CHAPTER 2: Landscapes
Karne had turned away from me when he returned to his armchair. I looked up from the file resting on my lap. A newly-lit cigarette sent up a slim plume from the other side of the chair; above his head it caught a draft and dissipated. His hair had started to dry and fall forward in its usual determined way. He brought the hand holding the cigarette up to flick his hair back behind his ear, and the tip loomed dangerously close to his hairline. He cut his eyes over to me, drawing his eyebrows down. "What is it, Connell?"
"You're going to set your hair on fire that way," I muttered. A corner of his mouth jerked upward twice quickly before his stern expression returned.
"DuPret sent that file yesterday." He settled back in his chair as he finished speaking, but kept his eyes on me.
"DuPret?" Karne smirked a little at my surprised tone. From what I'd seen of their relationship, those two were hardly pen pals.
"He sends me curiosities; he thinks it will keep me away." Karne waved a hand in the air between us. This dismissive gesture of his had been present at the start of so many of our arguments that I gritted my teeth in preparation.
"And?" I prodded.
"And what, Connell?" He looked away from me again to blow a long stream of smoke into the air. "You have the file."
"Oh quit being an ass, Karne," I scolded. I went back to the form in my hands. It had been routed through a JP, which was unusual for the files that wind up in homicide. I scanned down the page and found it had been used as a sort of table of contents for a packet of evidence forms. Sloppy. Nobody in homicide would do that.
"You're making a face, Connell," Karne said dryly. I pressed my lips together. I could hear him let out an amused snort as I turned back to the file, and I considered throwing it at him.
"I will make it easy for you. Last month estate clearance teams in Hollywood Hills found a collection of framed embroidery done on an unorthodox material." His striking grey eyes were focused dead on mine, and they weren't amused. I spent a moment wondering if he believed his own dramatics before I took the bait.
"So what was it?" He sat forward and took another slow drag on his cigarette before answering.
"Human skin." I drew the inside of my cheek between my molars, then convulsively bit down when I fully processed what he'd said.
"Bridget above!" I felt the blush starting in my neck and face as soon as I heard that come out of my mouth. I tried to cover for it by going on quickly, but I could see Karne clamp down on a grin. If nothing else I guess I'm good comic relief. "How do they know it was skin? And in frames? Who exactly brought it in? Whose was it?"
"One at a time, Connell," Karne held up a hand. I squinted at it. There were several textures of paper in the file, I could feel it. I started to leaf through the stack and arrived at a reasonably sharp printout of a digital photo. This had to be it.
I felt my mind slip into lab mode and began to catalog my observations. Inside the standard gray background with scale markers along the bottom was an ornate dark wood frame antiqued with black in the crevices of its carved draperies and cornices. A thin mauve mat with precisely beveled edges set off a ground with the uneven look of antique paper. A meticulous hand had worked a design of arcing flowers onto the ground. I recognized the proportions from an old Art History class: the French landscape painters of the late eighteenth century. I reflexively looked for a hermit, banditti, or a ruined castle. Finally, my eye landed on a small figure in the lower right—a man with a tall walking stick held some distance from his side.
I brought my face closer to the photograph and stared at the stitches. Each length seemed so confident and precise that I looked for pencil or chalk marks on the ground. I found no trace. I sucked my cheek back between my molars and contained my hair behind my ears. The tiny blooms on the lowest stalks of the paintbrush stems seemed like either crewel or tatting; it was amazing for such a fine thread. It must have been a very fine needle, too. The evidence of it passing through the ground was impressively slight. I wished I could tilt the original in front of my eyes to see the surface more clearly.
I backed away from the photograph to look at the entire composition again, and the scale marker caught my eye. I let out a surprised noise, and Karne's head popped up. According to the marker, the entire composition was no larger than a snapshot. Amazing. I flipped through the file to the next photograph. Again, the virtuoso stitching took up a canvas so small it could fit on a postcard. "Criminy," I shook my head.
"I take it you're finished blaspheming, Connell?" Karne's sardonic voice brought my attention to his piercing look. The light from the open curtains slanted across his angular face, and again I noticed the precise elegance of his bone structure. I laughed at myself. Leave it to a forensic anthropologist to notice a man's bones. I yanked my attention back to the file.
"Course I am," I grunted. "Will you tell me the rest of the story now?"
"I will start with your initial questions," Karne began, still slouched and chain smoking between sentences. I sat forward to listen. "Mrs. Ettie Relson was a hoarder of many things—maps, paintings, posters, ceramic plates, mirrors. She was the wife of a refugee, and lost two sons in peacekeeping missions in the former Eastern Bloc. The saints," he paused to fling a hand toward the composition on the wall opposite my armchair, "are from digital photographs of hers. What you see in the file is the embroidered and framed human skin found by the estate clearance team," he announced. He flung a hand again, this time toward the file I held. I let my eyes dart to the photograph again.
I brought the photograph closer to my eyes again and focused on the texture of the field. I began to see the small curves of the grain of the skin. And there, just beneath the crewel I'd admired, I saw the delicate hatching of the knuckle. I felt my face crumple as I started to snap the folder shut with less care than I ought to have used. I swallowed hard and hoped Karne wouldn't notice. The last thing I needed was to have him see me act like a silly girl.
"Come Connell," he sat forward and laced his fingers after crushing his cigarette into the crowded surface of the plain saucer on his coffee table. "Tell me the provenance of this little collection of art."
"I really don't want to," I said. I closed the file and set it on the table, dropping my hands to my sides. Karne raised his eyebrows at me.
"Now Connell," He said lightly, "you can hardly be squeamish."
"Everyone's got their thing." My voice seemed to dissipate in the middle of the room. I cleared my throat and put my hands together on my lap as I let my mind wander back to my first anatomy lab. My partner had trouble with eyes. I've always hated hands. I could just see them in life, holding a fork at the dinner table or patting a grandkid
on the head. I swallowed again and shoved my hair back from my face. "Mine's hands."
"Give me your hand, Connell," Karne's sharp voice startled me, and I found I'd put my right hand into his waiting palm without really thinking about it. He turned my palm up and traced a finger along a crease of it. "You've an impressive heart line, Connell."
"Stop it. Please." I pulled my hand away and tucked it into the crook of my elbow. I imagined I could still feel the light traces of his finger on my skin, and I closed my eyes for a moment to shake it off.
"I've discomfited you, Connell. I do apologize." Karne sat even farther forward in his chair. I wandered to the window, determined not to seem childish.
"It's okay. Really. It's stupid, I know." I straightened my posture. "Stop playing with me, Karne. Where do you think the skin came from?"
"I have looked into a few lines of inquiry," Karne said, lighting another cigarette and taking a long moment to pour more coffee into his cup. "The local mortician's assistant has been most helpful."
Despite myself I started snickering. I could just see Karne marching into a funeral home and demanding to know how long human skin could be preserved if a person wanted to try some needlepoint on a free evening. I tried to sober up when I saw the testy look Karne was giving me, but I ended up just twisting around in my chair and stretching toward my coffee mug.
When I looked back Karne's face was back in the usual humored expression he wore during the start of an interesting case. He lifted an eyebrow at me. "Let's have it, Connell. Why might a person choose the skin of hands, and hands alone?"