Remi sat in front of her computer researching the painting by Jacob van der Veer. This was, she realized, not much different than a usual workday at Georgetown or the Sorbonne. When she wasn’t burrowing into some dusty old archive, she was in front of a computer, researching old art or working on an academic paper.
The only difference now was that she was in a hotel room in New York City researching a painting that was stolen in a murder case.
And that made all the difference.
It had turned her research from a soothing intellectual stimulus into an exciting and far more important quest.
It was only a few hours after Daniel had arrested Azad Sahakian, and the art dealer was already out on bail. Daniel had explained to her that usually murder suspects weren’t let out on bail, but since the evidence was thin, his lawyer had gotten the judge to reconsider. Now the New York Police Department was helping Daniel check on the validity of all of Sahakian’s import licenses.
“If we can’t make the murder rap stick,” he had told her over the phone an hour ago, “I think we’ll be able to get him on antiquities laws.”
Good. People like that deserved to get punished by the law. But to do so, Remi had discovered, took a great deal of digging, legwork, and research. Daniel had been gone all afternoon looking at forms and making calls, while Remi had stayed in her cramped hotel room, which at least offered a fine view of downtown Manhattan.
Her research had uncovered some interesting facts that she was eager to tell Daniel whenever he got back from the police department. He’d probably have some good input.
As she had suspected, Death was only one of four paintings, each being a portrait of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Unusually, it was the only one painted by Jacob van der Veer. The others were all painted by his contemporaries. War was painted by Jan Mertens, Pestilence by Geert Janssens, and Famine by Frerik Peeters.
She had heard of none of these painters. While 17th century Flemish art was hardly her specialty, she was well-versed enough in all periods to know all the major figures. None of the four artists were major figures, and yet no less a personage than the mayor of Haarlem had hired them to make the set of paintings. During the 17th century, this city near Amsterdam was in its golden age, making vast fortunes off international trade and the production of linen and silk. The mayor had even hired Van der Veer to paint a portrait of his wife.
The mayor had been one of the richest men in the Low Countries at that time, owning several textile manufactories and a small fleet of ships. Why didn’t he hire Rubens or Stevens or Brueghel the Younger? He could have afforded them.
Instead, he went with four capable but second-tier painters. Why? None of them were even from Haarlem. And why not just hire one man to paint all four?
Was it to add a little anonymity to the project? If Ruben took on a commission from a wealthy patron, the entire country would have heard about it. If someone like Mertens or Peeters took a commission of just a single midsized painting, it would make much less of a ripple.
But why want anonymity for a set of paintings, items whose purpose was to be displayed? And the paintings were signed.
It made no sense.
She needed to learn more. There was frustratingly little about any of these artists online, and a trip to the New York Public Library hadn’t produced much else of value. Few paintings or biographical details existed for the four painters. What she did find was that at least a couple of them were known for their grim paintings of battles and apocalyptic scenes. Remi suspected all four of them had produced work along those lines, but there was simply not enough information to know for sure. Historians didn’t even know the dates of birth or death for Mertens or Peeters.
She had, however, found photos of Pestilence and War in an old exhibition catalogue from 1925, when they appeared with other paintings of a religious bent in an exhibition in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, the photo was small and showed them hanging side by side, thus providing little detail. The caption, as much as she could puzzle out from the Dutch, said nothing beyond the names of the paintings and the artists.
Eleah Smets, her art curator friend in Brussels, had sent her a little more information. There was no record at all of the provenance of Famine by Frerik Peeters. That was unusual. No bill of sale, no museum catalog, no police report saying it was stolen. Perhaps it had been stolen or destroyed in a fire in an early century. While War and Pestilence did not appear to have been stolen or destroyed, there was no record of who owned them now. In the credits of the exhibition catalog, she discovered a list of the loaned items and was able to find family names for those who had loaned Pestilence and War. She sent these to Smets and was waiting for her answer.
Remi stared at the photo she had taken from the exhibition catalog. The four paintings had been commissioned together, but there was no record as to where they went after the painters completed them. Did the mayor of Haarlem keep them, or did he send the set to a colleague? Or did he disperse the paintings? As far as she could tell, the paintings had never all been owned by the same person, although the records were so incomplete that she couldn’t say that for sure. That exhibition was the only time she could find where more than one had even been displayed together.
That made her wonder. What if the killer wanted all four? Often with sets of paintings, such as a religious triptych or paintings of the Apostles, there would be symbols scattered in each of the works, and the viewer could only understand them as a whole.
Was the man who stole Death looking for the other three?
If so, he would have a very difficult search. Remi could trace no record as to their present location.
And yet the murderer had found the painting of Death and had even known the very day Dyson purchased it.
This man was better informed than Remi, that was for sure.
Enough speculation. She went back to her research, chasing up leads as well as she could in online databases and digitized books.
A knock at her hotel room door stopped her. She went and peeked through the peephole, a precaution she had learned from Daniel. After what she had faced on the last case, she had come to appreciate the value of caution. Not as much as her new partner would like, she thought with a wry smile, but she was getting there.
Daniel stood in the hallway. She let him in.
“I just got off the phone with the FBI,” he said breathlessly. Remi got the impression he ran here. “There’s been a second murder.”
Remi slowly sat down in her chair, stunned. She had predicted this. The murderer really was after all four paintings.
“Tell me more.” Her voice came out harsh, barely above a whisper.
“The FBI is part of an international crime tracking system. I had the techies back at Quantico send me alerts if anyone related to the art world got killed or had a painting stolen. Last night in Paris an art dealer was hacked to death with a sword and his assistant bludgeoned with the pommel.”
“I’m sorry, the what?”
“The knob on the end of the hilt, the handle of the sword.”
“Oh, le pommeau. Go on.”
“He was knocked out and is recovering in the hospital. They’re still pumping him for information, but a search through the business receipts shows the murder victim just bought a painting of War by—” Daniel checked his phone for the name.
“By Jan Mertens,” Remi said.
Daniel smiled and cocked his head. “Been doing some research, eh?”
“I have to do something while you’re in the police station. As I suspected, the painting of Death was part of a set. Each was painted by a different Flemish artist for the same commission. This must be the same murderer!”
“Well, the M.O. is certainly the same.”
“M.O.?”
“Modus operandi means the way someone operates. Criminals fall into patterns, even when they try to hide it, which this guy isn’t. A ton of witnesses saw him go into the gallery, because he was dressed as a knight in full armor with a sword at his side.”
“And no one called the police?”
“People thought he was in a movie, or it was some publicity stunt. The Paris police collected a ton of cell phone photos from people who saw him, but they all look like this.”
Daniel showed her a photo. It showed a man walking down a narrow back street somewhere in central Paris. The visor to the helmet was down, so there was no telling the man’s features. In fact, Remi only assumed he was a man because of the person’s size.
“Dressed as a murderous monk last time, and this time as a knight,” Daniel said.
“He’s playing the part. Death with a scythe, and a knight of war.”
“Yup. A psycho sickball, to use the technical term.”
“We need to go to Paris,” she said, moving to the edge of her seat.
Daniel shook his head. “It’s a bit outside our jurisdiction. The FBI deals with crimes on U.S. soil.”
“But this is a crime on U.S. soil. He killed an American citizen. Surely we could get clearance with Interpol to go—”
“There’s that ‘we’ again. You’re as eager as a rookie straight out of the academy.”
“In a way I feel I am.”
Daniel looked uncomfortable for a moment. “You’re not. You are a huge help, but you have to remember you’re a civilian advisor. You don’t get a gun, and you don’t get to chase suspects. You nearly got killed last time and if you get killed on this case, I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
Hot anger rose up in Remi’s chest. He was dismissing her, putting her in a second category below him. She had been the one who had solved the Cryptex Killer case, and she would solve this one too, if she could convince this boor to go to Paris.
Guilt quickly tinged her anger. Taking it from Daniel’s point of view, she could be seen as a liability. She really had put herself in harm’s way several times on the last case, and if she had gotten hurt on Daniel’s watch, it might cost him his job.
She needed to tread carefully to get what she wanted without alienating her partner.
“You’re right,” she said with some effort. “I need to be more careful. But we really need to chase up this case, Daniel. Both times when he stole the paintings he killed unnecessarily. Dyson was an old man. The killer could have overcome him easily. And in Paris he knocked out the assistant but killed the owner of the painting. He could have knocked out both, but he wanted to murder the man he was robbing.”
“And no one else,” Daniel mused. “He didn’t bother killing the gallery assistant in Paris or any of the staff in East Hampton. Yes, I see what you mean. He’s a focused killer, and he won’t stop until he’s killed the owners of all four paintings and taken them for himself.”
“We need to convince your superiors to send us to Paris. If the killer is there, there’s nothing further to investigate here.”
She stared at the FBI agent as he said nothing, lost in thought.
At last Daniel nodded and got on his phone. Remi’s heart lifted. He punched in a number, then stopped.
He looked Remi in the eye.
“One thing you might not know about killers. While some are selective, they get a whole lot less selective if you try and stop them. You need to be careful, Remi. This guy might be as dangerous as the Cryptex Killer.”
Daniel got on his phone to talk with the FBI. Remi turned back to her computer to search for more information on the paintings and found the words going into the search engine coming out as gibberish.
Her hands couldn’t stop shaking.
Then another trouble arose in her mind.
She still hadn’t spoken with Cyril since their blowup at the Italian restaurant. If she was going to Paris, she needed to speak with him. She couldn’t just run off to another country without informing him. After all, he was her department head as well as her lover.
But what to say?
Reluctantly, Remi pulled out her phone. Daniel stood not two meters away, talking with someone at the FBI. She couldn’t make this call in his presence, and she couldn’t very well make him leave. She’d have to explain why.
Gesturing to her phone, she headed out to the hallway. Daniel nodded, not really focusing, already deep in his struggle with government bureaucracy.
Stepping out into the hall and closing the door behind her, she checked her phone. No calls or texts from Cyril. She checked the time and saw he’d be done with classes and office hours.
Taking a deep breath, she dialed.
It rang and rang again. It rang a third time and Remi’s tensions rose higher. Cyril always answered his phone on the first or second ring, even when in the middle of a conversation. He whipped it out of his pocket in his curt, businesslike manner and answered it like he was an executive negotiating the sale of ten-thousand shares.
Except this time, he didn’t.
Was he in a meeting? She didn’t know of any, and it wasn’t his day to volunteer. Had Cyril seen who was calling and simply decided not to answer?
It rang again. And again.
She was about to hang up when he answered.
On the eighth ring.
“Yes,” he demanded as if some phone salesman had interrupted his nap.
Already he was irritating her! Remi decided to keep her voice calm.
“It’s me. I’m still in New York.”
“The dean told me. Off on a big adventure.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you. We’re making good progress on the investigation.”
Cyril let out a loud, dramatic sigh. “I suppose it’s necessary. Was your rudeness at the restaurant necessary?”
“I overreacted,” Remi said, then bridled at this apology when it wasn’t immediately followed by an apology of Cyril’s own. After a brief pause, she continued. “But you should have been more understanding.”
“Of what, exactly? You cutting off the most important conversation of our lives to talk about going off on some research trip? And then saying you have to chase some murderer? It feels like I don’t know you anymore. You’re changing, and not in a good way.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“All this policework. It excites you more than your research. And you’re still after the cryptex, aren’t you? That’s why you want to go to Florence. There’s some evidence there you want to dig up.”
Remi grimaced. Cyril was too intelligent to hide the truth from.
“And what of it?” she said. “It’s my main line of research, and it’s been bolstered now that the cryptex has been shown to be real.”
“But the Vatican took it, and you’ll never see it again.” He sounded smug about it, and that annoyed her to no end.
“So what? I can still research it. I took—” Remi stopped herself. She had almost revealed that she had opened it and took photos of the interior. “—I found some new evidence for a groundbreaking paper. But that’s not what I want to talk about. There’s been a development in the case.”
“Oh God, more policework. I thought you were only going to New York for a day to study a crime scene.”
“I never said that,” Remi glared at the phone. He was so eager to keep her on a leash, he heard what he wanted to hear.
“Yes, you did. And you’re going to stay in New York for days now, aren’t you? While Edwards and Hinksey have to scramble their schedules to cover your classes. The dean has prostrated himself to the FBI.”
Remi gathered her patience, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m not staying in New York. Actually, the case is taking us to Paris.”
“What?!”
“Don’t get hysterical. The killer is looking for a series of paintings, and it appears he isn’t done killing.”
“Oh God, you’re looking for another serial killer. How can you do this to me?”
Remi’s brow furrowed. “Do this to you?”
“Leave me like this! You embarrassed me in the restaurant, and now you’re leaving me alone to go off one some ridiculous quest for a killer in Europe.”
“It’s not some ridiculous quest. It’s valuable policework.”
“Leave it to the police then.”
“I am the police,” she blurted.
Right after she said it, she realized how ridiculous it sounded.
So did Cyril. He laughed. Actually laughed.
“Oh, Remi. I never suspected this side of you,” he said, still laughing. “You’re like a little girl with her head full of adventure. Get real. You’re an academic and you’re about to get—”
“Enough!” she snapped. “I’m my own person and I’ll do what I like in my life. You have no right to be so condescending and possessive. I can see why your wife left you!”
With that, she hung up.
Remi slumped against the wall, feeling sick. What just happened? Had he really been so terrible, and had she really been so cruel?
Just as a new case was beginning, she could feel her relationship falling apart.