Painted to Death, page 2
I was silent the rest of our walk. At the top of the stairs, Detective O’Connor led us across the lobby, down a short corridor, and into a small classroom near the back of the building. It was usually used for film classes, with the chairs lined up in neat rows facing a single projection screen. The man waiting inside, presumably Sergeant Marks, had pulled three chairs out of their rows and into a neat little triangle at the front of the room. He smiled and gave me a single nod, gesturing for me to take the seat opposite him, at the tip of the triangle.
“Thanks for coming down here to speak with us,” he said. Whatever I had expected a police detective to be, it was almost definitely not this. The man opposite me, who confirmed that he was indeed Sergeant Marks but I could call him Phillip, was tall and thin, reedy enough to be a cartoon grasshopper. His blond hair was thinning yet still stood nearly straight up, almost reaching Conan O’Brien heights. His voice was soft, so much so that even just a few feet away from him, I had to lean over the desk to hear what he was saying. I had seen enough cop shows to wonder if this was some kind of ploy, aimed at knocking suspects off balance.
“We know this is a very difficult time. But I’m sure you can understand that the faster we ask these questions, the faster we can clear everything up and let you go back to your lives,” Marks said. “We understand you were a close friend of Catherine Reed’s?”
I nodded. I don’t know if I would have said close friend, but definitely a good friend. But if they thought I was such a close friend, why had they waited two weeks to interview me?
I must have looked confused, because Detective O’Connor, hereon just “the younger one,” broke in.
“We’ve had a lot of people to talk to over the past couple weeks, as I’m sure you’ve heard. Your name has come up a few times. It sounds like you were with Catherine earlier on the day we think she died?” At this, he flipped open a skinny black reporter’s notebook, something I thought they only did on television.
“Yes,” I said. “Catherine, Rebecca, Benny, and I had dinner together at our apartment that Sunday evening. We did most Sundays. I think you already spoke with Benny about this.” I raised my eyebrows in question. The pair declined to confirm or deny.
“How did Catherine seem that night?” Marks asked instead, leaning on his elbows in what I took to be his attempt at a casual pose.
“Completely fine,” I replied. “She was always a sweetheart, cooking for everyone at those dinners. It was no different that weekend. The next morning, when we got here and heard what had happened … It was just a complete shock.”
“Nothing seemed to be bothering her?” Marks went on. “Catherine didn’t mention anything that had happened, maybe over the weekend or at school the previous week?”
I shook my head slowly, pretending to consider my answer, but it was going to be the same as for the question before: Nothing out of the ordinary had happened until we heard she had died. Why were they going on about her mood? I wanted to ask, but clearly I was not going to be allowed to ask the questions here.
I settled for an answer in a tone that I hoped wouldn’t sound too antagonistic: “I really don’t think so. Catherine definitely didn’t mention anything to me about something stressing her out.”
Marks nodded, apparently content. He leaned back, which was clearly O’Connor’s signal to take over.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but we’re asking because there may be the possibility that Catherine took her own life.”
“No,” I blurted out without a second thought. “That cannot be true. Catherine was one of the easiest going people I know.” I could hear my voice rising but couldn’t stop. “I understand this is something that happens, but absolutely not to Catherine. Catherine was happy.” I tried to add a note of finality here, anything that would offset the tremor that had come into my voice.
The two detectives exchanged looks.
O’Connor tried for a conciliatory tone. “Look,” he said, soothingly. “We just have to ask and we have to rule out the possibility.” Another glance at Marks, who gave the most imperceptible nod I’ve ever seen. “It looks like Catherine died from a large injection of insulin. Do you know if she often mixed up glucose and insulin? Or miscalculated what doses she would need? We found several empty vials of insulin in her studio, and they do appear to be nearly identical to the glucose she carried.”
This was a little bit easier to consider than O’Connor’s previous question. Catherine had been diabetic her whole life, and seemed effortlessly at ease with the entire situation. But the fact was, Catherine was forgetful, maybe even flakey; I’d seen her mix up medications and vials once or twice before, although never to this degree. She always caught her mistake before actually taking anything. My pause seemed to indicate this.
“Sam,” O’Connor prodded. “Does this sound like something that might have happened?”
I relented and nodded. “Maybe,” I said. “But I still have to say, I think that sounds extremely unlikely.” I tried to put as much emphasis on “unlikely” as I could muster.
“Okay,” O’Connor said, clearly backing off from this line of questioning. “That’s okay. We can keep that as a possibility, but we hear that you think it’s unlikely. What about anything else you can tell us? Was there anyone you can think of who might have wanted to hurt Catherine?”
Everyone knows this question is coming, don’t they? Seems like Police Interview 101 material. You’d think that I would have thought about it, maybe even rehearsed some kind of answer before now. But the truth was, I meant it when I said Catherine was a sweetheart. She never had a bad word to say about anyone, never gossiping with the rest of us – not even when Rebecca got going about whoever’s new relationship drama was in the spotlight that week. No matter how much I considered it, I couldn’t think of anyone with a good reason to do this. Which is itself an absurd thought: What is ever a good reason to kill someone who’s done nothing? I said as much as to the detectives.
“Any recent ex-boyfriends?” Marks cut in. So apparently it wasn’t just Benny they were going to ask about this.
“Not really,” I said. “She dated Todd – that’s Todd Jansen – most of last year, but they broke up over the summer. Maybe mid-August? Before we came back for the new school year. Honestly, he seemed fine with it, and I think he’s already dating someone else.”
O’Connor nodded, jotting this down quickly.
“Anyone after that?” he asked.
“I don’t think she was in any long-term relationships again,” I replied, only slightly hedging. “You’re probably better off asking Benny about that. If Catherine confided in anyone, it would be him.” I paused, hoping that I looked like I was trying to think farther back, when really, I was trying to decide how much information to give them. “I think the only real boyfriend last semester was Michael Drexler.” I felt bad giving his name to the police, watching O’Connor add it to his notebook like he was writing up a list of naughty kids for Santa.
Michael was admittedly not my favorite person, but no one really deserved to be added to a police investigation. Todd Jansen would probably be dismissed by the detectives at first glance, with his wire-rim glasses and smooth, easy-going manners, his blond hair and tennis shoes. But Michael: Michael was not the easiest person to get along with, even at the best of times. I didn’t know what Catherine had seen in him at the time, maybe besides his looks. He was prickly and arrogant, often needing to be the loudest voice in a class, and made these huge abstract paintings that took up an absurd amount of space in the senior studios. If nothing else, this was just evidence that Catherine was a much better person than I was. I’d never had the patience for Michael that she did.
“What about anyone who might have been jealous of her?” Marks was asking now.
His delivery made it sound like this was a new idea he’d just had, but how could that possibly be true? Wasn’t this also Police Interview 101 material – make the interviewee feel like they’re getting a behind-the-scenes glimpse? Did these guys think I had never watched a movie before?
“I’m not sure what there really was to be jealous of, exactly. Everyone loved Catherine as far as I knew, but she wasn’t exactly the most popular or the richest or honestly the most anything that someone could quantify,” I said.
“We heard she was up for a big award at the end of this year. When you all graduate?” Marks said.
“Well, not me. I graduate next year; Benny and Catherine are this year,” I said. “But yeah, that’s true. All graduating seniors are eligible for the Goldstein Award. For artistic excellence.”
Marks nodded, considering this. “We’ve been told Catherine was a front runner.”
I shrugged. “I haven’t been paying much attention to the award rumors,” I said with honesty. “It’s determined by a small faculty committee that’s supposed to be done in secret, so it’s not like we could have had anything to do with it, let alone know who the actual front runners were.”
The two seemed content to leave it at this. O’Connor reached behind him, to a folder that was sitting on the next desk over. “Do you think you would be up for answering a few more questions, if we asked you to take a look at some photos?” he asked. “It might be upsetting, but it could be very helpful to us.”
It wasn’t clear if I really had a choice, or what suspicious something it would imply about me if I refused, so I simply nodded. O’Connor opened the folder, taking out an eight-by-ten photograph and putting it on the desk where I sat.
“Can you tell us if anything is missing or looks out of place?” O’Connor asked, almost apologetically.
I took a deep breath to steel myself before looking down. Mercifully, the photo focused on Catherine’s studio, with only her legs visible in the lower right of the frame. At first, all I could see was the beautiful composition, the contrast, the light on the easel in the background making the painting on it even more striking than it was in person, with the painting’s three figures shadowy and emerging slowly from the background. Another detail I’d be leaving out when I told Rebecca about this later. I tried to refocus, trying to look carefully at the contents of the studio. In all honesty, most of us worked quite messily, with each of the studios looking like a page out of an I Spy book. It would be hard to tell if anything was missing, let alone out of place. I said as much to the detectives.
“That’s okay,” Marks said. “Thanks for taking a look. What about in this photo?”
This next one that O’Connor slid over to me focused on her desk. Catherine had painted from photographs, so the desk was a mosaic of photos, negatives, handwritten notes, paint tubes. I slowly shook my head. It was messy, but didn’t look messed with, exactly.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, and I was. “I just can’t tell if anything is missing. Everyone’s studio looks like this.”
“It’s okay,” the younger one said, smiling sympathetically, “really. We know this isn’t easy.”
I hoped my smile back was appropriate – concerned and serious but also acknowledging that I had just noticed he was pretty cute, at least in this lighting, if not exactly my type.
“We’ll let you know if we have any other questions, if that sounds okay?” O’Connor said.
Of course I agreed, writing my phone number down and handing it over to him. They stood, gesturing to me that I was free to go. But back in the hallway, I didn’t think I could face going back to class and having to answer everyone’s questions, even if it meant getting to return to my pots of ceramic glazes. Instead, I walked slowly down the hall, going into the first empty classroom I came to. It was a drawing studio, with chairs lining the edges of two large tables, easels and drawing boards ringing the room.
I sat down, leaning against the easel behind me. Alone now, I couldn’t stop picturing the photographs they had just shown me. I didn’t know if there really was anything missing, but there was definitely something that had stood out to me. I just couldn’t put my finger on what. If Rebecca were here to do her sympathetic tutting, she would say it’s the fact that I just saw a photo of a friend of mine dead, and maybe she would be right. But I opened my backpack anyway, taking out a sketchbook and whatever pencils I could fish out of its depths, and started to do what I always did when I was trying to understand something better: I started sketching.
Out of respect, I started with Catherine’s body, her legs running parallel along the line that formed the edge of her desk. Over her stood her easel, a rickety metal affair where I had seen her standing and painting nearly every day for years. I added the canvas she must have left unfinished, showing its figures as just a quick line drawing shaded over in short, darker lines. Her paintings recently had been based on black-and-white photographs, mostly family photos or historic, genealogical images.
I didn’t know the full story, but I knew that Catherine had grown up with just her mom, and the rumor was that she’d never found out who her father was. Then Catherine’s mom had passed away from cancer the year before she started school. The whole thing was one of those stories that made the rounds periodically, as details from class critique sessions of her work became gossip. Apparently, her mother had always refused to disclose who her father was, promising that she would eventually, when Catherine was old enough, but of course then she’d died before ever telling her. Catherine had even gotten a copy of her birth certificate after her mom’s death, but the line for father had been left blank. Catherine’s paintings always kept this kind of shadowy aura about them, the figures (usually her and her mother) all blurry or too dark to make out.
I sketched in the small supply cart she kept next to the easel, filling it with her usual paints and piles of brushes. There hadn’t been too many objects on the desk that were clear, but I sketched in whatever I could remember: a notebook, closed; a few random pens and pencils scattered across the surface; a stack of papers, probably reading or an assignment for class; a couple of books with the clear markings of our school library, though I couldn’t recall the titles. I put my pencil down, looking at the drawing for any new clues, and groaned inwardly. What did I think I was doing? Clues? It was just a quick pencil drawing of a photograph that might have made a good jigsaw puzzle, but was certainly no masterpiece of detection. I tore the page out of my sketchbook, shoved it into my backpack, and decided to head home for the day.
Chapter Three
The walk home would be good for me. The sun had disappeared behind clouds, but the temperature was a bit better, at least enough that I didn’t need to turtle myself quite as deeply into my coat. I still kept my eyes down as I walked, letting the random patterns of gray and black asphalt, the sudden splotches of color from construction spray paint or gum, lull my brain into quieting down, zoning out.
When we first heard that Catherine had died, finding clues was the farthest thing from my mind. In the moment, all that seemed important was supporting one another, making sure Benny was okay, trying not to let the gossip get too out of hand. So what could have just changed my mind in a thirty-minute conversation? Even if it was a conversation with the police, the very idea of “clues” seemed out of place. As the detectives themselves had said, it seemed like Catherine had died from a simple mistake, switching her glucose and insulin. I couldn’t remember, but I didn’t think they’d even said the word “murder” once in that whole interview.
All the same, would Catherine really have made such a mistake? She had been diabetic for twenty-two years; who would know if she had ever made a similar mistake, going so far as to actually take the wrong medications? I made a mental note to ask Benny, if there was ever an okay moment with him. I didn’t even know how much insulin one would have to take to be fatal. How did detectives do it? It seemed like in books, there was always a helpful doctor down the street who would be happy to answer random questions about insulin doses, without suspicion or any hesitation about patient privacy.
I tried to clear my mind again, and let the gray asphalt become the black-and-white tones of the crime scene photographs. I didn’t have a photographic memory, but I did pride myself on being able to remember the placement of objects, like the order of paintings in a gallery. It always looked strange in class, but I usually took notes by dividing the page up into different sections, moving clockwise around the sheet. I always remembered things better if I created a map like this.
I tried to move clockwise through my memory of the photographs. The easel at the top of the frame, the painting on it. Catherine on the floor at three o’clock. The desk, with its random but expected assortment of objects. The supply cart next to the easel at eleven o’clock. The placement of everything seemed perfect, not a single item out of place. Not so perfect that it looked staged, but not so messy that it looked tampered with. I sighed, jogging through the flashing lights at the next crosswalk. This was no more helpful than the sketching had been. I didn’t even know what I hoped to find.
Looking up, I realized I must have been walking faster than I’d realized. I was just about ten blocks from home, which meant I was only five blocks away from the Phans’ store, easily the best convenience store-slash-deli in Boston. I’d first stumbled upon it the day we’d moved into our apartment, which had been a sweltering August afternoon. Rebecca, Mel, and I had moved ourselves, Mel navigating the rented box truck up our twisty, only two-way-in-theory street. By the time we’d finished, I could barely make it back down the three flights of stairs, but needed to venture out in search of dinner. The Phans’ shop was the first good-looking place I came to, its windows an eclectic mix of international snack bags and taped-up paper menus. Since then, I stopped in most days on my way home from class.
The bell above the door chimed as I pushed it open, stepping into a blast of overhead heat and the lingering smell of griddled breakfast sandwiches. Stephanie, the Phans’ daughter, looked over her shoulder, smiling when she saw it was me. I’d be lying if I said I came here just for the food, which was good and cheap but admittedly pretty standard deli fare. The truth was, whether I’d admit it openly or not, the Phans had become something of a surrogate family for me. I loved my own family, of course, don’t get me wrong; they were great, when I got to see them at Christmas and maybe once over the summer. But I had been paying my own way through school from day one, and always had to have at least one job, so I just didn’t make it home that much. Stephanie often worked the afternoons, and I’d gotten to know her pretty well over the past two years, especially since we were about the same age as each other. The first time she invited me over for dinner, I’d felt comfortable and comforted in a way I hadn’t since school started.
