Page 40 of The Grave Artist (Sanchez & Heron #2)

Now, at last, time to visit Her .

A trip to the special room Damon loved, his den, armed with the imported razor blades.

Yesterday had not gone as planned and, though he was safe, he was still shaken.

And so he needed the comfort of doing some cutting.

In his kitchen, which was suffused with morning sunlight, Damon pulled on the latex gloves and picked up the box of blades. Then he ambled to the huge living room.

There was no secret code or anything like that to enter his den, though the door was not obvious.

It seemed to be yet another floor-to-ceiling mirror.

A simple push on the frame and the heavy panel swung inward.

He flicked on the light and entered what appeared to be a space typical of an art gallery or museum.

Prints and paintings covered the walls. A comfortable light-brown leather couch in the center, some armchairs, a few end tables, and nods to the business side of Damon’s life: shelves, a scanner, a computer, a file cabinet, a worktable, an office chair, which could scoot across the tile floor fast as a sports car.

At the back was the special room, partially hidden by a thick purple (what else?) curtain.

Where She waited.

A rattle of the razor blades.

His eyes drifted to a print—a good one—of Vasili Pukirev’s painting Unequal Marriage , which portrayed an elderly nobleman marrying a young woman, possibly a teen.

His expression was haughty and imperious.

Her downcast eyes radiate sorrow. She is undoubtedly poor and forced into the union by circumstance.

As he sat down at the workstation, his thoughts were, not surprisingly, drawn instantly to September 15, some years ago, the day that changed his life.

For certain reasons, after Sarah Anne Taylor’s murder, Damon had decided to try leading a normal life.

Why not? Many serial killers were able to juggle.

He had finished his courses, with honors, and started teaching at a community college.

Then he met someone, an elementary school teacher and part-time grad student, Felicia McNichol. He began dating the willowy brunette.

Not a bad life.

It was faculty dinners, finding a town house, Sunday-morning sex, movies, drives to San Simeon ...

He still lived in his dreaded family home but, on the plus side, was tended to by Miss Spalding, who would not hear of him staying on campus or in an apartment.

He proposed to Felicia, who was working full-time at an elementary school in Hollywood. She preferred teaching sixth graders, explaining that they were at that perfect age, past babbling silliness and before hormonal dystopia.

And to Damon’s delight, she said yes.

September 15 was the day they would exchange vows, sealing their love in the bonds of matrimony. And begin their new life together—never to be alone again.

The ceremony was to be small. Both their parents were gone at that point, and they were only-children. So the guests would be mostly friends.

That fateful morning, Damon had gone to the hotel to see about final arrangements, while Felicia remained at her house in Beverly Hills to await girlfriends who would help with the hair and makeup.

They had discovered a wonderful venue for the ceremony and reception: a hotel and spa with a pavilion on a lake, offering lush gardens providing the perfect backdrop for an array of beautiful bridal photos.

There, he made a few last-minute decisions on the menu, the decorations and the seating, then returned home to put on his best suit.

Miss Spalding greeted him, and he knew instantly something was amiss. It wasn’t her face—which was a constant somber mask. No, it was her clothing. By then she should have changed from her typical floor-length gray frock to the pastel taffeta she’d selected for the wedding.

She had not.

She gave him one of her solid embraces—which lingered a bit too long—and said, “Come inside and sit down, Little ...”

She’d stopped short of calling him her Little Pup, that nickname from his early childhood. Her instinctive move to comfort him with the familiar term reinforced his sense of foreboding.

Damon had not taken a seat but stood with arms crossed over his chest as she delivered the news.

There had been an accident, Felicia was dead.

Before her friends arrived, she’d gone for a swim and slipped climbing out.

Her head hit the travertine coping, knocking her unconscious.

Then she’d fallen back in the water and drowned.

Damon had mutely stared out the window. He waved away Miss Spalding’s offer of iced tea and cottage pie. She suggested some junk food, candy, always good for comfort.

“No,” he’d exhaled.

She said she knew how upset he would be, so she would handle notifying everyone of the tragedy, and would field any calls, if he liked.

That was fine. He didn’t want to speak to anyone. Something odd, something significant, was occurring within him and he wanted no distractions.

He went into his room—a large space, as big as some bungalows whole families lived in.

He paced slowly past the contents: the many books of art for classwork, the framed posters and prints that were the souvenirs of the visits to art museums and galleries Miss Spalding had taken him to from almost the first week she had moved in: the Getty, the Broad, the county museum, those in the various colleges in the area.

An observer might be curious to see the high art was interspersed with the low: racks of DVDs of slasher films and violent computer game cartridges—all of which Miss Spalding was happy to let her Little Pup indulge in.

Damon stopped pacing when he came to his desk and gazed at the one photo that sat upon it: Felicia’s graduation picture.

And realized with a jolt what that sense of significance was, the one that had been wafting about him since Miss Spalding had delivered the horrific news.

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 if The Evil Dead was 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.

K?the 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 of La Douleur by 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.”