Chapter Sixteen
SIXTEEN
“I still don’t see why you’re ditching this morning. Performance poetry is practically writing!” Izzy grumbles as we walk toward campus.
It’s still hot out, but the sky has turned weirdly gray, and it’s drizzly, the air sticky beneath our shared umbrella. The hems of my jeans grow heavy with the rainwater they’re soaking up, and I’m half tempted to go home and change.
“Iz, I’m not completely ditching. I’m still going to be working on my project,” I say, though I want to tell her performance poetry is exactly why I’ve decided to skip the morning session.
“I just think the library is the best place to help with my research. That ancient desktop in the classroom is useless. I’ve already emailed Ramona and she was cool with it. ”
“Fine,” she says, pushing her painted red lips into a pout. “You don’t even want to come so you can spend more time with Noah?” she adds, her voice sly.
“No.” Yes. Maybe. “Why would you think that?”
“Because I saw how you were laughing together yesterday.” Izzy smiles. “He seems like a good guy, doesn’t he?”
“He does.” We pause as we reach the front of the Hurst Building. “Have fun.”
“You want to keep the umbrella?” Izzy asks. I tip it to the side to check, but the rain has mostly stopped and there’s a silver lining to the clouds, suggesting the sun is attempting to break through.
“No, you keep it in case I end up staying over lunch. The library’s only there.” I point at the far side of the quad, to a beautiful structure next to the Clarendon Building. “Text me when you’re done.”
“Yay for phones.”
I hand her the umbrella, and we don’t mention the fright we got when the cop knocked on the door first thing this morning with our cell phones, let alone our red faces when he saw the selection of furniture we’d piled in front of the door.
All that talk of serial killers and curses had us freaked out as soon as we turned off the lights, so we barricaded ourselves in.
I briefly wondered why we hadn’t thought of it on Monday night, but we were obviously in too much shock to do much of anything.
I cut straight across the green, regretting it immediately as the rain soaks further up the back of my jeans. Stupid flares.
I reach Blackwood Library and push open the heavy door, ears filling with muffled silence as I enter.
I go to the help desk and request a temporary reader pass, then make a beeline for the bank of computers.
I settle at one on the far side, press the power button and then empty the contents of my tote bag while I wait for the log-in screen to load.
I open the notebook at a clean double page and draw four rough columns like the ones on the Izzy-dubbed “murder board” in my room, the blue pen lines wobblier than I’d like.
I sit back and think about the information I want to commit to paper.
I focus and start a list that I know will make very little sense to anyone but me.
Portrait one
Name:
Date:
Circumstances:
Portrait two
Name:
Date:
Circumstances:
Portrait three
Name:
Date:
Circumstances:
Portrait four
Name:
Date:
Circumstances:
I glance around to make sure nobody is looking over my shoulder. If someone asks, I’ll just say I’m writing a book or something. I bet writers look up all kinds of weird stuff on the internet. Probably not when they’ve been witness to an actual murder just days before, but you know.
The computer screen finally wakes up, so I type in the temporary-log-in details while I chew on the end of my pen and think about where to begin.
I decide to print off some decent-quality pictures of The Four for my murder board first. That way if I find any details about the BBK murders, I can try to compare the posing, if there was any—the old sketches yesterday didn’t suggest much.
I know it’s a long shot, but I’m certain I’m on the right track—I just need to think like a psychopath.
I find some decent jpeg files from the Heywood Gallery’s website and send them to print, going through the faff of topping up a temporary account to pay.
I collect them, and the woman in the portrait on top catches my eye.
It’s the final one in the series, and she seems slightly more defiant than the others, her black hair painted with golden streaks from the burst of light behind her.
Even though the fear in her eyes is obvious, there’s something about the tilt of her head and the curl of her lip that suggests she is full of disdain for the painter.
I slip the pictures into my notebook and open an internet browser with renewed determination.
I Google The Four and go to their Wikipedia page first, scrolling down to the tab labeled “Provenance.” Maybe if I have an idea of where the paintings have been I can find some clues that way.
I skim through the details I already know—found with a fifth painting and the artist’s dead body—and instead focus on the date and the location of where they were found: 18th July 1911. New York City.
Okay. Let’s start there.
I type “New York newspapers 1911” into Google and scroll until I find a website I can browse for free.
I click through and a scanned image of a paper called The Tribune loads on the screen.
The front page is crammed with tiny boxes and columns that separate the stories, and it’s dominated by a hand-drawn depiction of two firemen in old-timey uniforms, saving a child from a burning building.
I close my eyes. There must be hundreds of stories here alone.
I consult my notes from yesterday, and that allows me to narrow the search to the short period before the paintings and artist’s body were found.
I skim over front pages of newspapers called The Sun and The Evening World, but so many of the stories have bold, sensationalized headlines that the process is a slow one.
It’s almost half an hour before I find something that looks promising. I zoom in and read the article, my heart rate increasing as I do.
MUTILATED BODY FOUND IN RENOVATION SITE
The shouts of construction workers on the Lower East Side drew the attention of a shopkeeper on St. Mark’s Place early yesterday morning.
The workers were shocked to find the mutilated corpse of a prostitute occupying the otherwise empty building.
Police have removed the body, which they described as “bound and bled,” to the county morgue to await identification.
Bound and bled. BBK. This has to be the first murder, because the nickname isn’t there yet. You only get a nickname when you’ve done something more than once. I check the date against the dates of BBK’s murders I found yesterday and add it to the table—Portrait 1, July 3, 1911.
Buoyed by this horrendous story, I keep going and find a similar entry that says a murder occurred on July 10, followed by two more, on the 14th and the 17th.
I fill in each date part of the table diligently, but the circumstances are all the same.
Vulnerable women found murdered in abandoned buildings.
There are no real details, and no connections made between the victims, but just a quick scroll through the newspaper archive paints a picture of the Lower East Side in the same light as the Wild West. The city was rife with crime, and murder was not an uncommon occurrence.
I lean back in my chair. The women are all unidentified so far.
What if, just like the artist, no one ever claimed their bodies?
I might never be able to find out who they were.
I hit print on the four articles and collect them, then stretch my shoulders before I sit back down.
Four murders with the same MO, within exactly two weeks.
But what if there are more than four? If there were, then I’ve been barking up the wrong tree, and as much as I hate that thought, I have to check.
I spend another half hour scrolling through articles that go way past the end of July and cannot find another headline that fits.
Okay, that seems like progress. I can speculate that the artist completed The Four on July 17, when he committed his last murder, then he was found the next day.
I sit back, pleased with my findings, until I realize all I’ve done is make a list of dates.
I write out a quick list of the things the victims seem to have in common—their apparent vulnerability, the similar locations where they were found—and stare at the sparse results.
I need more.
I rub my eyes and take a sip from my water bottle as I mull it over, then I open a new browser tab.
I need to circle back to the beginning—finding the self-portrait.
I type “The Four lost portrait” into the search bar, hoping that its reappearance has already been covered in the media somewhere, and immediately spot an article in The Blackwood Gazette, a small local paper.
I skim it. It’s basic enough, detailing that Michael Keller found the painting at Professor Williams’s estate sale (no mention of me, which annoys me a bit) and it went on display at the Heywood Gallery immediately after.
The, quite frankly, eye-watering estimated value is briefly mentioned, but it’s the allusion to “the painting’s dark history” that catches my attention.
There’s no further detail, but if it’s cited here and also in that article Professor Williams kept a copy of, then there must be more on the internet.
I just have to dig for it. I search the term the journalist used about its “dark history,” and my eyes grow wide when a whole page of Deddit articles load.
Why didn’t I think of looking here before?
It’s the home of internet sleuths. I really haven’t been firing on all cylinders since Monday night.
I scroll eagerly, dismissing anything that mentions the word “curse”—ugh—and click on one that looks promising.
Deddit
13/12/2023
d/UnsolvedMysteries
artymarty_47: Do you think the portraits known as The Four were really painted by a serial killer?
I saw these paintings when I was visiting Blackwood University in the fall and decided to write a paper on them for my art history class.
I ended up going down a rabbit hole but couldn’t find much about the artist, apart from some stuff about his own self-portrait going missing and being cursed, yada yada.
But there was one book I found in the library that discusses blood and hair mixed in with the paint.
When I looked into this further, I found an article about the painter possibly killing his models!
Has anyone come across this before? Surely if it’s true he’d have been a serial killer, as there are four known paintings?
Callmemoko: I haven’t heard that, but those paintings are creepy AF.
Donttalktome12: Yeah, something about the eyes. They look in genuine pain.
Potatolover2004: Sign of a good artist? Just because he painted them looking like they were in pain doesn’t mean they really were, does it?
artymarty_47: I suppose not. It was the mention of blood and hair that intrigued me (in a not gross way, obviously). Why/how would someone do that?
Donttalktome12: Yeah, that is weird. Some artists do go to extremes for their art, I guess.
Potatolover2004: That really is extreme, though. Are you sure you read it right? What was the book?
artymarty_47: Tracing Provenance by Philomena Huxtable. My notes say it was published in 1985, but that might just have been the edition I was reading? It comes up if you search the title online, but it seems to be out of print and only available in libraries.
I stop scrolling and immediately navigate to the library catalogue, typing in the title with shaking hands. The conversation between Dad and the appraiser replays in my head as the computer directs me to the shelf where Tracing Provenance is. It’s the disturbing anomalies I’m really looking for…
The book is here.