Greg Iles - Dead Sleep

“Do you know anything about the clearing he supposedly paints? Is it a real place?”

“I assume it is, or was, but I really have no idea. I don’t think it matters. It’s just a point of departure for him, the way a cliff might be the point of departure for an eagle.”

“It may well matter in relation to these crimes,” says Lenz.

“Are you really looking at Roger as a suspect? That’s ludicrous. He’s the gentlest man I know. Also the most ethical.”

“Did you know he killed several men in Vietnam?” asks Kaiser.

“I know he was in the war. He doesn’t talk about it. But surely you don’t consider killing in combat to be murder?”

“No. But a man who’s killed once can kill again. Perhaps more easily than some others.”

“Perhaps. Have you ever killed anyone, Agent Kaiser?”

“Yes.”

“In war?”

“Yes.”

“As a civilian? In the line of duty?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll bet you have. There’s violence in you. I can see it. I’d like to paint you sometime.”

“I’m not available.”

“You’ve seen some terrible things, haven’t you?”

“It’s a tough world, Frank.”

“Isn’t it? Dr. Lenz has seen things, too, but they don’t affect him the same way. Evil and brutality offend you. You have a strong moral streak. A compulsion to judge.”

“This is a waste of time,” Kaiser says testily. “Our photographer should be here any minute.”

Baxter takes hold of my elbow. “Move. Go, go, go.”

Outside the van, I look both ways, then cross Esplanade, my eyes on Frank Smith’s cottage. It presents a simple face to the street: four windows, three dormers, and a gabled roof, with a door where the porte cochere would have been a century ago. My knock is answered by a beautiful Hispanic boy of about nineteen. Juan, I presume.

“Jes?” he says.

“I’m from the FBI. I’m here to take some pictures.”

“Si. Follow me.”

As he leads me through the entrance hall, I realize that Smith’s Creole cottage has been transformed from humble nineteenth-century abode into a showplace for antiques and art. To my right is a luxurious dining room with a Regency table, Empire chandeliers, and a huge mirror over a French commode. On the wall above a hunt board hangs a life-size portrait of a nude man reclining on a chaise. He looks vaguely familiar: large-boned but not well-muscled, yet his face has a remarkable nobility. The picture is languidly erotic, with full frontal nudity, and looks as though it could have been painted in the 1500s.

“Senora?” Juan says. “Please?”

A few steps and a left turn take us to the salon, where the others sit drinking coffee. This room, too, is stunning, with Oriental wood screens and an Aubusson rug the size of a wading pool. Frank Smith looks up as I reach the door, and though I intended to keep my eyes on my camera, I find myself looking square into Smith’s face. The young painter has sea-green eyes, an aquamarine shade I’ve only seen in the eyes of women. They’re set in a deeply tanned face, above a Roman nose and sensual mouth. Both his face and body have a remarkable symmetry, and he looks lean and muscular under his white linen clothes. Suddenly recalling my purpose for being here, I blink and turn to Kaiser.

“I’m sorry I’m late. What do you want me to shoot?”

“Anything by Mr. Smith here.”

Frank Smith hasn’t taken his eyes off me, and I’m eerily certain that he has seen me before. Me or my sister. That possibility closes my throat and brings sweat to my face.

“The nude in the dining room is mine,” Smith says.

I nod and manage to speak one sentence. “I won’t be a minute.”

“I beg your pardon,” he says. “Have we met?”

I clear my throat and look at Kaiser, half hoping he’ll draw his gun. “I don’t think so.”

“In San Francisco, perhaps? Have you been there?”

I live there when I’m not working… “Yes, but not for-”

“My God, you’re Jordan Glass.”

Kaiser, Lenz, and I stare at one another like fools.

“You are,” Smith says. “I might not have recognized you, but with the camera, something just clicked. My God, what are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’ve joined the FBI?”

“No.”

“Well, what in the world are you doing here?”

The truth has a voice of its own. “My sister was one of the victims.”

Smith’s mouth drops open. “Oh, no. Oh, I see.” He gets to his feet and looks as though he wants to hug me, as though the tragedy had just happened. “Actually, that’s not true. I don’t see at all.”

Kaiser is glaring at me like I shouldn’t have given away the game, but once Smith recognized me, there was really no point in continuing.

“We were identical twins,” I explain.

The artist’s eyes narrow as he tries to understand; it doesn’t take him long.

“You’re a stalking horse! They’re using you to try to panic the killer into revealing himself.”

I say nothing.

Smith shakes his head in amazement. “Well, I’m happy to meet you, despite the circumstances. I love your work. I have for years.”

“Thank you.”

“How did you recognize her?” asks Lenz.

Smith directs his answer to me. “Someone pointed you out to me at a party in San Francisco. I stood within three feet of you for twenty minutes, talking to someone else. I wanted to meet you, but I didn’t want to intrude.”

As I look back at Smith, the portrait in his dining room clicks in my mind. “Is the man in the dining room painting Oscar Wilde?”

His eyes light with pleasure. “Yes. I used the photo on the cover of the Ellmann biography for his face, and various other photos to get an idea of the rest of his body. Wilde is a hero of mine.”

“I love the cottage,” I tell him, laying a hand on his arm to gauge his reaction. He clearly enjoys it. “Do you have a garden?”

Smith beams. “Of course. Follow me.”

Without paying the slightest bit of attention to Kaiser or Lenz, he escorts me to the front door, which leads to a walled garden filled with citrus plants, roses, and a gnarled wisteria that’s probably as old as the house. One wall of the garden is formed by an old servants’ quarters, which appears to have been converted into a wing of the cottage. Rushing water from a three-tiered fountain fills the courtyard with sound, but what holds me rapt is the light -glorious sunlight falling softly through the foliage with the perfect clarity I remember from Marcel de Becque’s Sleeping Women.

“It’s lovely,” I say softly, wondering if my sister ever lay unconscious or dead on the paving bricks before me.

“You have a standing invitation. I’d love to entertain you. Please call anytime.”

My second invitation today. “I just might do that.”

Footsteps sound on the porch behind us. Kaiser says, “Mr. Smith, we’d like you to keep Ms. Glass’s presence in New Orleans to yourself.”

“Spoilsport,” Smith retorts, cutting his eyes at me. “They’re no fun at all, are they?”

“And please do not contact Thalia Laveau about his visit.”

Anger flares in Smith’s eyes. “Stop giving me orders in my own house.”

In the awkward silence that follows, I suddenly want out of this place, away from this man who could have been the last person my sister ever saw.

“We really must go,” Lenz says.

“No rest for the wicked,” Smith quips, his humor inexplicably back in gear. Taking my arm, he leads me back through the house to the porch facing Esplanade Avenue.

“Remember,” he says. “You’re always welcome.”

I nod but do not speak, and without a word to Kaiser or Lenz, Smith turns and goes back into his cottage, leaving us on the small porch.