The Blind (6 page)

“You're an artist?”

“Was.” They reached the third floor. He was about to reach for the door handle, when she wedged herself between him and the door.

“What happened?” Evie asked.

“I thought you wanted to speak to our current artist in residence.”

“Right now I want to speak to you.”

Wainwright tapped his shiny brown shoe.

She tapped her pointy red boot.

He took a cloth handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the red from his hand. “The muse died.”

“But not your love of art.”

“No. That kind of thing is in your blood.” He shoved the cloth back in his pocket.

Evie studied the executive director, a smallish man with a soft voice. Not the ex-military type they were looking for, but Wainwright had a sharp edge and fit the age of Hayden's new profile. “Are you seeing someone?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Dating? Are you dating anyone right now?”

“You're hardly my type, Agent Jimenez.”

The quiet, mousy administrator wasn't her type. She liked her men strong and confident and served up with a chaser of no commitment. Like Jack. She was drawn to power. Jack Elliott in a single word.

Adam smoothed the cuffs of his sweater. “My partner and I broke up earlier in the year. Still hurts. I haven't jumped back in.”

A man who loved hard and fell hard. And hard falls usually left big bruises called resentment. “Where'd you go to college?”

“Stanford.”

“Impressive. You must be a pretty smart guy.”

“I like to think so.”

“Do you own a gun?”

“Heavens no. I abhor violence.” But he clearly loved art.

“Where were you around lunchtime on Tuesday, October sixth?”

“Is there a reason for this line of questioning?”

“Should there be?”

He took out his phone and jabbed at his calendar, and she got the distinct impression he'd love to be jabbing her ass out the door. “I was in a foundation board meeting. All day.” Snapping his phone shut, he nudged away her hand and opened the door.

In one of the third-floor studios, she found a man standing before a block of black marble, his hands sliding across the stone in a lover's caress. A golden-haired dog sat in a dog bed in a circle of sunshine before the wall of windows.

She knocked on the door. The dog turned to her, but the man did not. She cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Mr. Brice. I'm Evie Jimenez with the FBI.” Brice was the Abby Foundation's current artist in residence, and he visited the top-floor gallery weekly, clearly a man familiar with the
Beauty Through the Ages
exhibit.

His fingers traced a coppery-orange vein streaking the stone.

“Mr. Brice.” She settled a hand on his arm, and he jumped, as if she'd taken a dagger to his flesh. She held up her hands. “I'm with the FBI, sir, and I need to talk to you.”

“Now is not a good time.” Once again, Brice closed his eyes and ran his hands along the stone. He swayed, as if music were coming from the stone.

“Mr. Brice—”

His eyes flew open. “Didn't you hear me? Not! Now!”

Wainwright let out a chuffing sound. “Mr. Elliott says you'll need to talk with her.”

The artist's hands dropped to his sides. “It appears I have no choice.” Because Jack, the man who controlled the foundation, controlled this man's career.

Once again Wainwright tapped his shoe. He was another one of Jack's loyal and dedicated guard dogs.

“Can you excuse us, Mr. Wainwright?” Evie asked.

The foundation director tapped a dozen more times before he finally left. Evie reached out and scratched the dog's head. “She's beautiful. What's her name?”

“What do you want, Agent Jimenez?” Brandon Brice asked.

She was trying to take a few lessons from Jack. He was the kind of guy who knew how to work with people. Not her. Her teammate Hatch Hatcher, a crisis negotiator and master interviewer, accused her of skidding into these interviews at warp speed with limbs flailing. True. Words were hard. She had an easier time working with bombs. “According to security records, you visit the
Beauty Through the Ages
collection at least once a week. Why?”

“I appreciate good art.”

“Good art is important in your world?”

“Good art is important in any civilized world. Art separates man from beast. It connects souls. It creates a feeling in both the artist and the viewer. And good art endures. That's really what makes that particular collection so amazing. Even after centuries, those paintings still live and breathe and speak.”

This was a man passionate about his art, but was the passion twisted enough to sanction murder in his mind? “Where did you go to school?” Evie asked.

“MIT.”

“You studied
art
at MIT?”

“Engineering. My parents thought I should have a practical degree in case I couldn't make a go of it with my art.”

Bomb enthusiasts by nature have more than a layman's knowledge of mechanics and chemistry and basic engineering. “Are you making a go of your art?”

“This is my second commission this year.”

“Are you married, Mr. Brice?”

“To my art.”

A loner with limited success. “Do you own a gun?”

He laughed, a snort so loud and hard it blew a puff of marble dust across the room. “You're kidding, right?”

“
I
don't kid.”

A rumble rocked his chest, and his shoulders heaved. Peals of laughter filled the room, and tears rolled down his face. “And this, ladies and gentlemen, is our U.S. tax dollars at work.”

“Mr. Brice, do you own a gun?” Evie kept her tone firm and even.

“No, Agent Jimenez, I do not. Nor have I ever shot a gun.” He wiped the tears streaked down his face. “You really don't know?”

“Know what?”

Another laugh gripped his body before he managed to get out, “I'm blind.”

Her eyebrows shot up. She would never have guessed, but that didn't exclude him from the bombings. Look at what Smokey Joe managed despite his blindness. The old man ran an online jewelry business with Kate and had—at least for a while—successfully driven a car. Evie would never underestimate a person with a physical handicap.

“Where were you around lunchtime on Tuesday, October sixth?”

“Where I'm at every afternoon. Here in my studio. All my comings and goings duly noted with this.” He saluted her with his access card and turned back to the chunk of marble.

Friday, October 30
1:37 p.m.

J
ack Elliott was blind. Or stupid. Or possibly both.

It was a good thing for Jack that Carter Vandemere was neither.

The elevator doors parted and Carter entered the executive offices of Elliott Enterprises, a plain brown box under his right arm. He double-checked the time. Twenty-three minutes until Claire would return. She really was like a dog to Jack Elliott, loyal and obedient.

Carter could count on her, too. Claire liked order, probably because before landing with Elliott, she spent ten years with an alcoholic husband who made her life a chaotic living hell. Carter had learned that six months ago when he'd noticed the scars on her arm and showed her his. The scar along his jaw where a surgeon had had to rebuild the bone. The faint white line above the cartilage on his nose that hadn't healed straight. The puckered scar at his temple from the final blow of his father's fist. In hushed tones, he'd told Claire about his own hellish war. Battle wounds made for solid comrades.

So every day from one thirty to two, Jack's order-loving executive assistant would go downstairs to the coffee cart, pick up a caramel macchiato—passion fruit iced tea if it was summer—then take her brown-bag lunch up to the garden atop the Elliott Tower.

Plain brown bags, like plain brown boxes, were just that. Plain. And brown. But there was something about an unadorned box that drew one's eye, something that screamed,
Open me and look inside.

Carter shifted the plain brown box to his left arm and took a pair of gloves out of his pocket. He slipped them on and swiped the key card in the magnetic reader. The red light flashed green, and he pushed open the door of Jack Elliott's office.

People who knew art realized the art experience wasn't just about the image on the canvas. Setting and framing were equally important. The wrong frame could ruin a brilliant painting. The wrong backdrop could take away from a magnificent sculpture.

He considered Jack's desktop, a large, cold piece of glass, but the proportion was all wrong. The credenza in front of the window? Too much light. Of course there was the display shelf in the corner that held some exquisite pieces, a nice piece of Murano glass and a beautiful celadon jade Chinese vase, but Jack didn't look at his beauties. He simply collected them. That is, when he was not destroying people's lives.

Carter opened the top drawer of Jack's desk where he kept his fancy pens in velvet-lined cases. Indirect lighting. Nice backdrop of dark-grained wood. The perfect display place for his latest creation.

Carter placed the plain brown paper box in the desk drawer and set the switch.

Beautiful.

He checked his watch. Claire would be back in thirteen minutes.

5:06 p.m.

“What are you looking for?” Jack motioned to the mangled and charred material spread out across a tarp on the floor of Evie's office. It looked like the wreckage of a small plane, and given the smudges of black on her cheek and jacket, she'd been digging through the wreckage for some time.

“Don't you have business to do?” Evie asked from the floor of her office.

“It's Friday after five.” Jack had spent most of the day here at LAPD going through mug shots and trying to finger the shooter from last night. He'd found no one, which is when he'd taken to the streets, walking for miles, poking his head in alleys, talking to street people. Double nothing. He was hoping Evie had something on her end.

“Like
after hours
means anything to a guy like you,” Evie said.

“I'm in good company.” Jack sat in the chair behind her desk. Parker was right. Evie lived for and loved her work. Sitting amidst the bomb wreckage, she radiated light and energy and showed no signs of slowing down for the night. He rolled the chair toward her. “What are we looking for?”

She tossed a charred piece of white fabric in a bucket and whisked soot from her hands. “Each bomber utilizes supplies and a method of construction that are uniquely his. He sets up and detonates the bomb in a way unique to him. He selects specific locations and targets important to him. It all adds up to something greater than trace evidence, a signature.”

He thumbed through a stack of sketches on her desk, which consisted of pencil drawings of each of the bomb sites, with before and after images. “You drew these?” Jack asked.

“Sorry they're not in color.” She gave him a wry smile. “One of my nephews borrowed my box of crayons.”

“They're not half bad.”

She snorted out a laugh. “If you weren't you, I'd accuse you of hitting one too many happy-hour specials this evening.”

He tilted one of the drawings, changing the angle of lighting. “I'm serious. This has no artistic value—”

She clutched her chest. “Ouch.”

“—but value to collectors of true crime or even Los Angeles memorabilia.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I'm a collector.”

“You collect more than priceless pieces of art?”

“I have a few collections.”

“Like?”

“Stuff.”

Evie cocked her head. “If I were the suspicious type, which I am, I'd be checking into your past. You can save us both a lot of time and trouble and tell me what I'd find.”

Another thing about Evie was she didn't have a filter. She spoke her mind, wore her heart on her sleeve, and ate cake. He'd never met anyone like her inside or outside the boardroom. “Not much. I'm just a guy who works hard to make a buck.”

“A buck?”

“A few bucks.” He held up the sketch so the image faced her. “Enough that I would like to purchase this. I'm starting a new collection of crime memorabilia, and this will be my first acquisition.”

“What if I don't want to sell?”

“Everyone has a price.”

She leaned back onto her palms. “Not everyone.”

“Four years' college tuition for your oldest nephew. Any university in the country, including those with ivy.” He pulled out a pen. “But you must sign it.”

“Are you…” She gave her head a shake, a curl of hair slipping from the banded bunch on top of her head. “You don't kid.” She took the pen and signed her name with a flourish, tossed the pen in the air, then held it out to him with a saucy tilt of her head. So much passion in the simple act of signing her name. Was it possible to be too passionate?

He reached for the pen, but she didn't let go.

“You're not holding out for two nephews, are you?” he asked.

Her lips flattened, then turned down at the corners.

“What is it?” Jack asked.

“A signature.” Evie hopped up and angled her thumb, booting him from her chair. She sat before her computer and called up a folder with hundreds of photo files. “Every bomber leaves a signature, as do artists, and my team's criminal profiler said this guy is an artist first, bomber second. So if the bombings are indeed re-creations of the original paintings, it's possible the bomber signed his work in the same place as the original masters.”

Jack planted himself at her side. “Titian signed the original in the lower right-hand corner.”

“What color?” Evie asked.

“Red.”

She clicked through the thumbnails and called up a wide angle shot.

Jack pointed to the concrete path that wound through the library grounds. “It would be in this area. Zoom in.”

“Must you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Order people around.”

“Okay,
please
zoom in.”

Some of the path had been blown away. “Look, there,” she said. “See the red?”

“Could be blood.”

“Could be a signature.” She grabbed her bag. “I need to get to the bomb site.”

He slipped his hand in his pocket, his keys jangling. “Good thing one of us has a collection of fast cars.”

This time Evie didn't argue.

6:03 p.m.

“Let's make a frame.” Evie handed the end of the crime scene tape to Jack, her hand rocking with anticipation. “Take this and go stand near the library.”

She motioned to three boys riding their bikes. “Hey, you wanna play FBI agent?” They slowed, and she took out her wallet and flashed her shield.

They stopped, and a boy in a surfer hoodie picked at the grip on his handlebar. “Is this about the Angel Bomber?” Even in the dark, she could see the tremble of his lips.

“Yes.”

Bits of foam from the grip floated to the ground like bits of ash. “You think he's, uh, gonna come back here and blow up someone else?”

Her gut twisted. Kids out on bikes worrying about bad guys was wrong. It was all so wrong. But she could ease the boy's mind on this account. “You and your friends are safe.” However, a woman in a red dress and blond-haired child were not. At least not yet.

The kid kicked the toe of his sneaker at his bike tire. “I hope you catch him.”

Evie put her hands on the handlebars. “I will.”

The boys hopped off their bikes and with Jack marked off a giant square frame with crime scene tape. She looked from the photo of the Titian painting to the crime scene. “Hoodie, take two giant steps back,” she called out. “Perfect. Gray shirt, five steps to the left. One more. Good. And Jack?” Evie paused. He looked so serious and intense. The boys, too. “Take two steps back, one step right. There. Now do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around.”

The boys broke out in laughter. Even Jack cracked a smile. She thanked the boys and sent them off. Jack jogged back to where she stood at the “base” of the painting. “If we use the actual portrait as a guide, the signature should be right there.” She pointed to the section of earth below the tree, which had at one time been a concrete walkway, but was now a gouge in the earth.

“Damn,” Jack said under his breath. “They already cleared away the rubble.”

Evie rolled up the sleeves of her jacket. “Cleared, but didn't haul off.” She climbed onto the lip of a construction waste container.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

She hooked a leg over and jumped in. “Looking for puzzle pieces.”

Jack grabbed the ledge of the container.

Evie hauled a flashlight from her bag. “What are
you
doing?”

“Helping.” He took out his phone and turned on some kind of flashlight app.

She tilted her head. She understood that he felt guilty, but he was dogged, as if this case was personal. Balancing on the debris, she cupped her hands over his. “Jack, I can do this.”

“I am in no way doubting your ability.” He swung a leg over the container.

“You're going to ruin your fancy suit.”

He hopped inside. “I have others.”

After fifteen minutes of toeing through dead branches, mud clods, and construction debris, Jack lifted a hunk of concrete. “Found one.”

She studied the streak of red, which looked like a small letter
t
. “Where?”

“This pile.”

They worked side by side and after two hours found three more pieces with what appeared to be red letters. An uppercase
C
and lowercase
r
and
e
.

Jack tossed the last chunk of concrete back into the pile with more force than necessary. “We need more than four letters.”

She wiped her hands on her jeans and smiled. “We have them.” She sat on a tree stump in the middle of the waste container and hauled out her phone.

8:38 p.m.

Fake fog rolled along the weathered concrete of L.A.'s Old Bank District. Evie squinted past men in fedoras carrying fake Thompson submachine guns. “There he is,” she told Jack. “Guy across the street standing at the mouth of the alley.”

Jack double-parked his car, this one a svelte red Porsche Spider, in front of the barricade blocking off Main Street, and they wove their way through the crowd gathered in front of century-old buildings to watch late-night filming of some big-budget gangster film. According to Freddy Ortiz, the lead in the film was an aging Hollywood A-lister who'd been happily married for forty years but was now boinking his nineteen-year-old co-star. Freddy was hanging out in the wings hoping to get a shot or two of the alleged boinkers.

“Friday is one of my busiest nights,” Freddy said as he downed half a Corona. “You're messing with my bread and butter.”

“After we're done,” Evie said, “I'll bake you a cake.”

Freddy laughed. “I like you, Lady Feeb. You got spark.”

“Good, consider me lighting a fire under your ass. I have a job for you.”

He downed the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle in a battered metal trash can covered with swirls of paint, more art than graffiti. “Lead and I shall follow.”

“Holy shit,” Evie said when Freddy stepped out of the shadowy alley. “What happened to your lip?”

Freddy slid a finger along a swollen hunk of flesh. “Skip Folsum's fist.”

“I take it Waltzing Matilda didn't do too well at the races?”

He let out a grunt. “Nor did Sizzling Sam or Rockabilly Sue.”

“Your luck's about to change. Tonight you're going to be a winner.”

Freddy leaned closer, his sickly sweet breath fanning her neck. “Got some insider info?”

“I
need
some insider info,” Evie said. “I have a lead and need to see all your shots of the crime scene, including those
after the boom
.”

“How bad do you want to see them?” The tabloid photographer's already beady eyes narrowed.

Evie turned her gaze heavenward, praying for patience to keep from splitting this guy's other lip. “We're trying to catch a killer.”

Freddy stroked the camera slung around his neck. “Me too. In my wildest fantasies, I catch him, 'cause that catch is going to pay for a beachfront condo in Maui.”