“I’d consider that interesting. Without architects, we’d all be living in caves, right?”
He lifted his bottle. “And without painters, we’d be deprived of beauty. Renoir, Matisse, Vermeer, you. Can you imagine a world without beauty?”
She could, but this was not the time or place to discuss it. There was a timer sitting between them, the tick of seconds winding down. Their five minutes had dwindled down to less than two. Five minutes was just enough to meet, just enough to pique an interest, not long enough for a true connection. It was just long enough to begin to feel trapped if things weren’t going well but still short enough so that the agony had an end point. She glanced over at Mr. Rolex talking a mile a minute, blowing hot air around.
“Not many people could,” she said. “A world without art or creativity or beauty isn’t a world I could live in.”
“Okay, speed round,” Jason said, rubbing his hands together. “Favorite color.”
“Green,” Amelia said as she looked into his clear green eyes. It wasn’t the truth.
She leaned her elbows on the table, getting into the rhythm of the thing. Just for kicks. Just to see. “Your dream city?”
“Easy. Florence.”
She chuckled. “I assume not Missouri?”
He laughed. “Definitely Italy. Vanilla or chocolate?”
Her eyes danced. “Are we talking ice cream or . . .”
The timer sounded. She shrugged playfully. “Time’s up.”
Jason stood, held out a hand. “It was nice meeting you, Amelia the artist.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mr. Rolex get up, grab his glass, and wait to sit across from her. Amelia rose and squeezed Jason’s hand, telegraphing a message. Soft skin. A megawatt smile impossible to resist. “Would you like to see my studio?”
His brows lifted in surprise. “Will you paint me?”
“If you’d like.”
He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Then I’d love to see your studio, Amelia.”
She took her hand back. “Then let’s get out of here.” She followed behind him, admiring the view. She could hear Mr. Rolex behind them complaining about the disruption in the order, but his frustration wasn’t her problem. He’d just have to flash his watch at someone else.
As she and Jason passed the long table where they had placed their calling cards, Amelia stopped. There were rows and rows of cards with names and professions written on them, no numbers, no addresses. If you found a match, those were details you could relay yourself. She quickly found hers, plucked it up, and slid it into her bag. Poof. Like she’d never been here, except for Jason.
“Ready, Mr. Builder of Buildings?” she asked when they stepped outside onto busy Rush Street.
“This is a first,” he said, “a woman inviting me up to look at her sketches.”
She gave him a long look. She didn’t choose just anyone. “If you live long enough, Jason, you see everything at least once.”
CHAPTER 43
What a mess, Silva thought as she pushed her way through the crowd holding up the sidewalk the next morning. Barely 10:00 a.m. and there were at least a hundred people standing around, pushing, jockeying for position in front of the District One police station.
This was her next move. The police had a problem, three dead women, and they were about to learn that Dr. Mariana Silva was their solution. She was bringing them a prime suspect, a threat to himself and to public safety. That fell within her bounds, her responsibility, as a mental health clinician, or so she would argue. Extraordinary measures had to be taken when lives were at stake. Her proof that Bodie Morgan was a real and present danger? Her instinct and experience. Hadn’t the first victim been found just a few short hours after Bodie Morgan walked out of Westhaven? She didn’t have all the details of the case, of course, but Bodie had twenty-four hours to roam the city on that day pass. And Silva didn’t believe in coincidences.
The crowd pushed forward, banners and protesters, reporters and cameras, pedestrians stopping to watch the chaos. The entire thing felt apocalyptic, end-of-world-ish, as though a deadly pathogen had wormed its way into the population and there wasn’t enough lifesaving vaccine for everyone. They needed to put a face to the maniac prowling their streets. They needed order restored, and it didn’t look to Silva like they cared much how they got it. A woman with a large sign shouted for a total city lockdown, another for an 8:00 p.m. curfew and a callout to the National Guard. SAVE OUR CHILDREN, one sign read. DOWN WITH CLUELESS COPS, read another. They had no idea the dour, humorless woman with the sharp dark eyes studying them held the key to everything.
It took Silva longer than it should have to convince the sergeant at the desk that she wasn’t some attention-seeking crackpot and that she had information vital to the murder investigation. She was forced to show her Westhaven credentials, meaningless to her and embarrassing to present but official enough to get the sergeant’s attention.
“I’m Dr. Mariana Silva,” she finally had to say in an authoritative tone that had heads turning at the front desk. “Do you want to stop these murders or not? I need to see Detective Harriet Foster.”
Quickly deposited into a small, stuffy, smelly interview room with no windows, she waited for Foster to come in, knowing discussions about her were going on outside the closed door, feeling that eyes were on her, maybe, through the two-way mirror. They would look her up to see if she was who she claimed to be, but they wouldn’t find everything. This made her smile. Pride. She had a lot of it.
The door opened, and she watched two women enter. Foster and a lean Asian woman, their badges clipped to their belts, stern looks on their faces. All business. No time for grandstanding. They pulled out chairs across the table and sat facing her. It was Foster she wanted to see, up close, and here she was, as straight as a ship’s mast. But she was meeting only the cop, the job, not the woman underneath. That woman, she could clearly see, had been stowed away. How fascinating, Silva thought. She stared into Foster’s sharp eyes, searching for private truths as she always did whenever she encountered anyone, only this time the eyes probed back, searching for Silva’s secrets as intensely as Silva was searching for hers.
“I’m Detective Foster. This is Detective Li. You say you have something for us?”
All business. Task at hand. “I do,” Silva said, pleased with herself.
A beat passed. Li was impatient. Three bodies on the ME’s slab. There was zero time for a meandering conversation with a strange walk-in. “Well, then?”
“You were partnered with a man before,” Silva said, addressing Foster. “I saw your pictures in the paper.” She gave Li half a smile. “But I like this pairing better. I’ve found that women are far more intuitive than men.”
“You’re a psychiatrist.” Foster consulted her notes. “At Westhaven Psychiatric Hospital. And you’re here because . . .”
Silva flinched at the mention of Westhaven. God, she hated the place. But she knew Foster and Li weren’t going to give her much time. “I specialize in antisocial personality disorders. To the layman, sociopaths, psychopaths, though we eschew the terms. That’s what you’re dealing with. The papers weren’t explicit, but were the murders unusually violent? Were the victims found naked? Was there something distinctive left behind, like a mark or a symbol?”