Each Quivering Arrow

A 12-page pseudocomic from 2026 - by Jesse Farber

Bang Blurb

2.72MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

* * *

What's this? Why, it's the bumper summer edition of the world's most inexorable Soap Opera and thriller, Also, Without, and this week, it features previously unreleased tracks by The Anti Group (TAGC) and The Hafler Trio, as well as a very necessary intervention by Lulu Marie, plus the usual heady assortment of interjections, cajoling and comeuppances. No word of a lie! The proof of the pudding is under the (paid, yes, paid) crust. 36 minutes of sheer delight, and that's putting it mildly!

Read more

Waxing Poetic—the conclusion.

Cover art by CJ Lutz. Story by RL Vanwey

Here we offer the dark resolution of the investigation of detectives Greene and Davis. The intro has been reposted. To skip ahead to the new material, hit ctr-F and type in “to flee.” This story contains graphic scenes… reader discretion is advised.

Waxing Poetic

The introduction

“This place is creepy as hell,” said Detective Greene.

“Yeah,” his partner absently muttered back.

“Who thinks, ‘I want to run a wax museum when I grow up’?”

Detective Davis was too busy inspecting the row of figures, their lifelike features each encased in glass, to answer. More than a dozen lined the wall on one side of a dimly lit hallway. Some resembled famous people. The cops did not recognize the others.

At the end of the hall, they knocked on a door and identified themselves. A man of average height answered. Greene jumped in surprise at the oversized headlamp shining directly in his face. Apologizing, the man switched it off. He wore a lab coat over a black t-shirt and jeans. White socks were all that covered his feet.

“Mr. Keller?”

The man nodded.

“Your secretary sent us back here.”

“Yes, she told me,” the man said, nodding still.

“Does this woman work for you?” Greene held up a photo of a face taken from the DMV’s driver license database.

“I contract with her, yes. Why? Did she do something?”

Davis shook his head. “She was reported missing. When’s the last time you seen her?”

Removing the head lamp, the man tapped its strap on his chin. “She doesn’t come here much, only to deliver her product.” He pointed to a painting hanging next to one of the glass cases that housed a mannequin. “The last time was maybe three weeks ago. But I can check my books to confirm. I always enter the delivery date of products and give the creators a receipt.”

The officers grunted in assent.

Mr. Keller led them through a curious workshop. Several human-shaped body parts rested on a table in various states of completeness. The finished ones looked frighteningly real. Various tools were scattered in between, many of them bladed. Greene’s face wrinkled when they passed another table, this one full of heads. Next to a wall packed with wigs propped on hooks sat a desk upon which Mr. Keller sifted through some papers. Locating a book buried beneath them, he flipped through the pages until he reached the one he sought.

“Here.” He stabbed his finger on an entry that read ‘Providence McNally.’ “April nine. So, yeah, just over three weeks ago.”

Greene leaned in toward the book. “Right. Ok. Have you spoken with Ms. McNally since then?”

“No. I just wired her the remainder of what I owed her. Half the agreed upon price. That’s how we always do it.”

“Do you have any future work planned for her?” Davis asked.

“Nothing specific, yet. She typically does five or six pieces for me per year.”

Greene handed him his business card. “Ok, thanks. Give us a call if you see or hear from her, ok?”

“Sure thing.”

Mr. Keller guided them back to the ‘creepy’ hallway. When he closed the door to his shop, the officers headed for the exit.

“What do you think?” Davis looked at his partner.

“He’s a weirdo,” Greene pointed at the nearest statue for emphasis, “but not necessarily suspicious. He says he regularly buys her work, so that kind of speaks against a motive. But who knows, maybe their arrangement—whatever it was—went south. Let’s get his bank records.”

“Lunch first?”

Greene grinned. “Damn straight.”

The Timeline

“Ten weeks ago, the vic receives an email from the secretary at the Trompe L’oeil art gallery requesting a painting. They have a little back-and-forth, but basically, the secretary says they’re looking for an image of Grape Street. She offers her five grand.”

Lieutenant Wright whistled.

Greene shook his head. “I know. We’re in the wrong business.” He leaned back in his chair. “The vic replies to the offer with a short message, ‘I’ll do it,’ and then they have a few more emails setting a schedule for the work. According to the vic’s neighbor, she starts preparing the canvas—whatever the hell that means—the day after the gallery paid her the deposit, which was…” he thumbed through some papers. “…February 20.”

“Does she work from home?” Wright asked.

“Yeah, she’s got a studio at the back of her house, I guess,” said Davis.

“So, she and a friend go for beers at the Alley Cat on February 21,” Greene continued. “Apparently, once she starts painting, she doesn’t leave the house, answer calls or texts, nothing. At least, that’s what her neighbor told us. We’re still trying to track down the friend.”

Wright groaned. “So how do we know for sure she’s even missing?”

Greene raised his palm in a stopping motion. “She finished the painting three weeks ago and delivered it to the gallery on or around April 8, if the gallery guy is being straight with us. No one’s heard from her since then, that we know of. She even missed some deadlines with another company, which is who called it in.”

“Yeah,” Davis interjected, “the weirdo guy showed us his logbook, and when we served the subpoena for his bank records, we asked them to check for that final payment on April 9. It was made.”

“Ok, so can we confirm the delivery date and track her from there?” Wright asked.

Greene nodded. “We got video coming from the gas station at the corner. They said it doesn’t show the gallery itself, but you can see part of the street leading up to it. There’s a Tim Horton’s at the other corner, but same problem—their video only covers part of the area, not the gallery itself. We got nothing in between.”

“Once we see her leave, we can get more based on whatever direction she went,” Davis added. “Gas station told us they’ll call once they download it. It’s stored offsite, apparently.”

* * *

Two days later, the detectives sat once again with their lieutenant.

“Alright, lou, the McNally case has taken a turn.”

“What do you mean?”

Greene rubbed his shaved head. “So, McNally goes to the gallery at 10pm to drop off her painting. We see her jeep pass the gas station. You can’t make out the plate, but we know it’s hers because it’s got an old college parking sticker on the top driver side corner of the windshield, probably from the previous owner.”

“Ok.”

“We don’t see it again until 2:25 in the morning. And we’re sure she didn’t go anywhere else because she would have had to pass one of the cameras.”

“2:25 in the morning?” Wright looked incredulous. “What the hell was she doing there for four and a half hours? Banging the weirdo?”

“That’s what we thought,” said Greene, “so we went back to the secretary for the gallery, this time at her house. She’s the one who gave us the email chain. We mentioned the idea that McNally and the weirdo were doing it, but she doesn’t think so. She suspects her boss isn’t into the physical stuff at all or he might be a gay afraid to come out. Said he never has anyone around socially, just clients and creators. And even those are infrequent.”

“Did she give any reason for the timeframe, then?”

“Not really. Normally, McNally drops her shit off and splits. But the secretary did note this was the most expensive work McNally ever sold them, so she figured maybe her and the owner were celebrating.”

“Celebrating?”

Sighing, Greene said, “Yeah. When I asked celebrating how, the secretary had no idea since that’s never happened before. But, the lady’s pretty old, so maybe she’s not being imaginative enough. I don’t know.”

“Weird that he paid so much. What did you say the usual amount was?”

“800,” Davis announced.

“Did the secretary offer any ideas for why such a high price on this one?” Wright asked.

Greene frowned. “Only that when the price goes up dramatically like that, it usually means the artist found a sponsor, but the gallery owner is the only one with that info. Getting a sponsor might be a reason to celebrate, I guess.”

“Ok. We’re gonna need to talk to him again.”

“Yeah, once we’ve got some more background on him. I made a request for the gallery’s phone records. Apparently, the owner doesn’t have a cell.”

Wright’s eyebrows raised. “No cell? He is a weirdo.”

“Yeah. So, there’s the huge amount, the long night at the gallery, and then McNally apparently just goes home and disappears.” Greene waved several photos. “We got her—well, her car, anyway—on three traffic cams, including one a block from her street. We’re still waiting on GPS from the car, but I think it’s gonna put it in the driveway. Her neighbors all report that it was there when they woke up and never moved again.”

“Any cameras on the house?” Wright asked.

“No. The nearest camera only gets the property line opposite from the driveway. It belongs to a neighbor, so it’s focused on his property. We see the lights when the Jeep pulls in, but nothing else. The shades are all drawn, so we can’t see in the house, and from the outside the car looks clean.”

“Why don’t you run it by the DA? We should have enough to get a warrant for the house and car. In the meantime, I got a friend over at DHS, I’ll see if she crossed the border. Any chance she just hopped on a plane somewhere?”

Greene shrugged. “At this point, anything’s possible.”

The Search

An officer in a black polo with the words ‘Crime Scene Investigations’ printed across the back forced open the door. Greene and Davis, guns drawn, stepped inside. They both clicked on flashlights. With all the shades down, the room was quite dark. Before beginning their search, they and several other officers ensured no one was present in the house, including McNally herself. Finding nobody, they holstered their weapons, turned on some lights, and entered the kitchen. It was extraordinarily neat and clean, only a wine bottle and one glass sat on the countertop.

“Seems she was planning to celebrate alone,” Davis said, snapping several photos with his phone.

“Yeah. I assumed artists are all slobs, but this place is like a hospital, it’s so clean.”

Chuckling, Davis opened the refrigerator. “Oh,” he moaned, covering his face and quickly slamming it shut. “Something’s rotten in there.”

Greene stepped over to it. “Open it again.”

Frowning, Davis did so.

Greene reached a glove hand in and moved a few things around. “Okay,” he coughed, “good enough.” With a puckered face he said, “Some of the meat is almost a month old. If she did come home after the gallery, she disappeared pretty quickly thereafter or else she would have eaten or thrown that stuff away.”

“I’m doubting she went away voluntarily.”

“Me too,” said Greene, as he stroked his chin. “Let’s check out her work room.”

Located at the rear, the studio was the largest room in the house. Unlike every other space, this area was cluttered with paint cans, canvases of all sizes, easels, brushes, and other artist supplies and tools. In one corner, a computer sat upon a desk littered with papers, pens, and pencils. A standard office chair was the only seat. Barely any of the floor was visible amidst the clutter.

“Well, this is more like what I expected,” Greene declared.

“Yeah, but what the hell are we even looking for?”

Greene’s brow furrowed. “No idea.”

“Hey boss,” an officer called from another room.

“Yeah?” Greene shouted back.

The officer walked toward him holding a clear plastic evidence bag. “She had a few boyfriends.” He grinned, jiggling the bag. Greene scowled. It contained several vibrators and dildos.

“Just log it and stop fucking around.”

When the officer left, Greene turned to Davis. “If she’s into kink, that could be an avenue to go down.”

“That, or she could just be lonely and horny.”

“Yeah,” Greene muttered, scrolling through his phone. He selected a contact and, when the call connected, said, “Hey lou, can we get a warrant for a computer? It could be synced to her phone, which we haven’t found.”

After thanking the lieutenant and hanging up, Greene instructed Davis to look around for other devices. He then headed for the woman’s bedroom. Two officers searched there. One rifled through dresser drawers while the other peeked under furniture.

“Anything?”

“Phone charger’s still plugged in,” replied one of the CSIs, “that’s about it so far.”

“So, she probably didn’t plan on going anywhere for long. Ok, good. Keep at it.”

Back at Davis’s side, Greene asked the same question.

“I think the computer’s gonna be important,” Davis answered. “It’s obviously heavily used and, fortunately for the techs, she’s got Post-Its all over with passwords. I took, like, twenty pics just in case anything gets lost. Otherwise, there is so much shit in here, I can’t find anything of use.”

Patting him on the shoulder, Greene said, “It is what it is. Let’s keep looking.”

The discovery

On May 9, now a month since the disappearance and a week into their investigation, Greene and Davis impatiently stared across their desks at each other. The techs had advised them that morning that the contents of the computer would be coming their way in the afternoon.

The search of McNally’s house led them nowhere; likewise with the car. No foreign DNA, fingerprints, blood, nothing. Still, the detectives had not sat idle over the week, waiting on the computer geeks. DHS informed them there was no record of McNally crossing the border, either by land or air. Calls to the airlines revealed no domestic flights. McNally’s car did not register on any license plate readers after the night she disappeared. The detectives canvassed every bar, store, restaurant, and gas station near her house. And, importantly, they located the friend she had a beer with when first commissioned for the art job back in February.

The interview with the friend took some time because when she learned McNally had gone missing, and for how long she’d been gone, she broke down. Once she gathered herself, she told the detectives the two have been friends for the last three years, but McNally is a very private person. They only hang out a few times per year. Both detectives nodded—they gleaned much the same about McNally from the few people in her neighborhood who claimed to know her. In short, even those who ‘knew’ her didn’t know much about her. The friend noted that during their celebratory meet-up McNally gave no details about this latest job for the gallery; she stated only, “it’s paying well.”

Greene asked, “How does she make a living? Aside from the last job, she only made about $4,000 from the gallery this year.”

“She does graphics for businesses, like their mailers and stuff, as well as websites. I don’t think she earns a ton of money, but she doesn’t really need it.” McNally’s bank records, which the detectives reviewed a few days prior, supported these assertions.

The woman could offer little other helpful information, but she stated she hopes they find her. “No one deserves that,” she said. The detectives gave her a business card, thanked her, and departed.

One of the techs finally arrived at the detectives’ desks shortly after lunch holding a baggie of thumb drives. “Her computer was data heavy—lot of imagery.”

“She’s an artist,” interrupted Greene.

“Right. So, I split the drive into three parts, labeled here,” the tech pointed to a number taped to each flash stick. “I made two copies, one for each of you, and put the original drive and original copy into evidence.”

“Cool, thanks Ducky.” Everyone called him that because the guy was obsessed with ducks and filled his office with photos of them.

When Ducky waddled away, Davis said, “I have a thought.”

“Shoot.”

“Pick a number to start on, and I’ll do a different one. But first, I wanna run a check of missing person cases. See if any look similar. I mean, this is kinda serial killer 101—a single woman no one will notice missing for a while. Don’t ya think?”

Greene wagged his finger. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good to me. We were lucky it was only three weeks on this one. Who would’ve expected a contracted company located out of state to file a report just because she missed a deadline?”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

* * *

At around 9:30 the next morning, Davis stumbled into the office.

“Man, did you go on a bender last night?” Greene asked. “You got the same threads on.”

“I didn’t go anywhere. Slept in the storeroom.”

“What?! Why? Problems with the wife?”

Shaking his head dismissively, Davis plopped at his desk and booted his computer. “Check this out.” He spun his monitor. Numerous images covered the screen. “Found this last night.”

“I’m not following.”

“These are all for the gallery—that Trumpet Oil place.”

Greene chuckled. “It’s Trompe L’oeil.”

“Whatever. The point is, didn’t the weirdo guy say she only does like five or six pieces a year for him?”

“Yeah, but maybe she’s been doing that for years. We saw payments from the gallery going back at least three. Maybe there’s more before that.”

Davis beamed. “I checked. We only have the last three years cuz that’s how old her account is. But that’s not the key part.”

“What is?” Greene was clearly intrigued now.

“This folder isn’t the stuff she was getting paid for. That’s in another folder. This one, according to Ducky, was hidden.”

“No shit?”

“There are twenty-three images, all of cities. But, they’re not artsy, they’re just alleys and fields, and shit like that.”

Greene gazed at the screen again. “Well, what’s that about?”

“Good question. It’s fucking odd, ain’t it? And there’s more.”

“Do tell.”

“So, Ducky said the mega data…”

Slapping his forehead, Greene snipped, “Metadata.”

“What?”

“It’s meta—ah forget it. What did Ducky say?”

“These go back eighteen years.”

“Maybe she just mixed in old stuff.”

Davis shook his head. “That’s what I said, but Ducky thinks that’s unlikely. Not only was the folder hidden, it was password protected. It wasn’t like she could accidentally move something into or out of it.”

Greene clicked his tongue, staring at the monitor. “What were you up to, girl?”

“I got on this when the missing persons search was getting nowhere. Was up all night.”

“It’s an excellent find, D.”

“Also, I went back to her DMV stuff. She would have been eighteen, eighteen years ago.”

“Huh. Young age to start, and quite a long tenure for not much money. What was the weirdo guy’s name again?”

Davis opened a folder on his desk. “Harlan Keller.”

“Let’s find everything we can about this guy. This is all really strange.

“On it.”

The revelation

“Lou, we gotta talk.”

The lieutenant beckoned the pair into his office. “What’s up?”

“So, on the McNally case, we found some crazy shit.”

Lt. Wright’s eyes lit up.

“On the missing girl’s computer, we found twenty-three images—pics and paintings, or maybe drawings—of locations in cities, but nothing fancy or artsy, really.”

“So?”

Greene snapped, “Let me get to the good part, goddammit.”

Wright spread his arms. “Ok, ok, chill already. Jesus.”

Sitting down, Greene continued. “What’s crazy is that these photos were in a secret file named for the art gallery—one of the last places our vic was seen alive. Now, we know she got paid by the gallery to produce art works, but those were different from these. And these go back way further—eighteen years. Payments only go back three years.”

“That’s pretty weird.”

“Not as weird as what I am about to tell you next.” Greene rubbed his hands together and Davis leaned toward the desk. “The art gallery opened three years ago. And…” he paused for dramatic effect. “…Providence McNally, our alleged victim, has only existed for three years. Bank account, license, car reg, credit history… all three years old. Before that, nothing.”

Lieutenant Wright leaned back, whistling. “Whoa…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Stolen identity?”

Greene shrugged. “Probably. Anyway, we looked at the owner of the gallery. Before this, he had a place in Virginia for a couple years. It was incorporated under a different LLC. Other than that, there’s nothing odd there. But,” he stabbed his finger into the air, “before that, Harlan Keller didn’t fucking exist!”

Davis slapped the desk, causing his boss to flinch.

“You gotta be kidding me.” Wright looked completely befuddled.

“Nope,” Davis blurted.

“What in hell is going on here?”

“I don’t know, lou,” Greene was practically panting, “but we’re sure as hell gonna find out.”

* * *

The detectives returned to their desks. Both began scrolling through computer files from McNally’s hard drive. After two hours of laborious slogging, Davis rubbed his eyes. “This isn’t going anywhere. Let’s get a bite.”

At a nearby sandwich shop, the two munched away. Between mouthfuls, Greene said, “Alright, we got two people, both with fake identities. Dude runs an art gallery through which he was paying the girl. And now, she’s missing. I’m thinking if we can find out who she really is, we will probably find that he has been paying her all along for ‘official’ work while she was also doing the side stuff. Question is, what’s up with the side work? And why the fake identities?”

Davis wiped his mouth. “I think the side work is the answer, but how are we gonna figure that out?”

“Yeah, how?” Greene took another bite, his expression thoughtful. “I wonder if we can determine where those photos were taken. Maybe there’s a pattern or something relevant about them.”

“How the hell we gonna do that?”

Greene’s eyes widened. He put a finger up, indicating to wait a moment. Fumbling for his phone, he unlocked it and made a call. “Ducky, you know that hidden folder on the McNally girl’s computer, all those city pics?”

He waited for the reply. “Can you check for location data?” Putting the phone on speaker, he placed it on the table.

Davis called over his shoulder. “Yo, Pete. Don’t listen. We’re doing some police shit out here.”

From somewhere out of view came the response. “First time for everything.” Both detectives chuckled.

On the phone, Ducky said, “Sorry guys. No dice.”

“Shit.”

“Let me make a call. I know an analyst with the Troops who is excellent at OSINT. Maybe he can figure it out from the photos themselves. I’ll call you back.”

Davis mouthed, ‘OSINT?’

Greene waved at him. “It just means using the internet to find the place in the pic.”

“Oh.”

The phone rang. “Yeah, Duck, what have ya got?”

“I’m sending him the file now, secured transfer. I gave him your emails, so he can connect directly. Name is Sergeant Tom Mills.”

“Any idea how long it will take?”

“Look Greene, this is difficult stuff. More so when the pictures are of bland places, like these are. We’ll be lucky if he can locate any of them.”

“Got it. Ok, thanks Ducky. Hey, one last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Do we got her email account?”

“Only what’s saved locally on the drive. To get the account from Google, you’ll need a search warrant. Can’t get content with a subpoena.”

“Shit, I don’t know if we’ve got PC for that. I’ll run it by the lou. Thanks, Duck.”

Davis exhaled loudly. “I hate all this tech shit.”

“This tech shit is the only way we’re gonna solve this.”

The tech shit

On the drive back to the office, Greene’s phone rang again. He put it on speaker. “Detective Greene.”

“Hey, it’s Ducky. Mills called me. We discovered something interesting. Well, two things.”

The detectives looked at each other.

“In the audit logs of that secret folder, we checked the access permissions. There were two entries. One was what you’d expect—Providence. But there was another name: Sarina. S-A-R-I-N-A. I couldn’t find that name or user ID anywhere else, so I suspect it was from a previous computer this folder once sat on.”

“Good. Thanks. What’s the other thing?”

“I was getting to it.” Ducky sounded annoyed by the question. “The audit logs also revealed the folder was created on the same day the oldest picture was dropped in there, in 2008. Someone scrubbed the location and certain other data, but on the oldest picture they forgot to remove the name of the user—Jenny.”

“Sarina and Jenny, 2008, got it. You da man, Ducky.” Greene ended the call.

He looked over at Davis. “I bet Jenny is real. And we got a year. Let’s look up every missing person case under Jen, Jenny, Jennifer, or whatever from ‘08.”

Davis nodded. “I would have preferred Sarina. Probably a lot less cases.”

“Hey, it’s something.”

* * *

“Well, we knew it wasn’t gonna be easy.” Greene glared at the computer. His search resulted in nearly 12,000 hits.

“Let’s put an age range in there. We don’t know her real birth date, but she was probably around 18.”

“Good call. How about 17 to 21?” Greene entered the parameter and refreshed. “9,102.”

“Eye color?”

Greene made the adjustment, hoping the color listed on the driver’s license was real even if the identity was not. “7,455.”

“Too bad her eyes weren’t fucking purple. We’re gonna need a location.”

Grunting in agreement, Greene picked up the phone. “Ducky, tell Mills we really need to locate that first image, the oldest one.”

“10-4.”

Before he disconnected, Ducky spoke again. “Greene, wait. I wanted to let you know, the computer does not appear to have been synced or ever connected to a phone or mobile device.

“Shit. Thanks.”

Turning to Davis, Greene said, “Now, I guess we wait.”

Davis nodded absently. He was scouring a pile of documents.

“What have ya got there?”

“Bank records.” He held them up. “I didn’t notice before, but check this out. All her bills are auto-debited—utilities, car payment, insurance.”

“So? That’s what normal people do… unlike you.”

Davis stuck his tongue out. “One is missing—the rent.”

“Check? Cash, maybe?”

Running his finger along the page, he muttered, “No checks. Not enough in cash withdrawals.”

“Huh.” Greene started typing.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking to see who owns the property.” He clicked the mouse a few times. “Chantel, LLC.”

“Not surprising.”

“According to State, Chantel LLC is owned by…” Greene waited for the data to populate. “Private. Argh. We’re gonna need a subpoena.”

“You know what I don’t get?” Davis ran his hand over his head.

“What’s that?”

“If the weirdo guy abducted her or killed her or whatever, why pay her the money, the rest of the five grand?” He pointed to the entry indicating the wire from the gallery.

“We don’t know that he’s responsible.”

“I know, but suppose he is. And there’s good reason to think so—last one to see her alive, business relationship, fake identities, and all that. Why pay her?”

Greene thought for a moment. “You said all her bills were paid by auto-debit, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it was to keep them up-to-date for a while to buy him time.”

Davis looked up from the papers. “Buy time for what?”

Both stared at each other before simultaneously blurting, “To flee.”

* * *

As they sped down the street, their siren blaring, Davis made a call. “Lou, we need a pole cam for the art gallery. We have reason to believe our primary suspect’s gonna flee.” He sat in silence for a moment. “Ok. Understood. Yeah.”

“Well?”

“Two days.”

“Shit. I ain’t ready for two days straight with you.” Greene grinned.

Davis winked back. “This car is gonna smell like ass by tomorrow.”

Greene dodged a vehicle that was taking a long time to yield. Then, he picked up his phone, keeping one eye on the road. “Ducky,” he shouted over the siren, “see if the Troops got a pole cam we can borrow. Ours is gonna take two days. Me and D are gonna sit on the gallery until we get one up.”

“I’ll call you back.”

When they neared the gallery, Greene killed the lights and noise. They drove by casually, on the lookout for any cameras on the gallery itself. Seeing none, Greene performed a U-turn a ways up the street and parked against the curb.

“We’re pretty far,” Davis complained.

“I don’t trust this guy. If he’s our man, he’s probably got cameras all over that place, even if we can’t see them. Binocs are in the turtle case in the back seat.”

The phone rang.

“Greene.”

“Hey, I got Mills on the line with me. Take it, Mills.”

“Gents, I have good news for you. Pole cam will be up in four hours. If you’re sitting on the location, shoot me a photo of where you want it. I emailed you already, so you can just reply to me.”

“Cool, man. Your boys are gonna save us from a serious bout of swamp ass,” Davis quipped.

“Um, ok,” Mills replied. “As for the photo you wanted analyzed, I am very confident it was taken in Jacksonville. I will email you specifics, but the visible vegetation, building layout, and background all match with an industrial complex down there. I used satellite imagery taken the same year as the photo to confirm. If you want, I can loop in Duval Sheriffs to go have a look around.”

“Wow. Incredible stuff. Thanks.” Greene shot an almost giddy look at Davis. “I want to hold off on the coppers, for now. We need to chase down some things with your info first. Maybe we will be able to give them a fuller picture before sending them out.”

“Copy that. Thanks gentlemen. Mike, talk to you later.” Mills ended the call.

“Mike?” Davis asked.

“Ducky.”

“No shit?”

The epiphany

Davis watched a high-resolution image of the art gallery on a new monitor the State Troopers set up on his desk. It was a live feed, so once in a while it captured cars or pedestrians passing by. Over the first afternoon he monitored it, only one person entered the place, and left about twenty minutes later.

“How does this guy make any money? No one ever goes in or out.”

Greene grunted. “Galleries make their money from shows and donors, not random visitors.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you were so wise to the world of the cultured,” Davis jibed.

Greene scoffed. “I read.” Staring at his computer screen, he growled in frustration. “There were only a handful of Jennies that went missing in Jacksonville in 2008, but none of them look like McNally.”

“She was really young. Could have changed a lot since.”

“Yeah.” Clicking over to the oldest photo from the woman’s computer, Greene slumped back in his chair. “We’re missing something. I feel like we are out of sync somehow.”

“It’s just a roadblock, man. We’re making progress.”

“I guess. It’s just that something about these photos is really bugging me, but I can’t put my finger on it.” Greene craned his neck. “Why these places?” He pulled up the entire cache of photos. “They’re all so… uninteresting.”

Davis loudly chewed potato chips. “Maybe we should ask the locals to go have that look.”

“I dunno. I’m a bit uncomfortable sending people I don’t know, who don’t know the case, to go poking around a potential crime scene.”

“What cri—” Davis stopped. “Holy shit!”

“What?”

“Maybe that’s what these photos are of… crime scenes.”

Greene tugged his ear. “What do you mean?”

“Pull up the newest one.”

Organizing the files by date, Greene opened the most recent. It was a photo taken in January of this year. Davis grabbed the mouse and zoomed in on a particular spot.

“I’ll be damned,” he gushed. “Look! Right where the arrow is.”

Greene practically stuck his nose against the screen. “What? I don’t see anything.”

“Right there.” Davis pointed with his finger. “That lettering. It was on some of the masonry of the walls of weirdo guy’s shop. I saw it when we were in there.”

“So, you’re saying McNally was taking pictures of the weirdo’s crime scenes, and her last photo was inside the wax museum?”

“Sure as shit, I am.”

Greene covered his mouth with his hand and glared at that spot on the monitor. He sat like that for long moments. Glancing up at Davis who loomed over his shoulder, he asked, “What crime? And what happened to her, then?”

“I don’t know what crime. But maybe after she took this photo, she betrayed him for some reason, so he disappeared her. Or, maybe he betrayed her by disappearing her.”

“Let’s take this to lou. I want to get a search warrant for that fucking gallery.”

The lawyers

“It’s a stretch, guys.” Lieutenant Wright had a troubled look on his face. “I mean, we don’t know that McNally made these images. She could have simply come into possession of them somehow. And we still don’t know who she really is, or who the gallery guy really is. And the only connection to the gallery is the file folder name and her on-the-books business relationship. We can’t prove the last image is from inside the place.”

Scoffing, Greene replied, “There’s something in that art gallery. We’re sure of it.”

“I can’t disagree. But if this Keller guy is a serious criminal, we don’t want to tip him off prematurely or give him any grounds to suppress later. Any action on the pole cam?”

“We’re watching it 24-7. Smith, Kelly, Ducky, and me.” Davis sighed. “The place is a ghost town. One or two people per day, at most. Nothing out of the ordinary. No deliveries. Keller hasn’t appeared at all. He must sleep there; we don’t see him even at night. The best action I got was a dog taking a shit on the sidewalk out front.”

“Lieutenant?” A uniformed officer entered the office and handed him an envelope.

“Thank you.” Wright turned the envelope over. “Department of State.”

“Open it!” Davis and Greene nearly shouted.

Wright read the document. “Chantel LLC principal is Devon Wilshire. Address is probably a virtual mailbox; I think it’s a strip mall over on Elmwood.”

“Who the hell is Devon Wilshire?” Davis asked.

“Find out.”

* * *

An hour and a half later, Greene pounded his desk in frustration. “No meaningful record of this name at all.”

“How the hell does State let people use a fake name and virtual mailbox for an address?”

“Politicians gotta have ways to launder money, you know.”

Davis smirked. “So, is this a dead end?”

“Not necessarily.” Greene held up the incorporation document. “Chantel LLC was formed three years ago. I’m betting the principal, this Wilshire, is Keller. Let’s find the previous owner of the house. Maybe we can get info from the details of the sale.”

They left the station and drove to a law firm in the suburbs. Online records indicated the law firm sold the house to Chantel LLC at a modest price. Greene speculated it was probably a ‘flip’ — buying a house at a low price and quickly reselling it for a higher one. Other data they uncovered supported this—the firm only owned the property for seven months and did indeed profit from the transaction.

The lawyers were forthcoming with the detectives. They said the firm sold the house to an LLC through the LLC’s attorney. When asked if anyone ever met an officer or agent of the company, they said no, only the lawyer representing it. Their firm conducts hundreds of these transactions per year, typically between lawyers, rarely with buyers or sellers. In their opinion, this sale proceeded normally. But they did offer an interesting tidbit. Chantel LLC’s representative was an attorney registered in both Virginia and New York. His name was Andrew Mazulli. Payment in this instance came from Mazulli’s firm in the form of a cashier’s check, also not unusual.

Back in the car, Greene asked Davis, “Wasn’t Keller’s last gallery in Virginia?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Interesting. When we get back, let’s dig into this Mazulli.”

Davis checked his phone. “Ducky emailed. Says Devon Wilshire might be a foil. Apparently, you don’t need to show any ID or provide real documentation to get an LLC.”

“Of course not.” Greene’s sarcasm was biting.

“If you’ve got a lawyer in the bag to cut checks for you, you wouldn’t even need a bank account. Maybe Keller is using the lawyer or the gallery account for big stuff and living day-to-day on cash for the rest.”

Greene agreed. “That would keep him pretty well under the radar. The bank records list only the secretary as an authorized user. He either has an extra debit card, or he has her do the money work. Maybe he operates solely on cash.”

“She probably has no idea what he’s up to. Her background was pretty boring.”

“Let’s bring her in.”

The interview

“Thank you for taking the time to speak with us Mrs. Bennet. I am lieutenant Wright. This is Detective Greene and Detective Davis. I believe you all met before. Can I get you a coffee or something?”

She politely declined, so the detectives led her into an interview room. Unlike rooms used to interrogate suspects, this one had a warm interior with comfortable chairs. A coffee machine sat on a corner table surrounded by a stack of Styrofoam cups and sugar packets. Pictures of cute animals, red pandas and kittens, adorned the walls. Davis and Greene took seats opposite from her and set down several manila folders.

“Let me start, Mrs. Bennet, by saying we do not suspect you of any wrongdoing whatsoever. We believe you may have information about someone we do suspect, however.” Davis’s voice was uncharacteristically soft and pleasant.

“Oh, I doubt that. I don’t know people like that.” Mrs. Bennet’s voice quivered.

Davis pressed his hands together like one does when praying. “It’s ok, ma’am. Such people are often quite clever and go to great lengths to keep their activities secret, especially from people who think they know them.”

“Ok.” Her eyes flipped back and forth between the two men.

“Do you recall when my partner and I visited the art gallery back in April?”

“Yes, you were both so polite.”

Davis smiled. “Thank you. We came there because we were looking for a missing woman. This one.” He placed McNally’s DMV photo on the table.

“Providence, yes.” Mrs. Bennet touched the paper. “Have you found her?”

“No.” Davis glumly shook his head. “That’s why we asked you to come in.”

Mrs. Bennet’s eyes flashed. “What could I possibly know about it?”

Taking her hands in his, Davis gently replied, “What troubles me, ma’am, is that the last place we know for sure she was alive was at the gallery.”

Withdrawing her hands, Bennet whispered, “I wasn’t there.”

“No. No you weren’t. We know that. But your boss was.” He took her hands again. “Tell me, what do you know about him?”

“Well… I… pretty much what I already told you. He keeps to himself. I never saw a boyfriend or girlfriend. In fact, he almost never socializes or goes out at all.”

Davis’s eyes lowered. “Do you know where he lives?”

“At the gallery. There is an apartment in the back, down the hall opposite from the wax figurines.”

“Great. Can you describe the layout of the gallery some?”

As she did, Greene frantically scribbled on his notepad.

“Good. Good.” Davis practically purred. “Have you ever been in there, the apartment, I mean?”

“Not much, but yes, a few times.”

“What can you tell me about it?”

Bennet’s eyes shifted upward in an effort to recall. “It’s small. And very tidy. In fact, I would say it’s quite boring. The only notable thing is that he has no decorations or pictures or anything like that. I always assumed it was because he has no family or friends. He never said so but, like I told you, he never talks to people socially.”

“So, what does he do? How does he spend his time?”

“He tends to the gallery, of course. But most of the time he works in his shop. You gentlemen saw it.”

Davis patted her hands. “We did, yes. Kind of a creepy place, isn’t it?”

Bennet chuckled. “It took me a while to get used to, all those body parts lying around, so lifelike. But he doesn’t let me in there much.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“He doesn’t like to be disturbed when ‘working his art’. At least, that’s how he put it.”

Greene looked up from his notepad and shook his pen-hand. “Is there a delivery entrance? Like, how does he get materials into his shop?”

“When you visited, did you see the small alley two doors down, toward the coffee shop?”

Both men nodded. They had made sure their pole cam included the entrance to the alley in its coverage area.

Mrs. Bennet continued. “In there. There’s a garage door to our building and one to the building next door.”

Davis smiled again. “And, Mrs. Bennet, have you ever been back there or in the receiving area?”

She shook her head. “Oh no. That was the first rule Mr. Keller established when he hired me. He said it was dangerous back there. He said hobos often did their drugs there, no matter how often he tried to chase them off.”

The detectives glanced at each other.

“Do you know anything about the materials he purchases or who he purchases them from?”

“Not really. He orders a good amount of foam, like the kind they use to stuff sofas. It’s the base material for the statues. That, and wax.”

“Good. Good.” Greene resumed writing as Davis prodded further. “Do you know the companies?”

She provided a couple names. Greene asked her to confirm the spelling.

“Any others?” Davis asked.

Mrs. Bennet could not remember their names.

“How does he pay his bills? Or get spending money?”

Bennet tapped her chin. “The gallery’s bills are paid from the gallery account. I handle that. I guess I really don’t know where Mr. Keller gets his spending money. He probably doesn’t need it because he never goes anywhere.”

“Does he have access to the gallery account?”

She bobbed her head. “He does, but since I keep the ledger, I can tell you he almost never draws from it. Once in a great while I’ll see a very small cash withdrawal, but that’s it.”

“Ok, let me step back in time for a moment, Mrs. Bennet.” Davis leaned casually on one arm, twiddling a pen in his fingers. “How did you first get your job there?”

The woman ran her hand through her hair. “Let’s see… I think I saw the posting on a flyer in the Tasty Ground coffee shop over on Miller.”

“I know that place. Good coffee.”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “It had a phone number, but my daughter was kind of suspicious. So, she took me to the gallery itself. It wasn’t open, but when we knocked on the front door, Mr. Keller answered.”

Davis grunted. “Smart girl. So, what happened? What did he tell you?”

“He said he just moved from somewhere… San Francisco, I think. He said he liked smaller cities and Buffalo was perfect. It had all the culture of a big city, but the quaintness of a backwater. Those were his exact words. I remember them because I thought—at the time, anyway—that it was what I would expect an art curator to say.”

Raising an eyebrow, Davis asked, “At the time?”

“After working there a few months, I started to think of him more like a mad scientist than an eccentric artist. I think the shift happened when I first saw his shop. The place freaked me out, quite honestly.”

“So, why did you stay?”

Mrs. Bennet exhaled. “Well, I needed work, and he pays me pretty well for an incredibly easy job. Mr. Keller is always very kind to me. Never yells. Never gets mad. I just figured my squeamishness about the shop was my own problem. I guess I watch too many horror films.”

“Uh huh…Did—”

“I like horror films.” Bennet interrupted with a silly grin. “It’s probably unbecoming of someone my age, but we all have our vices.”

Both detectives laughed.

“Mrs. Bennet, that is hardly an immoral vice,” Davis replied.

She blushed.

Greene set down his pen. “What do you say we take a break? Mrs. Bennet, are you hungry? If you say yes, it will give me a chance to order my boss to do something for once.” He winked at her.

With a smile, she said, “A light sandwich would be nice, thank you.”

“Help yourself to some coffee. We’ll be back in a few moments.”

The detectives left the room and headed down the hall some distance before speaking in hushed voices.

“She doesn’t have a whole lot, but the garage is interesting,” Davis said.

“Yeah. I’m also interested in his ‘rule’ about it. I wonder if we can get architectural plans for the building. It seems there’s more in there than what we saw.”

“Think there’s anything else we need to ask?”

Greene shook his head no. “Let’s have lou get her lunch and then send her on her way. She’s being cooperative, and will be again if we need her.”

“Yeah. We should advise her not to tell Keller she was here.”

“Right. But she might, which is why I don’t want to ask her too many questions right now.”

The searches

Driving to city hall, Greene received a call on his cellphone from Ducky.

“Greene, I went through the search history stored on McNally’s browser. She was into some wild stuff.”

“Such as?”

“There’s a lot—and I mean, a lot—of porn.”

“Not surprised. Her nightstand looked like a mini sex store,” Greene interjected.

“Yeah, but some of the porn is… shall we say… nontraditional.”

“What do you mean?”

“Snuff sites. Murder sites. And other really whacky stuff.”

Greene scowled. “Kid stuff?”

“I don’t think so, but there’s something else.

Davis looked at his partner.

“She searched the FBI’s database on missing persons regularly. Like, once a week.”

“Can you tell if she was monitoring a particular case?”

The sound of a keyboard clacking came through the speaker. “I am sorting through that now. I’m going to create a spreadsheet for you guys of the ones she hit on more than once.”

“Great. Thanks, Ducky. Hey, one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Put together a subpoena for her search history. I don’t want to miss anything.”

“Got it. See ya.”

Davis slapped the dashboard. “I wonder if she’s searching her own case. She could’ve gotten away from her perp and is on the run, hence the alias.”

Staring intently at the road ahead, Greene didn’t speak right away. They covered two blocks before he replied, “Or she’s looking at others.”

Both men frowned.

* * *

At a counter inside the city’s property office, Davis gave the clerk the address of the art gallery. She set it next to her computer and began typing. After several minutes, she tore her gaze from the screen.

“Sorry officers, but the building has been privately owned for a long time, meaning they’re not required to provide plans to the city. The best I can do is give you the last ones that were submitted to us. Unfortunately, they’re decades old.”

Greene leaned in and smiled at her. “Whatever you can do will be great, my dear.”

She tilted her head in a flirty way, then printed what documents she had.

When the detectives left, Greene proposed they send a copy to Mills. “He can compare it to satellite imagery, see how much the overall layout has changed. That will at least give us an idea of whether these are useful at all.”

“Might also give us another spot to stick a pole cam,” Davis suggested.

“Yeah.”

“Do you think there’s any chance he’s on to us?”

Greene rubbed his hand over the car’s gear shift. “Keller? He’s gotta be suspicious, at least.”

“He hasn’t tried to run. Maybe he thinks he got away with it.”

“Wouldn’t be the first dumbass to think so.”

The cases

When the detectives arrived at work the next morning, they were greeted with thumb drives labeled, ‘the missing person cases.’ Along with them sat a note. Guys, here is what McNally was searching re the missing persons database. I pulled the reports for each and summarized them in a spreadsheet. All are attached. Subpoenas were sent to the ISP and Google for full histories. Let me know if any follow-up is needed. –Ducky

Without delay, they stuck the USBs into their computers. Greene opened the spreadsheet first and something struck him immediately.

“Yo, D. Did you open the spreadsheet?”

“Yeah. Twenty-three lines. Holy shit.”

“Holy shit is right.”

Almost hesitantly, they began opening the individual case files. This felt like a profound moment in the investigation, even though neither was sure where it would lead. Only the sound of their mouse clicks could be heard over the din of the detective bureau. The partners did not speak for quite a while, their eyes glued to their screens. Finally, Davis broke the silence.

“Ho-ly shit. Open Kovalev.”

Greene did as prompted. When the report popped up, there before him was the unmistakable face of a very young Providence McNally—real name, Jenevieve Kovalev. His jaw went slack.

Davis, who was already reading through the report, started doing so out loud. “Mother’s Irish, father’s Russian. They emigrated to the US forty-two years ago. Gave birth to Jenevieve—Jenny—on March 30, 1990 in Trenton, New Jersey. She went missing on April 8, 2006, at 16 years of age. Last seen leaving Hamilton Township High School. Notable markings—a scar on her left clavicle, three inches in length.”

Still looking at the spreadsheet as he listened, Greene interrupted in a hoarse voice, “D, open the Rodriguez report.”

A few seconds later, Davis gasped. “Jacksonville.”

“The images on her computer.” Greene hurriedly picked up the phone. “Sergeant Mills, please. This is Detective Kevin Greene.” He locked eyes with his partner as he impatiently tapped the ear piece against his head.

“Sergeant Mills.”

Pressing the speaker phone button, Greene hung up the receiver. “Mills, Greene and Davis here. Have you had any luck geolocating those images?”

“Only two more, so far. They’re tough to crack.”

Greene nearly howled. “Where?”

“Charleston, South Carolina and Atlanta.”

“Great. Hold on.” Greene scrolled over the spreadsheet. Sure enough, there were reports for both of those places. “Jesus Christ.”

“What’s up?” Mills asked.

“You won’t believe this, but I think those images are of actual dump sites.”

“Really? How do you know?”

“Our missing subject, the one who had the images we gave you on her computer, was monitoring missing person cases in each of the areas you’ve given us so far.”

Mills whistled. “That’s big.”

“I’m gonna connect with the locals in those places. Can you send me the direct coordinates?”

“Yeah, right away. And I’ll keep working on the others. Keep me posted.”

“I’ll send you the spreadsheet to help narrow your search. Start in Virginia. Thanks, man.” Greene ended the call. With wide eyes, he gazed at Davis. “This is it. The break we needed.”

* * *

They spent a frustrating week awaiting word from the police in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Moreover, Mills had not yet been able to confirm the locations in any of the other images. Their frustrations boiled over into disbelief when the calls started coming in. Jacksonville, nothing found. Charleston, nothing found. Atlanta, nothing found.

Sitting in Lieutenant Wright’s office, Greene slammed his fist on the desk. “We can’t be wrong about this.”

Wright and Davis hung their heads dejectedly. All three of them had been so sure those sites would crack the case wide open. Yet, here they were, with nothing.

“Look, this can’t be a coincidence. Three of the photos match locations where three girls were reported missing, three girls our other missing girl was regularly checking in on online. I mean, c’mon.” Wright ran his hand over his head.

Davis agreed. “Definitely not a coincidence. So, what are we missing?”

“And where does Keller fit in?” Greene added. “I told Mills to focus on Virginia. That’s where Keller was before. Maybe one of the images is from there. If so, that’ll tie him in a little tighter.”

The three officers dolefully looked around the room as if the answers were hidden on the walls. A knock interrupted their ponderings. Ducky.

“Guys, Mrs. Bennet’s on the phone. Greene, your desk, line 1.”

All of them headed to Greene’s desk. He picked up the receiver. “Mrs. Bennet, Detective Greene. How are you ma’am, and how can I help you?” He repeatedly muttered ‘uh huh’ or ‘ok’. After what seemed like forever to the others, he hung up.

“There’s a public showing at the Trompe L’oeil in two weeks.”

The undercover op

“Riggs and Ming, you’ll arrive first. Connelly and Bogart, twenty minutes later. That’ll spread you out. Special ops is going to outfit you with multiple cameras. We don’t know the sophistication level of the subject, so the cameras will record and store onboard only. This is a sig-free op—no transmitting of audio or video. If you get into trouble, you’ll have these panic buttons.” Lieutenant Wright held up a small device. “Hit ‘em, and we’ll be inside in seconds. Detective Greene.”

Greene walked to the front of the room. He faced a small crowd—the lieutenant, his partner, Ducky, the four undercovers, and four officers from the special operations team. “We are outfitting each of you with three micro-cameras.” He focused his gaze directly on the undercovers. “The hope is to capture as much of the place as possible, in as much detail as possible. It’s an art show, so it’ll be normal to walk around a lot, lean into stuff, etcetera. Target the physical layout, but also the art itself. We suspect there might be clues hidden within it.”

Ming, a slender Chinese-American woman, asked, “We have our cover stories in case we’re forced to interact with anyone. Are the cameras themselves equipped with audio or are we wearing separate mics?”

“In the cameras,” Wright called from the back.

“But we prefer you avoid conversation to the extent possible. We have no specific intel on who will be in attendance,” Greene added. “We don’t want to risk blowing your cover. Camera placement will differ on each of you to provide as many angles as possible. If you don’t have any more questions, pair off with your assigned special op to get set up.”

When no one spoke, Lieutenant Wright adjourned the briefing.

* * *

Davis and Greene perched in the dark interior of a box truck outfitted to look like one belonging to a well-known local company. The vehicle faced away from the gallery, but the detectives could see through its back window. From outside, the window looked no different than the rest of the exterior. It was covered in a special paint that had properties similar to one-way glass. Four men in tactical gear leaned against the walls behind them, peering over their shoulders, weapons hanging over their chests. A driver sat at the wheel, monitoring radio traffic through an earpiece, keeping watch through the windshield.

At the opposite end of the block, four more SWAT officers observed from inside a blacked-out Mercedes. Normally, such a high-end car would stand out, but parallel parked among the vehicles of gallery guests, it fit in perfectly. They crouched low to avoid being noticed. Across from the gallery, a SWAT sniper laid prone on a rooftop. His dark gear blending with the surrounding shadows, he kept watch through a high-powered scope.

“There’s Ming,” Davis whispered to Greene.

“Damn, she’s fine.”

Davis glanced at him. “Dude.”

“Well, they got her all dolled up for this shindig. I never knew she had such nice tits. What do ya want from me?”

The support teams watched Ming and her partner enter the gallery, arms locked together. Dozens of others filtered in alongside them.

“Popular event. That’s good. Easier to blend in,” Davis noted.

Once the undercover officers entered, there wasn’t much to see. Nonetheless, Davis took numerous photographs with a telephoto lens. Lieutenant Wright advised they might need to identify some of the visitors, depending upon what the UCs recorded, so Davis made sure to capture close-ups of as many faces as he could.

Officers Connelly and Bogart arrived precisely as planned. Even twenty minutes later, guests continued to funnel in. Eventually, the crowd outside subsided. For most of the evening, the support teams were alone on the street. Occasionally, a guest from the event stepped out to smoke or take a phone call, but that was the extent of the activity.

Hours later, people began departing. The undercovers returned to their cars, acting wholly oblivious to the presence of their comrades, and drove off like every other guest. In just a matter of minutes, the street was quiet once again.

The driver of the box truck called over his shoulder. “Detective, on your mark.”

“We’re good, Harv.”

Harvey cranked the engine over and tapped the brakes twice. That was the signal to the men in the Mercedes. Both police vehicles exited the street.

* * *

It took a day for Ducky and his team to convert the videos taken by the UCs into a watchable format. But finally, the time came to view them. Ducky called Greene and, in minutes, he joined him along with Davis and Wright. Twelve camera angles captured the event in high definition. Although the quality of the videos was excellent, the audio was garbled by the large number of people talking at once. Greene didn’t mind much, though, because the UCs informed him they had not entered into any conversations nor heard anything of interest.

Ducky set the trio up in a room with a giant screen. Each of the twelve angles was projected as large as a modestly sized television. He played them all simultaneously, promising to repeat as many times as needed. Davis, Greene, and Wright leaned forward, studying intently, looking for anything out of the ordinary. This went on for hours. At 12:30, Wright called for a break.

He ordered a pizza the men ate seated around the detectives’ desks. Wright and Greene discussed whether they gained anything from the operation. They were interrupted by Davis swearing loudly. He had dripped grease on his shirt. Stretching forward for a napkin, he stopped suddenly and craned his neck.

“Greene,” he growled. “How do I print everything on my screen at once?”

It wasn’t the content of the question that caught Greene off guard, but the tone with which it was asked.

“Here.” He reached over him and depressed keys on the keyboard.

Davis unceremoniously dropped his pizza into the box and rushed over to the printer. His still greasy fingers gripped the stack of papers. “Call Ducky. We need to get back to the video room.” He didn’t wait for a response before jetting away.

Wright and Greene looked at each other in confusion, shrugged, and dropped their slices to follow him.

* * *

The three investigators clung to the edges of their seats. Davis had made copies of the papers he printed and passed them out, including to Ducky, who stood at the rear of the room working a control panel.

“Ducky, can you make the image from cam 4 take up the whole screen?” When it appeared, he added, “Start it from the point they get to the hallway with all the statues.” The video began playing.

“D, what are we looking for?” Greene asked.

Quietly, and eerily, he replied, “The faces.”

As the UC wearing camera 4 walked along the hall, the view panned left and right. “This is Ming’s barrette cam. It moves with her head,” Ducky advised.

When she neared the first glass-encased figure, she kept her head turned in its direction. The first two figures she passed depicted famous actresses, but the third looked like a much younger woman. When Ming was almost directly in front of it, Davis yelled, “Pause it!”

He flipped through his papers, stopping at one and holding it in front of his face. Lowering it slightly, his eyes peeked over and at the screen, then back down, then up again. “Mo-ther fuck.”

Greene cast a sharp glance at him. “D, what?”

“Look at the Sampson file.” It sounded like he spoke from inside a cave; his voice was deep, watery.

Wright and Greene flipped to that record. Their eyes impossibly widened. The image of the girl in the missing person file stared at them from both the paper and the television screen.

“It’s the same girl.” Greene barely squeezed the words out.

Everyone in the room froze. None of them could mentally ingest what their eyes were feeding them. For a long time, no one did anything while the girl’s visage lingered in its uncanny size, there on the screen.

The trip

All three—Davis, Greene, and Wright—had been on the job for a long time. They’d seen things. Horrible things. But nothing like this.

The art gallery contained a total of forty statues—at least based on a count of what they could see in the videos—and twenty-two of them looked strikingly similar to the women in the missing person reports. All, that is, except for their case, Providence McNally, also known as Jenevieve Kovalev. They did not see a representation of her.

Wright was the first to break the spell of their astonishment. Nevertheless, his voice was severely strained. “Boys, what in hell do we have here?”

Greene repeatedly ran his hand over his head. “Serial killer?”

Davis nodded. “It’s gotta be.”

“It’s gonna be hard to prove that without at least one body. He could just claim he’s got a weird obsession with true crime or whatever,” Wright stated.

“I think we need to dive into those missing person cases. Go to the sites, if necessary,” Greene said. “If we can make a strong connection between Keller and any one of them, we’ll have enough to get a warrant to search the gallery.”

Wright smacked the arm of his chair. “Agreed. I’m going to write this up as a special task force assignment. That will free up funds. Call your women. Tell them to pack you a bag and put a picture of you at the dinner table. That’s all they’re gonna get until we close this up. Ducky, you too.”

* * *

After conducting a detailed analysis of every file, the detectives decided to pursue the Sampson case first. Not only did it include a good amount of information, but it also occurred in Virginia—the last location they believed their suspect spent time before coming to Buffalo. Moreover, they planned to take the opportunity to interview Andrew Mazulli, the lawyer who handled the purchase of Kovalev’s home.

“Mazulli might be difficult.” Greene said. “He can hide behind privilege.”

“Yeah.” Davis gazed at a still shot of Keller they printed from the UC’s video. “I’m thinking we start by showing him this and ask if he knows the guy. His response will tell us how he’s going to deal with us.”

“Agreed.”

“If he’s not a total sleazebag, he might be forthcoming if we tell him we think Keller’s got the girl and we’re trying to locate her, and that we think she’s still alive. He don’t need to know how long she’s been missing.”

Greene shook his head. “Yeah, I like that.”

“Cool. Let’s get our shit together. Flight leaves in two hours. Yo, Duck. You driving us?”

* * *

Greene parked the rental in the lot of a strip mall. Davis peered through the front window of the law firm named Mazulli & Booker using a pair of binoculars.

“Two secretaries or paralegals. Decent-looking place. I’m guessing these guys are legit.”

“Good. Let’s go find out for sure.”

The detectives entered the office and asked one of the women if Mazulli was available. She apologized, telling them he was currently at another law office, managing a property sale. As a concession, she invited them to speak with the other partner, Devon Booker. They agreed.

“Mr. Booker, we are Detectives Greene and Davis. We’re with the Buffalo Police.”

The attorney shook their hands. He was a tall, dark-skinned man, wearing a tan suit and white shirt. A maroon tie and pocket kerchief finished the ensemble. “All the way from New York, eh fellows?” His paradoxically deep but cheery voice boomed through the room. “What can I do for you?”

Davis held Keller’s picture up. “Do you know this man?”

“Hmm…” he took the picture to study it more closely. “He looks familiar. Annie, do you know this guy? Is he one of our clients?” he called to the secretary.

When she looked at the photo her face immediately fell. Davis and Greene both noticed.

“You know him,” Davis said gently. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

Booker realized, a moment after the policemen, the strength of her reaction. “Annie, what is it?”

“We did a sale for him. A house in New York, I think. A couple years ago. It was one of Andrews’. After it went through, that man came here for the paperwork.”

All three men stared intently as the woman spoke.

“It all seemed normal… until I left for the day. He was waiting outside in a van, parked near my car. I didn’t actually see him at first because a woman got out and tried to get me to take a ride with her.”

Davis raised an eyebrow. “A woman?”

“Yeah. Young. Pretty woman. Said her name was Sabrina, or something like that.”

“Sarina?”

“Oh, yeah, maybe that.”

Davis flipped through his folder and retrieved a picture of Sampson—the victim who had gone missing here in Virginia. “Her?”

Annie looked at it and quickly answered no.

Drawing forth another photo, Davis held it up. This one was of Kovalev (McNally).

“Yes! Her! That’s her!”

The expressions on the detectives’ faces turned dark.

“So, what happened?” Davis’s tone was low, foreboding.

“That woman,” she pointed at the paper, “tried to get me to go with her. I forget the exact excuse. When I said no, he got out.” She pointed at Keller’s photo. “The girl grabbed my arm. I hit her—right in the face—and got in my car right quick. Fortunately, I had already unlocked it. If I hadn’t…” she trailed off, visibly shaken.

“Why are you guys really here? What did this guy do?” Booker asked.

Davis turned to look him directly in the eye. “Quite frankly, we thought he kidnapped this woman.” He waved Kovalev’s picture. “Now, I’m starting to think they are working as a team.”

“Whoa.” Booker wrapped his arm around Annie.

“We need his name.” Greene stated.

“I’ll give you whatever you need.”

* * *

“Ducky, I need you to run a client ID, Virginia DL.” Davis proceeded to read the identifying number on the copy of Keller’s license the attorney gave them.

“Nothing major. No tickets or criminal hits.”

“When was it first issued?”

Ducky hummed while he worked. “2020.”

Davis frowned at Greene. “Ok, what’s the social attached to it?”

After reading the social security number out loud, Ducky said, “Wait a minute. The soshe comes back to a Merrick Johnson… who died in ‘69.”

“Figures. Ok, we’re going to check out the address on the license. Can you get us a current address for the Sampson parents? We’re heading over there after.”

“On it.”

Turning to Greene, Davis said, “We’re gonna be chasing our tails forever trying to follow this guy’s fake identities.”

“He has to have put the bodies somewhere. These girls aren’t just missing, they’re dead.”

“Yeah.” Davis was interrupted by a computerized voice coming through the car’s speakers instructing them to turn left in 200 feet. “What do you think is the deal with Kovalev?”

Greene puckered his lips in thought. “I am leaning toward that he groomed her into becoming his accomplice. Maybe she was his first.”

“Yeah, but where is she now then?”

“Good question.” Greene turned the wheel. “My guess is she’s in that gallery. Either dead, or they’re planning to move.”

Turn right in 100 feet. Your destination will be on the right.

“I’m thinking dead.” Davis sighed. “Going missing only brought attention. I don’t think he’d have done that.”

“Yeah, I agree. Question is: why?”

You have arrived at your destination.

“Fuck.” Davis wasn’t swearing at Greene. Both men were looking, with irritation, at a UPS store.

* * *

“Mr. Sampson?”

“Yes?”

“I am Detective Greene. This is Detective Davis.” They presented their credentials and badges. “We’re with the Buffalo Police in New York.”

“Yer a far way from home. What can I do for ya?”

“We want to speak with you about Lisa.”

The man squinted. His lips drew into a thin line. For a long moment, he stood there, silent. When Davis coughed lightly, Mr. Sampson quietly invited them inside.

“My wife gets home in an hour. Unless you found our Lisa, y’all need ta be gone well before then.”

Greene retrieved his picture of Keller. “No sir, we haven’t found your daughter. But we think we are close. Or, at the least, close to capturing who might have taken her.” He handed Mr. Sampson the photo. “Do you recognize this man?”

Scowling, Sampson growled no. His eyes pierced the image with daggers. “Ya think it’s this bastard who took our Lisa?”

“We don’t know for sure, but we want to show you something. Something, I gotta admit, is gonna be deeply disturbing.”

“I ain’t felt nothin’ in years. Y’ain’t gon’ disturb me none.”

Greene handed the man a picture of his daughter. Or, more accurately, the representation of her captured by the UCs’ cameras. Sampson gasped and fell into his armchair, still holding the image in front of his face. “What is this?”

“Well, sir, our undercover officers took that picture in an art gallery. What you are looking at is a wax figurine made to look just like your daughter. There are more than twenty such figures, all of missing women from around the country.”

“Wax what?” The man looked up at Greene in confusion.

“Wax figurine. A statue.”

Sampson waved the paper. “This ain’t no statue. It’s her!”

“No sir. It’s a statue. We think it’s possible that the artist is just obsessed with missing persons cases and uses them for his art. But, it’s also possible—”

“If that’s a statue, he had her. Had to of.” Sampson interrupted.

“You sound so sure. Why?” Davis asked.

“Cuz, look at her neck. See that little mark under her jaw? That ain’t never been in the photos we released of her. Cops told us to do that so if anyone tried to ransom her, we’d know if they was legit. It’s a little cross tattoo we let her get for her 14^th birthday.”

The detectives took the picture from him and looked closely where he indicated.

Greene stood up. “Mr. Sampson, we’re gonna need you to write what you just said in a signed statement. You just gave us the probable cause to bust into that place.”

With a malicious grin, Sampson replied, “Good. And if one of y’alls guns accidentally goes off, even better.”

Back in the car, Greene slapped his partner on the shoulder. “Dude, we’re getting’ in there.”

Davis shook his head slowly. “I’m just concerned about whether we’ll get any evidence. This guy seems to run a pretty tight ship.”

Clicking his tongue, Greene responded, “Maybe the other parents also hid some features of their daughters. If we get a couple like the Sampson girl, prosecutors will be able to convict without a body.”

“I hope—” The ringing phone cut Davis off midsentence.

“Ducky, what’s up?”

“Guys, I need to delay your flight.”

“Man,” Greene whined, “I wanted to get back on the red eye.”

“You’ll like the reason. Check your phones. Gotta run.” Ducky abruptly hung up.

“Dude!” Davis showed him an email from Mills, with Ducky cc’d. It contained a photo with coordinates.

* * *

Greene steered the rental onto a gravel path. The coordinates they entered into their map program led them to the middle of an abandoned industrial complex. To get there from the main road, they had to drive down several side streets between lines of rusted-out buildings. Slowly rolling along, the men opened the windows of the vehicle and peered around.

“You could hide a body anywhere in here.”

After checking his phone, Greene pulled the car forward another hundred feet or so, then stopped and shut it off. “Mills puts it right here. Let’s have a look around.”

The two climbed out of the car.

“She’s been gone for so long, I don’t think we’re gonna find anything, unless an animal dragged one of her bones into the open or something.”

Greene did not respond to Davis’s comment. He was turning round and round, hand scratching his chin. For several moments he did that, as Davis walked about sometimes lifting stones or other debris to peek underneath.

“Yo, D.”

“Yeah?”

“What if we’re wrong about these sites? Like, what they were for, I mean.”

Davis absently bounced his hand on his holster. “Well, she wasn’t abducted from here. So, if it isn’t where he dumped her, what’s the point of all the pics?”

“Serial killers like ritual. Maybe the images are places where he performed them.”

Davis furrowed his brow. “Could be, I guess.”

“Think about it. At least three police agencies searched three different locations and got nothing. If they were dumping grounds, one of them would have come up with something.”

“Yeah.”

“The secretary at the law firm said he had a van. Maybe they—or just him—used these sites to park it so they wouldn’t run the risk of interruption.”

“Ya know,” Davis bit his lip, “this guy is pretty brazen, showing off his victims in his own damn business. I wonder if he’s got video of whatever he was doing to these girls.”

“He seems the type.” Greene started walking back to the car. He was kind of annoyed because, if he drove fast enough, they still could have made their flight. Unfortunately, Ducky already rescheduled it for the morning. “Since we’re stuck here for another night, let’s get the warrant application started when we get back to the hotel.”

“Beers first?”

“Yeah.”

The execution

More than forty men and women crowded into the room. Greene, Davis, and Wright stood at the front with a large screen behind them showing the entrance to the Trompe L’oeil art gallery. After shushing everyone, Wright began speaking.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for being here. I want to thank, especially, the State Police, the Erie County Sheriffs, and the FBI’s Field Technologies Division. This is a big one, and maybe the most important execution of a warrant in many of our careers, so I can’t express enough my gratitude for your assistance.”

Some people murmured in response. The agents from the other agencies had not yet learned much about the case. That’s why they were here.

The image of the gallery was replaced with side-by-side images of Keller and Kovalev. “The person on the left—our primary suspect—is currently known as Harlan Keller, proprietor of the Trompe L’oeil art gallery. We still do not know his real name. He’s traveled around the country under various identities, stealing social security numbers and other credentials from long-dead people. We believe he is kidnapping and killing young women.”

More murmuring.

“On the right is Jenevieve Kovalev. She was reported missing at the end of April under her current identity, Providence McNally. But, since we began our investigation, her status has become muddled. We think, now, that she may have been groomed after Keller first abducted her, which happened way back in 2006. She has traveled the country with him, also under fake identities, and appears to have assisted him with his abductions. We found about two dozen images in a secret file on her computer, which seem to indicate locations where the two possibly performed some kind of ritual on his—or their—victims. Those images match exactly our estimated number of possible victims, twenty-two—twenty-three, if you count Kovalev.”

“Do we have any bodies?” an agent from the State Police asked.

“Negative. But we do have evidence that Keller had special access to these women. Ducky, put Sampson up.”

Ducky nodded and clicked his mouse. Two images of Lisa Sampson appeared. On the left was the photo from her missing person report. On the right was the wax figurine the detectives showed to her father.

“This is Lisa Sampson, missing for over a decade.” Wright continued, “The image on the right was captured by our UCs who went to an event at the gallery to gather intel. When Detectives Greene and Davis showed it to her father, he pointed out a cross tattoo that her father said was never publicly revealed. That was our last piece of PC to get us the warrant.”

“He makes statues of his victims and puts them in his gallery?” an FBI agent asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s fucked up,” muttered another agent.

“Yeah, it is,” Wright concurred. “So, before Greene gets into specifics, here’s what we’re looking for.” On the screen, the search warrant popped up. “Any instrument that could be used to cause the deaths of these girls. Anything that could contain DNA of the victims.”

A State Trooper interjected, “Do we have the perp’s DNA yet?”

“Negative. He has never gone public since we’ve been watching him, so we never got the opportunity. Even the garbage from the gallery is incinerated on-site, it seems. Speaking of which,” Wright pointed to an image now on-screen of a chimney rising from the rooftop of the gallery, “if there is, in fact, an incinerator, we want whatever’s in it. We are taking all the artwork, including the statues, any business records, video equipment, computers, devices, etc.”

“Are we arresting him?”

“Affirmative. We are arresting him on identity theft and fraud, for now, so make sure you swab him. But, most important of all, we are looking for Kovalev. We don’t have evidence that she’s dead, but we do know she was at the gallery and was never seen again after that. We caught her car on video, leaving the place. But we can’t confirm she was driving.”

The various agents in the room furiously scribbled into notebooks.

“One last note, for the tech team, we do not know the subject’s level of sophistication. Be wary of automatic bricking or erasure programs. Unfortunately, our UCs were unable to discern whether there were any computers other than the secretary’s. We questioned her about that, but she had no knowledge of the technical arrangement. And the gallery’s financials did not give us any insight. I’m really hoping he’s got videos or pictures, but we just don’t know.”

Greene stood. “Ok, break into your assigned groups. We’ll address any more questions there, so we’re not wasting time. Remember, execution time is 0600 tomorrow. Muster time is 0400 at our depot on Exchange Street. Thanks, again, everyone. Let’s get this dirtbag off the streets.”

* * *

Dozens of men and women, in full tactical gear, stood around tables. Many were checking their firearms; some were eating the donuts laid out for them. Because Wright’s men did not know the full layout of the gallery and its attached apartment, he split the teams into two groups. Based on what little information the architectural plans, the UCs’ videos, and Mrs. Bennet could provide them, they decided to sweep in through the front and fan out while the other group cut their way through the garage in the alley. The hope was that Keller would still be asleep, giving them time to prevent him from spoiling any evidence.

At 0530, the teams climbed aboard several swat vehicles. Greene, Davis, and Wright led the convoy to the street parallel to the one hosting the gallery. There, they split apart to park on the same corners from which the detectives had first obtained video footage—the gas station and the Tim Horton’s café. Weapons out, the agents jogged from those parking lots to the gallery.

At its entrance, one of the Troopers stuck a suction cup to the glass door and began turning a handle. In seconds, he cut out a circle. With a small flashlight, he inspected the locking mechanism and frame. Nodding in satisfaction, he pulled another tool from his belt and, in moments, swung the door open. Nearly thirty agents silently poured past him, weapons drawn. They did not flash lights. Rather, they crept through the darkness aided by night vision lenses mounted to their helmets.

As much as Greene and Davis wanted to be the ones to put the bracelets on Keller, they opted instead to head toward the shop. Both believed that was where the most evidence was likely to be found and, given they knew the case better than anyone, they should be first into that area. When they reached the door they knocked on seemingly so long ago, they found it locked. The same Trooper who got them into the gallery hustled to their side. He lifted his infrared scope and fired up a little flashlight. Following a quick inspection, he went to work. Within a minute, they were in.

The shop appeared largely the same as the first time the detectives saw it. The team didn’t spend much time in there; they needed to clear the remainder of the complex before they began their search. Greene pointed to a robust steel door at the far end. Turning a wheel mounted in the middle unlocked it. On the other side was a large open area with a garage door on one wall. Numerous pallets rested against the walls, their contents shrouded by shrink wrap. In one corner stood the incinerator they expected they would find.

A radio call came through Greene’s headset with just the news he hoped to hear. “Subject’s detained.”

Delighted, he hurried over to the garage door. He pressed the open button and stood back as the massive door rolled upwards. Greeting him were a dozen armed agents, two of them holding large saws. Everyone lowered their weapons and shook hands.

“Hit the lights,” Wright announced over the radio. The agents removed their infrared equipment once the facility became fully illuminated.

Greene depressed the button for his mic. “Lou, any sign of Kovalev?”

“Negative.”

To one of the agents, Greene said, “Check in there,” pointing at the incinerator. The agent did and shook his head.

“It ain’t big enough for a body. He’d have to cut it up.”

Another agent sprayed the incinerator and the area around it with a bottle that resembled a cleaning implement. “Lights!” he shouted.

Someone shut off the lights to the receiving area. The agent with the spray lit up a blue lamp and walked around the oven. After a few moments, he called out, “Negative for blood.” The main lights came back on.

Greene and Davis glanced at each other. “She’s gotta be here somewhere,” Davis said.

“Yeah.”

The two of them walked back to the shop. At the wall of wigs, Greene reached out and touched one. An agent near him was placing saws from the table of arms and legs into a case. “Make sure you bag these wigs,” Greene said to the man. “I want to test them for DNA.”

Something behind the wig he was fiddling with caught his eye. He lifted the clump of hair off its hook and leaned close. “Yo, D. Weapons up!”

At that command, several agents joined Davis at Greene’s side. He had found a door behind the wall of wigs. Removing those around the handle, he tested it. The handle moved easily. On a whispered count of three, he whipped the door open.

Davis, the first one through, his AR dialed in, stopped dead in his tracks. “Ho-ly shit.”

Jenevieve Kovalev stared back at him.

Waxing poetic

Davis and Greene crept toward the woman, guns aimed at her chest. She stood unmoving, unflinching, in the middle of a room accented by a bank of monitors and computers.

“Jenevieve?” Greene sternly added, “Put your hands up.”

She didn’t move. Her arms remained down at her sides.

Davis fanned to the left, backed by three agents, their weapons trained on the woman. “Greene, her eyes ain’t moving.”

Greene cocked his head, then lowered his weapon. “It’s one of those statues,” he sneered.

An agent behind him said, “If that’s a statue, it’s the most lifelike thing I have ever seen.”

“Look,” Greene pointed at her neck, “the scar.”

Over the radio came Wright’s voice. “Greene, Davis. Come to the lobby.”

Taking a last look at the figure, Greene turned on his heel. “D, let’s go.” To another agent he ordered, “Get the techs in here; everyone else out.”

In the lobby of the gallery, the man they referred to as the weirdo sat in a chair, his hands cuffed behind him. Upon the arrival of his men, Wright announced, “Detectives, I believe you have met Mr. Keller—or whatever your name is—before.”

They both nodded.

“I wanted you here before I ask him this very simple question.” Wright turned to face their suspect. “Where are the girls?” He dropped a stack of missing persons reports in the man’s lap.

Keller looked down at them and smiled. It sent shivers up the detectives’ spines. He studied the images for several seconds before looking back up at the policemen. “I’m sure they’re around.” The casualness of his statement drew angry looks from the cops.

Wright picked up one of the papers, rolled it up, and smacked him with it. “You made fucking statues like them. Where are their bodies?”

Keller grinned again, but this time it wreaked of such malevolence it shocked even the seasoned detectives. “The gumshoes…” he hissed the word, “still haven’t figured it out.”

Enraged, Wright balled a fist. Greene stepped in before his lieutenant punched the guy in the face. Whirling on Keller, he hissed, “Figured out what?”

At that instant a call came through their ear pieces. “Uh, detectives. Come to zone B-2, please. Urgent.”

In their operations plan, each section of the gallery was given a zone label. Zone B-2 comprised the hallway of statues. With a frustrated huff, Greene and Davis whisked away. In the statue-filled hall, they encountered an FBI agent holding a peculiar tool.

“What is that?” Greene nodded toward it.

“It’s a SOLID—Signs Of Life Detector. We got ‘em from NASA—kind of a mini-version. They use fluorescent immunoassays to identify organic biosignatures.”

“Enough with the gibberish,” Davis snapped, “Plain English please.”

“It’s a tool that can tell if something is made of life material.”

“What are you getting at?” Greene’s demeanor indicated he knew what the answer was going to be.

“He never buried the bodies.” The agent pointed at the girl in the case beside him. “They’re staring right at us.”

Epilogue

The investigation continued throughout the following year. Greene and Davis no longer served as the leads; that role was transferred to investigators from the District Attorney’s office. The detectives did, however, keep apprised of developments in the case.

No one ever figured out Harlan Keller’s real identity. Neither his fingerprints nor DNA appeared in any database, not even in those commercial ancestry types. In court, he was presented as John Doe or, more often, The Defendant. Even at the time of his first abduction, Jenevieve Kovalev, he used a stolen identity. No matter how hard investigators pressed him, he would not reveal his real name, choosing to claim, instead, that he was “From Hell.”

Investigators did learn, however, From Hell kept Kovalev locked in an abandoned warehouse, somewhere in New Jersey, though exactly where could not be ascertained. Over several months, he put her through various forms of emotional and psychological torture. At last, he broke her will and convinced her to help abduct his next victim. Videos of his methods were saved on his computer.

Keller ordered her to sexually assault that first victim she helped kidnap while he filmed it. In a conversation he secretly recorded later, he warned Kovalev if she ever betrayed him, he would release the video online. From that point on, she seemed all in. She even recommended some of the victims, based on her desire to have sex with them. In each instance, she and Keller would take turns assaulting the women while the other recorded the attacks. Later, the two would sit and watch their handiwork together.

As for her own demise, she confessed on video that she felt bad for her participation and wanted Keller to make her his last conquest. Psychologists who viewed the confession believed she was sincere. She stated she was aware of the monster she had become and, while Keller made her that way, she was nonetheless responsible for her actions. Her evaluators wondered whether that was true. Keller, some of the shrinks argued, put her under a spell more powerful than they had seen in other cases involving this type of manipulation.

Scientific analyses of the statues revealed Keller had essentially mummified the corpses. He injected wax into the muscles to harden them, so they would hold their pose. He funded his scheme through his showings in which wealthy people sponsored him because they thought he was so profoundly talented. None realized, evidently, that they looked upon actual corpses. The figurines of famous people—actual statues—were crafted to uphold the ruse.

Each time Keller and Kovalev moved from one city to the next, he rented a moving van and took the bodies—or bodies-turned-statues—with them. Other than his hard drives, he destroyed everything else. He also used rentals to conduct his kidnappings.

Keller said he fell in love with Kovalev at some point, which was why he agreed to her request to kill her. He allowed himself to be caught by police, he claimed, because his life had served its purpose. His final masterpiece, Kovalev herself, was his magnum opus. What happened to him afterward was immaterial, he admitted this during his plea hearing, adding that soon he would descend to hell to rejoin her for their eternal matrimony.

Anthropologists dressed the victims’ bodies to make them look dead, so they could be presented to the families for funeral rites or burial. Their current appearance, so lifelike, would traumatize their loved ones, the head-doctors believed. After a great deal of deliberation, it was decided the families should, nonetheless, know precisely what happened to their girls. Greene was the biggest advocate for this because he knew the families would find out eventually. He thought the authorities should be the ones to tell them, “not some true crime show on YouTube,” he argued.

Keller was sentenced to numerous life terms, ironic for one claiming to be immortal and bound to no particular plane of existence. The day after sentencing, Davis retired. His stint in the missing persons bureau was short, but traumatic. He could have transferred out, but decided to pursue a more mundane way to make a living.

Wright followed him just a year later, ready to live off his pension. Greene went on to become lieutenant and later headed the homicide bureau, capping off a long and decorated career. Ducky spent five more years with the force before joining the private sector as a programmer, to a much higher salary. He brought Sgt. Mills into the company when the man retired from the Troopers a few years later.

Jenevieve Kovalev’s father killed himself two months after hearing the full story of his daughter’s depravity and regretful confession. Her mother died of a heart attack just four weeks later. At their joint funeral, the pastor declared the devil had taken their entire family—father, mother, daughter.

Lisa Sampson’s parents got divorced, but both remarried and did their best to keep themselves emotionally put together. They remained friends thereafter. Mrs. Bennet never took another job. She chose to downsize her home so she could afford to live solely on her social security; she died a decade later, at the age of ninety. Jenevieve’s friend, the one with whom she had a beer to celebrate her last job, moved to Europe and was not heard from by anyone in Buffalo ever again.

Harlan Keller / From Hell—or whatever his name is—currently remains locked up in Clinton Correctional facility in a small town in New York State. At least, that’s what the official records say. Cellmates of his, however, claim he comes and goes at will.

Who should one believe? The government? Or the rapists and murderers…

**All characters depicted in this story are fictional, and any similarities to real people are purely coincidental. Most businesses and locations are fictional. Real businesses named are only to add realism to the setting, and are not meant to be disparaging. All rights reserved.

Also, without the Also, Without saga, enjoy (or suffer) the regaling of a boy’s recount of how he killed his baby brother… Or did he? Narrators can be so finicky, especially young ones.

Fear not ye general public, the next open installment, as planned, will reach your inbox on May the 2nd.

Read more

Part Two: the pathology of the portrayal of sacred discontent informs reasoning beyond the necessary to the point of the required dissolution.

Within, but not without, at least in this case; leading very definitely not in innocence nowhere near a dog which can be buried deeper and not the bone, if you grab my gist. Without doubt, wandering into a sea of metaphor, and emptying it with a thimble. Perhaps some kind of narrative is taking place, but it most definitely is not in the video but in your own presence. The miracles of modern science laid bear with clause.

From the 4th dimension of Majla Zeneli:

When the devil stands before you, things are oft not what they seem. Tread upon these paths, face down evil, from an insider’s view, though fictionalized, in multiple parts.

Waxing Poetic - Part 1

Story by RL Vanwey; cover art by CJ Lutz

The introduction

“This place is creepy as hell,” grumbled Detective Greene.

“Yeah,” his partner absently muttered back.

“Who thinks, ‘I want to run a wax museum when I grow up’?”

Detective Davis was too busy inspecting the row of figures, their lifelike features, each encased in glass, to answer. More than a dozen lined the wall on one side of a dimly lit hallway. Some resembled famous people. The cops did not recognize the others.

At the end of the hall, they knocked on a door and identified themselves. A man of average height answered. Greene jumped in surprise at the oversized headlamp shining directly in his face. Apologizing, the man switched it off. He wore a lab coat over a black t-shirt and jeans. White socks were all that covered his feet.

“Mr. Keller?”

The man nodded.

“Your secretary sent us back here.”

“Yes, she told me,” the man said, nodding still.

“Does this woman work for you?” Greene held up a photo of a face taken from the DMV’s driver license database.

“I contract with her, yes. Why? Did she do something?”

Davis shook his head. “She was reported missing. When’s the last time you seen her?”

Removing the head lamp, the man tapped its strap on his chin. “She doesn’t come here much, only to deliver her product.” He pointed to a painting hanging next to one of the glass cases that housed a mannequin. “The last time was maybe three weeks ago. But I can check my books to confirm. I always enter the delivery date of products and give the creators a receipt.”

The officers grunted in assent.

Mr. Keller led them through a curious workshop. Several human-shaped body parts rested on a table in various states of completeness. The finished ones looked frighteningly real. Numerous tools were scattered in between, many of them bladed. Greene’s face wrinkled when they passed another table, this one full of heads, also in various states of development. Next to a wall packed with wigs propped on hooks sat a desk upon which Mr. Keller sifted through some papers. Locating a book buried beneath them, he flipped through the pages until he reached the one he sought.

“Here.” He stabbed his finger on an entry that read Providence McNally. “April nine. So, yeah, just over three weeks ago.”

Greene leaned in toward the book. “Right. Ok. Have you spoken with Ms. McNally since then?”

“No. I just wired her the remainder of what I owed her. Half the agreed upon price. That’s how we always do it.”

“Do you have any future work planned for her?” Davis asked.

“Nothing specific, yet. She typically does five or six pieces for me per year.”

Greene handed him his business card. “Ok, thanks. Give us a call if you see or hear from her, ok?”

“Sure thing.”

Mr. Keller guided them back to the ‘creepy’ hallway. When he closed the door to his shop, the officers headed for the exit.

“What do you think?” Davis looked at his partner.

“He’s a weirdo,” Greene pointed at the nearest statue for emphasis, “but not necessarily suspicious. He says he regularly buys her work, so that kind of speaks against a motive. But who knows, maybe their arrangement—whatever it was—went south. Let’s get his bank records.”

“Lunch first?”

Greene grinned. “Damn straight.”

The Timeline

“Ten weeks ago, the vic receives an email from the secretary at the Trompe L’oeil art gallery, requesting a painting. They have a little back-and-forth, but basically, the secretary says they’re looking for an image of Grape Street. She offers her five grand.”

Lieutenant Wright whistled.

Greene shook his head. “I know. We’re in the wrong business.” He leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the desk. “The vic replies to the offer with a short message, ‘I’ll do it,’ and then they have a few more emails setting a schedule for the work. According to the vic’s neighbor, she starts preparing the canvas—whatever the hell that means—the day after the gallery paid her the deposit, which was…” he thumbed through some papers, “…February 20.”

“Does she work from home?” Wright asked.

“Yeah, she’s got a studio at the back of her house, I guess,” said Davis.

“So, she and a friend go for beers at the Alley Cat on February 21,” Greene continued. “Apparently, once she starts painting, she doesn’t leave the house, answer calls or texts, nothing. At least, that’s what her neighbor told us. We’re still trying to track down the friend.”

Wright groaned. “So how do we know for sure she’s even missing?”

Greene raised his palm in a stopping motion. “She finished the painting three weeks ago and delivered it to the gallery on or around April 9, if the gallery guy is being straight with us. No one’s heard from her since then, that we know of. She even missed some deadlines with another company, which is who called it in.”

“Yeah,” Davis added, “the weirdo guy showed us his logbook, and when we served the subpoena for his bank records, we asked them to check for that final payment. It was made on April 10.”

“Ok, so can we confirm the delivery date and track her from there?” Wright asked.

Greene nodded. “We got video coming from the gas station at the corner. They said it doesn’t show the gallery itself, but you can see the part of the street leading up to it. There’s a Tim Horton’s at the other corner, but same problem—their video only covers part of the area, not the gallery itself. We got nothing in between.”

“Once we see her leave, we can get more based on whatever direction she went,” Davis said. “Gas station told us they’ll call once they download it. It’s stored offsite, apparently.”

Two days later, the detectives sat once again with their lieutenant.

“Alright, lou, the McNally case has taken a turn.”

“What do you mean?”

Greene rubbed his shaved head. “So, McNally goes to the gallery at 10pm to drop off her painting. We see her jeep pass the gas station. You can’t make out the plate, but we know it’s hers because it’s got an old college parking sticker on the top driver side corner of the windshield, probably from the previous owner.”

“Ok.”

“We don’t see it again until 2:25 in the morning. And we’re sure she didn’t go anywhere else because she would have had to pass one of the cameras.”

“2:25 in the morning?” Wright looked incredulous. “What the hell was she doing there for four and a half hours? Banging the weirdo?”

“That’s what we thought,” said Greene, “so we went back to the secretary for the gallery, this time at her house. She’s the one who gave us the email chain. We mentioned the idea that McNally and the weirdo were doing it, but she doesn’t think so. She suspects her boss isn’t into the physical stuff at all or he might be a gay afraid to come out. Said he never has anyone around socially, just clients and creators. And even those are infrequent.”

“Did she give any reason for the timeframe, then?”

“Not really. Normally, McNally drops her shit off and splits. But the secretary did note this was the most expensive work McNally ever sold them, so she figured maybe her and the owner were celebrating.”

“Celebrating?”

Sighing, Greene said, “Yeah. When I asked celebrating how, the secretary had no idea since that’s never happened before. But, the lady’s pretty old, so maybe she’s not being imaginative enough—the vic is young and attractive. I don’t know.”

“Odd that he paid her so much. What did you say the usual amount was?”

“800,” Davis announced.

“Did the secretary offer any ideas for why such a high price on this one?” Wright asked.

Greene frowned. “Only that when the price goes up dramatically like that, it usually means the artist found a sponsor, but the gallery owner is the only one with that info. Getting a sponsor might be a reason to celebrate, I guess.”

“Ok. We’re gonna need to talk to him again.”

“Yeah, once we’ve got some more background on him. I made a request for the gallery’s phone records. Apparently, the owner doesn’t have a cell.”

Wright’s eyebrows raised. “No cell? He is a weirdo.”

“Yeah. So, there’s the huge amount, the long night at the gallery, and then McNally apparently just goes home and disappears.” Greene waved several photos. “We got her on three traffic cams, including one a block from her street. We’re still waiting on GPS from the car, but I think it’s gonna put it in the driveway. Her neighbors all report that it was there when they woke up and never moved again.”

“Any cameras on the house?” Wright asked.

“No. The nearest camera only gets the property line opposite from the driveway. It belongs to a neighbor, so it’s focused on his property. We see the lights when the Jeep pulls in, but nothing else. The shades are all drawn, so we can’t see in the house, and from the outside the car looks clean.”

“Why don’t you run it by the DA? We should have enough to get a warrant for the house and car. In the meantime, I got a friend over at DHS, I’ll see if she crossed the border. Any chance she just hopped on a plane somewhere?”

Greene shrugged. “At this point, anything’s possible.”

The search

An officer in a black polo with the words ‘Crime Scene Investigations’ printed across the back forced open the door. Greene and Davis, guns drawn, crept inside. They both clicked on flashlights. With all the shades down, the room was quite dark. Before beginning their search, they and several other officers ensured no one was present in the house, including McNally herself. Finding nobody, they holstered their weapons, turned on some lights, and entered the kitchen. It was extraordinarily neat and clean, only a wine bottle and one glass sat on the countertop.

“Seems she was planning to celebrate alone,” Davis said, snapping several photos with his phone.

“Yeah… I assumed artists are all slobs, but this place is like a hospital, it’s so clean.”

Chuckling, Davis opened the refrigerator. “Oh,” he moaned, covering his face and quickly slamming it shut. “Something’s rotten in there.”

Greene stepped over to it. “Open it again.”

Pinching his nose, Davis did so.

Greene reached a glove hand in and moved a few things around. “Okay,” he coughed, “good enough.” With a squinty face he said, “Some of the meat is almost a month old. If she did come home after the gallery, she disappeared pretty quickly thereafter or else she would have eaten or thrown that stuff away.”

“I’m doubting she went away voluntarily.”

“Me too,” said Greene, as he stroked his chin. “Let’s check out her work room.”

Located at the rear, the studio was the largest room in the house. Unlike every other space, this area was cluttered with paint cans, canvases of all sizes, easels, brushes, and other artist supplies and tools. In one corner, a computer sat upon a desk littered with papers, pens, and pencils. A standard office chair was the only seat. Barely any of the floor was visible amidst the mess.

“Well, this is more like what I expected,” Greene declared.

“Yeah, but what the hell are we even looking for?”

Greene’s brow furrowed. “No idea.”

“Hey boss,” an officer called from another room.

“Yeah?” Greene shouted back.

The officer walked toward him holding a clear plastic evidence bag. “She had a few boyfriends.” He grinned, jiggling the bag. Greene scowled. It contained several vibrators and dildos.

“Just log it and stop fucking around.”

When the officer left, Greene turned to Davis. “If she’s into kink, that could be an avenue to go down.”

“That, or she could just be lonely and horny.”

“Yeah,” Greene mumbled, scrolling through his phone. He selected a contact and, when the call connected, said, “Hey lou, can we get a warrant for a computer? It could be synced to her phone, which we haven’t found.”

After thanking the lieutenant and hanging up, Greene instructed Davis to look around for other devices. He then headed for the woman’s bedroom. Two officers searched there. One rifled through dresser drawers while the other peeked under furniture.

“Anything?”

“Phone charger’s still plugged in,” replied one of the CSIs, “that’s about it so far.”

“So, she probably didn’t plan on going anywhere for long. Ok, good. Keep at it.”

Back at Davis’s side, Greene asked the same question.

“I think the computer’s gonna be important,” Davis answered. “It’s obviously heavily used and, fortunately for the techs, she’s got Post-Its all over with passwords. I took, like, twenty pics just in case anything gets lost. Otherwise, there is so much shit in here, I can’t find anything of use.”

Patting him on the shoulder, Greene said, “It is what it is. Let’s keep looking.”

The discovery

On May 9, now a month since the disappearance and a week into their investigation, Greene and Davis impatiently stared across their desks at each other. The techs had advised them that morning that the contents of the computer would be coming their way in the afternoon.

The search of McNally’s house led them mostly nowhere; likewise with the car. No foreign DNA, fingerprints, blood, nothing. Still, the detectives had not sat idle over the week, waiting on the computer geeks. DHS informed them there was no record of McNally crossing the border, either by land or air. Calls to the airlines revealed no domestic flights. McNally’s car did not register on any license plate readers after the night she disappeared. The detectives canvassed every bar, store, restaurant, and gas station near her house, but few could offer anything at all. Importantly, they located the friend she had a beer with when first commissioned for the art job back in February.

The interview with the friend took some time because when she learned McNally had gone missing, and for how long she’d been gone, the friend broke down. Once she gathered herself, she told the detectives the two have been friends for the last three years, but McNally is a very private person. They only hang out a few times per year. Both detectives nodded—they gleaned much the same about McNally from the few people in her neighborhood who claimed to know her. In short, even those who ‘knew’ her didn’t know much about her. The friend noted that during their celebratory meet-up McNally gave no details about this latest job for the gallery; she stated only, “it’s paying well.”

Greene asked, “How does she make a living? Aside from the last job, she only made about four grand from the gallery this year.”

“She does graphics for businesses, like their mailers and stuff, as well as websites. I don’t think she earns a ton of money, but she doesn’t really seem to need it.” McNally’s bank records, which the detectives reviewed a few days prior, supported these assertions.

The woman could offer little other helpful information, but she closed by saying she hopes the detectives find her. “No one deserves that,” she said. Davis gave her a business card, thanked her, and he and his partner departed.

One of the techs finally arrived at the detectives’ desks shortly after lunch holding a baggie of thumb drives. “Her computer was data heavy—lot of imagery.”

“She’s an artist,” interrupted Greene.

“Right. So, I split the drive into three parts, labeled here,” the tech pointed to a number taped to each flash stick. “I made two copies, one for each of you, and put the original drive and original copy into evidence.”

“Cool, thanks Ducky.” Everyone called him that because the guy was obsessed with ducks and filled his office with photos of them.

When Ducky waddled away, Davis said, “I have a thought.”

“Shoot.”

“Pick a number to start on, and I’ll do a different one. But first, I wanna run a check of missing person cases. See if any look similar. I mean, this is kinda serial killer 101—a single woman no one will notice missing for a while. Don’t ya think?”

Greene wagged his finger. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good to me. We were lucky it was only three weeks on this one. Who would’ve expected a contracted company located out of state to file a report just because she missed a deadline?”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

At around 9:30 the next morning, Davis stumbled into the office.

“Man, did you go on a bender last night?” Greene asked. “You got the same threads on.”

“I didn’t go anywhere. Slept in the storeroom.”

“What?! Why? Problems with the wife?”

Tilting his head dismissively, Davis plopped at his desk and booted his computer. “Check this out.” He spun his monitor. Numerous images covered the screen. “Found this last night.”

“I’m not following.”

“These are all for the gallery—that Trumpet Oil place.”

Greene chuckled. “It’s Trompe L’oeil.”

“Whatever. The point is, didn’t the weirdo guy say she only does like five or six pieces a year for him?”

“Yeah, but maybe she’s been doing that for years. We saw payments from the gallery going back at least three. Maybe there’s more before that.”

Davis beamed. “I checked. We only have the last three years cuz that’s how old her account is. But that’s not the key part.”

“What is?” Greene eyed his partner, clearly intrigued now.

“This folder isn’t the stuff she was getting paid for. That’s in another folder. This one, according to Ducky, was hidden.”

“No shit?”

“There are twenty-three images, all of cities. But, they’re not artsy, they’re just alleys and fields, and shit like that.”

Greene gazed at the screen again. “Well, what’s that about?”

“Good question. It’s fucking odd, ain’t it? And there’s more.”

“Do tell.”

“So, Ducky said the mega data…”

Slapping his forehead, Greene snipped, “Metadata.”

“What?”

“It’s meta—ah forget it. What did Ducky say?”

“These go back eighteen years.”

“Maybe she just mixed in old stuff from something else.”

Davis shook his head. “That’s what I said, but Ducky thinks that’s unlikely. Not only was the folder hidden, it was password protected. It wasn’t like she could accidentally move something into or out of it.”

Greene clicked his tongue, staring back at the monitor. “What were you up to, girl?”

“I got on this when the missing persons search was getting nowhere. Was up all night.”

“It’s an excellent find, D.”

“Also, I went back to her DMV stuff. She would have been eighteen, eighteen years ago.”

“Huh. Young age to start, and quite a long tenure for not much money. What was the weirdo guy’s name again?”

Davis opened a folder on his desk. “Harlan Keller.”

“Let’s find everything we can about this guy. This is all really strange.

“On it.”

The revelation

“Lou, we gotta talk.”

The lieutenant beckoned the pair into his office. “What’s up?”

“So, on the McNally case, we found some crazy shit.”

Lt. Wright’s eyes lit up. “Oh?”

“On the missing girl’s computer, we found twenty-three images—pics and paintings, or maybe drawings—of locations in cities, but nothing fancy or artsy, really.”

“So?”

Greene snapped, “Let me get to the good part, goddammit.”

Wright spread his arms. “Ok, ok, chill already. Jesus.”

Sitting down, Greene continued. “What’s crazy is that these photos were in a secret file named for the art gallery—one of the last places our vic was seen alive. Now, we know she got paid by the gallery to produce art works, but those were different from these. And these go back way further—eighteen years. Payments only go back three years.”

“That’s pretty weird.”

“Not as weird as what I am about to tell you next.” Greene rubbed his hands together and Davis leaned toward the desk. “The art gallery opened three years ago. McNally’s bank records, same. And…” he paused for dramatic effect. “…Providence McNally, our alleged victim, has only existed for three years herself. Bank account, license, car reg, credit history… all three years old. Before that, nothing.”

Lt. Wright leaned back, whistling. “Whoa…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Stolen identity?”

Greene shrugged. “Probably. Anyway, we looked at the owner of the gallery. Before this, he had a place in Virginia for a couple years. It was incorporated under a different LLC. Other than that, there’s nothing odd there. But,” he stabbed his finger into the air, “before that, Harlan Keller didn’t fucking exist!”

Davis slapped the desk, causing his boss to flinch.

“You gotta be kidding me.” Wright looked completely befuddled.

“Nope,” Davis blurted.

“What in hell is going on here?”

“I don’t know, lou,” Greene was practically panting, “but we’re sure as hell gonna find out.”

The detectives returned to their desks. Both began scrolling through computer files from McNally’s hard drive. After two hours of laborious slogging, Davis rubbed his eyes. “This isn’t going anywhere. Let’s get a bite.”

At a nearby sandwich shop, the two munched away. Between mouthfuls, Greene said, “Alright, we got two people, both with fake identities. Dude runs an art gallery through which he was paying the girl. And now, she’s missing. I’m thinking if we can find out who she really is, we will probably find that he has been paying her all along for ‘official’ work while she was also doing the side stuff. Question is, what’s up with the side work? And why the fake identities?”

Davis wiped his mouth. “I think the side work is the answer, but how are we gonna figure that out?”

“Yeah, how?” Greene took another bite, his expression thoughtful. “I wonder if we can determine where those photos were taken. Maybe there’s a pattern or something relevant about them.”

“How the hell we gonna do that?”

Greene’s eyes widened. He put a finger up, indicating to wait a moment. Fumbling for his phone, he unlocked it and made a call. “Ducky, you know that hidden folder on the McNally girl’s computer, all those city pics?”

He waited for the reply. “Can you check for location data?” Putting the phone on speaker, he placed it on the table.

Davis called over his shoulder. “Yo, Pete. Don’t listen. We’re doing some police shit out here.”

From somewhere out of view came the response. “First time for everything.” Both detectives chuckled.

On the phone, Ducky said, “Sorry guys. No dice.”

“Shit.”

“Let me make a call. I know an analyst with the Troops who is excellent at OSINT. Maybe he can figure it out from the photos themselves. I’ll call you back.”

Davis mouthed, ‘OSINT?’

Greene waved at him. “It just means using the internet to find the place in the pic.”

“Oh.”

The phone rang. “Yeah, Duck, what have ya got?”

“I’m sending him the file now, secured transfer. I gave him your emails, so he can connect directly. Name is Sergeant Tom Mills.”

“Any idea how long it will take?”

“Look Greene, this is difficult stuff. More so when the pictures are of generic places, like these are. We’ll be lucky if he can locate any of them.”

“Got it. Ok, thanks Ducky. Hey, one last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Do we got her email account?”

“Only what’s saved locally on the drive. To get the account from Google, you’ll need a search warrant. Can’t get content with a subpoena.”

“Shit, I don’t know if we’ve got PC for that. I’ll run it by the lou. Thanks, Duck.”

Davis exhaled loudly. “I hate all this tech shit.”

“This tech shit is the only way we’re gonna solve this.”

The tech shit

On the drive back to the office, Greene’s phone rang again. He put it on speaker. “Detective Greene.”

“Hey, it’s Ducky. Mills called me. We discovered something interesting. Well, two things.”

The detectives looked at each other.

“In the audit logs of that secret folder, we checked the access permissions. There were two entries. One was what you’d expect—Providence. But there was another name: Sarina. S-A-R-I-N-A. I couldn’t find that name or user ID anywhere else, so I suspect it was from a previous computer this folder once sat on.”

“Good. Thanks. What’s the other thing?”

“I was getting to it.” Ducky sounded annoyed by the question. “The audit logs also revealed the folder was created on the same day the oldest picture was dropped in there, in 2008. Someone scrubbed the location and certain other data, but on the oldest picture they forgot to remove the name of the user—Jenny.”

“Sarina and Jenny, 2008, got it. You da man, Ducky.” Greene ended the call.

He looked over at Davis. “I bet Jenny is real. And we got a year. Let’s look up every missing person case under Jen, Jenny, Jennifer, or whatever from ‘08.”

Davis nodded. “I would have preferred Sarina. Probably a lot less cases.”

“Hey, it’s something.”

“Well, we knew it wasn’t gonna be easy.” Greene glared at the computer. His search resulted in nearly 12,000 hits.

“Let’s put an age range in there. We don’t know her real birth date, but she was probably around 18.”

“Good call. How about 16 to 21?” Greene entered the parameter and refreshed. “9,102.”

“Eye color?”

Greene made the adjustment, hoping the color listed on the driver’s license was real even if the identity was not. “7,455.”

“Too bad her eyes weren’t fucking purple. We’re gonna need a location.”

Grunting in agreement, Greene picked up the phone. “Ducky, tell Mills we really need to locate that first image, the oldest one.”

“10-4.”

Before he disconnected, Ducky spoke again. “Greene, wait. I wanted to let you know, the computer does not appear to have been synced or ever connected to a phone or mobile device.

“Shit. Thanks.”

Turning to Davis, Greene said, “Now, I guess we wait.”

Davis nodded absently. He was scouring a pile of documents.

“What have ya got there?”

“Bank records.” He held them up. “I didn’t notice before, but check this out. All her bills are auto-debited—utilities, car payment, insurance.”

“So? That’s what normal people do… unlike you.”

Davis stuck his tongue out. “One is missing—the rent.”

“Check? Cash, maybe?”

Running his finger along the page, he muttered, “No checks. Not enough in cash withdrawals.”

“Huh.” Greene started typing.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking to see who owns the property.” He clicked the mouse a few times. “Chantel, LLC.”

“Not surprising.”

“According to State, Chantel LLC is owned by…” Greene waited for the data to populate. “Private. Argh. We’re gonna need a subpoena.”

“You know what I don’t get?” Davis ran his hand over his head.

“What’s that?”

“If the weirdo guy abducted her or killed her or whatever, why pay her the money, the rest of the five grand?” He pointed to the entry indicating the wire from the gallery.

“We don’t know that he’s responsible.”

“I know, but suppose he is. And there’s good reason to think so—last one to see her alive, business relationship, fake identities, and all that. Why pay her?”

Greene thought for a moment. “You said all her bills were paid by auto-debit, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it was to keep them up-to-date for a while to buy him time.”

Davis looked up from the papers. “Buy time for what?”

Both stared at each other before simultaneously blurting, “To flee.”

The set-up thus given, the pay-off is to come in the next open installment, on May the second.

Every other month, a new episode will arise, dripping with oil and mud, vowing vengeance on the consciousnesses of an ever vigilant audience. Rare and previously unreleased material by The Hafler Trio and their various associates will be heavily featured, nay, will be unavoidable. As well all sorts of other nonsense.

Fear not ye general public, the next open installment, as planned, will reach your inbox on March the 7th.

Subscribe now

Read more

Next delightful post will be, yes it will, Saturday, 7th March. What will be the content? Oh my, well… that’s a long story, which the excited viewer will see unfold before their lovely eyes. Who? Why? where? How? What if? All of this–and more!–will be revealed, gloriously. Inevitably.

In addition, gentle reader, there will be additional additional additions. Confused? You may still be, after next-but-next month’s episode of…

Subscribe now

As a collective creative organization, it stands for the idea that such an entity refuses orderly hierarchies or predictable arrangements. Instead, it is a field where the different threads—ideas, practices, voices, disciplines, temperaments—are allowed to come down independently, only to be caught and held together by some invisible curvature of intent. The inversion is very significant: instead of unifying from above, it lets difference to emerge in its own way, thereby, it is believed that sense will be created through unforeseen combinations, awkward closeness, and the co-existence of things that were never meant to agree.

The things which are gathered are not uniform; the tensions, on the contrary, are still there, even in a productive sense, hence, contrast turns into a method rather than into a problem that has to be solved. The inverted umbrella in this respect is not so much a container as it is a device for chance orchestration, a means of producing the conditions under which the surprising, the marginal, and the incompatible can, for a short time, be together, resonate, and change each other. It is willing to let go of the idea that coherence may be there only if looked at sideways, or belatedly, or only in fragments, and that the most productive connections are usually at the places where no straight line was ever ‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌meant.