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“People have been killed,” Christopher said. “People arranged to look like works of art.”
That seemed to catch Lucien’s interest. “How? Show me.”
Paige saw a chance to gauge his reactions to the killings. She pulled up pictures of the murders on her phone, showing them to him one by one while watching his face. Was there excitement there? Satisfaction?
“Such power in the moment. Such an attempt to capture the sublime,” Lucien murmured as he stared.
Was that just an attempt to elicit credit for his own twisted attempts at art? Was it the joy of a twisted art appreciator or that of a killer loving his own work? The trouble was, Paige couldn’t tell.
“Sublime?” Christopher said. “There’s nothing sublime aboutkillingpeople.”
“But the poses . . . such exquisite takes on existing works. There . . . Caravaggio at his finest, bolstered by the abstract . . . only it isn’t abstract, is it?”
“He’s getting a kind of sick pleasure from all of this,” Christopher said. “He’s enjoying taunting us with what he’s done.”
“Oh, the lines, the composition,” Lucien said. “There’s such depth here, such power . . .”
The trouble was that it was hard to tell if he was really admitting to anything to do with the murders or simply expressing a sick kind of appreciation for the killer’s work. Lucien might be enough of a narcissist to praise murders he’d committed in front of the FBI, or he might simply be such a strange, obsessive artist that he found himself fascinated by the real killer’s work.
Paige needed to work out which one it was. Christopher obviously thought the same way because he was still pushing Lucien for answers.
“Stop talking about art and start answering some questions. I have times for three murders. I need to know where you were at those times.”
“Where is any one of us?” Lucien asked. “Form and formlessness flow together in art.”
“I said stop talking about art.”
Lucien gave him a hurt look. “It is the only thing trulyworthtalking about. Life, death, murder? It is empty without meaning, and art helps us to unlock that meaning.”
Paige could see the sudden directness of his expression. It was clear that he meant it. He really was only interested in talking about art. That made it tricky, because they needed to find ways to get him to talk about the details of the case.
Maybe art was the way to do it. Paige went looking for Lucien’s art online and quickly found images of several pieces. There were reviews of his art too.
“Your art is intriguing,” Paige said.
Lucien’s head snapped around to give her his full attention. “Most people don’t appreciate it. They think it is purely designed to shock.”
Paige could understand why, given some of the things the reviews said. “What was your idea behind including blood in your artworks?” Paige asked. With the woman he’d assaulted, he’d cut her, collecting the blood for use in one of his pieces after he’d used his own in several others.
“Art must get to the essence of life,” Lucien said. “Blood is a part of that essence. My blood meant putting a part of myself into my work.”
“And using someone else’s blood?” Paige asked in as neutral a tone as she could manage, like she was just asking a question about his process rather than talking about a crime.
“I thought that a different essence would bring something new out of the work,” Lucien said. His eyes seemed to shine as he said it. “And it did. It did. There was an inspiration there that I could never have achieved alone.”
“Can I ask you about some other artists?” Paige asked. “Hope Jackson? Do you know her?”
“Her? The singer? She was always out on the boardwalk. There was no real art to what she did, and she was always in spots where I wanted to exhibit my own work.”
Lucien sounded angry as he talked about her. Angry enough that it might almost be possible to believe that he could have killed her to assuage that anger.
“What about Professor Allison Hartley?” Christopher asked.
“Is he talking now?” Lucien said. He looked away from Christopher. “I don’t want to talk to him. He doesn’t appreciate art.”
It was an obvious game, the kind of game that both psychopaths and narcissists might play, trying to control the situation around them to prove their own importance. Normally, Paige would have shot that down to keep them from getting too much control, but right then it seemed like their best chance of getting any answers out of Lucien.
“Doyou know her?” Paige asked. “I hear she was quite a prominent art professor.”
