played an unintentional game—dodging to the right, then left, one blocking the other. “I’ll stand still,” Kate said to Grange. “Then you go, okay? On the count of three.”

Grange almost smiled.

“Back to the Bureau?” asked Kate.

“Guess so,” said Grange, who looked into her eyes for about a second, then immediately away.

Kate nodded. Grange nodded.

Perlmutter looked from Kate to Grange.

“Well then,” said Kate, and took a step.

“Hey, I—” Grange stretched out his hand. “No hard feelings, huh?”

Kate figured her face was registering some small amount of shock, but she took his hand. It was warm and moist. “Sure. Who needs hard feelings?” Kate slid her hand out. “Good-bye.”

Grange didn’t say anything, just nodded, this time closer to a bow, then quickly straightened up, awkward, tapping his pockets. “Keys,” he said. “Just looking for my keys. Ah, here they are.” He produced a heavy metal ring laden with keys.

“You a warden in your spare time?”

“No. I, uh, have a place here, in New York, and then the place in D.C., so I have a lot of uh…keys.”

“I was kidding,” said Kate.

“Oh. Sure. I knew that.” Grange set his features into a sober mask, then took off down the hall.

“Whoa,” said Perlmutter, once Grange had disappeared around the corner. “Agent Grange has got a thing for you.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Hey, when a man goes all bumbling and goofy around a woman—”

“Nicky,” said Kate, with what she hoped was a good-natured smile. “Shut up.”

T
he San Remo apartment seemed bigger and emptier than ever, like a tomb, or a museum with art and objects that Kate and Richard had collected that she couldn’t bear to look at, every one of them setting off another memory.

Kate wandered from the den to the living room, into the library, perused a few art books, considered the idea of writing a new book, which at the moment seemed totally impossible, then finally stumbled into her bedroom, a sideways glance at Richard’s laughing photo beside the money clip on her dresser, a constant reminder of her failure to get answers—and maybe his failure too. But would she ever know for sure?

The money clip felt cold in her hand, just a piece of metal, not much of a talisman, neither conjuring the man nor his spirit. Kate laid it back onto the dresser, wandered down the hallway into the den, folded herself into a soft leather chair, caught up on calls. First, Richard’s mother, who continued to insist that she come to Florida for a visit, which Kate said she would after Nola delivered, maybe all three of them. A quick call to Blair, who wanted to plan a lunch, all the girls, at one of their uptown haunts, but Kate begged off. “Next week,” she said, though Blair complained it was always
next week
.

Kate stared at the bookshelves filled with the novels Richard liked to read, thrillers of any kind, mysteries, whodunits, the irony not lost on her. But she couldn’t sit still. Down the hall again, into her office, where she sat and gazed at a blank yellow pad, finally picked up a pencil and started free-associating, compiling a list of what she knew, or thought she knew, about Richard’s death.

Kate stopped a moment, pencil poised in midair, then started again, allowing the thoughts to dictate themselves.

The words throbbed on the page.

Kate wasn’t sorry she’d shot and killed him. She took a breath, then wrote:

But Lombardi had disappeared without a trace. Neither the NYPD nor the Bureau could find him.

So what else?
Kate glanced out the window, down at the treetops of Central Park, a blur of fall color beginning—greens going brown and orange. It brought the Bronx psycho’s paintings to mind, and the arrangement in Boyd Werther’s studio, and the idea of the exhibition, which she had thought made sense, but now nothing made sense. The color-blind killer. Another mystery. Over. But not solved. Kate tapped the pen lightly against her chin and started writing again.

Kate wondered: Did Stokes know Baldoni?

Kate thought about talking to Noreen Stokes again, pictured the woman in her hospital bed—and how she had screamed at her—and knew it was impossible.

Kate scanned the notes she had written. So many of the players were dead.

So who was alive who might give her something she didn’t already know? If not Noreen Stokes, who?

Kate stared at the wall a moment, then checked her watch.

Her
watch
. Baume et Mercier. Baume, the private detective. Of course.

B
aume Investigations was in one of those tall, nondescript Midtown Manhattan buildings, the eighth-floor hallway long and harshly lit, doors every few feet, gray walls that may once have been white, worn brownish carpet that suggested it had started life as a color.

“Appointment?” asked the receptionist, middle-aged, hair the color of ripe Florida oranges.

“Sorry,” said Kate. “But if Mr. Baume can give me a minute…”

The secretary whipped a paper off her desk. “You’ll have to fill this out.”

One page.
NAME
.
ADDRESS
.
PHONE
.
DATE
.
PURPOSE OF VISIT
.
METHOD OF PAYMENT
.

“I only need to talk.”

“Mr. Baume, my husband”—she smiled, but it was slightly sour—“works by the hour. A hundred and twenty-five. Plus expenses. First consultation is free. Eugene, that is Mr. Baume, won’t charge you if he doesn’t take the case.”

“Have you worked with your husband long?” Kate asked, taking a moment to smile up at the woman while she filled in the form.

“Forever.” The woman waved a hand through the air. “But from what I’ve seen in this line of work, it pays to be around. You know what I mean, hon?” She laid a finger across her lips. “Oh, sorry. You’re not here about your husband, I hope.”