His phraseology was charming. She lost herself in a moment of bemusement at hearing a cop actually say “affairs of the heart.” Then she shook herself. “No. That was the last time I either saw her or heard from her.”
“Do you have any knowledge of someone, say, holding a grudge against Mrs. Worth?”
Only Richard, she started to say. Thank God he had cleared himself. “No. Candra and I were business associates, not friends. But I liked her,” she said softly, looking down. “Until that scene the other day, I had never seen her be anything but polite and friendly to everyone.”
They both smiled at her. “That’s all the questions I have,” Detective Aquino said, closing his little notebook. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Sweeney.”
“You’re welcome.” She went with them to the door.
As they started to leave, Aquino stopped and turned back. “Are you planning on going out of town, Ms. Sweeney? In case we have more questions.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
As soon as they were gone, Sweeney picked up the phone to call Richard, then put it down without dialing. There was no point in worrying him with this. The detectives had asked a few questions; that was all. Granted, she had no way of proving she hadn’t left the apartment all night, but neither had she ever been in Candra’s apartment, so there couldn’t be any evidence tying her in any way to the murder. She had nothing to worry about.
* * *
Despite her best intentions to stay out of the studio, after lunch and laundry she began to think about the painting. She hadn’t really examined it yesterday, looking at it only long enough to recognize Candra. She didn’t want to look at it again, and yet she knew she must. She had to finish it. The cops didn’t seem to have any solid leads, or they wouldn’t have been questioning her, so unless she finished the painting, the killer would probably get away with the murder.
The other day—two days ago? three?—she had worked on the painting while awake. If she could do that again, the shock to her system wouldn’t be as severe and the chill wouldn’t be as bad. She didn’t want to go through a repeat of yesterday morning, even though she now knew she could get through it on her own.
When she went into the studio, though, she couldn’t bring herself to walk right up to the painting. She wandered around looking at other works in progress, other things she had done, recalling what had been difficult or fascinating about each subject. For her, looking at her work was what looking at a photo album was to other people, calling up memories of times past.
But eventually she came to the unfinished painting, and she stopped cold, struck by the stark power of the work. The terror of Candra’s last minutes seemed to leap off the canvas, as well as the nothingness of death. And there was menace as well, in the stance of the man standing over her, a sort of gloating satisfaction that was sickening.
She stared at the blank space where the man’s face would be, and she felt a sort of floating sensation, faint but detectable. Her vision seemed to narrow, her focus tightening on the canvas.
The ringing of the doorbell was a jarring intrusion, making her jump. She lost the focus, the growing sense of seeing something that wasn’t yet there. Muttering to herself, she went to the door.
Her unexpected visitor was Kai, his arms loaded with wrapped canvases. “Hi,” he said when Sweeney opened the door. “I brought these by. The framer tried to deliver them to the gallery, but of course it isn’t open, so he called me. Candra told me to send them back to you, but I thought, what the hell, why not bring them to you myself? Who knows if or when the gallery will open again.”
He looked at her as if expecting her to tell him Richard’s plans for the gallery, but since she had no idea, she merely shrugged.
“In here,” she said, leading the way to the studio.
“By the way, the last of your old work sold.”
“That’s good.” She cleared some space where she could stand the canvases against the wall. “Put them here.”
He did as she directed, looking around at the other things she had completed. “Hey, these are really great. You’re gonna make a fortune; wait and see.”
“I hope,” she said, smiling at him.
“The light is great in here.” He walked over to the huge windows and looked out at the street below. Then he turned, and saw the painting.
All color leached out of his face. He stared at it, mouth agape, eyes blank with shock. “My God,” he blurted.
“Don’t tell anyone.” Uncomfortable, she shifted her feet, unable to look him in the eye.
“When did you—You did all this in a day and a half?”
She cringed inside, but she had to come up with some reasonable explanation for the painting, and she couldn’t think of one. “No, I’ve been working on it several days.”
“What? How?”
“I—” Her mind went blank. Furious with herself for not being able to lie, she said, “I swear to God, Kai, if you spill the beans on this, I’ll pull every hair out of your head.”
“Spill the beans?” He was looking back and forth from the painting to her, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“I’m sort of psychic,” she snapped.
“Sort of—?”
“I do paintings of things that haven’t happened yet. When I finish this, it will show who killed her.” She glared at him. “And I don’t want you to ever mention any of this to anyone.”
He was all but backing away from her, inching toward the door. “I won’t,” he said.
“I mean it, Kai. I don’t want the cops to know; not yet.”
He drew a deep breath. “I understand,” he said. “I won’t tell the cops, I promise.” Then he laughed, the sound shaky. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “No one would ever expect this, would he?”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
“I‘m telling you, I saw it.”
“That’s impossible. You must be mistaken.”
“That isn’t something I’d be mistaken about,” Kai said, annoyed.
“There’s no such thing as a psychic; that’s all just parlor games. She must have already done the painting, and when she heard about Candra, she just painted in her face.”
“Then explain how Sweeney knew what Candra was wearing. I saw Candra at the party, remember? I know how she was dressed. Sweeney had the dress, the shoes, the jewelry, everything, down right.”
“This is unbelievable. She had to have found out some other way.”
“There is no other way,” Kai insisted. “I don’t care if you believe real psychics exist or not; the painting exists—because I’ve seen it. And you have to decide what in hell you’re going to do about it.”
“Do? What is there to do? I don’t know anything about what’s going on. You, on the other hand, are going to do your civic duty and tell the police about this very interesting painting Sweeney has, which couldn’t possibly exist unless she saw the killing or did the killing. At the very least they’ll take the painting, and she won’t be able to finish it.”
“You don’t think the cops would be interested in letting her finish the face?”
“Why should they?”
Kai felt as if he were beating his head against a rock. He began ticking off points on his fingers. “A: Initially, the cops will think she did it, but unfortunately there isn’t any evidence except the painting to tie her to the murder. B: She’ll demonstrate how she did the painting, and once they’re believers, they’ll be watching every brushstroke she makes.”
“That would never hold up in court.”
“No, but once they know where to look, do you honestly think they won’t find some little shred of evidence to tie you up like a Christmas turkey?”
“No, I don’t. Anything they find will point to someone else and you know it.”
“But what about your fucking face?” he said from between gritted teeth. “Once they have it, don’t you think it will occur to the cops to show your picture to the guard?
What’s going to happen then?”
Finally, the danger of the situation began to sink in. They stared at each other in silence for a moment. “Okay, we have to contain the damage. I still think you should go to the police; it will take suspicion off you. And they won’t allow her to work on the painting because if they do, then it’s inadmissible as evidence against her, if they can make the case, and they wouldn’t take that chance.”
“What if they do?”
“Then we’ll fall back on our safety net. With hard physical evidence, and the tape as motive, do you think the cops are really going to believe a kooky painting? He’d have to die, of course, and leave a suicide note telling why. Such a shame.”
Kai relaxed. The logic of the plan was comforting. For the first time since seeing the painting in Sweeney’s apartment, he felt as if he might slip out of this trap after all.
“And there’s always the most obvious step.”
“What?” he asked.
“Why, killing Sweeney, of course. Before she finishes the painting.”
* * *
Late that afternoon, Sweeney opened the door once again to Detectives Aquino and Ritenour. As soon as she saw their cold eyes and impassive faces, the bottom dropped out of her stomach. She knew exactly what Kai had done. “That rotten tattletale,” she muttered.
“Ms. Sweeney,” said Detective Aquino, “with your permission, we’d like to search your apartment. If you insist, we can get a search warrant within the hour, but things will go much smoother if you cooperate.” Smoother for them, he meant. Right now smooth was probably very important to him; he didn’t look as if he had gotten any sleep that day, either.
She sighed. “The painting’s in the studio. I’ll get it.”
“If you don’t mind, we’ll go with you,” Ritenour said immediately, and they both fell in step just behind her.
She was so tired she didn’t care, or almost didn’t care. She had been fighting the need for sleep all day, hoping she would get to spend the night with Richard again and he would somehow protect her from whatever happened when she slept. If she was at his town house, then she couldn’t work on the painting, could she? But her conscience hurt her whenever she thought of avoiding the completion of the painting, as if she were planning to let a murderer go free. She had to do the painting. But she would very much prefer that Richard be with her when she did, to help her through the aftermath. That meant he needed to be here.
But now where she was going to sleep was a moot question, because it looked as if she wasn’t going to be getting any sleep for quite a while. That was assuming her next bed wasn’t in a jail cell.
“Here,” she said, going over to the painting. The two detectives ranged themselves slightly behind and on either side of her, in case she tried to do something stupid, like run. She didn’t look at them as they studied the painting. She knew exactly what they were seeing, and what they were thinking.
“Ms. Sweeney.” Detective Ritenour’s tone was flat. “Would you like to tell us how you knew the details of the murder scene?”
“You won’t believe me,” she said helplessly.
“Try us.”
“I didn’t.” She stood as still as a small animal with a wolf sniffing at the entrance to its lair. “I painted it in my sleep.”
Fleeting Yeah, sure expressions went over their faces. “We’d like you to come down to the precinct with us. This painting will be taken as evidence . . .” Aquino’s voice droned on, but Sweeney didn’t listen. She tried to beat down the panic that threatened to choke her. They couldn’t prove she killed Candra, because she hadn’t done it. She tried to hang on to that thought.
“I painted it in my sleep,” she repeated stubbornly. “I walk in my sleep sometimes, and when I wake up, I find that I’ve painted something. Wait—there’s another painting I did, of a hot dog vendor who was killed several days ago. His name was Elijah Stokes. There was a witness who saw a man running away, so I couldn’t have had anything to do with that murder.” She hurried to the closet and took out the painting, carefully not looking at the face that had always worn the sweetest expression God had ever put on a human being, and now never would again.
Ritenour took that canvas and grimly examined it. “I’m not familiar with this case,” he said. “We’ll have to check it out.”
They didn’t believe anything she said. Belatedly she realized she might find herself charged as an accessory in Elijah Stokes’s murder, if she didn’t manage to do something. She had been deliciously warm all day, but now a faint chill raced up her back. Automatically she hugged her arms, rubbing them.
“This isn’t the only weird thing that’s been happening.” They weren’t listening, their minds closed off to any explanation she could give except the obvious: she had been at the scenes. Panic congealed into a cold lump and settled in the pit of her stomach. She had to keep trying anyway.
“Please get your shoes and purse,” Detective Aquino requested.
She did, and a coat to go over her sweatshirt, though they gave her disbelieving glances. The high that day had been in the eighties, and the late afternoon was still warm. She couldn’t feel any internal heat, though, just the spreading chill of terror. She tried to control it, tried to keep calm, because that was the only way she had of helping herself.
Aquino took her purse and looked through it, then gave it back to her and took her arm.
“Listen to me,” she said in as calm a tone as she could manage. “When we get in the car, pay attention to the traffic signals.”
“We always do,” Ritenour said with heavy irony as they escorted her from the apartment.
“No, I mean to what happens.” She was trembling like a leaf, her breath hitching. “You won’t have to stop. The lights will turn green when we get close. They always do for me. And there’ll be an empty parking space right in front of the station for you.” She felt as if she were babbling, but she couldn’t stop.
“If that’s so,” said Aquino politely, “then people would pay you a fortune just to ride around in their cars with them.”
They put her in the backseat of a nondescript sedan. She noticed there weren’t any door handles in back, but at least there wasn’t a wire cage in front of her. The paintings were placed in the trunk. She forced herself to stillness, imposing a tiny bit of control on a world that was coming apart around her. Had she been officially arrested, or were they just taking her in for questioning? She didn’t know the procedure, didn’t know what came next. She should probably call a lawyer, she thought, but who she wanted to call was Richard. She needed him. But the cops had already had him in for questioning, and calling him would just drag him back into this mess.
The traffic light at the corner turned green. “Did you see that?” she asked. “It turned green.”
“Yeah, they do that occasionally,” Aquino said sarcastically.
The next one turned green, too. And the next one. Sweeney sat very quietly, not pointing out the obvious again. They would notice every light now.
The traffic cleared from in front of them, cars switching lanes, turning down other streets. The sedan didn’t have to slow, but kept a steady pace. As the seventh traffic light turned green at their approach, Ritenour turned in his seat and gave her an unreadable look, but neither he nor Aquino remarked on the phenomenon.
As they drove up to the precinct house, a car pulled out of a parking space directly in front of the building. She thought Aquino said, “Shit,” under his breath, but she wasn’t certain.
The precinct was boiling with humanity. Peeling green paint, metal desks and filing cabinets, shouts and curses and laughter all running together, armed men and women in blue uniforms: Sweeney’s impression of all this was a blur. Soon she was sitting in a very uncomfortable chair in a dingy little room, thoughts roiling in her mind, but no bright ideas on how to prove herself popped out of the cauldron.
Chills roughened her skin, and she began shivering. She pulled her coat on and huddled in it
. So it was shock, just as Richard thought, her body’s reaction to something upsetting. Probably when she painted the scenes she was at least partially protected by sleep, but when she woke up, the reaction hit with a bang.
“Ms. Sweeney, where were you night before last?” Ritenour was staring at her, pale eyes hard, his tone cold.
“At home.” Her teeth chattered. “The weird stuff started happening about a year ago. Little things. Traffic lights changing, the parking spaces, things like that. I didn’t notice at first. Like you said, lights turn green all the time. Everyone catches a green light occasionally. And my plants began to bloom out of season.”
“Ms. Sweeney.” Ritenour’s voice had gone as hard as his eyes. “Do I look like I care about your plants?”
No, he looked as if he had wanted to add a copulatory adjective in front of “plants.”
She opened her mouth to tell him about the ghosts, then shut it. That wouldn’t help her case at all. “I began the painting several days ago; I don’t know exactly when. I don’t keep track of days. When I woke up, I found I had painted shoes. Two of them, a man’s and a woman’s. Every morning I’d find s-something new added.” She clamped her teeth together to control their chattering.
“Would you like some coffee?” Aquino asked, and she nodded gratefully. He left the little room. Sweeney looked back to Ritenour.
“After a c-couple of days, I knew I was p-painting a murder scene, but I didn’t know who—I hadn’t gotten to the f-faces. Yesterday m-morning, when I got up, I saw I had painted C-Candra. I tried to c-call her, to warn her—at the gallery, but no one answered. Her home number is unlisted. S-so I called Richard’s office, to get her number, and his assistant told me Candra was d-dead.” She was shaking violently, teeth chattering. Her bones and muscles began to ache. Her hands, resting on the table, had turned a transparent bluish white, as if she had no blood in her body.
“If all that’s so, why didn’t you tell us about it this morning?” Despite himself, Ritenour was interested. People came forward all the time claiming to have special, prior knowledge of crimes, calling themselves psychic and looking to get their names in the news. In his experience, they were usually the perps. People were weird.