The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 24

At his suggestion, I meet Barry Chisworth at Rumjungle, an elaborate bar-restaurant in the lower level of Mandalay Bay. Like most of the other restaurants I passed on my way (the French Bistro, Red Square, etc.), this one has a theme. I’m just not sure what it is. Sheets of water cascade down the walls. Flames dance from an open pit. A safari fantasy, I guess. With water elements.

Chisworth is a stocky guy in his fifties, with the overdeveloped shoulders of a weight lifter. He has one of those little tufts of hair between his lower lip and his chin. “Thanks for giving me an excuse to get out of the house,” he says, with a crunching handshake. “I live alone, of course, but still…” He laughs at his own joke and I join him. “Try a mojito,” he suggests, holding up a tall glass. “Hemingway’s fave. Slammin’ little drink.”

I usually stick to beer, but I get the feeling Chisworth will be disappointed if I reject his suggestion. “Why not?”

“Two more of these bad boys,” he tells the bartender, and then turns back to me. “So… you want to know about the Gabler girls.” He leans toward me. “I want to make it clear that I won’t go on the record. Whatever I say – it’s strictly background.”

“You got it.”

“Well, it was some case. I see a lot of stuff – but that one was… definitely something.”

He fingers the tuft of hair, which he does often, as if it reassures him. It reminds me of the way Sean used to touch his blanket.

Sean. When I think of one of the boys in this incidental way – and this happens dozens of times a day – it’s like a trapdoor opens in my mind. And at first, I fell through it, fell into a kind of tumbling despair. But over the past couple of weeks, the thought of my sons, the fact that they’re missing – it doesn’t hit me the same way. I almost have to work at it, concentrate on my loss to feel it. And it occurs to me that somewhere deep inside, I’m getting used to it.

The waiter serves up the two mojitos, and Chisworth checks his glass toward mine. “Cheers.”

“You know,” he says, “I always figured the guy who did those two girls was more than a one-shot wonder, so to speak. You find anything yet?”

“My interest is more specific.” I explain who I am.

He does a double take. “I thought you looked familiar.” He fingers the tuft. “But… Jesus, how can there be a link between your sons and the Gablers?”

I shrug. “Identical twins.”

“Twins, yeah, but… not the same kind of twins. I mean, these were showgirls. Nice girls, maybe, but working a topless show, all the same. It’s hard to figure how the same psycho who snatched them would have any interest in… what?… male first-graders.”

I shrug.

“Well, for what it’s worth… a couple of things bugged the hell out of me.”

“Really.”

He leans toward me. “You’ve got this girl. Cut in two. Now the animals had been at her wounds for two weeks, so that wiped out any chance of establishing what kind of implement was used to sever her torso. You can conclude it was something sharp, probably metallic, but that’s about it. On the stand, and therefore in print, you can only present evidence and conclusions. In this case” – he shakes his head – “the soft tissues were really tattered. Even the bone had been nibbled on.”

My heart lurches.

“Metal fragments from wounds of that magnitude would normally be present. And they would help narrow down the type of weapon. With Clara Gabler, animals consumed those fragments. Any spatter evidence was also compromised by insects and wildlife.”

“Two weeks is a long time.”

“Any other climate, actually, and the remains would have been pudding – so in that sense, the remains told me quite a bit. Now, keep in mind that I’ve seen a lot of wounds. Hell, I’ve made a lot of wounds. And while I couldn’t testify to this, I’d say beyond my reasonable doubt that Clara Gabler was cut in two by a power rotary blade – a sweep from left to right across the torso. Good-sized blade. Maybe like so.” He puts down his mojito for a moment and holds his hands about a foot and a half apart in the air. “Fine kerf and hard enough to cut through bone without making too much of a mess. I say that because there wasn’t much splintering.”

“And these saws, saws like this would be… available? You could buy them?”

“Oh, sure. We’re just talking about a table saw. You could get it at Home Depot. But the thing is, to use a big table saw like that in the wilderness, you’d need a generator. Either that or an old-fashioned takeoff from a vehicle driveshaft to run the thing. And a platform to work on. And you’d have to get all that gear up there, way up past Icebox Canyon. A few ATVs, maybe one good off-road vehicle like a Land Rover, and you could do it. They’re illegal in the area where the bodies were found, but hey, it’s not like the Mojave is fenced in. And there’s a relatively easy way in from the direction of Death Valley. We found tracks, but that’s the thing – we found lots of tracks.

“But here’s the thing that got to me about it: Why bother schlepping a rotary saw and a generator and some kind of table up there? Why call attention to yourself by breaking the law with ATVs and so on if you’re going to commit murder? That’s what I couldn’t figure. I mean if you’re going to mutilate someone – a chain saw would be very efficient.”

I see what he means. “So – why would someone go to all that trouble? In your opinion.”

“I just couldn’t get my head around it.” He shrugs, takes another sip of his mojito. “Of course, whoever murdered the Gablers is obviously a whack job, so I guess there’s no reason the method should make sense.”

I gesture to the bartender for another round.

“Pretty good drink, huh?”

“It is.” This guy, I think, wasn’t kidding about getting out of the house.

He talks about Hemingway and “Kooba” for a while, his trip to Havana, his opinions about the embargo. It takes me a while to bring him back to the subject at hand.

“You have any other flashes on the Gabler case?”

He pulls on the tuft of chin hair. “Oh, yeah – and this also really got my head in a wringer. You read the autopsy report, right?”

“I looked at it.”

“So you know this chick, Clara, was alive when this… took place?”

I nod.

“There were traces of sawdust on her body. Back of her calves, back of the head, soles of the shoes, fingers. Pine dust. But no defensive wounds, no injuries to fingertips or toes.”

“A coffin?”

“It’s possible. I just mention that. Maybe the guy was going to bury them but changed his mind. But here’s what I really thought was weird: You get this massive injury to Clara Gabler, who was alive at the time it was inflicted. Yet I found no sign of restraint. No abrasions, no tissue damage to the wrists or ankles. And no visible damage from a struggle to get free, no defensive wounds at all, no flesh or dirt or wood beneath the fingernails. Nothing.”

“And that means, what? Drugs?”

“That’s what I thought, but I found nothing. Zip.”

“So what does it mean?”

“It means she was not restrained and, as far as I could determine, she wasn’t drugged. The woman is cut in half, but she’s not restrained. You tell me – how do you pull that off? Just lay down there, honey. Okay, now don’t move. This won’t hurt a bit.” He shakes his head.

Something dark begins to crawl around in the back of my mind, but whatever it is – I can’t get a fix on it. “So maybe she didn’t know it was going to happen.”

“Maybe. But I told you. I ran all kinds of tests. First I’m looking for sedatives, opioids, tranquilizers. No. And no muscle relaxants. I even scanned for paralytics. Nothing. I came up blank.”

“How about the other Gabler – the one who was shot?”

“She was executed,” Chisworth says. “Plain and simple. Prone, on the ground, facedown. One shot, back of the head, gun just far enough from the skull to avoid a mess. That got me, too, tell you the truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“The comparison. I mean Clara’s death involves a lot of trouble and hassle. Dragging a lot of equipment up to an inconvenient spot. And then, with her twin it’s just the opposite. No muss, no fuss. All business.” He drains his mojito. “Why?”

At seven the following morning, I’m in the car with my supplies: two bottles of water, sunscreen, Orioles cap, and sunglasses. That third mojito was definitely a mistake. I continue to regret it as I head out to Tropicana Boulevard. The hard morning light bounces off the polished curves of other cars and makes me wince. It helps when I hang a left on Charleston and point the car due west – away from the sun. I’m on my way to the Red Rock Canyon, the site where Carla and Clara Gabler were murdered.

I drive through miles of terrain flat as a communion wafer. If God didn’t make it that way, Asplundh or Caterpillar picked up the slack. Eventually, actual subdivisions give way to future subdivisions, some of them nothing but an expanse of bulldozed dirt and a Southwest-style entryway landscaped with a few good-sized cacti. Upper One Hundreds! Low Two Hundreds. Low Four Hundreds. Only four left! This is boomtown. I could see it on the satellite map in Holly Goldstein’s office: the city metastasizing toward the surrounding mountains.

To the west, development stops just short of Red Rock Canyon – one of a number of parks and conservation areas on the way out to Death Valley and the California line. I can see as I approach how beautiful it is: a desert basin backdropped by a crenelated escarpment of red sandstone. Five dollars at the booth (which opens at six A.M.) gets me onto the thirteen-mile scenic drive. The ranger gives me a brochure that covers the flora and fauna, the trailheads, and a little history of the area. There’s even a simple map of the drive and the trailheads. “Icebox Canyon?” she replies when I ask. “Park in the lot at milepost number eight. And take plenty of water. Won’t be an icebox today.”

There’s already a car in the lot, a Dodge pickup with a pair of bull’s horns fixed to the hood. The bumper sticker reads MY KID CAN BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT. I guzzle half a bottle of water, stick a fresh bottle in the pocket of my cargoes, and follow the sign to the trailhead.

Within fifteen minutes, I give up on the idea of actually going to the spot where the Gablers were found. That is in a small canyon above and behind Icebox, a place called Conjure Canyon.

I’ve done a good bit of rock climbing but not much since my college days. None at all since a year or so after the boys were born. And I didn’t come here prepared to follow in the footsteps of the hiker. No climbing shoes, for one thing. And free climbing the almost vertical upper wall of Icebox would not be a good idea for someone whose last climb was years ago.

I’d been thinking I could find a way around, a way to circle in. Now that I’m here, I can see that the terrain is so rugged, it would take me hours. I’d need hiking boots, a backpack, a lot more water. I decide to settle for getting close enough to the crime scene to get a feel for the place.

Right away, a couple of things bother me. First of all, I see what Chisworth meant. If his hunch about the rotary saw and the generator is correct, the killer had to drag a lot of equipment to a very inconvenient site. A site that happens to be close to a very popular hiking area. Sure, most tourists probably just make the standard trek, the one outlined in all the guidebooks – to the floor of Icebox and back to the parking lot. But the area around Icebox is popular with rock climbers – that’s why Josh Gromelski was climbing there. There’s lots of wilderness around this part of Nevada: why pick a spot with so many potential witnesses? And with all the outdoor enthusiasts in this part of the West, the killer must also have known that someone would stumble upon the remains of the Gabler twins. Sooner rather than later. Why not pick a place just as inaccessible but less popular?

The first twenty minutes, I’m crossing flat desert, walking past cholla cactus, creosote bushes, and Joshua trees. The walk is relatively easy, although it’s rocky and I have to watch my step. Then I begin to get into rougher terrain. Before long, I wonder if I’m going the right way. This may be a popular hike, listed in the brochure as moderate, but the trail’s not well marked. It’s not a national park, I tell myself; it’s a wilderness area. Suck it up.

Sometimes, I’m forced to climb over rocks and boulders. A few times I have to backtrack because I took a wrong turn and ended up on a cliff edge. Ten minutes later, I roll an ankle. It hurts, but it’s not serious. A little farther on, the terrain is so rough I don’t know if I’m still on the trail.

I’m still enjoying the effort of the hike, but I realize I’m out of shape and unprepared. I should have popped for a guide… or at least a topo map.

The sun will become an issue before long. I can feel the heat behind the temporary cool, waiting to lock on as soon as the sun gets a direct shot at me. Already, the air is warmer, and sunlight lasers off the rocks, slicing in through the open sides of my sunglasses. When I’m not in shadow, the rocks are warming up right under my hands.

Once I reach the floor of Icebox Canyon, the sun becomes less of a problem and I decide to climb a little way up, picking a route toward a shelf of rock where a piñon tree twists out of the stone. It’s a tougher climb than I thought it would be, and by the time I get there, I’m huffing for breath and glad to sit down. Right away, I can see that I’m not the first to find this spot. A crumpled Juicy Fruit gum wrapper nestles against the piñon’s roots, and someone’s jammed four cigarette butts into a crevice. I pull out my bottle of lukewarm water and tear off a bite of Clif Bar.

So here I am, only slightly the worse for wear, perched on the side of the canyon that Josh Gromelski chose for his climb. I look up, toward the place where he found the remains of Clara Gabler. But the crime scene is not – how did Holly Goldstein put it? – it’s not speaking to me. I finish the Clif Bar, thinking so what?

So the killer chose an inaccessible spot. So he cut Clara Gabler in half while she was alive. So he used a rotary saw. So he went to a lot of trouble to haul a bunch of stuff to a remote site. So the girls were auditioning for a magic act. So what? What does any of this have to do with Sean and Kev?

I pick up the Juicy Fruit wrapper and the four cigarette butts and twist them up in the Clif Bar wrapper, then stick the trash in my pocket along with the empty water bottle. Picking my way back down toward the canyon floor, I can’t believe I’m here, in the wilderness outside Las Vegas, chasing… I don’t know what. What am I doing? Liz is right. This is just another version of the gerbil wheel. I’m wasting time. I’m wasting money. This whole trip is self-indulgent.

I’m mad at myself, descending a tumble of boulders at a reckless speed, jumping from rock to rock in a knee-jarring, risky way, going down toward the canyon floor as fast as I can.

And then it hits me. Hits me with so much force that I lose concentration for a moment. The next thing I know I’m putting my foot down wrong, and then I’m falling, careening through space. I touch off one boulder, and then manage to launch myself toward a flat rock. A clumsy three-point landing rips the skin off my knees. I’m sprawled on a ledge above a twenty-foot drop-off. I watch my sunglasses cartwheel down the rocky slope, then lower my head and close my eyes.

I stay there for a few moments, the rock hot against my cheek, as a rush of sensation sweeps up my forearms. The prickly residue of adrenaline may come from the fall, but the fall itself came from the realization that hit me during my reckless descent.

Where were the Gablers found?

Conjure Canyon.

What were the Gabler girls auditioning for?

A magic act.

The crime scene photos of the women’s bodies pop into my mind’s eye, the upper and lower halves of Clara. Clara Gabler, cut in two. Severed by a power rotary saw, Chisworth guessed, a sweep from left to right across the torso.

In other words, not cut in half. Sawn in half.

They were on stage. That’s why they were wearing their costumes. It was a performance.

During which Clara Gabler was sawn in half. The blood seeping out of the box was real, the screams not the work of an actress but cries of pain and terror. Sawing a lady in half. And then the real live girl emerges, her two halves magically reunited.

Only in this case the trick was: there was no trick. There was a double. A twin.

I sit on my ledge, staring across the desert, across the sprawl toward the Strip. I pick gravel out of my shredded palm, doing my best to keep my mind focused on the Gabler girls. So Ezme Brewster was right. It was entertainment. A live show.

I stand up, ankle aching, rivulets of blood running down from my knees. My mouth is dry, my head hurts, the world before me seems to shimmer in and out of focus. I’m dehydrated. I squint against the glare, look for the best way down, start off toward the desert floor.

But motion doesn’t do the trick. I can’t keep my thoughts from cohering forever. I can’t really hold off the memory of the Sandling twins telling me their captor did tricks for them. What kind of tricks? Card tricks and coin tricks. “He made coins disappear.” Magic tricks.

Card tricks. Sawing a lady in half.

Twins in the first case, twins in the second.

Stumbling along the desert floor toward the parking area, I feel like a blind man on a cliff. I’m trying to hang on to my confusion and ignore the jolt of foreboding that hit me on my way down from the piñon tree.

But when I reach my car, open the windows, stand outside in the blast-furnace heat, there’s nothing for it. I can’t hold it off. The link is tenuous on the surface, but in my heart I know that Shoffler’s hunch was correct. There is a connection between the Gabler twins and the Sandlings and my sons, and the link is magic.

For the first time since the boys disappeared, I have an inkling of what might be in store for them and it drops me into a bleak despair. If I’m right, and the man who grabbed them is the same man who killed the Gabler sisters, The Piper isn’t just a killer, but a sadist. And not just a sadist, but an entertainer with a gift for pain and misdirection.

My sons are the raw material for a murder artist.