Wallflower (34 page)

Janek nodded. "I don't want to be portrayed in any more movies. But that shouldn't stop you guys. The case is in the public record. We all know police work isn't about stars; it's about teamwork. As team leader you can rightfully think of yourself as the leading man."

As Sullivan shook his head, Janek noticed something desperate in his eyes.

"What's the matter?"

The inspector sat, then twisted in his seat.
"
Tell you the truth, now that it's wrapped up, HF, or Wallflower I guess we should call it now, isn't all that dramatic from a story point of view. As Grey says, who cares about some nutty, bald girl who killed people because she was hung up on her shrink? But he feels there could be a very strong story if we structured the whole thing around you. Put you right in the center of it. Your character arc could make it work."

"Character arc?"

"You know what I mean."

"No,"
said Janek,
"I
don't think I do."

"The way you change as the case develops. You go in one sort of guy and come out another."

Janek was quiet. He didn't like the sound of that. It was too close to the truth. The notion of having his soul exposed to millions of people filled him with a special kind of dread.

Sullivan was still pitching. 'Try this. Cynical world-weary NYPD detective gets personally involved when his goddaughter's murdered. Grief-stricken, he goes after the killer with a vengeance, cuts through all the bureaucratic horseshit, finds the murderess, and shoots her dead. I mean, that's a real
story,
one a network will buy."

Janek looked at Sullivan sharply.
"
For me it wasn't a story, Harry. It was a murder case just, like all the others."

"Yeah, sure, I know you say that. But—"

"Forget it."

Sullivan lowered his head. When he spoke again, his tone was meek. "I hope you'll reconsider, Frank. Maybe later, when you're feeling your old self again . . ."

Janek waited until Sullivan raised his head and then met his eyes straight on.
"
Don't hope for that, Harry. It's not going to happen."

A
t first when he looked at the crayons Monika bought him, thirty pristine pastel crayons neatly organized by color in an elegant compartmentalized wooden box, he felt loath to touch them lest he violate their perfect order. But after he sat down on the chaise, propped the large spiral-bound pad of paper against his knees, and ran his fingers across the surface of a sheet, it seemed to cry out for color.

His first sketches were tentative and sloppy. But still there was a satisfaction in using his hands to try to reproduce the purity of the terrace view. And the longer he drew, the more he enjoyed it. It was a technique worthy of being mastered. He thought of the combination of intensity and patience exhibited by his father when he sat at his bench working on broken accordions in the little repair shop he'd operated on Carmine Street.
Perhaps,
he thought,
if I imitate the way Dad used to squint at the exposed insides of old accordions, I'll manage to get the swing of it.

Monika, careful not to disturb him, busied herself inside the house, preparing food she'd bought in town. Then she went out to swim and jog along the beach. When she returned two hours later, he showed her his latest sketch of the view. The sea and sky, divided horizontally by the horizon, were a simple study in blues. She liked it, and so did he.

"I'm pleased," she said.
"
You're enjoying yourself."

"Yeah, I am," he admitted.

She kissed his shoulder and went back inside the house. At midday she brought out a tray of tortillas, guacamole, and beer. They ate and laughed, then retired to their bedroom to make love and then to nap.

At three, well oiled with sunscreen, he returned to the terrace for another round of drawing. But this time, instead of portraying the view, he tried to sketch his dream.

He tore off several sheets before he was satisfied with the general design. When he finally felt he'd gotten it right, he began to fill it in.

"It really does look like a nightmare," Monika said when she came out onto the terrace with her book.

Janek stopped drawing. "I don't have the hand for this."

"No one expects you to draw like an artist, Frank. Just try to make it schematic."

"This is pretty much it," he said. He pointed to a small table set before the portrait.
"
I think the objects were here."

"Well, that's something, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You never mentioned a table before."

Janek nodded. She was right; he hadn't mentioned it because he hadn't remembered it.

"Well, they had to be set out on something, didn't they?" Monika smiled.
"
Keep drawing, Frank. Sooner or later you'll work it out."

By the end of the afternoon he had not resolved the objects in terms of their shapes, but he had positioned them, indicated by X's, in a straight line on the table.

He showed the sketch to Monika. She studied it. "The arrangement's strange," she said.
"
Maybe that's important."

"What do you mean?"

She shook her head.
"
The way everything is lined up, the table, the painting, the niche. It's hieratic, almost like the apse of a church. The table could be the altar. And the objects—"

He leaned toward her.
"
Yes?"

"They're equally spaced, symmetrically set out. Almost like relics. Or offerings . . ."

"Offerings to the portrait?"

She thought about that.
"
Perhaps. But I think it goes deeper. Suppose, instead of the portrait, there was something else in that niche, a sculpture or a painting of Christ on the cross. You wouldn't say the gold chalices on the altar were offerings to the painting. You'd say they were offerings to Jesus or to God."

Janek sat up.
"
That's it!" he said.
"
What I saw were offerings to the woman in the picture."

"Who is she?"

"Beverly told Aaron it was a portrait of her mother, who died a few years ago." He paused, then pointed to the table in the sketch. "I don't think there was a table here. I think I saw something else. Something like a table, but with a different shape beneath. I'll try and draw it."

He turned over a page of his pad, then started feverishly to draw. She stood behind him as he tried out a shape, crossed it out, tried another and still another.

"In the police photos there wasn't anything beneath the picture. Aaron thinks it took him about two minutes to reach me after he heard my shot. Beverly got to the bedroom just after I fell. If there was something there, she'd have had time to move it.
"

He drew an oval, then drew a rectangle over it.

"If she moved it, it couldn't have been very big," Monika said.

"I think it was big. But maybe it was lighter than it looked."

"Where could she have hidden it?"

He shrugged, drew a bookcase, then redrew it so its bottom half
stuck out. "It could have been portable, on wheels, or something
like a card table that folds up." He drew an angry slash across the
page. "Shit, I don't know!"

Monika, behind him, massaged his shoulders. "Let it go for now, Frank. You've done enough today."

"It's so maddening. I can almost see it. But not quite."

"Of course, it's maddening. Like forgetting someone's name even when you can see his face."

"Exactly!"

"What do you do when that happens?"

"Rack my brains till I come up with his name."

"If that doesn't work?"

"I forget about it awhile."

"Then?"

"It usually comes to me later when I'm thinking about something else or doing something strange like eating peas."

"When you're
consciously
thinking about something else. Mean
time, the subconscious part of your brain is processing the problem. You can let the same thing happen here, let your subconscious take over and do the work. Eventually the solution will come, probably sometime tonight."

"Then what?"

"Then on to the next problem. You see, the wonderful thing about drawing an encrypted dream is that it gives you a chance to break down a big riddle into smaller and more manageable parts. What you want to do is get the table right, then go on to the objects."

He gazed at her.
"
Anyone ever tell you you're terrific?"

"Oh, all the time," she said.
"
My patients are always telling me that."

"You're kidding!"

She smiled. "Shrinks are used to hearing endearments. But when I hear them from you, Frank, I know they're real."

T
hat night they ate dinner in the house, then drove down to the village to walk. A Mexican boy with gleaming teeth approached them on the street. He showed them a tray of handmade silver jewelry. When Monika showed interest in a pair of earrings, Janek bought them for her. The boy held out a cracked piece of mirror so she could look at herself as she put them on.

Later they stopped outside a modest bar that fronted on the beach. There was a light breeze that made the palms sway and churned up the smooth surface of the Gulf. Someone was playing a piano inside.
"
Looks like a decent saloon," Janek said.

The place was half filled. The high season wouldn't begin until Christmas. Janek and Monika took a table between the bar and the pianist, a young black woman with a red scarf tied around her head. She was playing the kind of restful dinner music that doesn't require much attention.

Janek grinned.
"
I'm glad we could have this week together." He paused.
"
Do you really have to fly home on Christmas?"

"I wish I didn't," she said.
"
But I have patients waiting and an early class the following day."

He looked at her. "I usually spend my holidays alone."

She leaned across the table and kissed him. "Not this year."

When the waiter brought their margaritas, Monika asked him in Spanish about the pianist. The waiter said she was a gringo. "But a nice one," he added.

Janek turned to look at the piano.

"I wonder . . ."

"What?"

"That table I drew, the table that wasn't a table—I wonder if it could have been a piano." He took a sip from his drink. "I don't see how it could have been. A piano's much too big. Hard to hide a piano even if it's on wheels." He took another sip. "Still, it had that piano shape, like a little upright, you know, with the objects arranged on the top just below the bottom edge of the painting."

He summoned the waiter, borrowed a ballpoint, made a quick sketch on his cocktail napkin. He turned it so Monika could see. "Something like that," he said.

She stared at the sketch. "Didn't you tell me the portrait seemed bigger in the dream than in Aaron's photographs?" Janek nodded. "We know the portrait didn't change. It's the same one you saw. But suppose there was a piece of furniture just under it, something that because of its scale made the picture seem bigger than it was."

Janek nodded. "Take that piece of furniture away, and the portrait would appear smaller. It's still life-size, but in the dream it looms over everything." He thought a moment. "Suppose it wasn't a real piano. Suppose it was a miniature or a model. That would be enough to confuse the scale, at least at a quick glance. And if it was a miniature piano, she could have hidden it."

"Hidden the relics, too, dispersed them around the room."

"Yes . . . the relics." Janek finished off his drink. "I like that word. Relics offered up to the image of her mother in the little chapel she constructed in her bedroom niche. Consecrated relics, you could say, or sanctified ones. Perhaps more than relics. Perhaps trophies, trophies of acts committed in her mother's honor. Mementos of sacrifices. Tributes offered in thanks or to appease."

He looked at Monika, nodded.
"
You were right this afternoon when you used the word 'hieratic.' That bedroom was a fucking shrine."

T
hat night he didn't dream about the whole room, only about the portrait. In his dream the woman's face came alive, her eyes blinked open, and her mouth opened and shut mechanically like a doll's. He woke up drenched in sweat.

In the morning he gulped his coffee, then hurried out to the terrace to draw. He sketched the painting and an under-scale piano beneath it and then made X's on the piano's top. How many trophies had there been? He drew various quantities. When that didn't work, he took another approach. There had been seventeen Wallflower killings in all. He drew seventeen X's on top of the piano. Too crowded. But there had been only seven victim clusters. When he drew seven X's, the design looked right.