Page 81 of The Grave Artist

He was experiencing something unprecedented.

Sorrow.

Of course, he’d been sad and disappointed at times. He’d been close to his mother before the pills and mental illness took over. And when she died, his main thought was that he was partly sad and partly relieved—and more than partly horrified that the buffer between him and his father was gone.

And when the man himself finally died, he’d idly wondered ifThe Evil Deadwas on Amazon Prime, and then laughed, realizing the unintended and possibly subconscious joke about the classic horror film’s title.

But Felicia . . .

At her loss, he felt raw, unadulterated grief.

Fascinated with the new sensation, he researched the subject.

Damon had been surprised to learn that sorrow had a close relationship to art.

First, as a theme: mourning the death of Christ, for instance.

Second, as therapy, in a way. Artists often expressed their personal loss on paper or canvas or in marble as a way to cope. Given that there was often a tortured element to being an artist, this therapeutic technique was widespread. Käthe Kollwitz, for instance. And particularly Frida Kahlo—whose lifelong battles with physical and emotional pain, from respectively a bus accident and a turbulent relationship with muralist Diego Rivera, were reflected in the majority of her haunting works.

Yes, Damon Garr had become quite the expert in grief.

He now found he was looking again at the Russian painting of the sorrowful marriage, which was directly across the worktable from him in the hidden den.

Grief . . .

And, in fact, studying its many iterations had led directly to the most significant moment of his life, to—

“Hello, Damon,” came a quiet voice from behind him.

Gasping, he rose and spun around. The chair rolled away.

A man in a black suit stood in the doorway of the den. Tall, lean and pale, he looked like a mortician.

Damon struggled to come to grips with the fact that a total stranger had somehow gotten inside his house. He wasn’t physically imposing, yet there was an air of subtle menace about him. His lack of concern about the potential threat posed by Damon, a much larger man, attested to either supreme confidence or foolhardy arrogance.

His unexpected visitor strolled over to the wall and squinted as he regarded a print ofLa Douleurby Paul Cézanne, which depicted a man beset by sorrow, with a deformed version of Mary Magdalene in the corner as she mourned the death of Jesus.

Damon demanded, “Who ... who the hell are you?”

The man turned to face him. “My name is Tristan Kane. And I have a proposition for you.”

Chapter 40

“How did you ...” Damon began, his heart slowing after the shock.

“Get in here?” Tristan Kane studied more prints. “Like everybody else in the universe you believe what advertisers tell you. They’ve convinced you their product is easy to use, it’s technological, it’s digital ... and according to the commercials, you’re endangering your family if you don’t buy it.”

“You mean my locks and security.”

“Hm.” Kane seemed pleased that Damon had understood. As if he’d been uncertain of his intelligence. “If you’d put a padlock on your front door, I’d still be sawing away. But you have an off-the-rack system that took me about ... six seconds to open.”

“But the camera—” Damon looked at a nearby monitor. The scene was still, despite the omnipresent breeze from the Pacific Ocean. A dead giveaway that he should have spotted. He tsked his tongue. “You loaded a screenshot, and waltzed right in, directly in front of the lens. Clever. You’re good.”

Kane shrugged as if bored with the praise. He scanned the walls, where his eyes settled on the Goya, then the El Greco. Trubert’sWeeping Madonnaheld his attention for a while. He stepped close to a high-quality reproduction of Hopper’sAutomat, which depicted a woman sitting alone at a table in one of the coin-operated restaurants that were all therage when the artist painted the work in the 1920s. It was described as embodying the essence of urban alienation. Eyes still on the seated woman, he said softly, “I did some research. You teach art history. Yet you’ve never published. That’s curious for an academic.” Then the man turned to him. “I suppose you want to draw as little attention to yourself as possible.”

True enough, but rather than respond verbally, Damon walked to the filing cabinet. With deliberate casualness, he pulled open the top drawer and reached in as if retrieving a stack of bills that needed paying.

He lifted out the pistol he kept inside and pointed it at Kane. “We’re talking about security systems and my career, but not about who the fuck you are and what you’re doing here.”