Something cold had taken hold of me. Certainly looking back, I'm surprised I didn't panic. I should have felt something. Didn't even show an emotional response to finding out my partner was intimately connected to a case. Ginny was right, I let the job override everything else. Except, in a way I didn't this time.
Because my job dictated I confide in someone, certainly Chief, but my loyalty to Reyes (a bond stronger than any friendship or marriage) said I couldn't risk it. Biggs had answered the call first, and I had a personal connection to the case. Meaning I'd be put in the back seat or taken off the investigation. So what choice did I have?
I gave Biggs the box's contents—without the personalized cassette or badge of course—and drove off the East Barrington in a decommissioned cruiser, since Ginny had dropped me off. I knew I'd have an hour, maybe two before I'd get a call. I had at least the night to see this out, see where it took me, then I'd spill it all to Chief and hope he didn't take my badge and gun.
East Barrington is on the other side of town, in the hills. Old real estate built for millionaires in the late seventies and early eighties. The area was filled with either 20th century has-beens—the kind of oldie that appeared in a TV drama that fizzled out after two seasons, or divorcee gold diggers living off the fat of some rich accountant they married back in '82—or it was for people with money they had made under the table. Pot growers.
Everyone on the force knew it, but, to be honest, neither demographic put up much of a fuss, beyond the occasional public indecency call (fresh off the operating table, the swollen chested cougars liked to strut their stuff) we never really came out here.
435 East Barrington was at the end of a cul-de-sac. Great, gaudy pillars held the front frame of the house upright, it looked like a plantation house straight out of the 19th century. It rested on stilts, rising high above a tree line that looked planted just to provide a contrast to how tall and wonderful the house was. In the 80's, they didn't build on zero lot properties, no sardine houses here, even in the pitch of midnight I could see the large lot, what looked like gables for a garden and the top of a greenhouse.
I swung the car around and parked it on the end of the street. The air was cool against my neck when I stepped out.
I opened my glove compartment and pulled out my father's service revolver. A snub nose Model 85. It wasn't my standard issue Glock 17, wasn't nearly as accurate and held only five rounds instead of the Glock's seventeen, but I wasn't on duty and this was personal, which called for a more sentimental weapon.
There was a gate in front of the house. For a fleeting moment I wondered if I'd have to jump the fence, but before I could check for cameras I leaned forward and the gate creaked open on hinges in desperate need of some WD-40. I took another cursory glance over my shoulder and walked through the iron fence. Concrete stairs climbed up a small rock side that lead up to the front door. I checked the cylinders of the Model 85 one more time and placed it back in the shoulder holster beneath my jacket.
Somewhere someone was playing music.
I thought about going back to my car and grabbing my Maglite, but the house was lit up like a Christmas party. I felt terribly exposed, the large landscape windows shown bright like spotlights, illuminating the pitch-black midnight outside.
Still, I crept up to the front door. I tested the handle, to my surprise it turned. The great world beyond the threshold of that doorway greeted me. Classical music danced through speakers. Strings and oboes and brass instruments flurried to and fro, chaotic and yet somehow organized singing its sweet song. The home was like something taken from a dramatic recreation on the History Channel. A grand staircase ran around a semi-circle wall, the foyer expanded outward, and a living room was to my right.
Candlesticks, dozens and dozens of them, sat upon walls, on tables, hanging from the ceiling in chandeliers. Casting the room in the wavering light and warm glow of fire, instead of bulbs. The house was a fire department violation waiting to happen. A terrifying thought crept into my mind: candles don't like themselves. I pulled out the Model 85 for some comfort.
A set of double doors to my left were closed tight—old habits die hard and I had to see what was behind them. I found my feet moving to the marching tempo of the music. Was it Bach? It was familiar to me.
Beyond the closed doors was grand dining hall. A table running the entirety of the room, a dozen or so seats filled only one side of the table. And it was set. Entirely. Plates, cups, forks, knifes and a meal. Enough food to feed a football team. Turkey, stuffing, salad, mashed potatoes—everything—glowing in candle light.
I got that eerie feeling. The kind I had gotten before, in a thousand different cases: the feeling of being watched. But this felt less physical, something closer to childish fear: a sinister thing lurking in the shadows with a mischievous grin peeled across a wicked face. I ignored an urge to turn around and instead rested a hand on the big bird in the center of the table. Cold to the touch.
Some of the food had begun to spoil, the gravy had a sickly looking layer of grease.
And beyond the table, opposite of the dozen chairs, was a mirror. Running the length of the feast, reflecting the twelve empty seats sitting before a spoiling meal. It was as if the guests of the Last Supper hadn't gotten the memo that dinner had been served.
I walked out of the room, the music had found a new tempo and volume. Was it Beethoven? I had never paid attention in class, but it most certainly fit with this house. I imagined it as something being played at a party somewhere long ago.
That's when I heard her. A scream. Blood curdling, the kind that sends runs a knife's point up your spine.
I waited for it again, the violins cut through the air.
She shouted again, this time pleading for someone, or something, to stop.
I pushed through a set of doors leading to a kitchen filled with dirty dishes and discarded pots and pans. Something had begun to smell in the sink.
Where are you?! I wanted to yell, but before I could say anything she cried out again. Something wet was bubbling in her throat.
I was running then, bursting through door after door, following the moans of a woman somewhere in the house. Her voice seemed to be coming from every room I was in, she was always one step away from me. That's when I spotted a set of speakers, resting in the corner of a room: blaring that classic music and shrill cries of the woman.
I found myself in the back of the house, a glass corridor ran the length of the garden. Like a tunnel through a mountain, or the depths of hell. Besides a candle resting on the table next to me, the corridor was unlit, save for the pallid moonlight that seeped through glass walls. I cursed for leaving my flashlight in the car, and grabbed a candle sitting at an end table. I remember feeling thankful it happened to be there. Looking back, I know it was left just for me.
I heard sobbing.
Outside, the world was dark. Quiet, and drown in the blue hue of a midnight moon. An old willow tree cast its branches downward, hiding who knows what behind its tendril fingers. I wondered who was watching me, beyond the thin glass pane. If I looked hard enough, would I see eyes leering? Her piercing cry called out again, then stopped short, someone had wrung her neck, or hit stop on a recording.
The music paused when I took the first step, then started again. I could hear it behind the only door at the end of the corridor. It dropped key, and the tempo hastened. Goosebumps riddled my arms. A violin danced violently on strings, a harsh shrill and the pitch of something mad and terrible, seeming to drive at the very movements of my heart.
With my finger looped through the handle on one hand, and my father's Model 85 in the other, I walked down glass corridor. The end was dark, the glass walls alongside me danced with long shadows cast by my solitary candle. I wanted to call out for the woman but feared at what might respond. Paintings flanked me as I walked, all of stone faced men and woman, portraits looking eagerly in my direction as if to warn me. As I walked, I noticed their faces: they became bruised and bloodied. Eyes swollen shut, lips slip and teeth missing. Each subsequent painting more gruesome than the one before. I reached the door at the end and stopped, feeling the bass of the cellos dancing their ominous notes, a tympani pounding at my pulse.
What horror house had I walked into?
But I couldn't go back now, despite the hairs rising on the back of my neck. Despite my frenzied heart, beating furiously with the music that now reverberated from the room just beyond the door in front of me. Tenor strings built towards a terrible climax, ushering in some wonderful or horrible finale that I couldn't help but feel cosmically connected to.
I holstered the revolver, and reached for the handle. The music marched, less like a song and more like a death rattle, reached a crescendo and stopped the moment I opened the door. It swung away from me, easily and theatrically, as if it were a curtain sweeping open to reveal a glorious stage.
I took in the room, in the frigid silence, and found I couldn't breathe.
* * * *
The last time Sarah had lost control was the week before her sixteenth birthday. She screamed herself hoarse, from behind the black bag that had been draped over her head. She screamed at the men who had grabbed her, at the zip ties at on her wrist, but most of all, she had screamed against the blackness. And since then, she couldn't—or wouldn't—she still didn't know.
But in her dreams, she wants to. They were vivid, dark and twisted; every sense a punctuation mark. The smells: of mildew, sweat, piss and sex. The flavors: blood, salt and iron. The sights: white featureless lights, concrete. The feeling: something gnawing close to despair. In her dreams, she floats above herself and the Man. His face had become a swirl of features: nose, eyes, mouth, cheeks, facial hair—all of it—melded into a single face. Expressionless beyond his grimace or labored panting. Sweat spattered his upper lip, his lower lip curled beneath his teeth, his eyes closed in a moment of fevered ecstasy. Her voice would well up in her chest, claw at her throat and grow like a balloon ready to burst, then in the moment before she would let it out, raw and real, she'd wake up, and find herself twisted in sweat soaked sheets with a knife piercing her heart.
But this time she woke on a concrete floor. That painful feeling swelling in her chest. Her eyes had trouble focusing, the world felt fuzzy at the corners. All at once she thought the withdrawals had come back, all these years later.
Her sense of smell is the first to come to life. Aromas of mildew and mold and something far worse twisted their way around the room. Something was decaying nearby, both the smell and the buzz of flies gave it away. The walls seeped with something wet, a burst pipe somewhere from a frozen line from a long-ago winter. Stains blossomed in dark patches of brown and grey and black.
A dull throbbing reverberated around her temples, half her face buzzed, like a foot or arm that's fallen asleep. She twisted to feel at it, but something cold bit into her wrist, pulled again and heard the rattle of metal against metal. She was cuffed to a radiator that'd been pried from a wall.
For a fleeting and terrifying moment, she's sure she's back in her nightmare, the kind built on the foundation of memory. The aching in her bones told her that wasn't quite right, this wasn't the place she had turned sixteen, but this was real.
And there was music playing. Something light and lilting, a symphony of strings and a choir of voices; a queer dichotomy to the ransacked basement she found herself in.
A bulb rose in her throat and she couldn't help herself. She retched on the ground, sat upright and tried to catch her breath.
Pulling on radiator again, she found she has the strength to slide it. No windows, but the stairs would surely lead to a door. Something pharmaceutical running through her veins impeded even the simplest lift of her arm.
A creaking came for the stairs, she saw a piercing light shine then a pair of boots. Not construction or biker boots, but the timid, almost effeminate boots of a designer brand. They moved slowly and methodically, the person was in no hurry, they took every step as if walking down a stairway to receive an award.
Before her was a man, she can tell by form, not face, because he wears a mask. Carved from a piece of wood, dark like cedar or mahogany and inlayed with ivory or something white, its mouth and eyes curved in a frown. It was something straight from a theater. He was well-dressed from head to toe, he looked to be on his way to a gala or opera.
He inhaled deeply through his nose, then exhaled behind his mask.
A voice came out in a rich baritone. "Hello, Detective Sarah Reyes. I am so happy you have woken up." He said, hands clasped behind his back, he turned his head to her vomit. "I apologize about the nausea. Symptom of the tranquilizer I am afraid. You do not mind if I sit down, do you?" He gestured to a stool near him and for the first time Sarah noticed a painter's easel upright beneath a light. She didn't tell him either way, but he sat down regardless.
"How did you sleep?"
She didn't answer.
"Not well, I suppose." He said, his rich voice resonating from behind the wooden mask. "These conditions might seem... meretricious. But, as they say, art comes at a price." He leaned down and opened a craftsman's toolbox and began to pull out his supplies.
"I have been painting you. You have been a wonderful model, up until now. So good that I could not make just one painting. Good thing for us, I have just got to finalize your face. I have got the form down. Unconscious people do not move, and some would argue that the unconscious cannot emote either, but I would disagree.
"My argument is thus: can a sculpture not emote? A painting cannot convey emotion?"
Sarah looked to the top of the stairs, the door was still open.
"The sculpture of man draws emotions from more innate features. High cheek bones, a heavy brow, supple cheeks, a bulbous nose, small lips: commanding, boisterous, effeminate, goofy, mousey, all these things can be learned by simply looking at someone's face. Our features tell more about us than anything we could emote. Do you want to know what your face says?"
She touched at her swollen eye, "Cheap prostitute looking to make a quick $5 behind an alley?"
"No." He paused, "No. That is very crude." She thinks his real mouth might be frowning at her, "Regardless, have you done modeling before? I could not find any professional history, but maybe amateur? Well, anyway, when I look at your face, it says to me:" He swiped an arm across the air, "Misspent beauty."
Sarah smirked and held up her fists, lifting a middle finger. "What does this say to you?"
His sigh is muffled behind his mask, "I was hoping we could have a conversation. But I suppose we should get to work." He started mixing paints on the pallet next to him.
He set the easel, raised the canvas if only by millimeters and sat up straight. "If you would please, I would appreciate you sit still. Is there anything I can grab you before I begin? Perhaps an aspirin? A glass of water?"
"How about you go fuck yourself." Sarah said.
"Again with that mouth." He tsked and shook his head like a mother scolding a child. "I am just trying to be a good host."
"Do hosts usually paint their guests before killing them?" The detective in her hoped she could pull this one bit out of him, like she had to so many others in interrogation room three. The human in her—the one chained to a radiator—dreaded what he'd say. But she couldn't let that thought weasel it's way in, fear would end her.
"What are you implying?"
"I'm implying you're a deranged piece of shit who paints women before murdering them."
"Murderer?" He tittered. A small, deep laugh that echoed against the mask on his face. "How quaint. I do not harm anyone. It is the process that kills."
She didn't answer.
"Art can be transformative," he said, giving the canvas a swipe of his brush. "It inspires, it is borne from emotion and yet births emotion. It is a cyclical cycle of creation. If a man takes a photo of a starving child in Africa and does nothing to save it, does that make him a monster? Does that make him a murderer for documenting the death of someone? His photo gives that life, however insignificant, purpose. The process cannot be questioned, inspiration is priceless."
Reyes planted her hands in her lap, "Somehow I doubt Pulitzer will be giving you a prize."
He didn't laugh at that. "I am trying to be serious, Detective, I would appreciate you doing the same. This is not about awards. A billion eyes can love a piece of filth, but only one pair needs to be able to appreciate true art to make it worthwhile." He looked back to his canvas and gave another flick to his paintbrush. Blue eyes, bright as any summer sky, peered at the painting then back at her. He held up the paint brush for reference.
"Would you say you are a religious person, Detective?
"I am not." He said, not really waiting for an answer and turning his attention back to his painting. "Marx called it opiate for the masses. Nietzsche said 'God is dead.' And God thus retorted: 'Nietzsche is dead.'" He gave that a dry chuckle, and touched a delicate amount of paint on his brush, before continuing. "I understand its value. Religion is responsible for some of the greatest human achievements in history. Certainly in the name of art. Theater, the Sistine Chapel, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Dante's Inferno, Michelangelo's David, Da Vinci's Last Supper. But you know what inspired me last week?"
He took another analytical look at her, then dabbed a bit of paint and touched a few spots on his painting. She wanted to rip the mask off and punch him in his pompous face.
"Greek mythology. I do not really know why. It is more of the same: gods of jealousy and envy and the like. It is so cookie cuttered that people often mix up Roman mythology with Greek. It is far from unique. The gods are rather binary, they lack the emotion or vindication of the Jewish and Muslim God, there is not the alleged 'grace' of the Christian God, and there certainly is not the excitement of Hindu gods with several arms or the faces of elephants."
He tilted his head and pulled back a little, his blue eyes peering through, looking at his painting with a new perspective.
He didn't say anything for a long time, then said with finality: "They are not imposters, the Greek gods. They wear a mask, but the mask is sincere. The represent who they are. A god for lust, for desire, for trickery." He took a moment to look at her and spoke in a lower, knowing tone. "A god for death."
"Sounds like someone spent a little too much time with their nose in a book."
"Shakespeare says there is truth in every jest, you are both correct in this case." He stood up and tilted his head like a golden retriever, holding his chin in his hand. "Have you heard of the mimesis dichotomy? Of Mimesis vs. Anti-mimesis. Aristotle vs. Oscar Wilde. The question: does art imitate society, or is it society that imitates art? And I would like to pose the question to you, considering your unique position."
Reyes eyed him coolly, "What, chained to an old radiator?"
He tittered, less happy more sardonic and walked towards her. "No, Detective Reyes, you are both. Right now, you represent both sides. You are human, you are a woman, you are a captive and you are a police officer. A civil servant. You are society." He gestured to the canvas behind him and squatted down to her level, his masked face just inches from hers, he whispered, "And you are human. You are a woman. You are a captive. You are a muse for paint upon canvas. You. Are. Art." His voice echoed out the last three words with a wondered reverence.
"So I ask, do you imitate the canvas or does that canvas imitate you?"
Reyes let her gaze linger on her captive, then took one look at the painting, and cleared her throat like a baseball player at the plate. The lougie slaps against his mask with a satisfying noise, she gives a sideways smile as to if to say, that's what I think.
He exhaled again, walked to the canvas and wiped his frowning mask with a paint speckled cloth. When he turned back to her, the mask is smeared with blue and black and red. "You know what I think the piece is missing?" He asked, looking at the painting and walking towards her.
She straightened up to answer, to give him what Cooper called the Reyes' special, but before she can say anything he reeled his leg back and sent his designer boot crashing into her face. White pain flashed, she spat up a tooth and more blood on the concrete floor.
"A bit more red."