“Maybe,” I say, refusing to catch her eye.
“Hmm. Well, I’ll leave you to your weird little hobby while I go and have a shower,” Izzy says, pushing herself up to standing.
I check the time on my iPad. “Do you want to go in today?I know we missed pottery this morning, but we can still make it in this afternoon.”
Izzy hesitates at the threshold and then nods. “Yeah, I think I do. It’ll be good for us to get out, right?”
“Yeah, I think it will.”
“You just want to do your creepy research,” she says, but then she breaks into the smile I was hoping for.
“Unfortunately,” I joke, though that’s exactly why. “Go on, get ready.”
“Won’t be long.”
I listen to Izzy bustling around the bathroom and choose an article from the bunch dated from five years ago, my eyes drawn to the accompanying photograph. It’s a large print ofthe portraits of The Four hanging in a gallery, though it’s not the Heywood. The quality is poor and pixelated, meaning the photo itself is years old, but it’s still an arresting image. It must have been taken the only other time Dad said the paintings were shown, whenthey were at the National Portrait Gallery. I settle back against the bed and read the headline: “Legacy of a Killer?”
Now we’re talking.
I skim-read as the steady thrum of the shower starts in the next room. There’s not much real information here, and I can tell from the style of writing this was probably snipped from a tabloid, but it paints a clear enough picture.
The Four are now headed to the brand-new Heywood Gallery after the previous owner of the paintings and founder of the gallery, millionaire Clifford Heywood, left them to Blackwood University in his will. The celebrated paintings come with a dark history attached. First discovered in 1911 in New York, five canvases in total were officially recorded, along with the dead body of a male. The deceased was thought to be the artist, but his name was never recorded. He had, disturbingly, appeared to mix human blood and hair in with the paint, and the final portrait was said to be unfinished. Though this John Doe’s official cause of death was listed as consumption, the tenement building was filed as acrime scene, due to the large amounts of other people’s blood discovered there.
Jesus, was this what the appraiser meant when he said “disturbing anomalies”? An unpleasant lump forms in my throat as I remember touching the paint. Does this mean the paintings of The Four contain blood and hair too? I feel sick, but I carry on reading anyway.
This incident occurred after a spate of murders in the summer of 1911, when at least four transient women were brutally slaughtered on the Lower East Side. Though there was very little documentation and a fire in the 1950s wiped out many earlier records, due to the way The Four are depicted, some armchair detectives suspect the artist of being a serial murderer known as BBK. This killer earned the moniker Bind, Bleed, Kill because of how he treated his victims before staging the bodies in different ways.
“Posing,” I mutter to myself, annoyed at the journalist’s error. Anyone who has watchedCriminal Mindsknows the difference. “The bodies wereposed. Crime scenes are staged.”
I finish reading, but I hang on to the mention of a name—BBK. Could he be the same man who painted The Four? I pick up the article again and stare at the portraits. On impulse I go to the kitchen, riffling through drawers until I find a roll of tape and some scissors. I raid the recycling and find a large, flattenedcardboard box; then I go to the living room and scour the bookshelves, taking a mug I bought Dad when I was six that is now filled with colored Sharpies.
I head back to my room and break down the box so it’s one long piece of cardboard. Then I carefully cut a strip of tape and stick the article with the photo at the top, right in the center. I uncap a red marker and draw three vertical lines, creating columns that I label from one to four, leaving space for a copy of each painting underneath.
“Jesus, Fliss. You know this is creepy, right?” Izzy says from the doorway, and she enters the room and looks at my handiwork. “It’s like one of those murder boards you see on TV, or those people so obsessed with a conspiracy theory that they plaster the walls of their house with articles and stuff.”
“It’s only one article,” I say, not letting her know I intend to stick the rest on at some point too. “I need a distraction, that’sall.”
“Fine,” Izzy says, her voice softening, but she marches over to the cardboard, picks it up and flips it over so it’s facing away from us. “But I cannot sleep in this room looking at that, I’m afraid.Those paintings freak me out, even more since yesterday.”
“Fully moveable.” I pick it up and fold it along the box lines. “See? Gone.”
“Thank you.” Izzy shrugs into an oversized yellow cardigan. “Are you ready?”
“Almost.” I throw my notebook and a few other essentials into a tote bag, holding up the iPad. “You think we’ll get our phones back today?”
“Mom said she’d text you as soon as she hears back from the police, iPad girl, so bring it with.”
We leave the room, and I grab my keys from the little dish next to the front door, wondering if I’ll be able to Google BBK while everyone else is busy with their projects.
TWELVE
Lorenna
New York City, July3, 1911
The city was sweltering.
Lorenna hitched her cotton skirts up, trying—and failing—to keep them from sweeping along in the dirt and debris. The roads were filthy in this part of Manhattan, unlike Millionaire’s Row, where she had already seen people driving motorcars. She sighed, thinking of the opulent houses she had passed yesterday. Perhaps one day she would work in one of them, be a lady’s maid for the daughter of a publishing magnate, but for now she was just another girl from a small town who landed in New York City two days ago with an empty pocketbook and a dream.
