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“I’m not sure he graduated,” said Fiona.
“I think you might be right. What I do remember is his moving to New York City and beginning his life as a painter. He had a couple of mentors and a couple of sponsors and did fairly well. We kept in loose touch over the years, but nothing really until he reached out to me as a cop. He’d gone to NYPD and the FBI, and neither had wanted to hear him. He said someone was trying to kill him; that’s when I brought him up here. His latest exhibition was labeled as a ‘dark masterpiece.’”
“Like you, I’m no art critic, but I did study art in school and from an abstract painting perspective this could very well be Daniel depicting the happenings of that night. I’m no expert but certainly this last painting could be described as dark and evocative of a death at the waterfall.”
“It seems to me that you and Daniel were both at the same party, and that while most of you had been able to push what happened aside, Daniel was not able to do the same.”
“But why would someone kill him now?”
“Because Daniel’s new exhibition is garnering not only a lot of praise but a lot of interest. If that boy was pushed, then whoever pushed him might have wanted to silence Daniel, or maybe someone who knew the boy had been able to block the memory until Daniel’s paintings dredged the memories back up and they snapped. Whatever it is, I believe those paintings, the death of the boy, and Daniel’s murder are all linked together.”
“So, what do we do?”
“I don’t suppose there’s even a possibility that the ‘we’ could become just Went and I, could it?”
“Not a snowball’s chance in hell. My depiction of the staked man must have been some kind of trigger for the killer and now they’re after me as well.”
“Maybe. If nothing else, I think the killer wanted to scare you.”
“Which they did, but it brings me back to, what arewegoing to do?”
“Find the killer, fall madly in love, and have our own happily ever after,” Slade said with conviction.
She pushed her chair back from the desk. “Are we?”
“We are.”
Slade walked up to the murder board and grabbed a red marker and drew a large heart. Inside the heart, he wrote:
Bring killer to justice
Fuck each other silly
Fall madly in love
Have happily ever after
“In no particular order,” he said.
“I suggest we don’t show that board to anyone involved in law enforcement.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you used a permanent marker instead of a dry erase one.”
“Must be some kind of Freudian slip kind of thing,” said Slade with a shrug. “But Went was the one who told me they had confirmed your alibi so I don’t think it’s all that big a deal. I mean it’s a big deal in general life terms but as far as the case goes, we’re good.”
“But why use my book and then threaten me?”
Slade shook his head. “Who knows? Maybe the killer was triggered by your book or thinks you had something to do with it. For me, my focus is on catching the killer, I’ll deal with the whys once I have him or her in custody, tried, convicted, and settled in a maximum-security prison.”
He was so sure everything would work out, but Fiona wasn’t convinced. The connection between her and Daniel seemed a bit tenuous. She’d known who he was, but they hadn’t been friends, hadn’t even traveled in the same circles, but at least she’d been cleared. Now it was time to go to work finding the real killer.
CHAPTER12
SLADE
“Ithink the first thing we need to do,” said Slade, “is find out who died that evening.”
