Page 18 of Wrong Door

It read: Hey, it’s Agent Hahn. Was looking into active Kane cases and saw you and Stone were on the chromium case in GA. Anything I can run from here?

Miles typed back a quick response as the red light remained steady. I don't think so but thanks for checking in. He set the phone back in the cupholder as the light changed.

“That was weird,” he said.

“Who was it?” Vic asked.

“Agent Hahn.”

"Hahn?" Vic asked.

"Yeah. He asked if we needed help. If he could run anything from Quantico.”

Vic smiled knowingly. “He landed that Parsons arrest,” she said. “Not to say I fault him for it, but I bet he’s trying to angle to make another big move. Trying to make a name for himself.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame him,” Miles said. Yet, it occurred to him that until recently, it had been Sarah who had sent messages like that. He wondered how her meeting had gone and how deep the waters were going to be for the first day or two of her new position.

Vic tapped at her phone and said, “I’m looking up some more stuff on Russell Cord,” she said. “There’s an old faculty profile from SCAD, which has been archived. And it doesn’t look like he has much of a web presence. His LinkedIn profile lists him as a former color theory lecturer."

“Is it just me or does that sound like a made-up job?” Miles asked.

Vic nodded but she was too deep into her digging to be distracted. "Looks like he published two papers through SCAD's academic press before the non-renewal. They’re both on what he calls ‘chromatic depletion in urban environments’."

Miles said nothing, though he was thinking about the face-down painting on the floor of Ostroff's studio. It occurred to Miles that if the killer felt so strongly about this, why not destroy the paintings? Why not rid the world of them?

He wondered if maybe there was a degree of appreciation there. If it was Cord, a former color theorist, it would make sense…a deluded sort of sense, but Miles could at least understand the logic behind it. The killer believed these people were somehow robbing the world of its colors.

And he was willing to remove lives from that very same world in order to protect it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The address Pruitt had sent for Cord led them to Gaston Street on the eastern edge of the Thomas Square neighborhood, in a block of older rental properties that sat under a dense canopy of live oaks. The route brought them in from the north end of the block so he could see the full length of the street before they arrived at the specific address.

He was barely aware of it, though, because he was thinking about Elena.

Her face had surfaced without invitation, the way it usually did. It wasn’t that he was trying not to think about her, but memories of her tended to pop up at the worst times. He’d thought of her here and there during cases at pivotal moments, and he had nearly broke into tears a week ago when he and Sarah had been sharing a deep kiss and a memory of Elana had popped into his head.

Now, he was thinking of her because he was thinking about the few months where Elana had gone through a painting phase. It had started roughly two years into their relationship, somewhere in that middle period when they were still learning one another while also envisioning what a future of marriage might look like. She had taken a class on Saturday mornings at a studio in Alexandria, and for about four months she had come home with canvases that she propped against the walls of the apartment to dry. They were bright…. aggressively, joyfully bright. She’d started painting in the garage, too, on cheap canvasses from the lower-end hobby store. He had loved them all without reservation and told her so, and she had laughed and said she had no idea what she was doing. He had lovingly told her many times that was maybe why he loved them so much.

She hadn't stuck with it. She had the enthusiasm but not the discipline for the solitary hours the work required. After a few months, the Saturday classes stopped and the canvases migrated to storage. Occasionally, she would mention going back to it but aside from some toying around with watercolors and sketches, she never had.

He thought about standing in Nadia Ostroff's studio, surrounded by work that represented the discipline Elana had never quite landed on. He had registered something in that room that he hadn't been able to name at the time—a faint sort of unease that had nothing to do with the crime scene. He’d felt unsettled and hadn’t been sure why. But he thought he understood it better now.

"There," Vic said.

Miles snapped out of his recollections and slowed the car. Vic was pointing just ahead and to the right.

Cord’s house was a narrow two-story rental, wood-sided, painted a pale gray that had been the right choice at some point and now needed refreshing. It sat between two similar properties, all of them set close to the sidewalk in the way of older Savannah construction. The lots were narrow and deep. The oak in front of the neighboring property threw shade across the upper half of the facade and the porch roof. Miles pulled to the curb two houses down and they sat for a moment looking at it.

The lawn had not been cut in some time, the grass gone long and uneven. Miles’s best guess was that it had been at least three weeks, likely more. In a neighborhood where the other properties were reasonably maintained, it stood out. The porch held a folding chair and a small table, and on the table a small, potted plant had seen its last days. The mailbox at the edge of the walk was open, and the overflow that hadn't fit in it had been set on the porch rail and had since blown or shifted to the steps.

Even before getting out of the car, he could see that the curtains on both front windows were drawn.

Miles got out of the car. Vic came around the passenger side, and they walked to the property line without going past it. He didn’t need to get close to see what he was seeing. The mail volume alone put the vacancy at two weeks minimum, possibly three. The lawn confirmed it. The curtains confirmed it differently.

"He's been gone a while," Vic said.

"At least two weeks." Miles looked at the porch, at the accumulated mail, at the folding chair with an envelope caught under one leg. "Maybe longer."