MARSIA GAY’S STUDIO
MILLSTOCK, MARYLAND
WEDNESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON
Savich turned off I-95 at the Millstock exit. Neither he nor Sherlock had ever visited this bedroom community. They saw quickly enough that it was a hub with a tangle of crossing and crisscrossing concrete highways curving off in every direction. They heard horns honking before they saw a long line of stopped cars. Rush-hour traffic? No, something else, probably an accident. Savich smelled frustration and impatience thick in the air. Sure enough there was a pileup maybe a quarter of a mile ahead. Everyone was blocked.
Sherlock said, “Take that right, Dillon, let’s see if we can go around.”
Savich pulled the Porsche off onto Buckley Street, and continued on side streets until they came to a small warehouse district. A good dozen warehouses faced one another in a long line. They weren’t abandoned and decrepit like some of their counterparts in Washington, D.C., with homeless people and drug addicts huddled in doorways. These warehouses looked like they’d been taken over by yuppies and the artist crowd for many years now, and gentrified.
Savich stopped the Porsche in front of the very last warehouse on the right. Unlike its neighbors, this warehouse exterior was stained aluminum siding, looked old enough to be condemned. Until they stepped inside and beheld a miracle—modern and shiny white walls, two art deco boxes containing palm trees, happy as could be, given the broad light coming in from the high windows. There was a brand-new elevator, mailboxes by the door, and three mirrors reflecting a big expanse of tile floor.
“Why do they keep the outside looking so derelict?” Sherlock wondered as they stepped onto the elevator and punched the third, and top, floor.
“Maybe it’s as simple as running out of money. Or maybe they want to keep the salesmen away.”
She laughed. “Or the management company. If they haven’t bothered to check out the interior, the rent might stay low.”
Savich thought she might be right. The elevator took them swiftly to the third floor and its three suites, the end one, 666—wasn’t that a kick—Marsia Gay’s studio. They heard a hammer pound in rhythmic time, then the low buzz of a welder.
Sherlock knocked, but the welder kept buzzing. He tried the door. Not locked. He and Sherlock walked into a large space filled with light from four enormous windows. At least a dozen metal sculptures of what could possibly be representations of men and women, in various stages of construction, stood like contorted and twisted sentinels along the walls. The sculptures looked oddly graceful, and drew the eye.
They saw Marsia Gay surrounded by machinery and a table of tools in the far corner wearing a welding apron, a welding mask, and thick gloves. She was welding two pieces of metal that looked like copper and aluminum, but Savich couldn’t be sure. It would have been stifling in the room were it not for several large fans that churned the air and dissipated the heat, making a huge noise. Marsia Gay still hadn’t seen or heard them.
Savich saw she was using an arc welder, the metal she was working on held by a clamp handle at the positive lead. Sparks flew around her. She was steady-handed, completely focused on what she was doing. They said nothing, only walked around the studio, studying her work. The smell of burned metal was strong, and bits of metal detritus hung in the sunlit air. The large room was ruthlessly organized. They saw bins filled with various sizes and shapes of scrap metal, each labeled: steel, brass and bronze, carbide, aluminum, and copper. Larger pieces of scrap metal, likewise labeled, stood in large bins against the wall.
Sherlock stopped to stare up at an eight-foot-tall figure with muscles of raw steel and prominent pecs, almost like breasts, long muscled steel legs at twisted angles, and a protruding tangle of bulging thick copper pipes banding the middle. “A pregnant man?”
“Actually, it’s a figure spun in a dream, and the dreamer is visualizing fecundity.” Marsia stepped forward and lightly touched her hand to the sculpture’s steel arm. “Her name is Helen—A Dream Vision. She was quite a challenge. For example, those copper ribs? I had to weld them to steel, but because the two metals aren’t mutually soluble, I used nickel as an intermediary metal. That way I could weld them and end up with a strong joint.”
Marsia pulled off her welding mask and set it carefully onto a countertop covered with tools and more even smaller containers of scrap metal. She ran her hands through her hair, smiled at them, took off her welding apron to show a long white artist shirt over black leggings. She wore Doc Martens on her long narrow feet. “Helen is going to be the focal point in the lobby of a fertility clinic in Baltimore.” She stripped off her welding gloves as she spoke, laid them beside the mask. They shook hands. Hers were strong, her fingers and palms callused.
She said, “Agent Savich, I have to admit, I visited the Raleigh Gallery in Georgetown this morning to see your pieces. I guess I wanted to see if you had really inherited some of your grandmother’s talent. It’s obvious you did. I particularly like the dolphin you whittled in rosewood. It’s marvelous really, so fluid you can almost see the dolphin moving.
“Mr. Raleigh also told me about your sister, Lily Russo. I realized soon enough that I read her in the Washington Post every Sunday. Her political cartoon featuring No Wrinkles Remus—he’s quite a personage, always has me laughing and shaking my head. Both of you are quite accomplished. Ah, I see that makes you uncomfortable. And you, Agent Sherlock, Mr. Raleigh told me you’re an accomplished pianist.”
Sherlock shook her head. “Not so much anymore, since I don’t practice enough. Now I tend to cruise the keys for pleasure.”
“I would enjoy hearing you play. Come have a cold drink and you can tell me what I can do for you. Sorry it’s so hot in here, but it’ll cool down quickly with the welder shut off. I’ll turn off a couple of fans so we can hear each other without shouting.”
Marsia turned off two of the four fans. Sherlock said, “Yes, that’s better. You have quite a setup here, Ms. Gay. All those bins—so many different metals.”
“Yes, most of it scrap metal. Sometimes I think the folk who sell scrap metal online make more money than I do. They scrounge through dump sites, carry away tossed-out washers, TVs, toasters, whatever—and strip them down for scrap metal to sell. Come, sit down.”
Savich and Sherlock were soon sitting on an old love seat beneath one of the large windows, glasses of water in their hands. Marsia on the floor facing them, her knees drawn up to her chin.
Sherlock said, “Ms. Gay, how long after you met Rob Rasmussen did you realize who he was? Or did you find out who he was and that’s why you hired him?”