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“I agree.” It had to be just about the first time Christopher had agreed with her on this case about anything. “He’s killed his previous victims as they were on their way home. It’s likely that he’ll try that again. Now, tell me about this idea of yours that he’s an artist. You said that you found proof?”
Paige tried to remember that this was her chance to get Christopher on board with her idea, so she held out her phone with the images of the classic pieces of art.
“Do the poses look familiar?” Paige asked.
“They . . . they’re the same poses that the killer placed the victims in,” Christopher said. He looked both puzzled and worried.
“Exactly the same.” Paige was pleased that he could see that part.
“So, what does that mean? He’s just copying other works of art?”
Paige shook her head. “Not just copying, adding to, with all the additional paint. More than that, I think it’s a comment. He’s taking people he doesn’t see as great artists and making them a part of works by better artists. He’s blending together old and new.”
“You almost sound as if you admire him,” Christopher said.
He had to know better than that by now. “I don’tadmireserial killers,” Paige said. “But I do want to understand them. And this one . . . only an artist would work like this.”
Christopher winced slightly at the rebuke, mild as it was. He nodded after a moment or two. “All right. We’re looking for artists, but where does that get us?”
“No normal artist would do this,” Paige said. “We’re looking for someone who has gone crazy with it. My guess would be that he’s tried and failed when it comes to succeeding in the world of conventional art, and that has pushed him to try something more extreme.”
She could see Christopher considering that. For the moment, at least, it was like they were back to their usual roles, bouncing ideas back and forth, able to combine her knowledge of the criminal psyche with his practical law enforcement experience.
“The question is how we find someone like that,” he said. “Would they have started out with fairly extreme artworks to begin with?”
“It’s possible,” Paige said. She thought of some of the artworks she’d heard about in recent years, at least some of them had clearly been deliberately designed to shock. “It might be hard to pick one artist out just on the basis of his work.”
“But there’s a chance that if we look at artists around the victims, we might find one whose work fits the bill,” Christopher suggested. “Aiden worked at a museum, Allison was a professor of art. They would have been involved with shows that featured artists, or maybe reviewed their work or something in the case of the professor.”
It was possible, but Paige wasn’t sure how they could find out.
“I’ll make a call to the professor’s department to try and get a list of as many artists she had contact with as possible,” Christopher said. “Maybe you can look through the museum’s catalogues to see which artists from the local area they’ve shown, or if they’ve had any who have proved controversial?”
Paige could do that. Taking out her phone, she started to search for the museum and for any particularly controversial shows.
The problem for Paige wasn’t finding possibilities but finding too many of them. It seemed that there were plenty of artists out there who courted controversy to grab attention, along with plenty of shows with historical pieces that proved controversial because of the events at the time or how the objects had been acquired. Paige was able to discount those as soon as she knew that was what they were, but it still took time to do it.
Meanwhile, Christopher was on the phone with someone at the university.
“Anyone controversial, yes, or anyone whose work exhibited a fascination with violence. Someone who might have had a chance to meet the professor. Yes, I know it’s a long list. Just send it to me.”
Paige liked watching him work. When he was concentrating, it was hard to ignore just how handsome Christopher was, how driven, how intelligent. Those had been the same qualities that had pulled Paige towards him in the first place, even when she’d known that it was impossible.
Paige looked up from her thoughts to find Christopher looking back, staring at her with an intensity that Paige had seen before, that had been there in the moments before they kissed last time. He obviously hadn’t realized that Paige was looking his way.
Now that she was, the pull was almost magnetic. The two of them moved closer, little by little, until they were only an inch or two apart. Paige felt her hand brush against his.
That was when Christopher pulled back, so sharply that he might have been burned. “No, I can’t.Wecan’t. I’m a married man. We’re partners.”
Paige didn’t bother pointing out that he was in the middle of a divorce, or that he’d been moving towards her just as quickly as she’d been moving towards him. There was one part of it that mattered more than the rest right then, one part that she couldn’t help saying. “Not for much longer.”
Christopher stared at her in obvious incomprehension. “What do you mean?”
“I’m putting in for a transfer as soon as this case is done,” Paige said. It was better to say it quickly, without feeling, because then she could pretend that this didn’t hurt her even as it threatened to break her heart.
She saw the shock on Christopher’s face as soon as she said it. The shock was quickly followed by hurt, even anger. “No, you can’t do that!”
“Why can’t I?” Paige countered. “It’s the best thing for both of us.”
