Rhymes With Prey (2 page)

Lucas said, “So, what, we're looking for a room off a studio? Maybe even living quarters?”

“Not living quarters. I think we're looking for a loft of some kind. A loft with a concrete floor. All four victims had flecks of concrete buried in their skin, but two of them were found lying on blacktop, not concrete. And it's an empty building. Probably an abandoned warehouse.”

“Where do you get that?” Lucas asked.

Lincoln twitched his shoulders, which Lucas had learned was a shrug. “The women weren't gagged. Whoever killed them let them scream. Either because it didn't bother them, or because they enjoyed it. And they felt safe in letting them scream.”

Lucas nodded at him: “Interesting,” he said.

Lily ticked it off on her fingers. “We're looking for a male, probably, because they're the ones who do this kind of thing; either a sculptor, or somebody who works with a sculptor, who has a studio or a workshop in an empty warehouse.”

“Either that, or somebody picked the building without knowing about the bronze filings,” Amelia said. “They have nothing to do with bronze, except that they happened to pick a place with bronze filings on the floor. Could have been there forever.”

“I doubt that,” Lincoln said.

“It's a logical possibility, though,” Lily said.

Lucas: “I'm with Lincoln on this.”

Lily asked, “Why?”

Lincoln looked at Lucas and said, “You tell them.”

“Because the particles are still shiny enough that Lincoln picked them up on the bodies. They're new.”

Lily nodded and Amelia said, “Okay.”

“And he's a freak. He's a sadomasochist who knows what he's doing. He's got a record,” Lucas said. He turned to Lily. “Time to fire up the computers.”

And the computers were fired up, not by Lucas, Lily, Amelia, or Lincoln, but by a clerk in the basement of the FBI building in Washington. Lily spoke quietly into the shell-like ear of the chief of detectives, Stan Markowitz, who spoke to a pal in the upper strata of the FBI, who wrote a memo that drifted down through several layers of the bureaucracy, and wound up on the desk of an inveterate war-game player named Barry.

Barry read the note, and punched in a bunch of keywords, and found, oddly enough, that there were four bronze sculptors in the United States who had been arrested for sex crimes involving some level of violence, and two of them had had studios in New York.

One of them was dead.

But James Robert Verlaine wasn't.

“JAMES ROBERT VERLAINE,” LILY READ
the next morning. They were in Lincoln's crime lab, once a parlor.

“Or as we know him, ‘Jim Bob,' ” Lucas said.

“Has a fondness for cocaine, has been arrested twice for possession of small amounts, did no time. Also arrested years ago for possession of LSD, did two months. Four years ago, he was charged with possession of thirty hits of ecstasy, but he'd wiped the Ziploc bag they were in and he'd thrown it into the next toilet stall, where
it landed in the toilet and wasn't fished out for a while. Quite a while—somebody hadn't flushed. The prosecutor dumped it for faulty chain of evidence. Last year he was arrested in an apartment over on skid row in a raid on a meth cooker, but he was released when it turned out the actual cooker was the woman who was renting the apartment. Verlaine said he was just an innocent visitor. The prosecutor dumped it again, insufficient evidence.”

“Get to the sex,” Lucas said.

“He's never been arrested for a sex crime, but he's been investigated,” Lily said, reading from the FBI report. “He's known for sculptures with slave themes involving bondage, whipping, various kinds of subjugation of women. A woman named Tina Martinez—note the last names here—complained to police that he'd injured a friend of hers named Maria Corso, who was supposedly modeling for one of these bondage sculptures. Corso refused to prosecute, said there'd been a misunderstanding with her friend. The investigators say they believe she was paid off.”

“He's a bad man,” Amelia said.

“Bad,” Lincoln agreed. “With a substantial interest in drugs.”

“And probably with the kind of brain rot you get from meth,” Lucas said.

“Do you have a plan?” Lincoln asked.

“I plan to spend some time with him today. Just watching. Amelia and Lily can help out. See what he does, who he talks to, where he hangs out.”

“Do we know where he lives?” Lincoln asked.

“We do,” Lily said.

Lincoln said to Lucas, “I wonder if the women could handle the surveillance and keep you informed, of course.”

Lucas said, “No reason they couldn't, I guess. Easier with three of us. Why?”

“I have an idea, but I want to speak to you privately about it. Just to avoid the inevitable question of conspiracy.”

“Oh, shit,” Lily said.

WELL, NOW, HERE'S A PRETTY.

Tasty, this one.

Oh, he could picture her on her back, arms outstretched, yeah, yeah, lying on something rough—concrete or wood. Or metal.

Metal's always good.

Sweat on her forehead, sweat on her tits, sweat everywhere. Mewing, gasping, pleading.

For a luscious moment, every other person in the club vanished from James Robert Verlaine's consciousness as his eyes, his
artist's
eyes, lapped up the brunette in black at the end of the bar.

Tasty . . .

Raven hair, tinting from red to blue to green to violet in the spotlights. Disco décor, punk music. Rasta's could never make up its mind.

Hair. That aspect of the human form fascinated him. A sculptor of hard materials, he could reproduce flesh and organ, but hair remained ever elusive.

She glanced toward him once, no message in the gaze, but then a second time, which was, possibly, a message in itself.

Studying her more closely now, the oval face, the sensuous figure, the provocative way she leaned against the bar as she carried on a conversation on her cell phone.

It irritated him that her attention was now on some asshole a mile or ten miles or a hundred miles away. A smile. But not at Verlaine.

Mona Lisa, he reflected. That's who she reminded him of. Not
a compliment, of course. Da Vinci's babe was a smirky bitch. And, Lord knew, the painting was way overrated.

Hey, look over here, Mona.

But she didn't.

Verlaine flagged down the bartender and ordered. Like always, here or at one of the other clubs where he hung out, Verlaine drank bourbon, straight, because girls liked it when men drank liquor that wasn't ruined with fruit juice. Beer was for kids, wine for the bedroom after fucking.

Mona looked in his direction once again. But didn't lock eyes.

He was getting angry now. Who the hell was she talking to?

Another scan. Little black dresses were a coward's choice—worn by women afraid to make a statement. But in Mona's case, he forgave her. The silk plunged and hovered just where it ought to and the cloth clung like latex paint to her voluptuous figure.

And what hands! Long fingers, tipped in black nails.

Hair was tough to duplicate, but hands were the most arduous of sculptors' challenges. Michelangelo was a genius at them, finding perfect palms and digits and nails in the heart of marble.

And James Robert Verlaine, who knew he was an artistic, if not blood, descendant of the great master, created the same magic, though with metal, not stone.

Which was much, much tougher to accomplish.

The crowd in Rasta's, Midtown, was typical for this time of night—artsy sorts who were really ad agency account managers, nerds who were really artists, hipsters pathetically clinging to their fading youth like a life preserver, players from Wall Street. Packed already. Soon to be more packed.

Finally, he caught Mona's eye. Her gaze flickered. Could be flirt, could be fuck off.

But Verlaine doubted the latter. He believed she liked what she
saw. Why wouldn't she? He had a lean, wolfish face, which looked younger than his forty years. His hair, a mop, thick and inky. He worked hard to keep the do in a state of controlled unruliness. His eyes were as focused as lasers. Thin hips, encased in his trademark black jeans, tight. His work shirt was DKNY, but suitably flecked and worn. The garment was two-buttons undone with the pecs just slightly visible. Verlaine humped ingots and bars of metal around his studio and the junkyards where he bought his raw materials. Carried oxygen and propane and acetylene tanks, too.

Another glance at Mona. He was losing control, as that familiar feeling rippled through him from chest to crotch.

Picking up his Basil Hayden's, he pushed away from the bar to circle Mona's way. He tried to get past a knot of young businessmen in suits. They ignored him. Verlaine hated people like this. He detested their conformity, their smugness, their utter ignorance of culture. They'd judge art by the price tag; Verlaine bet he could wipe his ass with a canvas, spray some varnish on it, and set a reserve price of a hundred thousand bucks—and philistines like this'd fight to outbid themselves at Christie's.

L'art du merde.

He pushed through the young men.

“Hey,” one muttered. “Asshole, you spilled my—”

Verlaine turned fast, firing off a searing gaze, like a spurt of pepper spray. The businessman, though taller and heavier, went still. His friends stirred, but chose not to come to his defense, returning quickly to a stilted conversation about the game.

When it was clear Mr. Brooks Brothers wasn't going to do something stupid and get a finger or face broken, or worse, Verlaine gave him a condescending smile and moved on.

Easing up to Mona, Verlaine hovered. He wasn't going to play the let's-ignore-each-other game. He was too worked up for that.
He whispered, “I've got one advantage over who you're talking to.” A nod at the phone.

She stopped speaking and turned to him.

Verlaine grinned. “I can buy you a drink and he can't.”

Tense. Would she balk?

Mona looked him over. Slow. Not smiling now. She said into the phone, “Gotta go.”

Click.

His index finger crooked for the bartender.

“So, I'm James.”

Playing it coy, of course. She said something. He couldn't hear. The music at Rasta's was a one-hundred-decibel remix of groups from twenty years ago, the worst of CBGBs.

He leaned closer and smelled a luscious floral scent rising from her skin.

Man, he wanted her. Wanted her tied down. Wanted her sweating. Wanted her crying.

“What's that?” he called.

Mona shouted, “I said, so what do you do, James?”

Of course. This was Manhattan. That was always question number one.

“I'm a sculptor.”

“Yeah?” A faint Brooklyn lilt. He could tolerate that. The skepticism in her eyes, no.

His iPhone appeared and, shoving it her way, he flipped through the pictures.

“Jesus, you really are.”

Then Mona looked past him. He followed her gaze and saw a tall redhead, smiling as she made her way through the crowd. A stunner. His eyes did the triplet glance: face, tits, ass. And he didn't care that she saw him doing it.

As tasty as Mona.

And no LBD for her. Leather miniskirt, fishnets, low-cut dark-blue sequined top, strapless.

The arrivee tossed her beautiful hair off her shoulders, glistening with sweat. She cheek-kissed Mona. Then pitched a smile Verlaine's way.

Mona said, “This is James. He's a real sculptor. He's famous.”

“Cool,” the redhead said, eyes wide and impressed—just the way he liked the pretties to be.

He shook their hands.

“And you are?” he asked the redhead.

“I'm Amelia.”

Mona turned out to be Lily.

Verlaine got Amelia a Pinot gris and a refill of his bourbon.

Conversation wandered. Protocol demanded that, and Verlaine had to play the game a little longer before he could bring up the subject. You had to be careful. You could ruin an evening if you moved too fast. A girl by herself? You got her drunk enough, you could usually get her to “try something different” back at your place without too much effort.