Through the Grinder (20 page)

Though he came on a little strong, I found Todd’s enthusiasm for his art and the design work of others infectious. He was a serious painter, but one concerned with his own notoriety, too. Some would probably be bothered by his ambition, but I found it honest and refreshing—at least he wasn’t hiding what he wanted out of life from anyone.

“So,” he said at last. “You’re here about my WTCC submission?”

I nodded, hoping my lie would hold up under scrutiny.

“I don’t judge the submissions, of course,” I said, playing for time. “I don’t even get to see them. I merely conduct an interview. We try to screen every artist and designer who wishes to be involved in this important project.”

“I was expecting a man,” Todd said. “A fellow named Henderson. A critic who used to write for
Art Review
.”

“Ah, yes. Well, we felt that Mr. Henderson had too heavy a hand to deal with certain artists, so I volunteered to fill in for him.”

“I’m delighted you did, Clare,” Todd said, his pale blue eyes staring into mine. “Henderson panned one of my shows, and I didn’t think I would get a fair evaluation from the man.”

This was not quite the tantrum Torquemada hinted had occurred. It wasn’t that Todd had something against men, it was more like he had something against this particular man. But, to be fair, it sounded more like Todd was just being protective of his own work and reputation, and he spoke about the issue with such genuine sincerity that I believed every word he said.

It was disturbing in a way, but it was hard for me to see this man as the same one Torquemada had described.

“So why do you want your work to be displayed in the new World Trade Center?” I asked.

“Because it’s important,” Todd replied. “Millions of people will eventually walk through the doors of that complex, once it is completed. This new World Trade Center will become the commercial capital of the world, and a showcase of art and design. Not since Cheops built the Great Pyramid has an architectural project received such widespread international attention. What better place to showcase my artistic creations?”

“I…see.”

So far Seth Martin Todd sounded more like a huckster than a killer, and I was already convinced I’d reached another dead end in my quest to clear Bruce Bowman. Still, I pushed on.

“Your work has been sold through Death Row Gallery? By a Ms. McNeil. Sahara McNeil?”

Todd’s eyes hardened. “Ms. McNeil sold one of my paintings to a Japanese conglomerate. Why do you ask?”

I set my cup down.

“I guess you heard about Ms. McNeil? The accident yesterday morning?”

Seth Todd blinked. “No.”

“She was killed. Crushed under a sanitation truck in Greenwich Village.”

“And this has what to do with the World Trade Commission?”

“We like our prospective artists to have clean backgrounds,” I said as coolly as I could manage.

Todd leaned forward and set his own cup down.

“You already know about my background, or you wouldn’t be here, asking questions about a dead woman.”

“I know you were accused of murder.”

Todd snorted.

“Accused? No. I
committed
murder. I went up to my cabin in Vermont and found my wife making love to another man. I felt betrayed. I went a little crazy. I killed them both. Do you understand how it feels to be betrayed?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I do.”

“Then you understand.”

We sat in silence for a time.

“So you’re really here to see if I had anything to do with Sahara McNeil’s death?” Todd said.

He stood up and walked to his canvas. He stared at it, his back to me. “Did Torquemada send you? Did he say I was angry at Sahara, that I threatened her?”

“Did you threaten her?”

I watched Seth Martin Todd’s shoulders heave in a long sigh.

“I threaten a lot of people, Clare. I have a temper as you well know. People don’t like me when I’m angry.”

I stood up.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Todd,” I said.

He turned and faced me again. He was smiling.

“Come on, Clare. Ask me. That’s why you came here.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Did you kill her, Seth?”

“No,” Todd said after a long pause. “I did not kill Sahara McNeil.”

I channeled Quinn, knowing that I would have to tell him about Todd unless I heard the right answers.

“Can you account for your whereabouts yesterday morning, between seven and ten
A.M
.?”

“Yesterday?” He laughed and went over to his desk. He returned with a video cassette. He handed me the plastic case and tapped it.

“Read the label.”

I did. It was the tape of an interview with Seth Martin Todd aired on
MetroNY Arts,
a cable access morning show. The interview was broadcast live from a Queens television studio at the time of Sahara McNeil’s death.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said. “Really.”

“God, I’m so embarrassed,” I found myself saying.

Seth Todd looked at me with wry amusement. “Don’t be, Clare. I get these kinds of questions all the time.”

“What? Someone asking you if you’ve killed again?”

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe not
that
one.”

I slipped back into my shearling. “You must know I’m not from the World Trade Center Commission,” I confessed.

Todd nodded. “I figured that out.”

“So don’t you want to know why I really came here?”

“Not really…I like the suspense. Now, can I call you a car? No taxis come near here, but I have a car service I use regularly.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I have a…car waiting at the end of the alley.”

“Well, it was pleasant meeting you, Clare. Drop by again—maybe next time you can critique my art—that gets me
really
angry.”

I shot him a look, and he raised his hands in mock surrender.

“Just kidding…”

After escorting me to the door, Todd said good-night with an admonishment to be careful in this neighborhood.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “My, uh…driver…once fought his way out of a Calcutta hellhole.”

“Cool.”

I walked down the dark cobblestones. At the far end of the alley, Matteo stepped out of the shadows.

“I was about three minutes away from calling Quinn on my cell,” he said, suppressing a shiver. “So, how did it go?”

“Todd is another dead end—pardon the pun. But I did learn one important fact…”

“What’s that?”

“You can’t judge a novel by its dust jacket.”

Matteo gave me a sour look. “That isn’t very helpful.”

“No, it isn’t,” I replied, thinking about how charming and erudite, educated, and intelligent Seth Martin Todd really was, despite being a double-murderer—and, unfortunately, how much he reminded me of Bruce Bowman.

The Genius could see the girl was pleased to be around him. Sharing a cozy table at her mother’s coffeehouse, sipping cappuccinos, chatting easily. How nice. How very, very nice…

Yes, Joy, you have a pretty name and a pretty face. But it’s your youth, your silly, bubbly youth that’s the biggest attraction.

That ridiculous yellow parka of yours is clearly history now. I can see you love the new shearling that’s taken its place. Charming how you don’t want to take it off, even as you sit here at a table by the fire, enjoying your cappuccino.

But you don’t really deserve that coat…because you are clearly too young to carry it off. And, my dear Joy, the truth is, you are just too carefree…and careless…and you don’t understand when you take teasing too far, how your laughter cuts me in two.

Neither do you understand that I, the Genius, am the one with the power, not you.

You will learn it quickly enough, though, my dear Joy…and soon…because I’m just about ready to teach you…

“But nobody questions your morals,

And nobody asks for the rent,

There’s no one to pry, if we’re tight, you and I,

Or demand how our evenings are spent….”

S
OMEWHERE
under the East River, Matt turned to me and recited those lines from “Life Among the Artists,” a nearly century-old ditty written by journalist and radical John Reed, who’d lived for a time in New York.

“And?” I asked when he was done. “What are you getting at?”

“This town is the perfect place for people like Toddie the painter boy back there, people who want to escape their pasts. In New York, people may see you, but they don’t know you. And they might even know you, but they don’t
really
know you.”

“Matt?”

“You’re out of leads, Clare—”

“No, I’m not—”

“Listen to me. You admitted that Seth Todd was as charming as Bowman. He’s probably sensitive and sweet, too, when he’s not in a murderous rage. You may think you know Bowman, but he may turn out to be exactly like Todd. That may be the real reason Bruce moved to New York City, to escape other ‘accidents’ in his past. Certainly, your meeting with Todd should at least make you stop and consider it.”

I shook my head.

“Consider it, Clare. I think you have to begin to acknowledge the possibility that Quinn was right.”

I slumped back against the cold, orange plastic subway seat and wrapped my shearling tighter around me, trying to feel the warmth of Bruce again.

As we rumbled out from under the river and toward the first underground stop in Manhattan, we passed a slower train on a parallel track. The people appeared like ghosts in the darkness, their heads and torsos surreally floating by in the frame of the other train’s windows. I thought of Valerie then. How her body had been mutilated on one section of these miles and miles of subway tracks, and despite the shearling, a shiver ran through me.

“Clare, come on. When you walked out of Todd’s studio, you bluntly admitted to me that he surprised you. That you never would have guessed he was a murderer—”

“But I only just met Seth Todd. I haven’t spent time getting to know him. I haven’t snuck around his place and read his e-mails, and—”

“—you haven’t
slept
with him.”

Matt’s raised voice drew some glances in the subway car. Two Hispanic teenage boys snickered then looked away. An old Filipino woman narrowed her eyes at us, then shook her head and went back to reading her paper.

“Let’s table this discussion,” I whispered, then slumped back in the hard, plastic seat and once again closed my eyes—trying to close out Matt’s words with them. Instead of considering Bruce’s guilt, I wanted to consider the facts.

Fact: Bruce was innocent. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a fact yet to Quinn or Matt but it was to me. I knew it. I just had to prove it.

Once again, I thought about Valerie Lathem. But not the dead Valerie. The live one. The Valerie that had been dating Bruce for a short time.

Bruce had met Valerie through her job at a travel agency—and that simple fact was probably all Detective Quinn wanted to focus on right now.

Obviously, the detective had begun eyeing Bruce as a suspect when the evidence at Inga’s crime scene had turned up a note signed with a
B
. So it made perfect sense for Quinn to stop asking questions about Valerie’s love life once he discovered Bruce’s basic connection to her.

But Bruce had revealed to me that it was Valerie who’d turned him on to the SinglesNYC site, which meant she had been using the same on-line dating service as Inga Berg. Maybe Quinn knew this already, or maybe he didn’t. To me, however, it seemed like a significant connection to pursue.

Okay, I admit that Quinn wasn’t wrong to focus on Bruce Bowman, the one man connecting Valerie and Inga (and Sahara, too, for that matter), but the detective wasn’t convinced of Bruce’s innocence, and I was. So there had to be another man connected to some or all of them.

If Valerie and Inga were killed by the same guy, chances were good that the guy who killed them probably met them both through that on-line dating site. All Matt and I really had to do was cross-check the site names. Whichever guy showed up on the dating lists for both of these women had to be a viable suspect.

And, frankly, if Sahara McNeil’s name showed up as a registered user of the SinglesNYC dating site, too, I wouldn’t be surprised. After all, Sahara had turned up at Cappuccino Connection night, which meant she’d been mate shopping—so it was highly possible that she may have tried SinglesNYC.

Bottom line: If I could find the one guy, other than Bruce, who was associated with all three women, I’d probably have my killer. And I’d happily serve him up to Quinn on a platter finer than Torquemada’s.

“Yes. There is a new lead,” I murmured, almost to myself, my eyes still closed. “SinglesNYC.com.”

“What?”

“Matt, listen to me.” I opened my eyes and turned to face him. “This isn’t just about my being charmed or duped by Bruce. This is about me trusting my own judgment. It took me a long time to believe in myself, but I do. And I trust that I’m right on this. I have one more lead I need to check out. It’s an important one. Can’t you trust me, just a little longer?”

From a safe distance, the Genius followed the bubbly girl as she left the Village Blend. Her thousand dollar shearling was easy to spot in the crowd of Old Navy pea-coats, leather jackets, and cheap synthetic parkas.

There was no plan here. None.

The Genius didn’t care. Something could be improvised. The Genius was truly gifted with improvising, and this girl had just gone too far tonight, teasing him unmercifully, laughing and flirting with him for a solid hour before rising to go.

The girl walked east from Hudson, toward Seventh Avenue South.

Good,
thought the Genius.
Very good. Perfect.

The Saturday night streets were crowded with college students and partygoers, straight and gay couples, uptown slummers, bridge-and-tunnel kids, night club groupies, drunks and drag queens. The carnival was nowhere thicker and louder and chaotic than Seventh Avenue South.

On a corner near a college bar, the crowd had overflowed onto the sidewalk. The bus stop midway down the block was the perfect nexus.

Joy strode to the corner and waited for the light to change, ready to cross the wide boulevard. A blonde young man with a goatee said something to her. She turned and smiled.

Good,
thought the Genius,
go ahead and tease the boy. You like to tease, and you’ll be just distracted enough for the improvised plan to work.

Here it comes, the Downtown M20, speeding right along, swerving toward the curb to get to the stop half a block down. Here it comes, your last stop, Joy Allegro.

The crowd was thick, and the shove was easy, no one could even tell who’d sent the girl off the curb and right into the path of the oncoming monster.

For the Genius, this final impact would be the sweetest, most satisfying of all…