Jake did a rough and dirty calculation. “Closer to five.”

“There’s a bunch in the house, too.” Kay stopped, picked one up. “Are they all a different shape?”

Jake shrugged. “Looks like. Just in framing it would take a year to stretch all of these. Then to gesso the canvases and paint them…” He let the sentence die. “Mad as a—” he looked around the place and a wave of sadness sunk into his flesh—“painter. You sure you want to spend the rest of your life with a guy like me? This,” he said, sweeping his arm over the piles of canvases, “is hereditary. Except with me, it will be pictures of dead people.” Jake sat down on the edge of the framing table, one of the only uncluttered surfaces in the studio.

Kay pointed at the door to the garage. “What’s in there?”

Jake, brought away from the dark ride he was taking through the demon-haunted universe painted by his father, looked over. “Garage.”

“Can I?”

He shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

She turned the knob and to both their surprise it swung open on greased hinges. Kay flicked a switch beside the door and the lights in the garage hummed to life. The room, in direct contrast to the studio, was painted in a bright blue-white. A car sat in the middle of the space and Jake eased forward, not realizing that he had stopped breathing again.

He got closer to the door and the image of the automobile began to widen. The skin was obscured by a thick layer of dust that hadn’t been disturbed in years. The windshield was opaque and the whole car looked like it had been sitting in here unnoticed forever. Jake knew this car, knew what it looked like under the neglect, and it reminded him of the night that everything had fallen apart. His life. His father’s. Everything turned to bloody black dirt in one big swing of fate.

It had been his mother’s—a 1966 Mercedes W113 in factory cream with a red leather interior. Jake remembered the morning they had brought it back on a flatbed after her murder. Jacob was drunk and had stayed in the house. Jake had helped them back up the truck and when they had rolled the Benz off, it had grazed the paneling under the window. They had closed the door and that seemed to be the end of it all. The sealing of the tomb of the queen.

At the front of the garage sat a cracked leather Eames lounge chair. It was dust free and surrounded by a forest of whiskey bottles, the floor at its feet worn smooth. He saw the chair, the bottles, and a quick flowchart sparked to life in his head. How often had his father come in here? Once a year? A month? A week? Looking at the forest of bottles and the smooth ring worn around the base of the chair, Jake guessed that he had come in here often. Maybe every night. Perched in his Captain Kirk chair, bottle of anger fuel in his hand, thinking about his dead wife. Probably never driven the car. It had stayed right here for how long? Thirty-three years now.

Jake moved slowly down the wall and peered at the back bumper. It was still touching the panel where it had rolled to a stop all those years ago, a fibrous tear in the grain of the wood, still splintered but now covered in dust and cobwebs.

It was obvious that it had not been moved since the morning after his mother’s murder.

The last people to touch it had probably been the flatbed guys. Before that, the police. And before that, his mother’s killer.

“Don’t touch anything,” Jake said, holding his own hands up as an example.

“Why?”

Jake ignored her and took out his cell phone. Dialed. “Yeah, Smolcheck, Jake Cole. You have time to do a car for me? Sure. Yeah. No. 1966 Mercedes convertible. Two-seater.”

Pause.

“It was part of a murder scene thirty-three years ago.”

Pause.

“I think so. Local police went through it.”

Pause.

“Returned to the family within twenty hours of the crime.”

Pause.

“Bare storage. Unheated but safe from the elements.”

Pause.

“No, no traffic. No one has touched it. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah.”

Longer pause.

“Okay, I’ll book storage from here. I’ll do the best I can. Polyethylene and duct tape. Got it. Sure.”

Pause.

“Thanks, Smolcheck. I appreciate it. It’s cold but it’s going to help me with a lateral case. I’ll make sure I go through Carradine. Don’t worry, it will be okayed by the time it gets there.”

Jake hung up and focused on a note taped to one of the scotch bottles: YOUR NAME IS JACOB COLERIDGE. KEEP PAINTING.

Oh, you kept painting, you mad old motherfucker, Jake thought. And what were you trying to say?

He looked up and Kay was gone, back in the house with Jeremy. How long had he been in one of his trances?

He put his hand to his chest and felt his heartbeat. Everything was fine. Fit as a fucking fiddle. When he thought about it, it was amazing what you could live through. Nietzsche had been right. After killing yourself three times with a high-octane mix of China White and Columbian, there was pretty much nothing else on the planet you were afraid of.

Except maybe the past.

29

Jake sat atop an old dented mechanic’s chest filled with brushes, palette knives, and the assorted implements of his father’s trade. It was an old Snap-on model, covered in painted fingerprints, brushstrokes, and random cuts of color. An open but untouched bottle of Coke sat on the concrete floor, bleeding condensation in a wet ring that seeped into the dust. He had one boot up on the edge of the tool chest and he hugged his knee, staring off into darkness decorated like Breughel’s The Triumph of Death. There was no exterior light, and bright bulbs lighted the room.

At first he thought it was the wind. Just an oblong sound that the ocean had somehow kicked up. Then he heard it a second time, the distinct cadence of human speech in its vowels. Someone was yelling. It was a tentative yell, but a yell nonetheless.

“Hello? Hello?”

Jake recognized the voice, the accent. He unfolded himself from atop the tool chest, stood up, and walked outside.

A man in a suit was on the balcony, bent over and peering into the living room. The posture, the hair, the soft pink hands clasped behind his back, the well-tailored suit—hadn’t changed in twenty-eight years. Jake walked quietly up behind him, leaned in, and very softly said, “Hello, David.”

David Finch jumped, banged his head on the mullion, and converted the startled jerk into a quickly extended hand. “Hello.”

Jake stood there for a second, appraising the man. “It’s me. Jake.”

Finch’s eyes narrowed, and he took in Jake with an exaggerated up-and-down. “Jakey?” He examined his face, his big polished smile opening up. “You still look like Charles Bronson.”

David Finch was one of the top gallery owners in New York and Jacob Coleridge had been one of his first discoveries. The two events were not mutually exclusive.

“And you look like a parasite coming to feed on a not-yet-dead cash cow.”

“I didn’t know you and your father were that close, Jakey.”

“Fuck you.”

“Still making money with that mouth?” Finch asked.

Jake took a step closer to the man and opened his teeth in an ugly smile. “What do you want?”

“I sent flowers. Did your father get them?”

Jake remembered the broken vase on the floor. “My father isn’t getting anything anymore.”

Finch looked around the deck. What for? Help, maybe. “Jakey, can we talk?”

Jake thought about the last time he had seen the man. About how he had asked for thirty-one dollars. About how he had been turned down. About the things he had done to feed himself because of that. “No, David, I don’t think we can.” Besides, Kay and Jeremy were inside and Jake didn’t want them to get contaminated by any more of his old life than they already had.