For a long time after she left, Beau sat there staring into space. Then, so reluctant that every movement was slow and careful, he got up and went to the big painting leaning against the wall, covered with a piece of heavy material so that Maggie hadn't even noticed it.
Beau propped the still-covered painting on a secondary easel and stepped away for a moment, trying to prepare himself. Then he drew a deep breath and flipped back the material.
A detached part of his mind noted the technique and skill displayed, seeing and accepting the unsettling fact that this was arguably the best work of his life. But that wasn't all he saw. He saw the vague yet identifiable faces and forms of what he recognized as tormented women trapped in a dark hell of suffering, their arms reaching out desperately for help, most of them with empty eye sockets wide, open mouths pleading.
He saw the hands that had destroyed the women, hands clenched into fists, hands wielding knives and holding ropes, and hands reaching out for the women, as though to pull them back down into hell.
For a long, long time, Beau didn't move. He stared at the painting, absorbing every brush stroke, every nuance. Ignoring the nausea churning in his gut, he stared until he was certain every dreadful detail was burned into his mind.
Then he went and got a tool designed to cut canvas and very methodically shredded the best work he'd ever done.
"Not this time," he muttered into the silence of the studio. "Goddammit, not this time."
"I always end up working in boring police conference rooms," Quentin said somewhat sadly to the room at large. "And with a great hotel this time too."
"It'll keep you humble," Kendra told him.
"Yeah, right."
John came in then and immediately asked, "Anybody heard from Maggie?"
"Not since you have," Quentin told him. "She was going to interview Ellen Randall and then stop off at the hospital to see Hollis Templeton, right?"
"So she said."
"Hasn't had time to do both, I'd say. And where have you been?"
"Letting Drummond vent some of his spleen."
Quentin grimaced. "Yeah, I thought when he was so painfully polite to us this morning that he was itching to explode."
John shrugged. "I thought it'd be better for all of us if he got it out of his system."
"We appreciate that," Jennifer said dryly.
"I won't say it was a pleasure-but you're welcome." Obviously restless, John looked at his watch, then sat down at the conference table. "Andy's still trying to hurry the medical examiner, but it'll probably be late this afternoon before we have the results of the postmortem on Samantha Mitchell."
"I'm not surprised," Quentin said absently, prowling back and forth in front of the bulletin boards. "According to the police scanner we were listening to yesterday, there were a couple of really bad fires in the city, with fatalities. The M.E.'s probably got more than he can handle."
"Still," John said.
"Still," Quentin agreed. He prowled a while longer, but when Kendra gave him a very direct look, he finally sat down across from John. Half under his breath, he said, "For somebody with a uniquely flexible mind, she gets very irritated by the smallest things."
"Even I was getting irritated," John told him dryly.
Jennifer added, "Me too, but I wasn't going to mention it."
"Then why did you?" Quentin demanded.
"Everybody else did."
Quentin sighed. "All right, all right. Can I help it if I'm restless? I hate this part of the job. Basically just sitting around going through papers and scratching our heads while we wait for the bastard to make another move." He watched John look at his watch again and added, "And I'm not the only one who hates it."
Ignoring that, John said, "Scott's out talking to Tara Jameson's coworkers, right?"
Quentin nodded. "Kendra's been running background checks on every name we've got, but so far everyone in her life looks clean. The fiance definitely is, with a strong alibi to boot. No family here in the city. Andy has a couple of detectives canvassing the building again, and I just spent the past two hours going over the security videotapes."
"And found nothing, I gather?"
"Nada. I have a hunch the tapes don't show anything because he monkeyed with the cameras, but I'm no expert."
"Then we need to send them to someone who is."
"That's my thinking."
Jennifer said, "The security company will raise hell, most likely. They swear their cameras have not been altered in any way, that it would have been impossible for any unauthorized person to do that. Of course, they also can't explain how Tara Jameson vanished from her supposedly secure building. The egg on their faces isn't pretty."
"Has Andy made an official request for the cameras?" John asked.
She nodded. "He's doing that as we speak. And we have technicians standing by to take the things apart as soon as we get our hands on them."
"So we wait," Quentin said with a sigh. "I hate waiting." He stared at the bulletin board. "Kendra, any luck from the databases on that 1894 date?"
She shook her head without a glance at the humming laptop before her. "Not so far. Hardly surprising, considering we're going back more than a hundred years. Most records that old haven't been digitized yet.
"If it comes to that," Jennifer said, "we aren't even sure the 1894 date is part of this. Even if it was on the note, it doesn't have to mean anything. Maybe our mysterious tipster just wants to make us waste time looking."
Quentin looked at her for a long moment, then said matter-of-factly, "You wrote the note, Jenn."
She stared at him. "What? No, I didn't."
"Look in your notebook." His voice remained steady, even gentle. "You'll find a page torn out. The page you found in your car will match it."
At first it seemed she wouldn't do it, but finally she opened her small black notebook on the table and slowly flipped through the pages covered by her neat shorthand notes. They all saw her pause. And they all saw her rub her finger gently across the ragged remains of a torn-out page.
By the time Maggie left Ellen Randall's house just after noon, she felt drained. She drove only as far as the nearest recreation area and stopped there, carefully parking her car in an open space where she could see anyone approach her, and warily leaving the engine running even as she double-checked to make certain all the doors were locked.
For several minutes, she sat there studying her surroundings, senses probing. Nothing. The place was virtually deserted on this dreary weekday. Still, Maggie couldn't quite relax and kept glancing up from time to time even as she opened her sketchbook and looked at the still-incomplete sketch of the rapist/killer.
Ellen hadn't been able to add anything to what Maggie already knew, and her continuing pain and anguish were still so intense it was difficult for Maggie to feel anything else right now, but she tried to concentrate.
Longish hair. Roughly oval face-maybe. Difficult to be sure, since he always seemed to wear a plastic mask of some kind. Eyes? Who knew what shape or color. Who knew if his nose was straight, or his mouth thin-lipped or full. Who knew if his ears were set high or low.
None of the women had seen him. Not so much as a glance. They had only felt what he did to them. Felt his body against theirs, felt his hands touching them.
His hands.
Hardly aware of what she was doing, Maggie turned to a fresh page and began slowly, tentatively drawing.
Her eyes were half closed, remembered voices soft in her mind while remembered suffering made her ache.
… felt his hands holding my wrists…
… he pushed my chin up, as if he wanted to look at my throat, and then he touched it…