Painted to Death, page 4
I turned back to Rebecca, who still sat staring into her glass. “I think you just have to let it go for now. Let Benny come to the idea on his own, you know. Let him think it was his idea in the first place.” I smiled encouragingly.
Rebecca nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know you’re right. It’s just a very hard situation to watch.”
I patted her on the back as I slid past her chair, getting the colander out of the pantry to drain the pasta.
Once we were both sitting back down, glasses refilled and spaghetti served, I decided to make my own suggestion.
“Maybe it would be good for you to speak to someone,” I tried. “You’ve been doing so much for everyone else, I think it could be good for you to have more support for yourself.”
She made some noncommittal noises, but I knew Rebecca well enough to know this wasn’t an outright dismissal. She thought about everything carefully, thoughtfully, not just her words. Knowing her, we would drop this topic now, only for her to bring it up again in a few days after she’d taken her time to think it over. So I didn’t push any further in the moment, instead pretending to be absorbed in the food.
Rebecca put her fork down and was looking at me curiously now. “Sam, why did you really leave early today? We looked for you at lunch to join us, but we couldn’t find you.”
I paused mid-bite, wondering how slowly I could chew to buy myself time without looking like an actual farm animal. Of course I couldn’t lie to Rebecca.
“The police came to talk to me this morning. I left after that.” I looked up. Rebecca’s eyebrows had knitted back together, the furrow as deep as ever. “It’s okay, really. I just didn’t feel like talking much or being around everyone after that.” I tried my most convincing voice: “It was completely fine, but you know what the department is like when you don’t feel like being social. Class was just too much to go back to.”
Rebecca nodded and I hoped she would leave it at that, but of course I should have known better. I wound up giving her the same rundown I had told Stephanie earlier, but again leaving out my post-interview crime scene sketch or my memory palace walkthrough of Catherine’s studio.
When I finished talking through the detectives’ questions, the information they had shared (or let slip, though Marks clearly had the imperceptible signaling down pat), Rebecca had finished eating.
“No,” she said simply. No anger, no defiance. Just a simple statement of what we both knew to be true.
Despite what the detectives had suggested, Catherine couldn’t have killed herself. Although I had been ruminating on this all day, hearing someone else confirm my thinking seemed definitive. Our eyes met as we silently acknowledged what this must mean.
“So, you do realize,” I started slowly, not sure how directly I should or could make this next statement, and finished in a rush before I could change my mind. “This means we think someone else killed Catherine.”
Rebecca was still sitting, poised, with a calm and determined expression. She nodded simply.
“I know that sounds extreme, but I think that has to be true. We both know she was happy; she had no reason to kill herself. She would have talked to us if there was something going on,” Rebecca reasoned. “And I know you said you’d seen her get the medications mixed up before, but I think this would have taken a lot of insulin. Catherine would have realized and stopped. Also, I remember she wasn’t drinking that night, since she knew she wanted to go back and work in the studios. She wouldn’t have been especially clumsy.”
I let these statements sink in. Even if we agreed that Catherine’s death had been murder, did I really think Rebecca would be any more encouraging of my investigating than Stephanie had been? She might not always be as outspoken as Steph, but Rebecca would never think twice about warning you away from a bad idea. If I wanted someone on my side in this, I would have to work hard to convince her it was a good idea.
“The thing is, I don’t think the police will necessarily agree with us. I did try to tell them how impossible I thought their scenario sounded,” I said. “And they dropped it, eventually, but I don’t think they’re going to take my word for it and leave at that.” I paused, hoping Rebecca would get to the next logical point without making me say it.
“Maybe we should ask Benny to call them – he could go back and talk to the detectives about this again,” Rebecca said.
“Sure, we could do that. Or, maybe I could look into it a bit more first.”
Rebecca’s eyes hardened, taking on the look they get right before she tells me off for leaving dirty laundry lying around or having too many lights on.
I rushed on, trying to cut her off at the path. “That way, we could go to the police with more information, a bit more background on why we think it couldn’t have happened the way they said.” Her face softened somewhat.
If I do say so myself, I think this sounded as good a reason as any to jump into a murder investigation.
“Even if you do look into what happened,” Rebecca said slowly, emphasis on if, “where would you even start? I can’t think of anyone who would have any reason to hurt Catherine. She was one of the nicest people I know.”
I know what a cliché that can sound like, but Rebecca definitely had a point. It would be hard to think of anyone who would have a motive for doing this. It wasn’t just that Catherine was nice, but she was quiet, easy to get along with. She was almost easy to overlook, until a few weeks had gone by and you realized she was the only person in class who had actually done all the work, never been late, and always had something constructive to say about everyone else’s work. Catherine was quietly determined, a work ethic I usually put down to her upbringing with a single mom. I knew it couldn’t have been easy, and like me, Catherine was only here because of financial aid and her part-time job. As supportive as Rebecca could be, Catherine was the one you would want to go to with any kind of practical problem, like dealing with a professor or completing a project. She could always be depended on for solutions.
But maybe we were approaching this the wrong way. Death wasn’t fair, and people died all the time who hadn’t done anything wrong. It seemed like we couldn’t start by only looking for a “good” reason why someone would want to do this. I said as much to Rebecca.
“That’s true,” she said, considering. “I guess it could have been a stranger? Some disturbed person who happened to wander into the building? You know the security there isn’t exactly strict.” She said this last part almost brightly, and I could understand why. The possibility of a stranger meant that it couldn’t be anyone of us, anyone Catherine knew. I would have to tread lightly on this topic with Rebecca.
“That’s certainly a good point,” I said. “I’m sure the police will be looking into that idea. In the meantime, let’s just give it some more thought, okay? I know it sounds far-fetched, but I’m sure there’s something we can do or find that’ll be good to bring back to the detectives.”
Rebecca nodded, doing the jaw clenching again as she considered her next words.
I stayed silent until finally she decided to speak: “What about Thompson?”
Our eyes met. Thompson meant Professor James Thompson, longtime painting professor. His portraits were known for being something out of a movie, with huge figures set against theatrical backdrops in stark lighting and deep shadows. The man was hardly less dramatic than his paintings, always involved in whatever the latest uproar was on campus, from fair pay for graduate assistants to switching to paper straws in the cafe. But simply being dramatic didn’t mean he was capable of murder. And I knew this wasn’t what Rebecca was thinking. Because you know how there’s always that one professor whom all the female students know about, even if they’ve never taken a class with him? And not because he’s cute. Thompson was that professor, whispered about in the women’s bathroom and in glances, in unspoken exchanges in class. Catherine had been in his open studio section all year, preparing a set of paintings for the graduating students’ exhibition. We all knew that she had been spending every spare minute in the studio, meeting with him during his office hours for additional critique.
“As far as I know, Catherine hadn’t been having any problems with him,” I said.
Between the lines, we both knew what this really meant: neither of us had heard any rumors about the two of them, anything to suggest she was the latest student he had approached.
“Catherine might not have said anything to us,” Rebecca countered. “I know it sounds extreme, but I think if we’re trying to come up with alternate explanations, he should at least be considered.”
I had never taken a class with the man but had heard enough about his behavior to see the sense in this.
We agreed to leave it at. I almost told her not to tell anyone else about this conversation, then thought better of it, not wanting to spook Rebecca any more than I already had. I didn’t want her to think that I already considered everyone in our circle, in our department, to be a possible suspect. If I had learned nothing else from years of overhearing my mom’s true crime podcasts, it was that a person is much more likely to be killed by someone they know than a total stranger.
“Well, in any event, did you manage to get time off for next Wednesday?” Rebecca asked, forcing a subject change.
“Oh, yes. Thanks for the reminder. I was able to switch shifts, so I can make it all day.”
Seemingly minutes after her death, the school had announced that they would be holding a memorial exhibition for Catherine, a show of her paintings. Benny, Rebecca, and I had agreed to arrange it, and would spend next Wednesday hanging a group of eighteen paintings in the school gallery. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this task. I’ll be honest: like many artists, installing work is my least favorite part of making something.
I helped Rebecca clear away the dishes, then made a (true) excuse about needing to finish an essay, and went back to my room, settling into bed with my phone and laptop. I texted Stephanie first: R votes for investigating, you’ve been overruled. She immediately replied with a thumbs-down emoji and a few choice words about my common sense that I won’t repeat.
I opened the laptop, clicking open my essay outline so that I could at least tell myself that I was actually working on homework. But I also wanted to start thinking about Catherine’s death and the people around her, before Rebecca thought better of it and came in to tell me off. I looked up Catherine’s social media accounts, but already each page was buried in memorial posts about how missed she would be. It would take me ages to scroll back through these to get to her actual posts. Instead, I settled for checking the photos she’d been tagged in most recently. The album was the usual mix of student events, a gallery reception the month before, a few shots of her and Benny over winter break. They were from the same town in Western Massachusetts, so usually drove back together for the holidays. Catherine’s aunt had come to live with them during her mom’s last months and had stayed after her death, so Catherine still went back there for breaks.
I don’t know what I was looking for exactly, but there certainly weren’t any photos of someone hovering over Catherine with a murderous look in their eye. I opened up my email instead, scrolling through for the last group thread we had. Rebecca, Benny, Catherine and I had been planning a trip together for the summer after Catherine and Benny graduated, a few days in California (chosen solely because we were planning while it was the middle of winter in Boston). We had sent a few notes back and forth over winter break, Rebecca sending details of various vacation rentals and the rest of us responding with thumbs up and funny GIFs. Catherine had sent a photo of her and Benny in party hats and fake mustaches, going through boxes of childhood things in Benny’s attic.
I think this was as much as I was going to find of Catherine online: someone who loved her friends, who worked hard at school and kept her head down. If I was really going to find out anything new about her, or at the very least more personal than this, I would need to look in the one place she seemed most herself: her studio.
Chapter Five
So I decided to just lightly poke around, definitely nothing that would involve capital “I” Investigating. Just a light rummage in Catherine’s studio before class. Snooping, if that wasn’t such a dirty word. The police tape had come down, so technically it was open to anyone now, even if the police were still at school and still interviewing (or just having “quick chats,” or whatever they wanted to call it). Especially to anyone with a valid reason for being there, like that I’d lent Catherine a pencil the week before she died and I definitely needed it back now. Not a weak excuse at all, thanks.
When I walked into school that morning, through the groups of smokers back in their rightful places, the lobby was silent compared to the previous morning, emptied of gawkers. Still, there was a slight fizz in the air, an electric current running through the hallways that I very much hoped was not just me. I had nothing to be nervous about, I reminded myself while I made my way upstairs, trying to remember how I usually walked – casually. I was just looking for a pencil.
The senior studios were on the top floor of the building, the better for taking advantage of the skylights cut throughout the roof in regular intervals. Catherine’s studio was in a large room on the east side of the building, with one whole wall of windows to catch the morning light (and the lights from the jumbotrons during Red Sox games in the evenings). Each studio suite had room for eight to ten students, partitioned out evenly with temporary, movable walls on wheels, walls pockmarked with the push pins, occasional graffiti, and intentional and unintentional paint smears of a thousand previous students. The studios would empty out at the end of each year, to be reset and refilled in the fall. Some people would leave their small white cubicles nearly empty, choosing to hang up only one piece at a time while they worked on it in a minimalist heaven, while others did their best to turn their studio into a living room or bedroom, with heaps of cushions and fabric hung up on the walls. Inevitably, squabbles would break out between the two factions, with the former accusing the latter of unnecessary noise and mess. The faculty tried not to get involved, only shuffling students around if they absolutely had to. I’m sure they were thankful for the rotating schedule that meant each professor only served as a senior mentor for one semester at a time.
Catherine had been the former bare walls type, while her studio neighbor, a girl named Julia, who made paintings of animals and snack foods, was the latter. Julia’s cushions and blankets spilled out of her cubicle, and you could still see where Catherine had tried to gently tuck the fabrics back under the temporary wall between them. It was one of the larger suites of studios, so there were nine other students who worked in the room: Benny; six other girls whom I knew to smile at but never spoke to beyond a hello; and three senior guys, the less said about them the better. They were the type we could all easily picture in ten years’ time: putting giant, probably rusty, steel sculptures of basic geometric shapes up at the kind of huge, empty warehouse space favored by contemporary modernist galleries and commercial art fairs. In other words, the three of them were basically interchangeable white men in different colors of baseball caps, all working through the same macho crap. On the plus side, there’s still a lot of money in large rusty sculptures.
Stepping into Catherine’s studio now, still washed in nine am sunlight only slightly weakened for it being winter, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of familiarity and nostalgia. The space still smelled like oil paint and turpentine, chemical but comforting, laced with the faint hint of stale coffee and old paper, as if Catherine had just stepped out to lunch and would be back and picking up a paintbrush at any moment. The only place in the building that smelled better to me than any of the painting studios was the darkroom, where I had worked in a work study position my first year here. Nothing was as Proustian for me as the smell of photo developer (especially since I had once spilled about a gallon of it all over myself), but oil paint and coffee came pretty close.
Although I knew that the police had been through everything, presumably dusting for fingerprints and whatever else they could find, it still felt like Catherine had been the last person to touch these things, to use the pens scattered across the desk or flip through these books. I was almost afraid to touch anything, as if I would wipe off any remaining trace of her. I gingerly reached out and picked up a pencil, using the end of it to tip open the book sitting on top of a small stack: Fathers on Film: Paternity and Masculinity in 1990s Hollywood. I couldn’t remember Catherine mentioning a film class this semester, but the topic was certainly fitting for her.
I sighed and sank down onto the desk chair. If I was really going to do this, I would have to really do it. No more gingerly poking around, no more sitting and looking. Before I could think twice, I picked up the whole stack of books and pulled them into my lap, flipping through each one before re-placing it on the desk. There was one more film book about women directors and violence, a book of Eric Fischl paintings (gestural, colorful figures against idyllic Hamptons backgrounds), and one book I wasn’t quite sure what to make of: The Claims Process: Administrative and Judicial Methods. From the table of contents, it looked to follow the paternity theme of the first book, as far as I could tell. I made a mental note to try to find Catherine’s class schedule for the semester. We weren’t quite as sequestered over here in the art department as it sometimes seemed, so it was entirely possible that Catherine had been taking classes in sociology or gender studies, even an elective in the law school.
There didn’t seem to be anything else of particular interest on the desk, and unfortunately it was more of a long metal table than a desk, so no deep or hidden drawers to go through here. I took a few photos of the desk just to be safe, turning to get a picture of the easel and the rest of the space as well, even taking one of Julia’s fabrics spilling under the wall. Judging by the lack of a sketchbook or pages of notes lying around, I assumed the police had taken away anything I might have also been interested in. Inconsiderate of them, but reasonable, I thought. I couldn’t see Catherine’s bag anywhere, either, so assumed this was probably with the police, too. Just as well, since if she was anything like me, it would be an entire backpack filled only with fifteen pencils and two tampons.
