The Hypnotist

TWENTY-TWO

Lucian finished reading about Vartan Reza’s hit-and-run accident, looked up from his computer screen and stared out of his window at his sliver of a view. The Art Crime Team offices were crammed into FBI headquarters downtown at 26 Federal Plaza. Between the two buildings across the street, he could see a small park with its curving wood benches, exaggerated lights and glass mounds emitting fog plumes. It was an amusement in the midst of the serious courthouses, government agencies, financial buildings and the destroyed World Trade Towers.

He stood and carried his mug of coffee over to the cork wall facing his desk, where there was a patchwork map of his current case. He always organized it the same way. Dead center was a single photo that was key to the core puzzle: the missing or stolen work of art. Overlapping and radiating out from there were photos, sketches and notes about the locations, players and props that related to the crime.

For more than a year this wall had been devoted to the memory stone theft in Rome and so included photos of Malachai Samuels, the Phoenix Foundation, the stones themselves, where they’d been found and hundreds of other related illustrations, diagrams and images. Recently items associated with the theft in the Memorist Society in Vienna had been added to what others saw as an unorganized mess, but which Lucian had carefully arranged.

In the past thirty-six hours, as he’d amassed a dossier on the sculpture at the heart of his newest case, another section of his wall was filling up with photos of Hypnos and the hostage paintings. Bits and pieces of all three crimes arbitrarily overlapped. Now, noticing it, Lucian wondered whether Malachai’s name would surface in the Hypnos crisis.

“How long have you been here?” Doug Comley stood in the door, holding a cardboard cup in one hand and his briefcase in the other.

“A few hours.”

“Still can’t sleep? You okay?”

“Never better. Listen, there’s something curious about the legal battle over the sculpture,” Lucian said. He explained what he’d discovered about the law firm that had been hired to replace Reza. “It’s owned by Tyler Weil’s father.”

“The Met’s director’s father is handling the Iranians’ lawsuit? That sounds like a pretty serious conflict of interest. What do you know about the accident?”

“It was early, raining, the park was empty, and there were no witnesses. The NYPD is investigating but have no leads.”

“I want you to follow through on this.”

“No problem,” Lucian said, and then put his hand up to his temple and massaged his forehead. He’d woken up with a headache that had lifted while he’d been drawing. This was the first sign of its return.

“You all right?” Comley asked.

“Like I said, never better.”

“You’re sure you’re not pushing yourself working on both of these cases? Why don’t you let Richmond-”

“Are you ordering me off?” Lucian asked, jumping six steps ahead.

Comley threw up his hands. “Ordering you? No. Suggesting. If I ordered you off the memory flute case and you kept working on it, then I’d have to fire you, and I don’t have the budget to hire a replacement.”

“I can handle it.”

“Malachai Samuels is tricky, even for us, Lucian. He proved that last year when-”

Comley was interrupted by the receptionist ringing through on the intercom.

“Agent Glass. Someone’s here to see you. She doesn’t have an appointment.”

“Who is it?”

“Her name is Emeline Jacobs.”

She was sitting in one of the blue leatherette chairs, staring straight ahead at a poster of a black-and-white WPA-era photo of New York City’s skyline taken by Stieglitz.

“Miss Jacobs?”

She turned, saw Lucian and stood up. Her hair was as gold and her skin as pale as he remembered. Her clothes were monochromatic: cream pants, a cream silk round-necked blouse and a cream sweater tied around her shoulders. No rings, no bracelets, not even a watch. Just a thin gold chain around her neck that bore a tiny gold paintbrush charm with a red tip.

Lucian tried not to stare but failed as a memory rushed him like a hurricane-force wind.

One cold February day, two weeks before Solange’s birthday, he’d walked from his dorm uptown to Forty-Seventh Street and Fifth Avenue to New York’s famed Diamond District, where hundreds of individual jewelers rented booths in the arcade buildings that lined the street. For over an hour, he had scanned their offerings, searching for something to give her that he thought she’d like and that he could afford. Everything was either too expensive or too impersonal. And then, in the fourth building, in the back, where there was less noise and foot traffic and the displays were more pedestrian, he passed a case of hundreds of tiny charms, all exquisitely made, and that was where he’d bought the one now hanging around Emeline Jacobs’s neck.

He gestured toward his office. Inside, he invited her to sit. “How can I help you?” She didn’t answer right away. The way she held his glance felt familiar somehow, an odd combination of curiosity and innocence. Was he wrong or had Solange always paused just so, regarding him almost exactly this way before she spoke? It was the artist in her observing her surroundings. The raw, involuntary sadness he suddenly felt after so long surprised him.

“My father’s been very upset since your visit,” Emeline said finally. Her soft but raspy voice was a relief and broke through his crazy, meandering thoughts.

“I’m sorry about that…”

“If you still need him to, he’ll look at the painting.”

It would save Lucian hours of work if Jacobs could identify the mark on the back of the Matisse. “That would be an enormous help.”

“He’s not doing it to help you. He needs to know if it’s the same painting for his own peace of mind…” She hesitated and shook her head as if she were still having an argument with someone who wasn’t there. “I don’t believe in closure. Therapists don’t show any respect for their patients when they suggest there can be an end to missing someone. Seeing this painting could threaten the little emotional stability he has left. He dwells in hell, Agent Glass. I see it in his eyes every time I look at him.”

Emeline’s voice communicated pathos and pain and was rife with emotion, but she didn’t twist her hands in her lap or exhibit any of the signs of distress that Lucian would expect to see in someone talking about such a difficult situation. He didn’t doubt that she was telling him the truth, but she was exhibiting amazing self-control.

“‘Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell,’” he said, surprised that the quote had come back to him.

“Emily Dickinson,” Emeline said. “I have a book of poetry with that poem in it. The page corner is turned down.”

Lucian didn’t need to ask whose book it was. Emeline must have all of Solange’s books. And what else? Her drawings? Journals? Were there letters from him that she’d found? Had she inherited all the remnants of Solange’s life? How much had she learned about him?

“We’ll do what we can to make it as painless as possible for your father.”

Her laugh was too bitter for someone so young, full of the disappointments of someone who’d lived much longer and suffered much more. Lucian had such a strong, sudden sense of being with Solange that he was swept under, submerged in murky confusion.

Was this a hallucination, a reaction to whatever he’d been exposed to in Vienna? Or did this have to do with his headaches? He wanted to break Emeline Jacobs open and see if the other woman was inside her, to find out where Solange was hiding.

“There’s nothing you can do to make it less painful. He’s never had a single day of real joy or happiness since…” She broke off, took a deep breath, then continued. “He just has days that are slightly less awful than others. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to see your father like that, for your whole life? To try to do everything you can to make it better? Make him really smile? My father’s never recovered.” She clasped her hands together.

She’s closing up, Lucian thought. And then, as if completing the act, Emeline crossed her legs. Bare legs, he noticed. He glanced back at her face, but her eyes revealed nothing. They were a stranger’s eyes. Whatever he’d seen there before must have been in his imagination.

“I’m curious about something. When I knew Solange twenty years ago she was an only child. I didn’t know she had a sister.”

“When I was eight years old my mother, my father, my brother and I were in a car accident. They were all killed. It was touch and go for me…I don’t remember anything about it…but I was in a coma for six weeks. My aunt and uncle, Solange’s parents, were there every day. She’d died five months before and they were still grieving, but I was all that was left of their family. When I recovered they adopted me. I don’t think they wanted to at first, but once they decided to, I think they hoped I’d fill up some of the space that she’d left.”

“Did you?”

“I only made it worse. I was a constant reminder to them of what they’d lost. My aunt never really recovered, and when I went off to college she finally gave in to her depression and committed suicide. Andre has been drinking himself into a state of numbness every day since then. He blames himself for all of it-for leaving Solange in the store the night it was robbed, for trusting his assistant to lock up, for not being able to save his wife from her sorrow.” She shrugged as if the burden of the story she’d just shared had settled on her shoulders and was too heavy.

“I’m sorry,” he offered compassionately. “They’re inadequate words, I know, but there are no adequate words, are there?”

“Too many people try to assuage pain that can never be eradicated. All you can do is salute the grief, acknowledge that you carry it, too, and that even though we all travel that path alone we are not alone in traveling it.” Emeline said the words as if she’d said them many times before. Was this what she’d learned from her adopted father or mother?

Whatever pleasure Lucian had in life came from solving mysteries. When there was something he didn’t understand he forced himself to keep looking until he found a solid, logical and comprehensible solution. But he knew there was no explanation for what was happening-one minute she was a stranger; the next he felt as if he’d always known her. He had to get back to working the case. To getting out of his head.

“Could you and your father come and see the painting at the Met this afternoon?”

“I think it would be better if you could bring it to the apartment. About five?”

The painting had been tested for fingerprints and any residual evidence that might help in the search for the person who had destroyed it, so there was no reason it couldn’t be moved, but Lucian didn’t think it was a good idea. “It will be horrible no matter where your father sees the Matisse, but it might be emotionally easier for him to see it in a neutral environment.”

“Or the opposite. At home my father will have the comfort of his surroundings. That’s really all he has left-some artwork and some memories.”

“And you. He has you.”

Emeline didn’t react except to reach for her pocketbook. Lucian knew the meeting was over. He felt disappointed and wasn’t sure why. He waited for her to stand, but she didn’t. She just sat there looking down at the black leather satchel.

“Do you have a few more minutes?” she asked without glancing up.

“Yes, of course.”

Opening the bag, Emeline reached inside and pulled out a few sheets of paper. She unfolded them, laid them on her lap and smoothed down the center crease with her forefinger. Still staring down at the type that Lucian couldn’t read upside down, she said, “I printed these e-mails out. My e-mail address at work is easy enough for anyone to find-it’s right on the store’s Web site.”

“What store?”

“My father’s framing store.”

“You work there?” Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. He was stunned.

“I grew up there… At some point Andre was too sick to run it anymore. I have a graduate degree in art history. It just made sense.” She was still running her finger back and forth on the paper as if she were trying to iron out the fold mark.

“What are those?”

“About six months after they brought me home, my adopted parents took me to see the same reincarnationist who was in the news with you last month.”

“Malachai Samuels?”

“Yes. I saw both him and another doctor at the foundation, Beryl Talmage.”

“Why?” As soon as he asked, he was sorry.

“My aunt and uncle thought I might know things.”

Lucian felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. “Know things? How?”

“And they both wanted to believe it so badly,” Emeline said. “It started in the hospital when they saw this…”

She brushed the hair off her forehead and Lucian stared at the small, white crescent-shaped scar above her right eyebrow.

He felt as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus.

“A birthmark?” he asked.

“Not a birthmark. I got it in the car accident. It’s the same scar in the same place as hers. You recognize it, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. How could you have the same scar?”

“Have you ever heard of walk-ins?”

“In what context?”

“Reincarnation.”

“No.”

She started running her finger up and down the crease of the page again. Lucian strained to read what she was trying so hard to wear away.

“There’s a theory,” she said, “that in order to accomplish its mission, an advanced soul can walk into another physical body that has been or is about to be abandoned. Like the body of someone about to commit suicide.”

“Or the body of a child in a coma?”

She nodded. “My adopted parents desperately wanted to believe that was what had happened to me instead of the more logical explanation. Our families had spent a lot of time together. I’d loved Solange, I’d looked up to her. She was like an older sister to me. And she was an artist. That was the most amazing thing. She used to pose me, then show me drawings she did of me. I thought she was making magic. Every kid picks up mannerisms and remembers things about the people they are in awe of. But my aunt and uncle were convinced that Solange’s soul, her spirit, had walked into my body when I was in a coma. That she was still alive in me.”

“How long did you go to the Phoenix Foundation?”

“A few months. The doctors said it could have been a case of reincarnation, but I wasn’t a good subject for hypnosis, I couldn’t concentrate deeply enough, and we never got very far. I was scared of the whole process, but I knew how much my aunt and uncle wanted me to somehow be her, and I didn’t want to disappoint them. I knew how desperate they were for the police to find the man who’d killed Solange, but there were no suspects. There were no witnesses. I thought if I could help solve the case they’d be happy, and then we could all be happy. That was all I wanted.”

The office was too warm. Lucian took off his jacket. There was one witness, but he hadn’t seen anything that could help. He’d never felt so useless, so impotent as he did in the weeks after the robbery. The police had interviewed him a dozen times or more, but all Lucian remembered was a brown sleeve, a man’s hand and the glitter of a knife. “I’m confused. Why did they think hypnotizing you would help the police solve the case?” he asked.

“If I was Solange reincarnated, then I had seen who broke in that night. I’d seen the killer’s face.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not if you believe in reincarnation.”

“Do you?”

Emeline looked down at her hands for a moment. “I wanted to.”

Lucian thought she sounded younger just then. As if she was suddenly remembering too much and it was more painful than she’d expected. It was time to come back to the present problem.

“What does all of this have to do with those e-mails?” he asked.

“I was in the news, Agent Glass. My uncle was distraught. He was telling everyone he met how determined he was to catch his daughter’s killer and that he believed I was going to help him. It was a sensational crime, and the interviews he gave provided the press with all the fodder they needed to keep the story alive.” She paused and looked down at what she was holding. “When all that crazy stuff happened last month in Vienna at the concert and Malachai Samuels was shot, newspapers and all sorts of blogs dug up everything about him and the foundation. Some of them ran lists of anyone with any notoriety he’d ever treated.”

Emeline’s hand trembled slightly as she held out the papers. Lucian took them and, with a sense of dread, read the first note.

The two lines of type seemed larger on the page than they actually were, as if their toxic meaning gave them billboard stature. He read the second and third printouts even though all of them contained exactly the same message.

Tell anyone what I look like and I’ll kill you before they find me. I did it once. I’ll do it again. I’ll kill you and your father, too.