She had their full attention now.
Virginia watched the expressions on the men’s faces with a sense of relief. She had hoped that they would at least listen to her wild theory, but Anson Salinas and Cabot Sutter were doing a whole lot more than just hearing her out. They were one hundred percent focused, a couple of natural-born hunters who had just sensed prey. She reminded herself that they were both ex-cops.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said, “but I have the impression that you’re not altogether surprised to hear me say that Zane might still be alive.”
“Anson and my brothers and I have never found hard proof that he’s dead,” Cabot said. “Until we get solid evidence, we’re working on the theory that he’s alive.”
“I don’t remember you having brothers at Zane’s compound,” she said.
This time Anson responded. “Max Cutler and Jack Lancaster. After the fire they didn’t have much in the way of family. They came to live with me. I did the foster parent thing.”
Paternal pride was infused in Anson’s voice.
“So I’ve got brothers,” Cabot said. “And a dad.”
“I understand,” Virginia said. “All of you have questioned Zane’s death?”
“Over the years we’ve chased down every rumor – every hint – that he might still be out there somewhere,” Cabot said, “but if he is, we’re almost certain he’s operating outside the country these days.”
“A few years ago there was a pyramid scheme in New York that looked like it had his fingerprints all over it,” Anson said. “But by the time it came to our attention, whoever was running the scam had vanished.”
“Generally speaking, we keep our little conspiracy theory a family secret,” Cabot added. “We’ve learned the hard way that it gives other people a bad impression. They tend to regard our interest in Quinton Zane as an unhealthy obsession.”
“Anything connected to Quinton Zane is, by definition, unhealthy,” Virginia said. “But just so you know, I share your obsession.”
“We’re listening,” Cabot said.
He angled himself onto the corner of Anson’s desk, one foot braced on the floor, and peeled the plastic lid off his coffee. His movements were deceptively relaxed. He had no doubt been born with that fluid coordination, Virginia thought. But his actions were infused with an aura of control and power that told her he had worked to hone his natural talent.
Mentally she did the math and concluded that Cabot was in his early thirties, two or three years older than she was. The tall, lanky boy with the very serious eyes had matured into the kind of man who probably wasn’t the life of the party. He would, however, be the kind of man you’d want at your back in a bar fight.
His dark hair was cut ruthlessly short and his lean profile had hardened into pure granite. His eyes were a feral shade of amber brown and still unnaturally intense. Hannah Brewster would have said that Cabot had the eyes of an old soul. But that wouldn’t have been entirely accurate. He had the eyes of a man who took the world very seriously.
There was no ring on his hand. That surprised her because everything about him intrigued her. Surely she wasn’t the first woman to find him interesting. On the other hand, Cabot Sutter would definitely not be the easiest person on the planet to live with. There was a gritty, uncompromising vibe about him that, sooner or later, would probably convince a lot of women that he was more trouble than he was worth.
She understood the reaction. She was a little screwed up herself, with a history of failed relationships testifying to the fact that a number of men had decided that she was more trouble than she was worth.
“As I told Anson, Hannah Brewster was an artist,” Virginia said. “She was also quite eccentric. Some would say unhinged. I occasionally exhibited some of her work in my gallery.”
“Was she any good?” Cabot asked.
“Hannah was quite good but her work is… disturbing. It’s too raw and too dark and too personal for most people. Hannah painted to exorcise the demons of her past – our past. She was there, you see.”
“She was a member of Zane’s operation?” Cabot asked.
“Yes. She was my mother’s closest friend in the cult. I’m sure you remember her. She did much of the cooking and cleaning.”
Cabot glanced at Anson. “See if Brewster’s name is on our list.”
Anson was already at work on his computer.
Virginia watched him. “You’ve got a list of the cult members?”
“It’s not a complete list,” Cabot said. “Nobody used last names, remember? And Zane confiscated everyone’s ID. Most of the documentation that he collected disappeared with him that night.”
“I interviewed the survivors after the fire,” Anson said, “but they were all traumatized. Some refused to identify themselves. Others were afraid. Most just took off and disappeared. I had no legal grounds to hold them. We’ve done our best to compile a list of cult members but, as Cabot said, we don’t think that it’s complete, not by a long shot.”
A page came up on the screen. Cabot uncoiled and rounded the desk so that he could read over Anson’s shoulder.
“There’s no Hannah Brewster,” he said. “There is a Hannah Parker, though. She just disappeared after the fire. No family ever came forward to ask about her.”
“That’s her,” Virginia said quickly. “She changed her name. She was always terrified that Zane might come looking for her. That’s why she lived off the grid on Lost Island. No phone. No computers. No credit cards. No bank account. To my knowledge, the only piece of tech that she possessed was a digital camera that I gave her about a year ago.”
Anson whistled softly. “All because she was afraid Zane might find her?”
“Yes,” Virginia said.
“Sounds like Hannah Parker Brewster would have fit right in with our little crowd of conspiracy theorists,” Anson said.
Virginia nodded grimly. “Definitely.”
Cabot fixed her with his intent gaze. “If she didn’t trust technology, why did she accept the camera?”
“She didn’t consider it a risky device. It was just a camera, after all. She used it to take photos of island scenes. She painted the scenes on notecards that were then sold to tourists at one of the island gift shops. That was how she survived, you see – selling boxes of notecards to visitors. She never signed those pictures, and the people who operate the gift shop kept her secret.”
Cabot got a thoughtful look. “If Brewster went to ground on that island, how did you find her?”
“I didn’t,” Virginia admitted. “It never even occurred to me to look for her. When I was growing up, my grandmother made sure that I had no connection with anyone who had been associated with Zane’s operation. Not that anyone ever came around asking about me, as far as I know. But about a year and a half ago Hannah showed up at my gallery.”
Anson peered at her over the rims of his glasses. “Why?”
“She wanted to give me some of her serious paintings – not the notecard scenes. I knew her pictures would be tough to sell – they are quite large, for one thing. But when she told me who she was, and after I saw the paintings, I couldn’t turn her away. I assumed she needed money, so I took the pictures and gave her an advance. She accepted the payment but she insisted on cash. I don’t think she really cared much about the money, though. She just needed to get rid of her pictures.”
Anson’s bushy brows formed a solid line above his forceful nose. “Why would she do that if it wasn’t for the money?”
“Her paintings were scenes from her worst nightmare,” Virginia said.
Understanding heated Cabot’s eyes. “Scenes from her time in the cult.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Specifically scenes from the night Zane torched the compound,” she said.
Cabot’s jaw tightened. “I see.”
“Before she died she gave me a total of ten pictures of that night,” Virginia continued. “Each one is a little different, each is from a slightly different perspective. But if you saw them, you would recognize the setting immediately. She called the series Visions.”
“Did you ever sell any of her pictures?” Anson asked.
“No. After the first couple of pictures were delivered, Hannah decided that she didn’t want them sold to what she called ‘outsiders.’ She insisted they were only for those who understood their true meaning.”
“Survivors of the cult,” Cabot said.
“Exactly,” Virginia said. “In the end, I just collected them one by one. I keep them in a storage locker in my shop.”
“You don’t hang any of them in your own home?” Anson asked.
“No,” Virginia said.
“Of course not,” Cabot said. “They’re your nightmares, too. Who wants a nightmare hanging on the living room wall?”
Virginia gave him a long, level look. “You are very perceptive, Mr. Sutter.”
The corner of his mouth may or may not have twitched a little. “What can I say? You caught me on a good day.”
“I assume you only bill for services rendered on your good days,” she said politely. “I wouldn’t want to pay for time spent working on your off days.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cabot said. “And the name is Cabot.”
Anson cleared his throat and looked at Virginia.
“Did Hannah Brewster always deliver the paintings to you personally or did she ship them to you?” he asked.
“She brought the first couple to me but I realized she truly hated having to leave the island,” Virginia said. “The outside world terrified her, so I offered to make the trip to Lost Island to pick up the pictures whenever they were ready. She was very relieved.”
Cabot raised his brows at that. “If Brewster didn’t use a phone or a computer, how did she let you know when a painting was ready for you?”
“Hannah had a very close friend on the island, Abigail Watkins, who ran the Lost Island B and B. Abigail did have a phone – a landline. She needed it for business purposes. She called me to let me know whenever Hannah had finished a painting. But aside from that landline, Abigail didn’t use any tech, either.”
“You say this Abigail Watkins was a good friend of Brewster’s?” Cabot asked.
“Yes. But I should mention that Watkins wasn’t Abigail’s real last name. She changed it years ago.”
“Why?” Cabot asked.
“Because she was connected to Zane’s cult, too, right from the start when he set up his first compound at the old house outside of Wallerton. Maybe you remember her as well. She was a little wisp of a woman who worked in the kitchen most of the time. Very delicate. Very lovely. Almost ethereal. She and Hannah were responsible for the cooking and housekeeping.”
Cabot’s eyes went cold. “Zane ran his cult like the business it was – a classic pyramid scheme. And, like any smart CEO, he only wanted people who could help him grow his empire. Everyone he lured into the cult had a purpose. Some of his followers handed over their life savings to provide him with capital. Others had business or technology expertise. And then there were the bastards who served as his enforcers.”
“Yes.” Virginia shuddered at the memory. She and the other kids had been terrified of the thugs Zane used to patrol the compound grounds. “Abigail was one of Zane’s earliest followers – maybe the very first.”
Cabot glanced at Anson. “We should add Abigail Watkins’s name to our list.”
“Right,” Anson said. He swiveled around in his chair to face his computer.
“You can mark Abigail Watkins as deceased,” Virginia said.
Anson and Cabot shot her sharp, questioning looks.
She shook her head. “No conspiracy theory involved. Abigail died of cancer in early December. It was very sad. Hannah nursed her to the end. They were quite close.”
Anson nodded once and then went to work entering Abigail Watkins’s name to the list.
Cabot turned back to Virginia. “What makes you think that Hannah Brewster’s death wasn’t suicide?”
“It’s her last painting that worries me,” Virginia said. “I need to show it to you.”
Cabot glanced at her large black leather tote. “Did you bring it with you?”
“I have a picture of it. I never got the original. Hannah painted it on the wall of her cabin. It was destroyed when the cabin burned to the ground.”
Cabot watched her intently. “How did you get a picture of the painting?”
“Hannah used the digital camera I gave her to take a photograph of it. Then she mailed the camera to me. According to the time-and-date stamp, she took the photo at three o’clock in the morning of the same day that the cabin was later destroyed – the day she died.”
Anson frowned. “Any other photos on the camera?”
“No, just the one. At first glance it looks very much like the others in the Visions series. But there are some significant differences. As I told you, the paintings are all scenes from the night of the fire at the California compound. They all show a demonic figure striding through an inferno. In most of the pictures it’s easy to identify the figure as Zane – at least it’s easy for those of us who remember him. Hannah usually depicted him with shoulder-length black hair swept straight back from a sharp widow’s peak, and he’s always dressed in black from head to toe. Always wearing a steel key ring.”
“That sounds like Zane, all right,” Anson said. “He used to come into town occasionally to pick up packages or get gas for that big black SUV he drove. I remember those fancy black leather boots he wore. The bastard had a real flair for the dramatic.”
Cabot’s eyes narrowed faintly. “I remember that damned key ring. He kept the keys to every building in the compound on it. You could hear those keys clashing whenever he got close. That’s how you knew when he was nearby.”
“I remember that sound, too,” Virginia said. “At night, after he locked us into that horrible barn, I could hear the keys as he walked away.”
She saw no point in mentioning that she still heard the clash and clatter of keys in her nightmares. She could tell from the way Cabot’s hand tightened around his coffee cup that he, too, heard the terrible music in his dreams.
“Go on,” Anson prodded gently.
Virginia willed herself to stay focused. She had to convince Anson and Cabot that there was enough evidence of murder to make them take the case. She could not afford to have them conclude that she was as unhinged as poor Hannah. The suggestion that she suffered from a form of PTSD had been made by more than one person in her past, including a couple of therapists and some ex-lovers. She had to tread carefully.
She reached into her tote, took out her tablet computer and opened the image of Hannah’s last painting. She put the device on the desk so that Cabot and Anson could see the screen.
“There’s a frantic kind of energy about this final painting that makes me think she did this in a great hurry,” Virginia said. “As you can see, she used one entire wall of her cabin as a canvas. It was as if she was trying to create a life-sized version of what she saw in her mind.”
Cabot and Anson studied the photo for a long time. She could tell by their grim expressions that they saw what she saw – a disturbing vision of the past fused with the present.
The scene showed a large, dark, demonic figure striding through a storm of flames. There were eight smaller figures clustered on one side of the painting, reminiscent of a Greek chorus. Virginia knew they were intended to represent the children, including herself and Cabot, who had been trapped in the barn. They stared at Quinton Zane, silent witnesses to the horror he had unleashed upon them.
After a time Anson looked up. His eyes were bleak. “Was there an investigation into Brewster’s death?”
“It was minimal at best,” Virginia said. “They believe she jumped off a cliff near her cabin. Her body washed ashore the following day. The island is very small. Only a couple hundred people live on it, so there is no local police presence. The authorities were called in from one of the larger islands. They determined that there was no indication that Hannah had been attacked. She hadn’t been shot or stabbed. There were no signs of a struggle.”
“Not a lot of high-end forensics available out there on those small islands in the San Juans,” Anson observed. “And water washes away a lot of evidence.”
“Believe me, I understand why the authorities went with the verdict of suicide,” Virginia said. “Everyone who knew Hannah was aware that she had some serious mental health issues. In addition, she was grieving the loss of Abigail, her only real friend. I might have bought the official conclusion myself, if she hadn’t sent me this last picture.”
Cabot examined the image again. There was a heightened intensity about him now that stirred the hair on the back of Virginia’s neck. It was not unlike the highly charged vibe she occasionally experienced around some of the artists she represented. The aura of fierce concentration that shivered in the atmosphere told her that Cabot was doing his own kind of art.
“I’ll be damned,” he said at last. “She really nailed the bastard, didn’t she?”
“I can see why it would be hard to sell pictures like this one,” Anson said.
Cabot glanced up briefly, his eyes tight at the corners. “You said this one was different from the others that Brewster painted?”
“I took a picture of the previous painting, the one I got a few months ago,” Virginia said. “You can compare the two and see for yourself.”
She opened the other picture on the screen so that Anson and Cabot could view both side by side.
“In theme and design it’s clear that the final work was intended to fit into the Visions series,” she said. “However, some of the details are different. Take a close look at the figure.”
She waited to see if they understood the significance of what they were viewing. In the hellish scene, a man dressed in black strode through a storm of flames, a devil walking through his empire.
“It’s not like looking at a police sketch,” Anson said. “There’s no real detail in the face. Hard to be sure of the age. But if you know something about the situation and the man, you can sure as hell tell it’s Zane. Amazing.”
“Hannah was a skilled artist,” Virginia said. “She could do traditional portraits. She did two of her friend, Abigail, for example. I have both of them. But when it came to the Visions series, she took a more abstract approach – probably because she was working from memories and dreams. She didn’t have any photos of Zane or his followers.”
“No one does,” Cabot said grimly. “At least, none that we’ve been able to discover. How did you end up with the portraits of Abigail Watkins?”
“Abigail left them to Hannah, but Hannah couldn’t bear to look at them after Abigail died. She insisted that I keep them. She said maybe someday someone would remember Abigail and come looking for the pictures. I doubt that will ever happen, but I promised Hannah I’d look after them. I store them in the same locker where I keep the Visions series.”
Cabot’s gaze sharpened. “Tell us about this picture of Zane.”
Virginia took a deep breath. This was it, she realized. She had to convince them that she was not the victim of an overactive imagination.
“Hannah used certain elements and details to identify her subjects. It was a form of iconography. The keys dangling from the steel chain on Zane’s belt are a typical example.”
Cabot studied the image. “They tell you the figure is Zane.”
“Without a doubt,” Virginia said.
Anson pointed to the cluster of eight small figures in the background.
“The kids in the barn,” he said. “You and Cabot and Jack and Max and the others.”
“Yes,” Virginia said. “We are almost always depicted in the same pose and in the same positions in the paintings.”
Cabot looked up. “Almost always?”
“This final picture is a little different. One of the girls is holding a book. You’ll notice that she is standing at the front of the group. That figure is me and that placement is new. In previous pictures I’m shown in a less prominent position on the canvas.”
“You’re holding that book,” Cabot said. “The one you carried out of the barn that night.”
“My mother gave it to me the morning of the day she died. It was an illustrated book filled with basic math lessons. She made it herself. Hannah illustrated it.”
Anson’s jaw tightened. “Those eight little figures represent the innocent victims.”
Cabot contemplated the cluster of children for a moment and then shook his head. “I think they somehow serve as a sort of judge and jury in the paintings. The kids are condemning Zane for his crimes.”
“I agree,” Virginia said. “Aside from Zane, there are no other grown-ups in the pictures. Just the kids. I’m very familiar with Hannah’s work. When it comes to her art, I’m the expert. She knew that. I’m sure she expected me to get the message that she was sending in this picture.”
“You said that in the other paintings the figure intended to represent Zane had dark hair down to his shoulders,” Cabot said. “This shows him with short hair.”
“Yes,” Virginia said. “The short hair cut in a very modern style was the first thing that jumped out at me.”
Anson rubbed his jaw. “No boots. Looks like he’s wearing running shoes. And a black parka. The hood is pulled up over his face.”
“There’s a small portion of a car in the background,” Cabot said. “Looks like a late model. Silver or gray. Definitely not Zane’s black SUV.”
“There are no cars in the earlier pictures,” Virginia said.
Cabot took one last look at the photos and then he fixed Virginia with his intent gaze. “You think she actually saw him before she died, don’t you?”
His tone was exquisitely neutral, but that very quality told her just how much control he was exerting over his own reaction to the painting.
“Yes,” Virginia said. “Here’s the thing about Hannah Brewster. She had trouble dealing with reality, but that was why she painted. She said it was the only way she could get at the truth.”