CopyCat (2 page)

“What kind of knife was he stabbed with?” I asked quietly. “Did they say?”
A shiv is a weapon made out of a commonplace object often in prison, also perhaps the origin of which is as an acronym for Self-Honed Implement of Violence.

I saw them look at each other again, but I didn’t hear if they answered. There was a buzzing sound in my ears that seemed to be getting louder. I got to my feet and shook my head. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me, but I’m not feeling well right now.”

“Mr. Winters? We have a few more questions,” one of them said.

“Mr. Winters, sit back down, please. We won’t take up much of your time.”

I blinked up at the blond man who had stood up with me—Connor Todd—and opened my mouth, but nothing came out. He reached for me, his eyes darkening with concern, but I couldn’t seem to focus on him. His mouth was moving but he looked like he was at the end of a long tunnel. I took a step toward him, intending to excuse myself, but before I could, I stumbled and the floor came up and hit me in the face.

****

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. Open your eyes.” Somebody was slapping my cheeks lightly, first one side then the other. I could feel warm breath close to my face. “Come on, Gavin, wake up.”

“Maybe we should call the paramedics,” another voice said from close by.

“Nah, he’s coming out of it. I know you’re awake, Gavin,” a soft voice said close to his ear. “Open your eyes for me.”

My eyelids felt like they were glued shut, but I struggled to open them, feeling my eyelashes flutter. I looked up to see Connor Todd kneeling next to me on the sofa in my living room. It was he who’d been tapping my face and speaking softly in my ear. He looked down at me as I forced my eyes open.

“Welcome back,” he said, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “You passed out, Gavin. Would you like us to call a doctor for you?”

I closed my eyes again and shook my head. “May-maybe some water?”

“Sure thing,” the older one said in his deep voice, and I heard him moving away to find the kitchen.

I pushed myself up to a sitting position, and felt Connor Todd’s strong hands on my back, helping me up. The second I was upright, though, he was up and moving away to sit opposite me in the chair I’d recently vacated. He frowned at me. I sighed and pushed my hair off my face.

“Relax, Connor Todd. I’m not going to say anything to your partner.”

His face took on that grim expression again, and he glanced toward the door leading to the kitchen. “About what?”

I tilted my head, gave him a little smile and shrugged just as his partner came back with a glass of warm tap water. I dutifully drank a sip and put the glass on the coffee table in front of me.

The older man settled next to me. “Are you feeling better?”

I lifted one shoulder again. “Can I see him?”

The two men glanced at each other, looking surprised. “You mean Santiago? The body was released to his closest relative,” Allen said, pulling a small pad from his vest pocket and consulting it. “An aunt in Racine, Wisconsin. She arranged for the body to be cremated and the ashes sent to her for interment.” He glanced at me. “The cremation took place yesterday.”

I nodded and took another sip of the water for something to do with my hands. Connor Todd leaned closer. “We have some questions, Gavin.”

I shrugged again and thought about the knocking in the wall the night before. Miguel?

“But they’re sure he’s dead? There wasn’t any mistake?”

Connor Todd glanced again at his partner before nodding. “Yes, of course. I mean, no, there’s no mistake. I’m sorry,” he said again.

I waved my hand and he continued. “As you know, the insurance company has never recovered all of the paintings stolen by Mr. Santiago. We believe you know where those missing paintings are.”

I gazed back at him steadily. “The judge decided otherwise.”

He made a face that managed to express his contempt for the court in general and probably me in particular. “No,” he said. “The judge in the case found you to be incompetent to stand trial.”

I shook my head. “No. My attorney was very precise about that. She said that I was morally innocent or what is known as a ‘mistake of fact’ in the court system.” I cocked my head, listening in my head to her voice as she explained it to me. ‘
Someone who breaks the law because he or she honestly misperceives reality lacks
mens rea
and should not be charged with or convicted of a crime
.’

“Mens rea
means a guilty mind,” I explained, rather helpfully, I thought
.
“The judge said as long as I keep seeing my therapist, Dr. Francis, everything is fine.”

Jim Allen huffed out a breath. “Yes, we know all about your lawyer’s tricks, but are you really going to pretend you don’t understand reality? You seem perfectly fine to me. We believe you knew exactly what you were doing, Mr. Winters. You played the system, that’s all, and got away with it.”

I got to my feet, trying not to betray the shakiness in my legs. “Please excuse me. I have to ask you to go now.” I was careful to use the words my grandfather taught me.
You have to learn not to be so blunt, Gavin. Polite behavior goes a long way, and good manners never go out of style.

The two men glanced at each other and Connor Todd’s lips curved up, though the smile never reached his eyes. He held out both hands and made a downward motion for me to sit, and unaccountably I found myself sinking back onto the sofa. “Let’s not get excited, Gavin. My partner didn’t mean to insult you, I’m sure. We just need to know where the missing paintings might be, you understand. The legal owners need to have their art returned to them. I’m sure you can understand that.”

I shook my head and glared at Jim Allen. I thought he’d been very clear on what he’d meant. “The legal owner is the insurance company now, isn’t that correct? But I don’t know where the paintings are. If I did, I’d tell you.”

“Well, see, Gavin, it’s statements like that one that make people wonder. You realizing that the insurance company has paid and we need to recover our property.” Connor Todd smiled at me again, but the smile didn’t thaw the ice floes that had drifted back into his eyes.

Nervously, I chewed my bottom lip and wished they would leave. I had wanted to see Connor Todd again, but not like this. The contempt in his gaze was hurtful, and I wondered why I cared so much. The other man was looking avidly around my house, and I knew he was itching to get up and search it. Like my house hadn’t already been thoroughly searched by the police from the basement to the attic in the days following Miguel’s arrest.

I’d been questioned for hours—again and again, over and over, day after day—the same questions about the missing artwork until I finally decided to shut down and stop paying attention to them altogether. That’s when my attorney, Andrea Jones, told me later that she stepped in, and the next thing I knew I was coming back to myself in the county hospital under “observation.”

I’d stayed there for three days before Andrea Jones finally got me released into her custody. After the hearing with the judge six weeks later, I was more than ready to go back home to the old house I lived in with my grandfather after my parents died. Built in the 1850s, it was a real beauty, though it had long since seen the last of its glory days. It was built in the antebellum style, a two-story home, with a wide front porch that wrapped around three sides, and two white columns that stretched up by the entrance, with shorter columns along the front and sides. It had another, smaller porch area up over the front door. A door at the end of the upper hallway led out to this small balcony, though it probably had rotten floorboards. That door had been boarded up years before and was never used.

My grandfather had bought the home when he first took me in and had replaced the furnace and made a few updates to the plumbing, but other than that, the house was pretty much in its original condition. I’d tried to get him to repaint and remodel for years, but he always put it off until later. I’d been putting it off for a couple of years too, since his death, but while I was in the hospital I’d decided to finally get started as soon as I could.

The moldings and fireplaces in each room were beautiful. I was in the process of painting the walls in each of the rooms and had finished most of the downstairs. The old plaster walls had been painted and repainted so many times I’d had to do a lot of prep work, but in the end the soft creamy color I used had begun to have an effect on the house, like an old woman who had fixed her hair and makeup and was able to call back an echo of her former beauty.

I couldn’t afford to put down new hardwood floors, so I used an old trick of my grandfather’s, mixing wood stain and polyurethane to repaint the floors until they could be properly refinished. I thought the result wasn’t too bad, especially once they’d been covered with area rugs. I rubbed my bare toe across a black scuff mark that I didn’t remember being there by the edge of the rug.

The two men in my living room glanced at each other again as the silence drew out, and some kind of unspoken message passed between them. Jim Allen got up and stood looking down at me. “I have some paperwork to finish in the car. Mr. Todd has a few more questions for you, so I’ll let myself out.”

I started to get up anyway, but Connor Todd put a hand out to cover mine, and I looked up at him. We both listened to the sound of the front door closing, and he leaned in closer, peering into my eyes. “Gavin? Tell me the truth. Is this act of yours for real?”

“Act? I don’t understand.”

He ran a hand over his face and blew out a breath. “Shit.” He lifted his gaze to mine again. “The other night—at the bar in the hotel. I had no idea…I mean, I didn’t even get your name, and when I woke up you were gone. You have to believe, I would never…I wouldn’t take advantage of you, Gavin. I want you to know that.”

“I know.” I gave him a little smile. “I couldn’t stay, but I enjoyed it very much. I was coming back to see if you were still in town.” He looked at me with a concerned little furrow between his eyes, and I suddenly understood. “Oh, I see. You’re worried because you think I might be...what did you call it just now? Incompetent?” I stood up. “You don’t have to worry. I knew exactly what I was doing.”

His eyes sharpened as he rose to his feet along with me, and I saw him wondering precisely what I meant. Did I mean that I knew what I was doing at the bar, or that I knew about Miguel’s crimes all along and only pretended to the court to get myself out of trouble?

I walked stiffly past him to the door and held it open. “Please excuse me, Connor Todd. I have to ask you to go now.”

Sighing heavily, he came to the door, but he turned in the doorway to look down at me. “I’ll be back, Gavin. I have more questions and I think we have unfinished business between us.”

I refused to look at him and he finally turned to leave. After I closed the door behind him, I went back to the sofa and leaned back, closing my eyes. Miguel was dead and was never coming back. I would have liked to have seen his body for myself, just to make sure, but I had to take their word for it.

Contrary to popular belief, cremated remains are not ashes in the usual sense. After incineration the pieces of bone are swept out and pulverized by a machine to turn them into ashes. The weight of a human male is approximately four to five pounds
. Miguel was gone, and his body had been cremated
, pulverized,
burned so completely, so utterly that nothing was left but bits of white bone and black ash.
I hoped that it was true.

I knew that Connor Todd thought I was aware of where Miguel had hidden the paintings he’d stolen. I was telling the truth when I said I had no idea. Miguel had never told me much about what he was doing. The two insurance detectives were partially right, though. It was true that if a person doesn’t realize what he’s doing is illegal, he can be found guilty only of a “mistake of fact,” as I was, and the court will usually dismiss the case. However, if he intentionally commits the act, it’s a “mistake of law” and those people are almost always found guilty and put in jail. I did the paintings for Miguel, and I knew I was creating perfect copies for him to replace the real art.
Ergo
…I
was
actually guilty.

Two years before, when I first met Miguel, he’d been a successful art dealer and I was an artist, just starting out. My grandfather had arranged for me to show my work to a man who worked for Miguel, a man named Steven Oswald. He told my grandfather I was “brilliant” and “amazing” and a lot of other stuff I knew wasn’t true.

The fact was that I had long ago realized that my only real talent lay in reproducing what I saw in someone else’s paintings. It was so simple, really. Art to me was an intricate pattern of colors. The reds, the blues, the yellows and greens, and all the secondary colors and the shades in between—I could literally see each one of them in a painting as a separate thing. All objects are made up of patterns of colors, and each color has its own unique shape. I could study a painting and look at it for hours, and I could distinguish each shape that went to make up the whole. Much like pixels in a photograph, I could see these patterns clearly in my head, so that, given a little time, it was simple enough for me to reproduce it.

Original art, however, was beyond my capabilities. I enjoyed looking at a beautiful scene and painting it, but the work came out mediocre at best. The patterns didn’t reappear for me in nature, only in paintings.

My ability to copy, though, that was another story, because it was just one of those weird Autism things. Some people said Asperger’s kids couldn’t see the forest for the trees, but I was very damn good at seeing the trees. When I was a little kid, I used to love letting sand from the sandbox run through my fingers. Each grain of sand looked like tiny, uniquely shaped rocks.

Some people called it being a savant. A friend of mine in school, for example, was a genius at Math, but had trouble tying his shoes in a knot that would hold. Another could play the piano like a virtuoso, but couldn’t read or write. As Wikipedia put it, “
Savant syndrome is a condition in which a person with a serious mental disability, such as an autism spectrum disorder, demonstrates profound and prodigious capacities or abilities far in excess of what would be considered normal.”