Page 19 of The Grave Artist (Sanchez & Heron #2)

Having changed into a light-gray windbreaker, jeans and a cap, Damon Garr was walking through the park, north of the cemetery, looking at a bench where three nannies sat talking. Before them were strollers, which they ignored as they chatted and scrolled on their phones.

The scene brought back Miss Spalding’s hoarse yet oddly melodic voice, drifting to him from the past. “They don’t love their little ones the way I love you.”

Ten-year-old Damon and his governess were passing through a park. She walked him back from school, which was an embarrassment, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Gesturing at several similarly indifferent nannies, she had spoken loudly enough to be overheard. “See, they’re not paying any attention. A stroller could roll down the hill and then who knows what might happen?”

Here, the three women in front of him weren’t paying any attention either, but then there were no hills and, besides, strollers were considerably safer nowadays, having been designed by lawyers as much as by engineers. Runaway babies seemed unlikely.

After her observation about the negligent caretakers, Miss Spalding had paused and turned, bending down—only a bit, as he was a tall child—and said, “Come here, my Little Pup. Give me a hug.”

And young Damon had endured the embrace, the way he endured the coddling walk home, and all the talk about baby carriages.

He endured a lot from Miss Spalding because there were other benefits.

Thinking of the den where her Little Pup would spend many of his afternoons.

And this reminded him of something else, something certain to distract him from the troubles caused by the officers determined to destroy him. He thought of his den behind the secret door, in his house in Malibu.

And who awaited him there.

Her . . .

And the delightful razor blades, sharpened on stone and honed on leather.

Then he tucked away thoughts of women with pale skin, hunched over in sorrow, and blades and Miss Spalding too, and eased into the brush, following the man he was about to stab to death, as he walked back to the cemetery from an intersection to the north where he and the other investigator had been poking their goddamn noses into Damon’s business.

Nearby was a statue of William Shakespeare. He was not a person you saw memorialized in bronze much like here—he was a painting kind of historical figure—and Damon wondered who had erected it. And wondered too: Why Southern California?

His victim was on his phone, though not speaking. Looking down, reading texts.

This was like fishing.

His father had never taken him. Of course.

But Miss Spalding had done so—several times—because he’d asked, and she did almost anything he had the least interest in. In a grim suburban lake in San Fernando Valley he’d caught a big sunfish and then hadn’t known what to do with it.

She looked at the thing distastefully and rather than take the hook out, she dropped it onto the ground and with a big rock smacked it into death.

“Didn’t want it to suffer,” she said, as if to allay his concern for the creature’s murder.

Though watching the fish die didn’t trouble him any more than it did her. He did not, however, gaze down at the guts and the final twitch with a gleam in his eyes, like her.

Maybe it was just the sunlight, that gleam. Or maybe not.

A jogger trotted past and vanished.

Alone now, Damon was free to attack.

He moved in fast, silently, and brought the hunting knife down hard between the man’s shoulder blades.

A shout from the pain.

The blade went straight in, through the dark cloth of the jacket. Deep.

He yanked the knife out, then plunged it in again, feeling the satisfying resistance as the blade pierced skin and organ. In seconds, the man was lying face down, hands clenching and relaxing spasmodically, feet kicking.

Motion from nearby.

Another jogger. Damon had planned to do a bit more stabbing, but he was satisfied he’d done sufficient damage.

He turned and jogged away, glancing back to survey the Tableau.

All was good. The figure was lying motionless.

The jogger had jogged elsewhere, unaware of the attack. No one else was present.

Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. William Shakespeare had witnessed the whole thing. Damon glanced at the dark metallic face. It held a curious expression, as if the violence the eyes had just witnessed were a thing of familiarity.

Which made sense, considering that here was a man who had, in his literary imaginative mind at least, engineered a hundred bloody murders.