Color Blind (20 page)

K
ate crossed her legs, and Mitch Freeman’s eyes followed them. “Crayola color names?”

“The words under the paint,” said Kate. “Grange is faxing Quantico to see what Cryptology makes of it. But I’m wondering what you think.” She glanced into Freeman’s blue-gray eyes, then quickly away, took in his small FBI Manhattan office, bookshelves sagging, psychiatric journals and more books stacked on the floor, the place a bit disheveled, somewhat like the FBI shrink himself, but comforting.

“My first thought? Arrested development.”

“Almost as if we’re dealing with a kid,” said Kate.

“Or just immature, stunted, someone beyond adult rules and conventions.”

The words of Herbert Bloom, the owner of the Gallery of Outsider Art, resonated in Kate’s brain:
Living by their own rules, culturally isolated, disturbed
.

“Here’s a question for you.” Freeman slid his reading glasses into place. “Does the fact that he uses crayon names mean we’re looking for an amateur?”

“Not necessarily. There are mature artists who use crayons in their drawings and paintings, but”—Kate paused, pushed her hair behind her ears—“I don’t know any who write the names of the colors in before they paint them. That’s what seems amateurish, why I keep labeling him an
outsider
.”

“And an exhibitionist. After all, he leaves his paintings behind for everyone to see.”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t agree?”

“All artists want to show their work publicly. It doesn’t necessarily make them exhibitionists.” Kate’s fingernails were tapping out something that sounded like John Philip Sousa. “But this guy definitely wants attention, and wants us to know he’s an artist.”

“He’s looking for some sort of approval, and possibly recognition,” said Freeman.

“Right.” Kate stopped tapping a moment, an idea forming in her mind, perhaps a way to get to this guy.

“So what have we got?” Freeman sat back in his chair and ticked off points on his fingers. “One, he eviscerates the bodies. Two, he’s obsessed with art. Three, he brings his paintings to crime scenes. Four, he writes and identifies everything with those Crayola names. Five—”

“Hold on. The fact that this guy needs to identify everything, why is that?”

“Obsessive-compulsive?”

“Possibly. But I was thinking it’s almost like he doesn’t know. That little kid thing again.” Kate shook her head. “Damn. I feel we’re missing something basic, but…what?”

“Don’t think so hard. You’ll get it.” Freeman sat forward. “We just have to figure out what’s driving him.”

“It’s got to be in those paintings.” Kate glanced at her watch. “Come on. Dr. Ernst is on his way.”

H
e jerks awake, wipes away a bit of spittle that he has drooled onto his chin while he slept. It’s time. He can feel it. The way Coke is it and Tom knows Jerry, and how Jessica always solves the crime.

He puts some drops in his eyes. He has to take care of them, now more than ever—with the miracle beginning.

For such a long time all he thought about was closing his eyes. Forever. Of dying. But now there is something to live for and it’s all thanks to her, the art
her-story-n
.

He glances at the newspaper: the San Remo, on Central Park West. Where the art
her-story-n
lives. How nice of them to provide the information.

He knows Central Park well, has spent some time there, earned a little cash on its less traveled paths.

He should go again. See where she lives. See if he is right about her hair color. But how will he know for sure, unless…

No!
He kicks the paper away, disgusted at himself, at his thoughts. He can’t even consider that. Not yet.

He closes his eyes. Just thinking of her, the art
her-story-n,
has made him hard, the need beginning to gnaw away at his insides—and he knows what that means: It’s just a matter of time. But right now another girl is waiting and he has to get ready.

He cuts a rectangle out of a roll of primed artist’s canvas. Gets his knives ready. Spends time sharpening the serrated one that tends to get dull really easily after cutting through ribs. While he prepares, he chants, “It’s all about the work—the work, the work, the work,” scuttling around the room as he harvests his tools, chanting as he wraps the knives inside the rectangle of canvas: “The work, the work, the work, the work.” He checks the bottle of chloral hydrate, lifts a roll of wide silver duct tape off his paint table and places the two items gingerly beside the knives and canvas. “The work, the work, the work, the work.” He selects a couple of long-handled bristle brushes, then stops chanting and stares at the still-life painting he stole from the dark-haired boy, the painting with the mint-green vase on the navy-blue cloth with the three razzmatazz-red apples. He remembers it all perfectly.

He strikes a pose and flexes his impressive biceps. He’s been using the weights that Pablo has stored in his place for almost a year now and they have made a big difference. He can no longer afford to be weak.

It was different when it was a frog or mouse or a rat or even a cat. They were easy.

He thinks back.

White room. Doctors. Nurse screaming. The mouse, the one he had killed, cut practically in half with his dull-edged dinner knife. Not so easy. But it worked—the colors. Beautiful. That’s when he knew.

An old image—
knife in; black changing to red
—flashes in his brain.

Yes, he remembers it. How could he forget? The first sign of what was to be. Not that he’d recognized it at the time. It was later, after the accident, when he killed the mouse that he remembered, and knew for sure.

Then he went after the cat. A mistake. He’d never use a cat again. It almost took his eye out, which would have been—what was the word that artist had used on the TV show?
Counterproductive.

He slips on a pair of latex gloves and steps into the one-piece jumpsuit that makes him look like a garage mechanic. Then he slides the brushes, tape, knock-out drops, and knives into the coverall’s deep inner pockets, and in one fast stroke zips it up from his crotch to his neck, then wraps his hands around Pablo’s barbells and hoists them above his head, his hands trembling slightly, the veins in his muscled arms throbbing.

He is getting better, stronger, and though he is often disappointed and drowning in dark and loathsome feelings, feels filthy and overcome by a desperate hunger, and for absolutely no reason that he can imagine pictures himself alone in a dim room with only the television’s flickering synthetic light and all the bits of songs and ads and hollow disconnected voices for company, he can forget them when he is working, and right now he absolutely refuses to think about any of that because he knows it is…
counterproductive
.

With the rolled-up canvas and knives in his pockets he feels confident. She is waiting for him. And this time will be the best time. He will see and remember everything.

D
r. Kurt Ernst, tall and reedy, though slightly stooped by age, seventy or more, white haired, thin skin mottled with brownish spots across a broad forehead, was unable to mask his excitement, hands fluttering, adjusting and readjusting his wireless glasses up and down his nose as he moved from one painting to the next.

It was not every day he had the opportunity to see the work of a living homicidal maniac.

Brown had joined Kate and Freeman in the evidence room, where the psycho’s paintings, bagged and numbered, but perfectly visible through the plastic, were tacked to the bulletin board.

“The color in them is rather ferocious, but simultaneously childlike,” Ernst said, attempting to answer the questions they’d posed. “Of course there is no correlation between mental age and actual chronological age. Your killer could be as young as sixteen or seventeen or substantially older.” Ernst’s English was a bit formal, slightly accented. “The immature quality in the artwork reflects only the state of his mind’s development.” He stared at the paintings. “This mix of obsessive doodles with bizarre color is not something I have observed before. Naturally every illness produces its own manifestations.” He came in for a close-up, bony nose practically grazing the painting’s plastic covering. “Of course the obsessive doodling that occurs in the borders is something one often associates with the work of schizophrenics.”

“The repetition,” said Freeman, anxious to share his expertise with someone he had studied in the classroom. “And you would make that diagnosis, schizophrenia?”

Ernst peered over his glasses at Freeman. “Yes, schizophrenia is the likely diagnosis, though one can never be absolutely certain.” He tilted his angular face at one of the paintings. “Have you deciphered these doodles?”

“They’re names,” said Kate.

“And have you identified them? That is, are they fictional, or…known names. Say, names in the news?”

“Just names,” said Freeman.

“They are never
just
names.” Ernst lanced a stare at the FBI shrink. “These names have significance. To him. What are the names?”

“We’re fairly sure we’ve identified Tony,” said Kate. “Maybe Brenda and possibly Dylan.”

“But they’re not any of the victims’ names,” said Freeman, anxious to offer something to restore his image.

“They could be names of loved ones,” said Ernst. “Though it is unlikely he has had many loved ones. More likely they are fantasy figures. Often, the mentally ill incorporate their fantasy life into their art.” He turned back to the bagged paintings. “But the images themselves are so standard, as if this man is trying to be a real, that is, an academic, painter. Don’t you agree, Katherine?”

Kate nodded.

“So you have here a mix in the work…in this man: the desire to make a good and standard kind of art and the obsessive scribbling so often seen in the art of the insane.” Ernst regarded Kate. “I know you have seen the Prinzhorn collection.”

“Just the sampling they showed at the Drawing Center, but I studied Prinzhorn at the Institute.” Kate tried to recollect the many drawings and paintings she had seen from the famed psychiatrist’s collection, both in person and in the catalog of the work she knew was now housed in Heidelberg—possibly the world’s largest collection of art of the insane. Prinzhorn, she remembered, had culled the work from psychiatric hospitals sometime in the late 1800s until around 1933.

“I mention this because Hans Prinzhorn drew comparisons between the art of the insane and the contemporary artist. He believed there were strong connections, such as the way many contemporary artists attempt to tap into their psyches. Of course with the contemporary artist this is a conscious effort, whereas the madman, he or she has no such choice.”

“Prinzhorn intended the comparison between insane art and contemporary art as a positive thing, didn’t he?” asked Kate.

“Yes,” said Ernst. “Though it was used quite perversely by the time Prinzhorn had finished compiling his collection.”

“The Nazis,” said Kate.

“The Nazis, exactly,” said Ernst.

“Degenerate Art,” said Kate.

Ernst offered her a sad smile. “You have been studying, Katherine.”

Kate blushed slightly. “Not lately, but of course I remember Degenerate Art from school. The Nazi’s intent was to draw parallels between the art of the insane and such great artists as Max Beckmann, Egon Schiele, Paul Klee, and groups of modern artists like the futurists, dadaists, expressionists, and members of the German Bauhaus.”

“Excuse my ignorance,” said Brown. “But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Forgive me, Detective,” said Ernst. “Degenerate Art was an enormous exhibition organized by the Nazis that traveled all around the Reich. It began in 1937, in Munich, and from there went to practically every major town and city in Germany. It finally, thankfully, came to an end in 1941. It was enormously popular, and drew huge crowds. And, unfortunately, did its job.”

“Which was?” asked Brown.

“To reinforce the layman’s conventional fears that modern art was obviously made by madmen.” Ernst pulled his reading glasses off and shook his head. “The Nazis’ aim was to place the troublesome avant-garde artists in the same arena as the mentally ill.”

“So that they could argue euthanasia for those artists,” said Kate. “Just as they were planning to do to the insane.”

“Precisely,” said Ernst. “And many artists who did not flee the Reich were, in fact, sent to camps where several of them perished.”

A moment of silence passed.

Brown glanced at the paintings tacked to the walls. “I doubt you’d get an argument from most people if the state urged euthanasia for our psycho.”

Ernst regarded Brown coolly. “But what if your
psycho
is acting out totally delusional fantasies, does not even know what he is doing, Detective?”

“Well then, Doctor, let me ask you this,” said Brown. “Would you say we are looking for someone insane—or a rational killer?”

Ernst slid his glasses back up his nose and peered at the paintings once again. “Frankly, Detective, I don’t see
anything
rational in these paintings.”

Y
ou’re real pretty.”

The girl does a little pirouette on her stilettos, and giggles. “Not half as pretty as you, baby.”

He digs his hands into his pockets, shrugs, kicks one shoe against the other, a pose he has borrowed from Opie, that kid on Mayberry, or was it from a cartoon? He can’t remember. But it doesn’t matter. She’s bought the act. Sweet little boy in a man’s body.

“What’s with the shades?” she asks. “You a movie star, or something? Afraid someone might recognize you?”

“Oh, these.” He lifts them off—it’s night, dark, safe—and tries out his look, a way to mask the squinting, a sort of a wink-thing he’s been working on, very 007. “Stirred, not shaken,” he says in a deep voice.