Page 9 of Go Now
‘Suggests he scattered them last, after the killing,’ Chen said.‘They’re allschist.Typical of the Manhattan Prong.’
‘Prong?’Marcus echoed.Kate shot him a look.He could be very childish.
‘That’s the bedrock most of the city is built on,’ Chen said.‘I majored in Geology.’
‘There you go, every day’s a school day,’ said Marcus, standing up.Chen laughed, rather too loudly.
‘The post-mortem may be able to tell us if the weapon was from the same source of rock,’ Kate observed.
‘Would we call this a graven image?’Chen asked, moving to a painting on the wall.The glass had been smashed, but the image was still visible. A hooker with wings and a short skirt stood talking to three meth-heads, seated on packing cases in a circle.
‘It’s the angel appearing to the shepherds,’ Kate said.‘To announce Christ’s birth. I’m not sure what the artist’s trying to say, but I can imagine quite a few Christians would object.It’s an angle, for sure.’
'What do we make of this?'Marcus said, standing by the victim's central workbench. A cigarette sat unfinished in a little brass ashtray.Like the Gatorade accompanying it, sad signs of a life abruptly ceased.But sharing the space on the bench was a macabre assembly of wooden limbs and digits, most of them gouged with a chisel, smashed, or snapped.
‘Like Pinocchio’s autopsy,’ Marcus murmured.
It appeared to be another angel, carved with some skill out of a hard wood like hickory or walnut.It might have been in bits to begin with, but the killer had obviously smashed it up further.They’d also made a vain attempt to set light to it, judging by the scorch marks on some of the limbs and the strong smell of white spirit.
‘The partial burning might be because he ran out of time,’ Marcus said.
‘Or he was surprised by someone,’ added Kate.‘Is there CCTV in the building?’
‘The building’s run by a co-op.They vote on everything, and apparently, they voted not to have CCTV.Privacy concerns.’She rolled her eyes.‘The damage suggests a systematic trashing of the guy’s work,’ she went on.‘But I don’t see any evidence of a struggle between killer and victim. There’s no damage to the door, no broken plates, no sign that the vic tried to defend himself with anything.’
‘What about the hands, knuckles?Any evidence of fighting?’Kate asked.
‘Take a look.I can’t see any,’ said Chen.‘But he could have come off worst: taken multiple blows to the face whilst failing to land any of his own.’
‘Or could have been incapacitated before the killer smashed his face in,’ Marcus added.
The techs returned with a fold-down gurney for the body; they were, as usual, itching to get everything cleared up and over to the lab.
‘No way.Please give these agents all the time they need,’ Chen said, authoritatively.‘They want to see everything in situ.’
As the techs slouched off, moodily, Kate shot Chen a grateful look.There were always these little struggles to take into account.Everyone thought their job was the most important of all. It helped to have an ally on the ground.
‘The other thing you need to see is this,’ Chen said, indicating a small object about the size of a pint bottle, lying in the shadows, just above and to the left of the head of the victim.
It was a clay sculpture.A sculpture of what, precisely, it was hard to say.
‘Is it a face?A head?It’s the shape and size of a head.’
‘It’s a mouth,’ Marcus said.‘A head that’s all mouth.’
‘A scream,’ Chen said. ‘It’s kind of… what a scream would look like, if a scream was in 3-D.’
It was a good description.Kate pulled her eyes away from it, to look at her colleagues.
‘Did the victim make this?’she asked.‘Or the killer?’
‘My money’s on the killer,’ Marcus said.‘Look at Ashworth’s stuff.It’s all… what’s the opposite of abstract?’
‘Figurative,’ said Chen.
'And the head, or the mouth, or whatever you want to call it,' Marcus went on.'It's still wet.But I guess it could be unfinished.What do you say, Kate?Kate?'
Kate didn’t reply, her eyes had once again found themselves drawn back to the sculpture.
