Read Online The Death Artist by Jonathan Santlofer - Free Book Online Page A

good.
    What was it that seemed familiar about Elena’s crime scene? Kate closed her eyes, tried to reconstruct it, but it was no good.
    She turned her attention to the two cartons of books that had been stacked in the corner for years, and chose from among them Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity, Sheilagh Hodgins, Mental Disorder and Crime, Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. She blew dust off the cover of David Abrahamsen’s Crime and the Human Mind, thumbed through it, noted her own faded yellow highlighted markings, scribbled margin notes. Certainly there had to be new findings, new studies. It had been ten years since she had even looked at them.
    A call to Liz. If anyone would know, Liz would.
    Of course, Liz was more interested in Kate’s state of mind than in helping her focus on criminology. But five minutes on how she was doing was about all Kate could take. Another second and she knew she would break down. “Enough,” she finally said. “Let’s just pretend I’m fine, okay?” Then, quietly, she said, “I’ve got to feel like I’m doing something, Liz–whether I’ve got the legal clout or not.”
    “You think that’s a good idea?”
    “Probably not. But what can I do?”
    “Let the police handle it?”
    “I didn’t ask to have this back in my life, but shit, it’s crawled back in through the front door.”
    “Okay,” said Liz, resigned. “What do you want me to do?”
    “I’ve made a list. I figure with your FBI status you can pull the information a lot faster than I can.”
    “Like what?”
    “Recent studies on sex murders, as well as updates on violent crime that might help me see this more clearly.”
    “Kate, are you aware of how much information on violent crime Quantico alone has produced in the last few years? Enough to stock the Library of Congress.”
    “That’s why I called you. I made a bunch of notes this weekend about what I observed at Elena’s scene.” Kate spent the next five minutes filling Liz in. “Can you run any of this through VICAP, and NCIC, see what the computer spits out?”
    “You say there wasn’t any evidence of a break-in. Could be date rape rather than homicide.”
    “Even if it was, Liz, Elena is dead. It is a homicide.” She took a breath.
    “True. I’ll see what I can get my staff to pull together.”
    Kate thanked her friend, hung up, reached into her bag for a smoke, came up with an empty pack. Damn. She turned her bag upside down: keys, gum, lipstick, comb, an atomizer filled with Bal à Versailles, tissues, and a dozen cigarettes, half of them broken, spilled onto her desktop, along with that color photograph.
    This time, Kate regarded it more carefully. Elena in cap and gown, Kate beside her; high school graduation, five–no, six–years ago. A familiar photo. In fact, Kate thought she had one just like it.
    In her library, she flipped through a dozen leather-bound albums until she found it. Identical.
    She tried to remember that moment outside George Washington High School. A sunny day. Elena’s camera. Richard took the photo. Elena sent her a dupe. Right. So this one in her hand would be the original. Elena’s?
    Kate bent the gooseneck on the high-intensity lamp closer to the snapshot. A thin film, something flesh-colored, had been meticulously painted over Elena’s eyes so they appeared, on closer inspection, to be closed, blinded, dead–like some creepy Surrealist painting by Dalí.
    Kate dropped the photo as if she’d received an electrical shock. But a moment later she got her magnifying glass. Yes, it was paint on those eyelids. Careful work, too. Something for a lab to go over, though by now any fingerprints would have been smudged, ruined. And what lab? Whom could she possibly bring it to? And what would she say: Oh, this picture made its way into my bag, mysteriously, you see, and look, there’s this odd paint on the girl’s eyes, and oh yes, this girl is now