CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
‘This is just… deranged,’ she muttered to herself. She forwarded the blog address to Marcus and Chen.
‘What have you sent me?’ Marcus asked.
‘Just open it.’
For a while, there was almost complete silence in the office, punctuated by occasional clicks of the mouse and sporadic, whispered expressions of shock. Then Kate found the author's profile.
His name was James Caldwell. His photo was a surprise, all of itself.
Caldwell was a large, hulking man, his hair combed flat over his forehead, his features heavy and somehow unfinished, like a sculpture abandoned halfway.
He had some skill with a camera, that much was obvious.
The blog suggested quite some talent with words as well, or at least, for writing angry polemics.
But from the look of him… You would think James Caldwell broke rocks for a living. Possibly with his bare hands.
‘James Patrick Caldwell,’ Chen announced, having swiftly delved into his background. ‘Born in Washington, Missouri, 1985. Won a scholarship to the Montroy Academy of Arts, studying sculpture, graduated cum laude.’
She went quiet.
‘And?’ Marcus prompted.
‘And nothing. No sign of him exhibiting or selling any works. Doesn’t seem to have an agent. His father sold the family brewery in 2005; Caldwell seems to subsist on a small annuity. Current address, Apartment E, 1106 Kennedy Boulevard, NYC. I know it. It’s near me, in Queens.’
‘Wait. Caldwell’s beer?’ Marcus asked.
‘That’s the one.’
‘Man…’ Marcus shook his head. ‘After three months in Afghan with no booze, we finished up on a transporter ship in the Gulf. All they had behind the bar was Caldwell’s. That stuff sucks.’
‘So he lives on Daddy’s money, but he claims to be a champion of the people,’ Kate observed.
‘He wouldn’t be the first.’
‘Where are the photographs from the Hauptmann Gallery?’ Kate asked.
‘I’m on it,’ Chen said, deftly retrieving the footage from the protests outside Ashworth’s exhibition. Marcus and Kate scooted across to see her screen.
‘It’s him. No doubt about it.’
‘He looks like the kind of guy who could be dangerous with a flint hammer in his hands,’ Chen said.
‘Definitely got the upper body strength,’ Kate agreed.
'I'll send it to Ashworth's agent,' Marcus said. 'See if it's the same guy she saw hanging around.'
Kate stood up. ‘I think we need to pay Mr Caldwell a visit.’
+ + + + + +
Caldwell lived in a row of apartments above a strip mall.
The whole boulevard seemed to be the same, for miles: big, blocky buildings housing laundromats and taquerias, with short rows of single-story apartments on top, accessed by a railed breezeway.
A dog barked incessantly as they came up the stairs, whilst tendrils of greasy smoke floated up from the Chinese restaurant on the ground floor.
As they’d more or less expected, nobody answered the door to Apartment E, although, after Marcus shouted ‘FBI Open up!’ the occupant of D opened his door just a crack.
‘Looking for James,’ Marcus said. ‘You seen him?’
The door closed again, quick and quiet. Marcus turned to his companions.
‘I don’t know about you guys, but I thought I heard somebody in distress inside Apartment E.’
‘Yes, I think I heard that, too,’ said Kate.
‘So distressed that we’d be entirely justified in making a forced entry,’ Chen added.
It was a long-established means of gaining entry without a warrant. Not exactly by the rule-book, but it happened, sometimes, when it had to. Marcus kicked the door, which didn’t work at all.
‘Where brute force fails…’ said Chen. She produced a neat little set of picks from her back pocket, and within seconds, they were inside.
The apartment was compact, but sparkling clean; indeed, the first thing that hit them when they came through the door was the smell of soap and polish, undercut by something musky, like patchouli oil, or incense.
A solitary bowl sat in the gleaming sink unit, while the living room at the back was light and airy.
The bedroom was a different matter; it was no less clean and tidy – the bed made, a sweater folded on a chair, the window open just a crack – but the walls were covered in photographs of artists and newspaper clippings concerning everything bad that could ever happen to an artist, from being dropped by their agent to dying in a car crash or being murdered.
‘It’s like a split personality in 3-D,’ Kate said. ‘There’s the neat and clean and tidy side that folds his clothes and washes the dishes. And then there’s… this.’ She pointed to the wall.
‘What the f…?’
The three of them jumped in alarm at the deep, unfamiliar voice. Towering in the tiny hallway, with a bag of shopping in his hand and looking no less startled, was the large form of James Caldwell. He stepped into the bedroom, filling the space.
‘We’re the FBI,’ Kate said. ‘We’d like to talk about your blog.’
‘How did you get in?’
‘We thought we heard someone in distress,’ Marcus said.
Caldwell frowned, clearly disbelieving him. In the end, judging by the slowly changing array of expressions that moved across his face, he seemed to accept it.
‘So we’re in a police state now,’ Caldwell said. ‘You’ve come here to harass me, because you don’t like what I’ve written on the internet.’
‘I wouldn’t go there, James,’ Kate said.
‘You said that Brandon Ashworth and Elena Vasquez’s killings were justified.
Prior to that, you’d been stalking both of them, along with other figures from the art world, and publishing large quantities of private, personal information about them on your blog.
Information that I doubt you sought permission to publish.
So we’re going to have some questions about that, aren’t we? ’
‘I didn’t kill them,’ Caldwell said. ‘And I’m allowed to think they deserved it.’’
‘But why would you think they deserved it?’ Kate asked, genuinely appalled. ‘They were people. People with families. Brutally killed. You really think they deserved that, just because of a painting you didn’t like?’
'Their mockery of something many people hold dear is just one example of how arrogant and facile the art world has become,' Caldwell thundered.
He paused for breath, leaning against the wall.
'It's a little club that specialises in sneering at all the people who aren't allowed to join.
Art is supposed to celebrate the world's beauty.
But they just use it as a kind of ironic weapon. '
‘You were a sculptor,’ Kate said. ‘You must have had talent to win that scholarship, to graduate cum laude. What went wrong?’
‘You can’t begin to understand,’ Caldwell said, breathing heavily.
‘Why didn’t you make it,’ Kate went on. ‘After that promising start? Is that the meaning behind the little statues? They look tortured. Is that what happened to you?’
Caldwell wiped his brow. Saliva dripped from his open mouth. He staggered a little.
‘Are you ok?’ Chen asked.
‘Excuse me, I need to…’ The rest of Caldwell’s words were lost in mumbling as he staggered backwards through the doorway into the hall.
‘Is he ill?’ Marcus asked.
‘Wait,’ said Kate. ‘We should -’
The rest of her sentence was cut off by a loud bang from the hallway.
‘He’s out the door!’
Marcus ran out after him, losing valuable seconds as he grappled with the door latch and emerging from the apartment to see Caldwell moving with surprising speed down the row of apartments.
‘Stop!’
Caldwell reached the end of the row then, to Marcus’s amazement and horror, climbed up on the ledge of the breezeway, wobbling slightly as he straightened up. Marcus came to a stop.
‘James. Don’t be stupid. You’ll kill yourself.’
Caldwell turned and looked at him, open-eyed, open-mouthed. Then he launched himself into the air.
‘No!’
But instead of plummeting to the ground, Caldwell had jumped onto the next row of apartments, which ran along the top of the adjacent building.
Marcus headed back towards the stairs, intersecting with Kate and Chen on the way.
‘He jumped onto the next building!’
They ran down the stairway, slowed down again as they tried to squeeze past a young mother and a child in a stroller.
Back on the sidewalk, they ran down towards the next building.
There was an identical stairway leading to the top-floor apartments, and Marcus bounded up it, three steps at a time, expecting to crash straight into Caldwell on the way.
Eventually, he made it to the top, where he peered over the rail to see Kate and Chen on the sidewalk below, struggling with the massive Caldwell, as a small crowd of onlookers gathered.
Cursing, Marcus headed back down the stairs, joining his colleagues on the street just as Caldwell flung Chen several feet into a collection of trash cans.
Much to the delight of the onlookers and their outstretched cellphones, the big man now had Kate in an armlock; she was kicking backwards, vainly trying to connect with his shins, or get her leg around one of his and twist, but his strength and agility were formidable.
Taking a split second to assess the situation, Marcus decided against drawing his weapon; there were too many bystanders, too close, and more were coming out of the laundromat, one avid spectator with a pile of wet clothes still in his hands.
Instead, Marcus jumped on Caldwell from behind and the two of them finally managed to bring the big man to the ground, though he kept struggling and kicking and cursing until the cuffs were snapped on.
‘This is police brutality!’ Caldwell roared. ‘This is happening, this is happening your streets right now!’
‘You’re hurting yourself, Caldwell,’ Kate said, through gritted teeth, as she tried to haul him upright.
‘I’m in pain!’ Caldwell shouted. ‘I had back surgery just last week!’
‘Two on one,’ commented one of the street film crew. ‘Nasty.’
There were shouts of agreement from the crowd as another onlooker shoved his camera right in Marcus’s face. ‘Tell me why the Feds fight dirty, man.’
Marcus put his hand up to the lens and told the cameraman to get lost. Then, to the hoots and jeers of the street, they limped back towards their vehicle with their captive, a sorry spectacle, feeling little pride in their arrest.