Double Homicide

10

Merry and Max in the Pool, 2003, 36 x 48,

oil on canvas, $7,000.00 Merry and Max Eating Cereal, 2002, 54 x 60,

oil on canvas, $15,000.00 Merry and Max with Rubber Ducks, 2003, 16 x 24,

oil on canvas, $5,000.00 Merry and Max Dreaming, 2003, 16 x 24,

oil on canvas, $7,500.00

Katz and Two Moons examined the snapshots of the paintings.

“What are these for?” Darrel asked Summer Riley.

“We send them out to clients who inquire about the artist. Or sometimes just to clients who Larry thinks would be a good match with the artist.”

Still talking about her dead boss in the present tense.

Katz had another look at the photos.

Four paintings, all of them revolving around the same subjects. Two naked, cherubic blond kids, a toddler girl and a slightly older boy.

Katz had seen them before. Dancing around the maypole, a larger canvas displayed in the great room of Larry Olafson’s house. That one had caught his untrained eye. The subject had been rescued from tackiness because Michael Weems could paint. That Olafson was hanging Weems’s work in his private space could’ve been a marketing ploy-taking her to the next level, as Summer had said.

Or could be he just liked her style.

So did someone else.

Two Moons squinted at one of the photos.

He frowned and Katz looked over his shoulder. Merry and Max with Rubber Ducks. The kids sitting on the rim of a bathtub examining the yellow toys. Full frontal nudity, a rumpled towel at the girl’s feet lying across a green-tiled bathroom floor.

Katz cleared his throat. Two Moons slipped the photos into an evidence bag, handed them to Debbie Santana. He told Summer Riley to wait in the gallery office and led Katz out to the front room. The taped outline of Olafson’s body remained affixed to the hardwood floor, and Katz found himself thinking still life. Imagining one of those little rust specks of dried blood to be the red-dot tag affixed to a painting, indicating that it had been sold.

Two Moons said, “What do you think of those paintings?”

“Never mind what I’m thinking,” Katz answered. “You’re thinking they’re kiddie porn.”

Darrel scratched the side of his nose. “Maybe you think they’re kiddie porn and you’re doing what the shrinks say… projecting it on me.”

“Thanks, Dr. Freud,” said Katz.

“Dr. Schadenfreude.”

Katz laughed. “Tell the truth, I don’t know how I feel about them. I saw the one hanging in Olafson’s house and I thought it was good-from an artistic point of view. You see four together, especially that one you were looking at…”

“The way the little girl’s sitting,” said Darrel. “Legs spread, that towel at her feet-we’ve seen it before.”

“Yeah,” said Katz. “Still, these are obviously kids Michael Weems knows. Maybe even her own kids. Artists have… muses. People they paint over and over.”

“Would you hang that stuff in your house?”

“No.”

“Olafson did,” said Darrel. “Meaning maybe he had more than a professional interest in Weems. Maybe he dug the subject matter.”

“Gay and straight and mean and twisted,” said Katz. “Anything’s possible.”

“Especially with this guy, Steve. He’s an onion. We keep peeling, he keeps smelling worse.”

“Whatever he did or didn’t do, someone wanted those paintings badly enough to kill for them. Which also fits with a nonpremeditated scenario. Our bad guy came for the pictures, not for Olafson. Either he tried a sneak-burgle, got caught in the act by Olafson, and there was a confrontation. Or he showed up and demanded them, and there was a confrontation.”

“Makes sense,” said Two Moons. “Either way, the two of them have words, Olafson’s his usual snotty, arrogant self. He turns his back on the guy and boom.”

“Big-time boom,” said Katz. “Summer said Olafson sent out photos to anyone who expresses interest in an artist. Let’s see who was interested in Weems.”

Fifteen clients had received Weems mailings: four in Europe, two in Japan, seven on the East Coast, and two locals. They were Mrs. Alma Maarten and Dr. and Mrs. Nelson Evans Aldren, both with high-end addresses in Las Campanas-a gated golf-course and equestrian development that featured estates with spectacular views.

Katz asked Summer Riley if she knew Maarten and the Aldrens.

“Sure,” she said. “Alma Maarten’s a doll. She’s around eighty and wheelchair-bound. Apparently, in her younger days, she was quite the party giver. Larry kept her on the mailing list to make her feel like she was still part of the scene. The Aldrens are a bit younger but not much. Maybe early seventies. Joyce-Mrs. A.-she’s the one who’s into art.”

“What kind of doctor is the husband?”

“I think he was a cardiologist. He’s retired now. I’ve only seen him once.”

“Big fellow?”

Summer laughed. “Maybe five-four. Why are you asking all this? None of Larry’s clients killed him. I’m sure of that.”

“Why?” asked Two Moons.

“Because they all loved him. That’s part of being a great art dealer.”

“What is?”

“Relating personally. Knowing which artist fits with which client-it’s like matchmaking.”

“Larry was a good matchmaker,” said Katz.

“The best.” The young woman’s eyes misted.

“You miss him.”

“He had so much to teach me,” she said. “Said I was headed straight for the top.”

“As a dealer?”

Summer nodded emphatically. “Larry said I had what it took. He was planning to set me up in a satellite gallery, selling Indian pottery. I was going to be his partner. Now…” She threw up her hands. “Can I go now? I really need to rest.”

“The kids in the paintings,” said Darrel.

“Merry and Max. They’re Michael’s children. They’re really cute and she captures their essence brilliantly.”

The last few words sounded like art-catalog hype.

Katz said, “Where does Michael live?”

“Right here in Santa Fe. She’s got a house just north of the Plaza.”

“How about an address?”

Sighing theatrically, Summer thumbed through a Rolodex. She found the card and pointed to the street and address.

Michael Weems lived on Artist Road.

“Now can I go?” she said. In a lower voice, more to herself than the detectives: “Goddammit! Time to start over.”

She was crying as she left.

Before they set out to talk to the portrayer of Merry and Max, the detectives worked the computer.

No criminal hits on Michael Weems, though ascertaining that fact hadn’t come without confusion. A man with the same name was incarcerated for robbery in Marion, Illinois. Michael Horis Weems, black male, twenty-six years old.

Two Moons said, “Maybe she had a sex change operation.”

“Could be.” Katz raised his red mustache. “At this point, I’ll believe anything.”

Michael Andrea Weems merited fifty-four Google hits, most of them reviews of exhibitions, almost all of those stemming from shows at Olafson’s galleries in New York and Santa Fe.

Hit fifty-two, however, proved to be the exception that made both detectives stop breathing.

A small paragraph in the New York Daily News, and from the snippy phrasing, probably a gossip column rather than straight reportage.

Last year, a Michael Weems premiere heralding a dozen new Merry-Max paintings had been disrupted by the appearance of the artist’s estranged husband, a minister and self-described “spiritual counselor” named Myron Weems.

The irate Myron had stunned onlookers by berating them for patronizing a den of iniquity and for “gazing at filth.” Before gallery personnel could intervene, he’d dived at one of the paintings, yanked it off the wall, stomped the canvas, and destroyed the artwork beyond repair. When he tried to repeat the process with a second painting, onlookers and a security guard managed to subdue the ranting man.

The police had been called, and Myron Weems had been arrested.

Nothing more.

Katz said, “This feels like something.”

Two Moons said, “Let’s plug in Myron’s name.”

Five of the six hits were sermons given at Myron Weems’s church in Enid, Oklahoma. Lots of mentions of “sin” and “abomination.” A couple of direct references to “the filth that is pornography.” The sixth citation was the identical Daily News piece.

“No charges filed?” Katz said.

“Let’s check the legal databases,” Two Moons said. “See if any civil suits come up.”

Half an hour later, they’d found nothing to indicate that Myron Weems had been held accountable for his tantrum.

Two Moons stood up and stretched his big and tall frame. “He humiliates his wife, trashes her work, and she doesn’t press charges?”

“Estranged-husband situation,” said Katz. “That means they were in the process of divorce. The two of them could’ve had a complicated situation. Maybe the incident got bargained away for a better custody or financial arrangement. Or maybe Myron calmed down a bit. She’s still painting the kids.”

“I don’t know, Steve, a guy’s got deep convictions, something to do with his kids. I don’t see him bargaining.”

Katz thought, Welcome to the world of marital discord, partner. He said, “There’s something else to consider. Myron had a relationship with Olafson apart from the art world. He’d helped Olafson deal with booze.”

“All the more reason for him to be angry, Steve. He counsels the guy, and the guy showcases his ex-wife’s work, pushing what he considers dirty pictures. Makes me kinda wonder how tall Myron is.”

A call to Oklahoma Motor Vehicles answered that question. Myron Manning Weems was a male white, with a DOB that put him at fifty-five. More pertinently, he was listed at six-five, two hundred eighty. They requested a fax of Weems’s driver’s license.

“If it says two eighty, it means he’s three hundred,” Two Moons stated. “People always lie.”

The fax machine whirred. The reproduced photo was small, and they blew it up on the station’s photocopy machine.

Myron Weems had a full face, bushy gray hair, and a meaty, cleft shelf of a chin. Tiny eyeglasses perched absurdly on a potato nose. Weems’s neck was even wider than his face and ringed in front, like a twine-wrapped pot roast. The overall impression was a college football tackle gone to seed.

“Big boy,” said Two Moons.

“Very big boy,” Katz answered. “I wonder if he’s in town.”

When the detectives phoned Myron Weems at his house in Enid, Oklahoma, all they got was a machine. “This is the Reverend Dr. Myron Weems…” An oily voice that was surprisingly boyish. Weems’s message ended with his bestowing a blessing for “spiritual and personal growth” upon the caller.

No response at his church, either. There were no records of Weems flying in or out of Albuquerque within the past sixty days.

Katz and Two Moons spent the next three hours canvassing every hotel in Santa Fe, expanded their search, and finally came up with a winner at a cheesy motel on the south side, just two miles from the station.

They drove over and spoke to the clerk-a Navajo kid just out of his teens with poker-straight black hair and a wisp of a mustache. Three days ago, Myron Weems had registered under his own name. He’d arrived in a vehicle whose Oklahoma plates had been duly listed. A ‘94 Jeep Cherokee, which matched the data they’d received from Enid. Weems had paid for a week in advance. The clerk, whose name was Leonard Cole, had seen him yesterday.

“You’re sure?” Katz said.

“Positive,” Cole answered. “The guy is hard to miss. He’s huge.”

Two Moons said, “And you haven’t seen him since.”

“No, sir.”

Cole checked the clock. A television was blaring from the back room. He seemed eager to get back to his program. He took out a key and said, “Wanna check his room?”

“We can’t without a warrant. But you could get in there if you were worried about something.”

“Like what?” said Leonard Cole.

“Gas leak, water leak, something like that.”

“We got no gas, everything’s electric,” said Cole. “But sometimes the showers get leaky.”

They followed Cole to the ground-floor unit. Cole knocked, waited, knocked again, then used his master key. They let him go in first. He held the door wide open and stared into the room.

Everything was neat and clean. Four paintings were stacked against the wall, next to the made-up single bed.

Katz thought: A guy that big sleeping on that bed couldn’t have been fun. Easier to do if you were motivated.

And the evidence of motivation was clear: A box cutter sat atop a plastic-wood dresser. The outermost painting was a shredded mass of curling canvas ribbons, still set snugly in its frame. Leonard Cole looked behind the picture and said, “They’re all cut up. Pretty freaky.”

Two Moons told him to leave the room and lock up. “We’re sending some police officers by to keep a watch. Meanwhile, don’t let anyone in or out. If Weems shows up, call us immediately.”

“Is this guy dangerous?”

“Probably not to you.” Katz took out his cell phone. “But don’t get in his way.” He called for uniform backup and a BOLO on Myron Weems’s Jeep. Then he looked at his partner. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I’m sure I am,” Two Moons said. “Let’s hit it.”

Both detectives hurried toward the Crown Victoria.

All that anger.

The ex-wife.