CHAPTER SIX
“Um, yeah?” he asked. He had looked almost amused at first, perhaps happy to have visitors, but the expression soured when Miles showed his ID. They ran through introductions and gave him the synopsis of why they were there. Finch let them in without much resistance or fanfare.
His studio was more of a loft, and it was clear that he not only worked here but slept there from time to time as well. A small bed was tucked far away in the corner to the back, as if he was trying to hide it.
The studio space was large but felt smaller than it was because of how thoroughly it had been filled.
Canvases were stacked four and five deep against every wall, the ones facing outward showing work that ranged from finished to barely begun.
The works that were facing inward constituted a kind of archive that appeared to have no organizational logic.
Tubes of paint covered the two worktables in the center in a dense, overlapping sprawl.
Three easels occupied the center of the room at slightly different angles, as though Finch moved between them without settling on a preferred position.
The floor was wood, once painted gray and now largely covered in drips and smears that had accumulated over years into an accidental record of everything he had ever mixed.
The whole place had the feeling of a space that had been intensely lived in without ever being cared for.
It smelled of turpentine and something else beneath it, something older and slightly damp.
Miles figured it was the smell of the building itself coming through the walls.
Where Nadia's studio had been ordered beneath its creative surface, her materials organized and her space arranged with the deliberateness of someone who understood that the environment shaped the work, Finch's studio looked like the inside of a mind that never stopped moving long enough to sort itself out.
Finch himself had a broad, fleshy face and gray-streaked hair that he wore longer and uncared for.
He was physically large, not in a fit way but in a way that suggested he liked to eat a little too much.
He looked at Miles and Vic with the evaluating impatience of a man who considered most conversations a concession.
"Okay, so what can I help with?” Finch asked, taking a seat on a well-used folding chair.
"First of all, we appreciate you making time," Vic said.
"I didn't have much choice, did I?" He said it without real hostility, more as a statement of fact. "What is it you need from me?” he asked, making it known that he’d like to hurry this awkward conversation along.
“When you were told Ostroff had died, you didn’t seem surprised,” Miles said.
He nodded and said, “I had a friend call me yesterday and told me all about it.”
“Were you surprised?” Vic asked
“Yeah, I guess. She was relatively young…healthy. You don’t think of people like that dying so suddenly. Even when it’s murder, you know?”
"How well did you know Nadia?" Miles asked.
Finch looked at the floor for a moment. When he looked back up, something in his face had shifted, the impatience retreating slightly into something he didn’t appear to have much practice managing.
"We came up at the same time, more or less. We’d known each other over the years.
Some of our work showed at some of the same galleries early on.
" He stopped and glared at them for a second and then said, "We had a falling out later on. I’m assuming that’s why you’ve come. "
"Tell us about that," Vic said.
He shifted uncomfortably in the chair. "The palette dispute,” he said.
“I believed she had studied my work closely enough to appropriate my approach, and I said so.
I said so publicly, which in retrospect was not my finest moment.
" He said this not as an apology but as a tactical acknowledgment.
"The issue was never resolved to my satisfaction.
But it's also not relevant to whatever happened to her. "
"Why do you say that?" Miles asked.
"Because I didn't harm her." He said it flatly, as if the mere idea was foolish.
"I was angry with her for quite some time. I thought she had taken something from me, copied my technique for mixing certain colors. But being angry doesn’t mean I wished death upon her.
And quite honestly, I'd appreciate not being made to feel like a suspect when I’ve done nothing wrong and you have no real reason to suspect me. "
Miles saw that the hurt and what might even be a bit of grief was real. It was clear, though, that the discomfort of understanding that someone he’d once considered a friend had died truly did hurt him. For now, Miles decided to move on.
"Can you tell us about your background in chemistry?"
Finch straightened slightly, the familiar territory of his own credentials visibly burning away some of his anger.
"I have a working knowledge of pigment chemistry,” he answered.
“How compounds interact, why certain colors behave the way they do over time, the science behind what we're actually putting on a canvas.
It's informed my practice significantly. And it’s because of that specialty that I took it personally that I believed Nadia was stealing my methods. "
"Where did you study?" Vic asked.
"I did a semester of chemistry at SCAD. I started a second, but I didn't complete it." He uncrossed his arms and crossed them again, as if he was getting slightly nervous about something. "I've supplemented it extensively through independent study, though."
"So just a little over one semester," Miles said.
"Yes, that’s right," Finch said, sounding a little defensive now. "I may have presented it as more substantial than it was in certain contexts. If you need my transcripts to confirm, I can request them.”
"I don’t think that will be necessary," Miles said. "But I do want to ask you a few things about paint chemistry specifically. Is that okay?”
He watched Finch's face settle into the confidence of a man about to demonstrate something. “Yes, that’s fine.”
"If you were working with a chromium-based pigment and you wanted to understand the oxidation state of the chromium compound, how would you go about determining whether it was trivalent or hexavalent?"
Finch looked at him, clearly shocked. Miles couldn’t help it; he took a crude bit of pride in getting such a reaction.
Finch had clearly not been expecting a visiting FBI agent to know so much about chemistry.
Once he finally recovered, trying his best not to look too thrown off, he answered: "By the oxidation state. "
"Chromium three versus chromium six,” Miles went on, watching as Finch continued trying not to look impressed. “How would you tell them apart in a practical context?"
"Well..." Finch shifted his weight. "You'd look at the color. Viridian is trivalent, for instance. Chrome yellow is a different compound entirely."
"And what if you had an unknown solution with no color reference?"
"You'd need to test it somehow." He said this with the slowing cadence of someone feeling the ground change beneath them. "You’d need to run some kind of analysis."
"What kind of analysis?"
Finch was quiet for a moment and now he was back to looking a little angry. "I'd have to look that up," he said.
"What about the toxicological profile of hexavalent chromium?” Miles pressed on. “Do you know the primary routes of exposure and the physiological mechanism?"
"I know it's a carcinogen," Finch said. He had stopped performing and now seemed to understand he had somehow been outsmarted. Judging from the look on his face, he did not like it one bit. "I know it's in some industrial processes,” he said. “But that's about the limit of it."
Miles nodded. He didn't push further because there was no point.
The chemistry Finch was describing seemed to be nothing more than the knowledge of a painter who had read some articles and picked up a textbook or two.
Miles strongly doubted that Finch was capable of synthesizing a targeted compound, calibrating a lethal concentration, and introducing it invisibly into a working environment.
The gap between those two things was enormous and could not be crossed by independent study of the kind Finch had done.
"Thank you," Miles said. He looked to Vic, raising an eyebrow—a silent way of asking if she had anything to add.
She gave him a small smile before getting to her feet. She then looked to Finch and said, “Thanks so much. We'll be in touch if we need anything else."
“That’s all?” he asked, perplexed.
“For now, yes,” Miles said. “You’ve been a big help.”
Finch walked them to the door and then even followed them down the staircase to the street. He didn't say anything further, and Miles didn't either. Finch seemed confused but at the same time, it almost seemed as if he wanted Miles to keep quizzing him.
At the bottom of the stairs, Finch stopped and looked at Miles with something that was less combative than anything he'd shown inside.
"She was very talented," he said. "Whatever I said about her work in the past or whatever I accused her of...Nadia was genuinely talented."
Miles looked at him. "I know," he said. "We’ve seen her studio."
They left Finch and got into their car. Miles was pulling his seatbelt across his chest when his phone rang. He answered it and heard Detective Pruitt’s voice on the line.
“Agent Sterling, it’s Pruitt. It looks like we may have another body with the same cause of death as Ostroff.”
“Where?”
"Broughton Street," she said. "A florist named Desmond Hale. He's been found collapsed in his shop, and the responding officer is describing mottled skin and hemorrhaged eyes." She paused for one beat and let out a sigh. "And a metallic smell in the air."
Miles looked over to Vic and said, "We're on our way."