Part 5 (1/2)

According to Vishneski, Iraq had changed Chad's personality. Jekyll and Hyde and which was the mean one? He could never remember. As he talked, Vishneski finally pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket. He played with it, tapping it on the tabletop, running it between his fingers, a prop to help him get through his story.

”He didn't tell me he was joining up. I knew he wasn't one for the books, but he just wandered into an Army recruitment office on Addison Street during spring break. Next thing I knew, he was off to basic training.”

”That must have startled you,” I said.

”I was p.i.s.sed off, him doing it without even talking to me, throwing away his college scholars.h.i.+p. But then I saw how much the Army suited him, and I thought, well, maybe he knew best after all, he needed that discipline. That and the activity. He used to send us these pictures of him and his unit, they'd be laughing, Chad teaching Iraqi boys how to play American football. 'That soccer, that's for sissies,' he says he told them.”

Vishneski rubbed his face. I wasn't supposed to see the unexpected spurt of tears as he thought of his son's happy-go-lucky past.

”But those endless deployments, they put the big hurt on all the kids out there. And they saw stuff no person ought to have to see, grown women fighting over a piece of bread, babies with their arms blown off, other things Chad wouldn't even talk about. It was too much for him.”

I went back to the murder weapon that the police supposedly found next to Chad when they picked him up. ”What kind of guns did Chad have?”

”He was a soldier. They don't get handguns. Chad, he likes-liked-to shoot, but Mona wouldn't let him keep a gun in her place any more'n I would in mine.”

Anymore than they allowed drugs or alcohol, which is to say parents often see what they hope will be in front of them.

”But did he own a gun? Guns?”

John claimed Chad didn't. And certainly not the Baby Glock that the police had found in bed with Chad.

”So whose gun was that?” I asked.

”If you're going to clear his name, you'll have to find that out, won't you?” He gave me a ferocious glare, as if anger with me could keep grief and uncertainty at bay.

”You're not hiring me to clear his name but to find out what happened,” I reminded him.

He argued with me a bit about that but in an unfocused way, not sure what he believed about his son. I asked him for names of Chad's friends, those boys and girls who used to have good clean fun with him.

Vishneski said, ”The kids he hung out with before he deployed, they couldn't understand why Chad was so angry all the time when he got home, so he kind of lost touch with them. The guys he sees now, they're Army buddies he picked up after he got home last summer. Most of 'em I don't know, but Tim Radke, he's the one who called me after he heard about Chad. He's the one said they'd been at a bar.”

Vishneski didn't know Radke's number, but maybe Mona would. I asked if there were any women in Chad's life, not counting Nadia Guaman, whose connection to Chad we were tiptoeing around.

”He dated a sweet gal in high school, but she married someone else while he was overseas. Since he got home, I don't think he's been meeting any women. But his ma would know. You ask Mona when you talk to her.”

Women are the repository of personal details in the lives of all who intersect their worlds. Even my own brief husband had expected me to know his clients' and his parents' birthdays.

Back in my office that afternoon, I typed up all my notes from the day and entered them into everyone's separate case files-which I religiously backed up on a portable drive as well as the office backup drive.

Oh, the computer age. It's been good for me, in a way. I used to write my notes on sc.r.a.ps of paper and lose them in the landfill on my worktable. Now everything's tidily laid out in my Investigator's Casebook spreadsheets, which automatically updates my handheld. Something's missing, though: the personal touch on archives. You see things when you're handling doc.u.ments that you miss on the World Wide Web.

The winter evening had closed in on the city hours ago. I felt cold and lonely in my office, although my leasemate was still hard at it with a blowtorch across the hall. If we still lived in caves, we'd be asleep, not driving ourselves to work in the dark.

I logged on to the Body Artist's website, [embodiedart.com] embodiedart.com. It opened to the slide show I'd seen on the screens at Club Gouge-the eye winking down at her v.u.l.v.a, the jungle scenes up her spine. The Middle Eastern music tw.a.n.ged with the changing screens.

The text, which was also disquieting, changed along with the pictures: What, is thy servant a dog that she should do this thing?

My eye winks at my m.u.f.f, my beaver, my little animal The Female of the Species is Deadlier than the Male The bashful audience member, drawing a few squiggly lines, a few people attempting actual figurative work with varying degrees of success, were staples of the shows. And so was Rodney. You didn't actually see him stride up to the stage, his paunch swaying slightly with his rolling gait, but you almost always saw the crude sets of letters and numbers on the Body Artist's b.u.t.tocks.

I found one of Nadia's drawings, the pink-and-gray scrolls, the woman with a slash down the middle of her face, and tried to print out a copy of that, and of Rodney's crude work. Unfortunately, the Artist had a slick print-protection feature built into her site: all you got was the text around the edge of the page, not the picture itself. You had to pay fifty dollars to print your own version; seventy-five would get you a signed print from the Artist. Two hundred, and it would arrive framed.

I copied down Rodney's contributions. ”C-I,” he wrote on one occasion. ”3521986 !397844125” on another. ”L-O 6221983 !4903612.” I looked at five different examples of Rodney's work. Each entry had a set of numbers separated by an exclamation point, but, other than that, I couldn't see what they shared. The strings of numbers weren't the same length from entry to entry.

I wondered if they might be phone numbers, perhaps for disposable phones in an overseas market. Europe doesn't share our fixation with the ten-digit phone number. Or perhaps Rodney was a spy for a burglary ring and used the Body Artist to broadcast safe combinations. Or he'd picked pockets at the club and was relaying credit card numbers. No matter what he was transmitting, why do it like that at all? In an era of instantaneous communication, this was incredibly c.u.mbersome. The only thing he really seemed to gain was a sense of power over the Body Artist, and over Olympia.

Before I left [embodiedart.com] embodiedart.com, I looked again at the changing images and captions on the home page, stopping each slide to study it more closely. Many of the pictures were overtly cruel: The Hind at Bay, The Hind at Bay, for instance, showed dogs mauling a deer that had a woman's face. for instance, showed dogs mauling a deer that had a woman's face. Crucifixus Est Crucifixus Est depicted a woman on a cross, a spike hammered through her v.u.l.v.a. Her face was divided in two, one side expressing bliss, the other agony. depicted a woman on a cross, a spike hammered through her v.u.l.v.a. Her face was divided in two, one side expressing bliss, the other agony.

As I went through the exhibit, I realized I'd misread one of the captions: ”Deader than the Male,” it said, not ”Deadlier than the Male.” And the face was the one Nadia had been painting on the Body Artist, a young woman with curly dark hair, her face cut in two where Nadia had sliced it with the palette knife.

I found myself s.h.i.+vering. Women savaged by dogs. Women crucified through the v.a.g.i.n.a. Women with their faces slashed. It was horrible and horrifying. If a man had done these paintings, I'd say he hated women. What was going on with Karen, that she hated other women, or hated herself so much she had to dismember her female body? And Nadia Guaman-was that what had drawn the two women together? Slasher art?

I rubbed my arms and got up to walk around the room, trying to dispel the images, or at least push them far enough away that I could think. I needed human company. I crossed the hall to see if my leasemate was willing to be interrupted, at least for five minutes. Tessa was hovering over a steel bar with a blowtorch, her dark face wet with sweat underneath her protective eyewear. She looked up at me briefly, continued her work until she'd finished the cut to her satisfaction, then turned off the flame and came over to me.

”I need someone alive and wholesome for a minute before I go back into my computer.” I explained what I'd been looking at.

Tessa was interested enough to wipe her face and neck dry and come across to look at the Body Artist's slide show. She went through it twice, pausing at several of the images, before she said anything.

”She's a skilled representational painter, no doubt about it, and she knows her art history. The Hind at Bay, The Hind at Bay, it's constructed like it's constructed like The Stag at Bay, The Stag at Bay, even if Landseer's dogs were more genteel and not actively attacking the stag. And the crucifixion, that's modeled on one Michelangelo painted.” She brought up a new window and found reproductions of both paintings so I could see how similar they were to Karen Buckley's work. even if Landseer's dogs were more genteel and not actively attacking the stag. And the crucifixion, that's modeled on one Michelangelo painted.” She brought up a new window and found reproductions of both paintings so I could see how similar they were to Karen Buckley's work.

”I see why you find them disturbing,” she continued. ”There's no life here. There's a kind of rage under these, and a kind of exhibitionism, but not vitality. I'd rather see something like these uncertain lines.” She pointed at one of the slides of customer art from a Club Gouge night. ”The person who held that brush was willing to take a risk.”

”You don't think it's a risk being naked on a stage, letting strangers put paint on you?”

”I think it's an extreme form of self-indulgence,” Tessa said. ”Every time you put paint on canvas, or flesh, you're taking a risk, but your Body Artist isn't doing that. Come to think of it, I'm surprised she isn't cutting herself onstage. I don't like the performance art of people like Lucia Balinoff, but she works along the same themes: the savaging of the female body. Your performance artist isn't doing anything new and she's not taking any risks. She's exposing herself, but not her self.” self.”

Tessa left on that stern note. A moment later, I heard her blowtorch fire up again.

9.

The Dead-Before They Got That Way.

I tried to map out a course of action. The most important thing seemed to me to get the client's son better care. That meant I needed sophisticated medical as well as first-cla.s.s legal help. I started with Freeman Carter. He had been in court all day and wanted to get away; he had tickets to the opera and wasn't going to miss the curtain on my account. I gave him a thirty-second rundown and told him I wanted a court order ASAP so we could move Chad-I hoped to Beth Israel, Lotty's hospital. tried to map out a course of action. The most important thing seemed to me to get the client's son better care. That meant I needed sophisticated medical as well as first-cla.s.s legal help. I started with Freeman Carter. He had been in court all day and wanted to get away; he had tickets to the opera and wasn't going to miss the curtain on my account. I gave him a thirty-second rundown and told him I wanted a court order ASAP so we could move Chad-I hoped to Beth Israel, Lotty's hospital.

”I'll get a doctor over to Cermak tomorrow morning if you can organize the legal side.”

”Are you being Donna Quixote,” Freeman asked, ”or do you really have evidence that the wrong person is in custody? From everything I've read, this was a PTSD vet who lost control. Not that it matters, you understand. I'm used to the odd alignment you make between the law and facts.”

”Vishneski is a PTSD vet, but I'm beginning to think he was framed. I'll tell you why when you have more time.”

”And is this on your tab, or can your client pay?”

Freeman's bill is one of the things that keeps me from ever getting ahead of the game financially. But the alignment between the law and me is such that I need the best defense lawyer in town. Even though my outstanding balance right now was close to sixty thousand, I a.s.sured Freeman that if the client couldn't pay him, I'd take care of it. I hung up knowing that the phone consult itself had just added a hundred dollars to my bill.

I called Lotty, who was also going to the opera, but who gave me a little more attention.

”Eve Rafael is a very fine surgeon, new to our practice, but she has a lot of experience with head trauma and coma. I'll see if she's free. But the billing is going to be complicated, you know. And it would help if I could tell her what your young friend had ingested.”