Color Blind (18 page)

T
he colors are swirling, a spectrum sparking in his eyes and brain like firecrackers igniting.

He pushes the knife in a little deeper and the dark-haired boy’s eyes—which he now sees are a cool Pacific blue—widen with shock before he doubles over, his erection going limp.

He catches him before he falls, balances the boy’s nude body by the knife that he has jabbed into his gut, and twists the blade without really looking, distracted by the room, the boy’s artwork on the walls—mostly nudes and still-life paintings that have been made in classes at the League, he assumes—all of them coming to life in full Technicolor magnificence.

He is nude too, having allowed the boy to fondle him, though, until this moment, he could not get hard. But now he is excited, hard, and tries not to be overcome by the stunning streams of scarlet and plum that are pouring out of the boy’s belly, over his hand, and puddling around his bare feet. He looks up and takes in the shimmering cornflower-blue walls of the apartment.

Where to look first? His tender eyes dart here, there, alighting on the boy’s blue denim jeans tossed to the floor, a cerise shirt on a chair painted bright fuchsia—all of it thrilling. But he cannot allow himself to linger on those insignificant things. He has to make use of his limited time.

Stick to the plan. Choose a painting.

He considers shoving his erection into the boy’s open mouth but notices the scarlet at his feet going slightly pink, and knows that he cannot waste the time.

Another twist of the knife; that sometimes helps.

Sure enough, the intensity of that pinkish red ratchets up a notch closer to vermilion, as blue-violet sausagelike links of intestine tumble from the boy’s split abdomen onto the floor, and over his toes.

He thinks it looks so much like one of the Soutine Carcass paintings or the Francis Bacon he has pinned to his wall that he is almost overwhelmed. He dips his hand into the boy’s blood and paints his erection bright red.

Instantly, he is back in a memory…

Squalid room. Torn drawings. Blood-red phallus.

The music has already started, and he sees that tilted floor, feels a sense of nausea, and hears her screams.

He stares at the cornflower-blue walls until their absolute splendor drowns the memory away in a sea of color and he once again knows where he is, feels his muscles straining against the dead boy suspended on his arm, and sees all of the other delicious colors—tickle-me-pink flesh and royal-purple organs. All he needs is the gentlest tug and instantly he comes.

Now he can get back to work.

Grrrrrrrrrrreat!

Oh, Tony is here. “Hi,” he whispers. “Can’t talk now. I’ve gotta choose a painting.”

On one wall are two painted nudes, flesh-toned figures with hints of burnt sienna, but a figure, he decides, is wrong, is too different. Another wall has several paintings, another nude, this one more rose-colored than flesh, and a landscape done in shamrock and sea greens. Also wrong. But beside the landscape is a smallish still life with a mint-green vase on a navy-blue cloth with three razzmatazz-red apples, and it is just what he is looking for.

He takes a minute to lock the color into his visual memory—
testing, testing, testing
—and when he is certain he has memorized it, he lets the boy’s slender lifeless body drop to the floor with a thud. He strides across the room and smears his bloodstained hand across one of the boy’s unfinished canvases.

That’s grrrrrrrrreat!

“Thanks, Tony.”

Later, when the color has faded, he looks around at all the paintings—including the still life of apples and a vase that he has chosen—and decides the boy’s paintings are mediocre, and hopes they will not embarrass him.

The aesthetic part is over.

He takes a long time cleaning up. Several hours to spray and wipe every surface in the small apartment. He’s in no hurry. The boy told him no one would disturb them.

Afterward, he enjoys a long shower, then cleans out the trap, goes over the bathroom with Fantastic and folds the towel he has used into his backpack.

He tugs the wallet from the back pocket of the blue jeans that the boy had tossed onto the floor and slips it into his backpack. Then decides he’d better take the jeans too.

He looks again at the boy’s painting, squints to see any trace of that mint green–colored vase, but now it’s pale gray. That’s okay. He remembers, and that makes it worth it.

He takes the boy’s painting, and his own creation, the one made from the boy’s blood, and wraps them together neatly. It’s funny, he thinks, that he had at one time actually considered
buying
a painting for his plan.
How dumb was that?

“You’re so smart,” he says aloud, in a high falsetto voice.

“Thanks, Donna,” he answers. “Have you been here long?”

His Donna-voice says: “Long enough.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re grrrrrrrrrrreat!”

“Not you, Tony. Donna.”

But Donna has vanished; sometimes his friends do that.

With the two carefully wrapped paintings under his arm, the knife, spray bottle of Fantastic, bath towel, and jeans crammed into his backpack, he circles the dead body on the floor and the spreading pool of blood that now appears inky black.

He attempts to recollect the color of the boy’s hair. Was it really black, or was there a hint of mahogany?

Shit.
He’s already forgotten.

W
ords,” said Kate. She held the X-rays of the paintings up to the light. “Colors. That
Y
I saw that was still visible in the finished painting is the beginning of the word
yellow
. And there’s
red,
and
blue
and
green
. And
wild watermelon,
and
magic mint
? I don’t quite get those. But I guess they could be colors too. And
mulberry
could be another. But
razzmatazz
? What’s that?” She exchanged the X-ray for a large photograph of scrawled, just barely discernible writing. “Blowup of the painting’s border?”

Brown nodded. “Blown up four hundred percent.”

“These are words too.” She tilted the photo one way, then another. “Handwriting, sort of. Childlike. But names, I think. Look…” She held them up for the others to see. “I think that says Tony, doesn’t it, over and over, so that it’s become a blur, but it is Tony, right? And…” She peered at the photos, masses of gray squiggles, just barely intelligible. “I think maybe…um, Don or Dot, and is that Bren…Brenda, or…” She passed them around. “What do you think?”

“Tony, for sure,” said Perlmutter. “And maybe…Dyan, no, Dyl, maybe it’s Dylan. You know, like Bob Dylan, or Dylan Thomas.”

“Who’s Dylan Thomas?” Grange asked, looking from Agent Marcusa to Agent Sobieski. They both shrugged.

“Poet,” said Perlmutter.

Grange made a face like how-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-know-that?

“Yeah, looks like Brad or Brenda, or something like that,” said Brown. “And yeah, Dyl-something.”

“Victims?” said Grange, studying the odd photos.

“Doesn’t jibe with the vics’ names we’ve turned up,” said Brown.

“Could be ones we haven’t found yet, or prospective ones,” said Grange.

“Maybe,” said Kate. “But it’s the same names in both paintings’ borders.” She compared photos from each painting’s framing edge. “See, they’re the same.”

“What about family?” said Brown. “Friends?”

“If he’s a true psychopath,” said Freeman, “he’s not going to have many friends. These characters don’t form lasting bonds.”

Obsessive doodling. Writing words and sentences over and over again.

“This kind of thing often shows up in outsider art,” said Kate. “Particularly the art of the insane.”

“Right,” said Freeman. “Repetition is often soothing to schizophrenics.”

“You ever read Dr. Kurt Ernst?”

“German psychiatrist, expert on art of the insane. Required reading,” said Freeman.

“I met him when he wrote a catalog essay for the Drawing Center’s show on art of the insane. He’s also an art historian. And he’s coming to New York. In fact, he might already be here.” Kate glanced back at the images. “I’d like him to have a look at the paintings, and I doubt I’ll have to twist his arm. He stays with my friend who runs the Drawing Center. I’ll call.”

“Do it,” said Brown.

Perlmutter picked up one of the other X-rays. “It’s like a plan for the painting.”

“Except that he doesn’t follow it.” Kate held the X-ray just above a full-scale, full-color reproduction of the actual painting. “Look, he’s written
yellow,
but painted blue on top of it. And in the sky and clouds area where he’s written
sky blue
he’s painted it red and pink.”

“The guy’s all over the place,” said Brown. “He’s organized. Brings the weapon—and the paintings. He doesn’t go in for torture, so he’s not a sadistic killer—but he eviscerates the bodies like a madman, which feels out of control and
disorganized
.”

“These guys live in elaborately concocted fantasy worlds,” said Freeman. “We just don’t happen to know what his fantasy world is—not yet. But it’s somewhere in the ritual.”

“Something to do with going after hookers?” asked Perlmutter.

“Could be a part of it,” said Freeman. “It’s hard to profile the guy until we know what’s driving him. And so many of these guys have more than one profile.”

“I think the key is in these paintings,” said Kate. “What do they represent to him?”

“An offering to the victim?” said Freeman.

“Maybe.” Kate started to pace, unconsciously fanning herself with the X-ray. “He brings the paintings with him, we know that, but then leaves them behind. So he either
wants
them to be found or doesn’t
care
if they’re found, right?”

“Right,” said Freeman. “Go on.”

Kate stopped fanning herself and stood still. “I’ve been thinking it’s more like he’s done with them. That he’s brought them with him for some sort of purpose, and then, when that part is over, he no longer cares about the paintings.”

“So we have to figure out what’s so important to him in these paintings in the first place,” said Freeman. “And then why they become
unimportant
.”

“Yes, I think so.” Kate laid the X-ray back over the painting reproduction and studied it. “He writes in the names of colors, but then fills in the area with a totally different color.”

“Doesn’t make much sense,” said Brown.

“No,” said Kate. “But there are artists who have done that sort of thing for conceptual reasons.”

“Conceptual?” asked Agent Sobieski.

“Conceptual artists pose questions to the nature of art,” said Kate.

“Meaning?” asked Grange.

“Well, a conceptual artist illustrates
ideas
.” Kate shut her eyes a minute, then opened them. “Okay, perfect example: The painter Jasper Johns, who is not really a conceptual artist, but uses some conceptual notions in his work, and—wait a minute.” She looked again at the X-rays, the words. “This is sort of uncanny, because our unsub is doing something
just
like Jasper Johns.”

“What do you mean?” asked Brown.

“Well, Jasper Johns made a series of paintings where he covered whole areas with heavily brushed-on paint, say yellow paint, and then on top of that he stenciled the word
yellow
.”

“And that means…what?” asked Grange.

“Johns is pointing out the difference between the
word
yellow and the
color
yellow. Also, that there are two different ways we see or describe something—through a word or an image. In this case the word
yellow
versus an expanse of yellow color. You get what I’m saying?” She looked at the men to see if they were following her. “And Jasper Johns has also done the opposite—which looks just like what our unsub painter has done—painted in, let’s say, an expanse of yellow paint and then stenciled over it the word
blue
. So that he denies the reality of what you are seeing.”

“So the viewer looks at yellow, but
reads
blue,” said Freeman.

“Right,” said Kate.

“To make the viewer think about what the word
blue
really means? Is that it?” asked Perlmutter.

“Exactly,” said Kate. “He’s making you
think
about color—about how artists use color in both real and unreal ways. Color can be descriptive, or naturalistic, versus, let’s say, abstract.”

“And that’s what our unsub is doing?” asked Brown. “Playing with us about the word he’s written and the color he’s actually painted?”

“Maybe.” Kate thought a moment. “But he hides the words
under
the paint, so unless, like us, you have an X-ray of the painting, how would you
know
he’s playing with you? Plus, I don’t know if he’s sophisticated enough to be teasing us with such high-art notions.” She looked again at the Bronx paintings. “It’s totally perplexing. On the one hand, the work feels amateurish, what the art world calls outsider art, and those obsessive, scribbled borders seem to confirm that. But that would mean the entire conceptual thing would be something he’d be unfamiliar with. And if he was an art world player I’d know his work, which I don’t, nor does anyone else I’ve talked to. And yet…this is so close to Jasper Johns’s paintings, I wonder if he’s seen Johns’s work? If he’s emulating the guy?” Kate stared at the images, lost in thought.

“What?” asked Brown.

Kate raised the X-rays up to the light.
“Wild watermelon
and
razzmatazz.
Those words mean anything to any of you?”