AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Now,” he said, giving them his full attention. “You said you have questions about Amy Antrim?”
“She told us you’re her senior adviser,” said Jane.
“Yes. A shame about the accident. She couldn’t graduate with the rest of her class, but she can finish her coursework in the fall, if she chooses to return. Have you caught the driver who hit her?”
“I don’t believe there’s been any progress.”
“But isn’t that whatyou’reinvestigating?” He looked at Frost and then Jane, head swiveling on his skinny neck like an ostrich searching for prey.
“No, we’re here on a different matter. It seems someone is stalking Amy, and it’s possible it started on this campus.”
“She never mentioned it to me.”
“She only became aware of it in the last few weeks, when he approached her at a local cemetery. Then he popped up again, on Newbury Street. He’s an older man, in his late fifties, maybe early sixties.”
Harthoorn scowled. “Hardly what I considerolder.”
“Take a look at this footage,” said Frost, pulling up the CCTV video on his tablet. He slid the device to Harthoorn. “It’s from the cemetery surveillance camera. Maybe you can recognize him.”
“How? I can hardly see the man’s face on this video.”
“But maybe there’s something about him you recognize. His clothes, his gait. Does he look like anyone you know on campus?”
Harthoorn replayed the video. “I’m sorry, I don’t know him. Certainly he’s not anyone in my department.” He handed the tablet back to Frost. “When you said someone was stalking her, I assumed you were talking about someone younger, like one of her classmates. I can see how Amy might attract attention. Unwanted or otherwise.”
“And has she? Attracted unwanted attention?” asked Jane.
“I have no idea.”
“You’re her faculty adviser. Did she ever mention anything about—”
“Her adviser inacademics. It’s not as if students come in here and spill their guts about their personal lives.”
No, I can’t imagine they do, thought Jane. Who would confide in a cranky old fart like you?
“Amy’s bound to have an admirer or two. An attractive young woman like her.” His gaze drifted toward a ceramic figure perched on the bookcase, the bust of a voluptuous woman in a toga with one breast spilling out. “Not that I ever pay much attention to such things. My meetings with Amy were purely about academic matters. Her prospects for grad school. Employment possibilities, given her field of study.”
“How is the job market?” asked Frost.
“In art history?” He shook his head. “Dismal. Which wasdiscouraging because financial security is important to her. She said her mother struggled to make ends meet as a single parent. Even though it was only for a few years, poverty and abuse leave a mark on a child.”
“Did she mention abuse?”
“She didn’t go into detail, but she said there was violence in her mother’s earlier relationship. It’s probably why Amy chose the topic she did for her thesis.” He shuffled through the stack of papers on his desk. “I have it here somewhere. When you called to say this meeting was about Amy, I thought you might want to see it.” He pulled out a folio and slid it to Jane.
“Amy wrote this?” said Jane.
“It’s the first draft of her thesis about the artist Artemisia Gentileschi. She was a female painter of the baroque era. The paper still needs work because Amy failed to address an important issue in Artemisia’s life, probably because she found it too uncomfortable to write about. But what she has written so far is very good.”
“What could be uncomfortable about art history?”
“Let me pull up an image, to help illustrate the point.” He typed on his laptop, then turned the screen toward them. “This is a painting by Artemisia. It hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Many people find it disturbing.”
With good reason. Jane frowned at the grotesque image of two grim-faced women pinning a terrified man to a bed as one of them brutally sliced his throat with a sword. Every detail, from the blood spurting from his neck to the folds of the dying man’s sumptuous robe, had been rendered with shockingly exquisite accuracy.
“This isJudith Beheading Holofernes,” said Harthoorn.
“That’s not something I’d want on my wall,” said Jane.
