The Monet Murders Read online

  “Like a museum exhibit label?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Hick sounded surprised at this suggestion.

  Jason reached for his gloves. Of course, he wasn’t wearing gloves. Hadn’t expected to be called out to a crime scene that night.

  “Use mine.” Sam peeled off his own latex gloves and handed them to Jason.

  Jason pulled on the still warm plastic—an act which felt strangely intimate—and took the canvas board from Hickok, who flicked on his flashlight to better illume the painted surface.

  He recognized the creative intent at once. How could he miss it? Those distinct brushstrokes. The careful and strongly horizontal representation of the sky and sea that were so typical of the artist’s early efforts. The ocean and shoreline were probably supposed to represent Sainte-Adresse, although they might as easily have been Santa Catalina. Wherever it was supposed to be—and despite the distinctive signature in the lower right-hand corner—it was a lousy effort and a lousy forgery.

  Not even taking into account the macabre and incongruous central figure of the corpse floating in the surf. He felt a prickling at the nape of his neck at the image of that indistinct but clearly bloodied form. Maybe the location was generic. The focus of the work—a murder scene—was not.

  “It’s sure as hell not Monet,” Jason said.

  “It’s his style,” Norquiss said.

  “I think Monet would beg to differ.”

  “Maybe it’s an early work,” Diaz suggested.

  “No. It’s not even a good imitation,” Jason said. “This is not genius in the making. It’s fully formed ineptitude.”

  Hick laughed. “What did I tell you?” he asked Sam.

  “You can’t know for sure without running tests. I don’t think it’s so terrible.” Norquiss sounded defensive. Maybe she was a regular at garage sales. Had she really thought they’d discovered a genuine Monet at the crime scene?

  Jason said, “For the sake of argument, why would Kerk be wandering around the beach carrying a priceless painting? And if this was a robbery gone bad, why would the unsub have then left a priceless painting at the scene?”

  “Maybe robbery wasn’t the motive. Maybe the perp had no idea this was a priceless painting.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why Kerk would be casually carrying around a valuable piece of art.”

  Norquiss retorted, “What makes no sense is that the perp would bother to stage the scene when this whole area is going to be underwater in about an hour.”

  She had a point. The oily black tide was already starting to swirl around the pilings. The marine air was redolent with salty decay.

  “Maybe your perp isn’t familiar with the tides—”

  “All right, never mind all that,” Sam cut in impatiently. “You don’t believe that Kerk purchased this work?” The question for Jason was clearly rhetorical. Sam already knew the answer.

  “No way.” Jason glanced at Hick.

  “Hell no,” Hick said. “That’s not a mistake even a rookie buyer would make. Sorry, guys,” he added to Norquiss and Diaz. “However this piece figures in, there’s no way an experienced art dealer purchased a forgery of this quality.”

  A forgery that seemed to suggest—predict—the crime that had only occurred a few hours earlier that evening.

  Having been shut up once, Jason kept the thought to himself. It wasn’t like Sam would have overlooked that point.

  Norquiss and Diaz exchanged frustrated looks. “Then what do we have here?” Norquiss asked. “What are we looking at?”

  Sam’s deep voice was somber as he answered her. “Best guess? The calling card of a serial killer.”

  Chapter Two

  The Hotel Casa del Mar had started life as a ritzy and exclusive beach club for the rich and famous in the 1920s. It was now open to all and sundry—although with rooms starting at half a grand per night, not really. Donald Kerk must have been pretty good at his job.

  Or maybe he was independently wealthy.

  Or just really, really liked staying on the beach.

  Kerk had booked one of the Palm Terrace rooms. Elegantly furnished in shades of cream, blue, and gold intended to suggest surf and sand. Amenities included a private patio just a few steps from the pool deck, a four-poster bed with Italian-designed bed linen, a personal reading library, an Italian marble bathroom with hydrothermal tub, and complimentary access to the Audi Q7 SUV house car.

  Kerk had not been driving the house car, though. He had been walking on the beach when he had been struck down.

  Just enjoying the ocean view, or had he gone out to meet someone? That was the question. One of the questions.

  “Want to give me a hint what we’re looking for?” Jason asked.

  From the other side of the dividing wall, Sam answered. “We’ll know it if we find it.”

  Riiight. Well, so far Jason could find nothing that suggested Kerk was anything but what he seemed: an affluent businessman mixing work with a little pleasure. No sign of other paintings in the style of the canvas on the beach. No sign of any paintings at all. Which made sense. Any purchases Kerk made on this trip would almost certainly have been shipped home.

  From the hall outside, he could hear Hickok on his cell phone. The words serial killer had a way of carrying.

  Jason, still wearing the latex gloves Sam had loaned him, opened the hand-painted armoire containing Kerk’s travel wardrobe and dragged out Kerk’s empty suitcase. He unlatched the lid and checked the pockets as well as the bottom and top of the case.

  Nothing. Not even dirty clothes. In fact, Kerk’s freshly laundered underwear were sitting wrapped in tissue in a fancy hotel laundry service basket on the immaculate bed.

  He made a mental note and began to go methodically through each and every item in the armoire. A couple of expensively tailored suits, a couple of dress shirts with garish prints in red and mustard. A pair of well-made shoes. That was about it.

  Clearly Kerk hadn’t planned on staying long or doing much that didn’t involve suits and ties.

  Jason checked pockets, hems, soles, heels. Nothing out of the ordinary. No drugs, no contraband, no weapons, no explosives, no counterfeit money or stolen art.

  He slid the final hanger across the wooden bar. So much for that. Kerk’s clothing carried a hint of his personal scent, but Jason was mostly aware of Sam’s aftershave. Sandalwood and musk. He had smelled it on the beach too, despite the sea breeze. Sam was a little bit of a hygiene fanatic, which Jason had found amusing until Sam had explained in one of those late night phone calls that he had trouble getting the scent of death out of his head sometimes.

  Jason shut the armoire door. Not only did he not know what they were looking for, he was uneasy about why they were in Kerk’s hotel room at all. Sure, per Title 18, United States Code, Section 668, it was a federal offense to obtain by theft or fraud any object of cultural heritage from a museum. But they had already established that the painting in question was not a major artwork, let alone stolen from a museum. On their walk from the crime scene with Hickok, Sam had not volunteered why he needed to personally examine the victim’s belongings. Why he could not trust Santa Monica PD to do their job.

  Typical Sam. Hands-on. He didn’t trust anyone to do theirs properly. Properly meaning like he would do it.

  Jason listened to the rustling sounds of Sam—wearing his spare set of gloves—going through the stack of receipts he’d found on the small desk on the other side of the dividing wall.

  Okay, maybe to do what Sam did, to achieve those legendary results, he needed this. Maybe he couldn’t get enough information from photographs and reports. Maybe he required this tactile experience of the victim’s environment in order to form a picture of both prey and predator.

  If so, that was opposite of the way Jason liked to work. Jason found this much contact, call it familiarity, with the victim distracting. Even disturbing. He preferred to keep an emotional distance. Could do his job better if he kept an emotional distance.
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  But then very rarely was Jason dealing with victims of homicide. He was usually on the trail of thieves, forgers, con artists. Not that he didn’t run into violent offenders. Humans were always unpredictable. He rubbed his right shoulder absently.

  “Do you want me to take the bathroom?”

  “That would be helpful.” Sam sounded preoccupied.

  Jason stepped into the shining marble bathroom and raised his brows at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. Now there was a look: black tie and bulletproof vest. The wind had whipped his hair into dark tufts like devil horns. One of his cuffs was flopping loose.

  “Shit.”

  “Problem?” Sam appeared in the open window that divided the bathroom from the bedroom. His eyes were very blue in the bright overhead light. Jason had forgotten how blue they were.

  “No. Well. I lost a cufflink.”

  Sam’s pale brows rose. Clearly he had no response to that, but those cufflinks had been a gift from Grandfather Harley when Jason turned sixteen. Besides being Tiffany and rare, they held sentimental value for him. He had idolized the old man.

  Sam left the window, and Jason began retracing his footsteps. Introducing forensic evidence into a crime scene was every bit as bad as removing evidence, and losing a freaking cufflink was a particularly idiotic thing to have happened.

  As he moved quietly around the room, he couldn’t help thinking that this was a very strange—and very strained—reunion. Not that he’d been expecting to fall into Sam’s arms, but for the last nine minutes, he and Sam had been alone for the first time in months, and Sam seemed to have nothing to say to him. Seemed unaware he was even in the same room.

  It wasn’t going to violate the professional code of conduct to say, Hey, nice to see you again, Jason! Was it?

  Especially after all those months of phone calls.

  All those midnight long-distance conversations when Sam had maybe a drink too many or Jason was half falling asleep. All those playful, provocative comments about what they’d do when they finally met up again.

  Well, here they were.

  Jason glanced at Sam’s broad back. Actually, he didn’t think Sam was unaware of him so much as deliberately tuning him out. Which was probably the professional and appropriate thing to do.

  Sam continued to ignore him as Jason finished retracing his movements around the room. The goddamned cufflink was nowhere to be found. He’d probably lost it on the beach, which at this point was the best case scenario. If it turned up when SMPD conducted their own search, he’d never hear the end of it.

  He returned to the bathroom and proceeded to inspect under the lid of the toilet tank. Aside from a surprisingly nice Rothko-esque print over the porcelain fixture, there was nothing of interest. He checked out the sink and bathtub drains and the heating vents.

  Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

  A damp bath towel hung on the back of the door. There were still pools of water on the sink counter. So Kerk had washed up before his fatal stroll. Which might mean he had been planning to meet someone. Or maybe he was just a tidy, well-groomed guy. Actually, judging by the amount of personal care products, he was for sure a tidy, well-groomed guy.

  “How did you find out about the Kerk homicide?” Jason asked, sifting through the tubes of toothpaste and hair gel, verifying that they did indeed contain toothpaste and hair gel.

  After a moment, Sam’s voice floated through the open window. “Santa Monica PD contacted LAPD’s Art Theft Detail. Hickok contacted the LA field office once they realized they had a dead German national on their hands.”

  “Right. But—” Jason stared at his own listening reflection. Furrowed brow. Green eyes narrowed in thought. He looked a little worried. He was a little worried.

  Because how the hell had Sam arrived so fast? It wasn’t like the FBI flew around the country in private jets. Not even the BAU.

  As though reading his mind, Sam said, “I was already in LA.”

  Jason stared at the mirrored window opening and the room beyond. It took a second to compute. “I didn’t realize.”

  Understatement of the year.

  From this angle, he could see Sam’s reflection. Just a slice. Enough to see that Sam was not moving, was standing perfectly still, listening to Jason. Despite his casual tone, Sam was deliberately choosing his words, and Jason’s heart began to thump with something unpleasantly like anxiety.

  What the hell was going on?

  Sam said in brisk reminder, like this was not a big deal, “I monitor the Roadside Ripper Taskforce.”

  “Right. Sure.” Jason answered automatically, following Sam’s lead. But of course this was kind of a big deal. For eight months he and Sam had been…what? Flirting? Fencing? Engaging in some kind of verbal foreplay. Foreplay, hell. Afterplay?

  There was no commitment, of course. No…understanding. Per se. If there was an understanding, it was that once they managed to land in the same city at the same time, they would hook up.

  Jason didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to look like it mattered as much as it felt like it did, but after all, if it really wasn’t a big deal, he’d ask the normal questions. He braced himself to get the words out casually.

  “When did you get in?”

  “This morning.”

  Okay. So that wasn’t too bad. Jason had been out of the office most of the day, and maybe Sam hadn’t had a chance to phone.

  “Are you here regularly? Monitoring the taskforce?”

  Sam’s reflection moved, picked up what looked like a day planner. His tone was vague as he flipped through the pages. “I’ve looked in a time or two.”

  Don’t ask. Leave it alone. Don’t push this. But of course he had to ask. Of course he couldn’t leave it alone.

  He said—and now he was the one with the artificially careless tone, “Since Kingsfield?”

  Stricken, he watched Sam close his eyes and expel a long breath. That…weary, wordless admission was all he needed to know. Except Sam had no idea he was being observed. Believed Jason was still waiting for an answer. He opened his eyes, looked down at the day planner, and said without inflection, “Yes.”

  Jason said nothing. There was nothing he could say without sounding exactly like what Sam clearly feared. Unprofessional. Emotional. Immature. Something.

  He felt incredibly, embarrassingly hurt. And foolish—which hurt even more than the ice-cold realization that Sam had never had any intention of pursuing their…whatever the hell it was.

  But no. That couldn’t be right, because Sam was the one who had come after him in Massachusetts. Jason had accepted no for an answer. There had been no reason for Sam to bring up the possibility of anything more between them. No reason for Sam to take him to bed one final time and promise, well, in the end nothing very serious. A date.

  A date that might have led to something more. Or might not have.

  Somewhere along the line, Sam had changed his mind.

  Which he had a right to do.

  Of course. Hell. Jason changed his mind all the time about…stuff. People. No. Maybe not people. He was actually a pretty good judge of character. But relationships. Yes. He had changed his mind a few times about pursuing relationships. No reason Sam couldn’t or shouldn’t do the same.

  It would have been nice to know, during all those flirty phone calls. Not so flirty lately, though. Not so many calls either.

  So. It was over. Before it had ever begun. Good to know.

  Which was why getting involved with coworkers was always a bad idea, regardless of company policy.

  He snapped out of his preoccupation as someone thumped on the front entrance, and jumped to open the heavy door for Hickok.

  “Sure is quiet in here. I was starting to wonder if you two gave up and went home.” He took a closer look at Jason. “Did you find something?” Hickok looked from Jason to the other room where Sam was still searching.

  “Not yet.” Jason rolled up his loose shirtsleeve. He was relieved that his fingers were perfect
ly steady, because his heart was still hopping in his chest like a cricket that had just escaped being squashed.

  “Nothing?” Hickok asked.

  “Not so far. We’re waiting on the night manager to show up and open the room safe.”

  If there was anything more than cash or maybe traveler’s checks in that safe, Jason would be very surprised. But then it was a night for surprises.

  Sam appeared around the corner, carrying Kerk’s brown leather day planner. “According to this, Kerk was at Bergamot Station, Baus Wirther & Kimmel, Stripes, Fletcher-Durrand Gallery, and 30303 Art Gallery and Lounge this week.” He looked in inquiry at Jason and Hickok.

  Hickok whistled. “Heavy hitters all of them.” He glanced at Jason. “Aren’t you guys investigating Fletcher-Durrand?”

  Jason nodded. In answer to Sam’s look, he said, “We’re looking into customer allegations of fraud and forgery. It’s early days, though, and we’re talking about the oldest and still one of the most prestigious galleries in California.”

  “That’s interesting,” Sam said, “but I doubt this homicide has anything to do with fraud or forgery. Do any of these museums handle or specialize in Monet?”

  “Galleries,” Jason said. “And no.”

  Sam eyed him for a moment and then nodded as though duly noting the correction.

  “What makes you think this is the work of a serial killer? What is it you’re not telling us?” Hickok asked.

  “Besides everything,” Jason put in.

  That sounded more waspish than he’d intended, and it drew another of those thoughtful looks from Sam before he answered.

  “This is the third homicide of someone involved in the art world where the unsub has left a painting in the style—general style,” he amended, apparently for Jason’s benefit, “of Monet. A painting which seems to depict the murder.”

  “That painting wasn’t just dry, it was cured,” Hickok said. “That means it was painted days ago. Maybe a week ago.”

  Jason’s scalp prickled with unease. He asked, “Who were the other victims?”

  But he didn’t hear Sam’s answer.