“Coffee?” Django Quinn offered.
“Only if you have any ready,” Behr answered.
“It will be in three minutes.”
Quinn lived in the Block, a large building that had once been the W. H. Block Department Store but had been converted into residential lofts. If Behr expected a dwelling featuring more gore than his own thanks to a profusion of Quinn’s crime scene photos, he was very wrong. Instead there were countless framed photos, shot by Quinn, hanging and stacked against the walls of the stylish space, but all were of living subjects. Most were striking black-and-white studio shots of a beautiful son and daughter who bore Quinn a strong resemblance. As they played on jungle gyms, skipped rope, and ran in the park, Behr felt what a charmed life the photographer was leading. There were also portraits of musicians, not to mention landscapes, and shots by other photographers, and no pictures of victims whatsoever.
“So Django—is that your real name? Not one you hear every day,” Behr asked.
“My dad played jazz trumpet, still does. But he loves the guitar and hoped I’d take it up, so he named me after Django Reinhardt. I picked up a camera instead. It was just an old Pentax ME, but once I made my first picture, that was all she wrote.”
“What was it?”
“A shot of my dog. I still have it somewhere.”
Quinn’s wife Sheri, a pretty, petite brunette, emerged from the kitchen with a tray bearing cups and a pair of steeping French presses.
“You want me to push these, or can you able-bodied men handle it?” she asked, revealing a bit of Michigan in her accent.
“You do it, honey. You know how I always botch it up,” Quinn said.
Sheri shot Behr a look. “He can break down and reassemble a camera body in the dark, but he can’t push a cup of coffee,” she said as she pressed down the plunger and then poured.
“I just like your touch,” Quinn said.
“Oh, my ass,” Sheri said.
“That too.”
“Enough out of you,” she said to Quinn. “If you need anything else, Mr. Behr, let me know.” With that Sheri Quinn left them. Fullbodied and robust, the coffee was one of the best cups Behr had ever tasted, and it made his own life seem the poorer for the crap he served himself.
“I’m glad you called,” Quinn said. “I was thinking about you this morning. Did you see it?”
“See what?” Behr asked. “I’ve been in the library all day.”
“Papers and website announced it—the body got identified. Name was Danielle Crawley. The DNA was getting run on a rush, but there was a missing-persons report out that fit the description and mentioned a tattoo on the right calf—a small shamrock. They called in the girl’s sister who had filed it, and she made the ID.” Quinn put down his coffee. “The girl was a bartender, DJ, and played in a rock band. She still drank a little, but she was recently out of rehab, clean after getting caught up in hard drugs.”
“Really,” Behr said. “Police checking known associates from that world?”
“They are,” Quinn said, “but she’d only recently got here to stay with the sister. She’d been living up in Milwaukee, and no one has reason to believe any trouble like this would follow her. Since we got the other cases with similar circumstances they figure it’s related to that. Point is: that tattoo—you identified that body.”
“It was just an idea. Someone else would’ve had it,” Behr said.
“Yeah, but you did,” Quinn said.
“Do the articles tie it to Northwestway?”
“Yep, you know it.”
Behr winced, knowing what a pain in the ass this would be for Breslau. “What about any other murders?” he asked.
“Official line: ‘Police are looking into connections to past cases,’ ” Quinn said. “So what can I help you with?”
Now Behr put down his coffee and took out his notebook.
“A still life of death. That’s what you called it out at the crime scene. It’s an art term.”
“Right.”
“And that, along with some other elements, got me thinking: this guy we’re dealing with is a killer, but he sees himself as an artist. He feels cut off and at odds from society in many of the ways artists do.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said, interested. “Misunderstood, misanthropic.”
“It hit me: his medium is killing, and mutilation. But there’s also a visual component that’s supposed to last afterward. So I thought: what if the bodies are just the subjects of what he considers his real work?”
“I see where you’re going.”
“At first I thought he’s keeping souvenirs, certain parts and pieces, but that’s not really enough. So then I thought: painter or a sculptor? But that seemed like it was coming up dry, and right when I started to doubt myself, I found a book on this guy Oscar Rejlander, who’d—”
“He started out a painter and became a photographer.”
“Yeah.”
“He was considered pretty damn good with the brush, but he abandoned it for photography when he saw how well a photograph captured the folds of a sleeve. He made some haunting images, especially for his time …”
Behr nodded and saw Quinn hit by a bolt of understanding, just as he had been.
“He photographs them. He’s making pictures before he puts them out …” Quinn said aloud.
Behr shrugged. “I think he might be. I started looking up well-known photographers after I called you, figuring I could find one he was imitating, and it would lead somewhere. But the books in the library were mostly portraits, famous actors, buildings and mountains. Fashion. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Man Ray, Diane Arbus—no one on the library shelves is even close. Man, I don’t know where else to look.”
“No, no, no. Those aren’t the right references,” Quinn said, excited now. He motioned Behr over to his bookshelves. “These are more along the lines …”
Quinn started pulling large, worn coffee-table-sized books of black-and-white prints from the shelves and handing them to Behr. “E. J. Bellocq. He shot New Orleans prostitutes …” Behr took a look at the grim, evocative portraiture of the fallen women of Storyville until Quinn handed him the next volume.
“Weegee—his real name was Arthur Fellig. The guy is my personal North Star, he’s like the godfather of crime scene photography.” Behr took the book and began flipping through pages of stark, graphic imagery of downed bodies on flashbulb-lit pavement, and denizens of the streets of New York City in raw couplings back in the 1940s, long before such things were considered acceptable. The shots created a visceral reaction in Behr, the mark of good art, he supposed. “There’s something hypnotic in a photo of a body,” Quinn said, almost to himself, as he looked over Behr’s shoulder, offering a window into his profession. “The way light hits a dead eye. It reflects total …”
“Nothingness,” Behr said.
“This is a Danish guy named Asger Carlsen.”
Behr looked over black-and-white photos of headless bodies with extra arms and legs jutting out in various directions. The images were odd, but there was a certain smoothness to the presentation that made it all slightly comfortable.
“Ah, here it is …” Quinn said, pulling a book from the shelf. “Witkin.”
Behr opened the heavy book and froze. Nothing he’d seen in the crime scene photos was specifically re-created in its pages, but the distressed black-and-white images there were gruesome, gothic, and sickening, almost like high-level torture porn. There were genitals punctured and stretched, nipples with nails through them, people in black masks hanging from hooks plunged through the skin of their chests and backs, cut-off heads. The photos communicated a deep pain and sadness of existence, not just in the subjects but in the photographer as well.
“My God,” Behr said quietly as he continued flipping. Beings from beyond the edges of regular society—hermaphrodites and dwarves, massively fat women wearing crow-like masks, emaciated and wrinkled ancient men—all passed before Behr’s eyes. He wasn’t sure how the images had been created, what special effects were at play in capturing the decapitations and amputations. Perhaps he used lifelike mannequins or corpses he’d acquired somewhere.
“I haven’t looked at these for a long time,” Quinn said. “The feeling is similar to seeing our killer’s displays. Shit, I should’ve thought of this. You’re getting inside his head.”
“That’s where I need to be,” Behr said. “Can I borrow this?” He raised the book.
“Sure, give it back whenever.”
“I need to find a way to smoke this bastard out,” Behr said.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I doubt he’s gonna invite you to his gallery show.” Quinn laughed over the rim of his coffee cup.
Behr looked up with an idea. “No, he’s not, but I can invite him to yours.”