“We better find something here,” Winston said as her eyes scanned the list of purchasers of the standard owl model. “Because chasing down buyers through the Home Depots and other retailers is going to mean court orders and lawyers and — hey, the Getty’s on here. They ordered four.”
McCaleb looked over at her and thought about that. Finally, he shook his shoulders and went back to his list. Winston moved on as well, continuing her listing of the difficulties they would face if they had to go to the retail outlets where the horned owl was sold. McCaleb tuned her out when he got to the third-to-the-last name on his list. He traced his finger from a name he recognized along a line on the printout detailing the address the owl was shipped to, method of payment, origin of purchase order and the name of the person receiving it if different from purchaser. His breath must have caught, because Winston picked up on his vibe.
“What?”
“I got something here.”
He held the printout across the seat to her and pointed to the line.
“This buyer. Jerome Van Aiken. He had one shipped the day before Christmas to Gunn’s address and apartment number. The order was paid for by a money order.”
She took the printout from him and started reading the information.
“Shipped to the Sweetzer address but to a Lubbert Das care of Edward Gunn. Lubbert Das. Nobody named Lubbert Das came up in the investigation. I don’t remember that name on the residents list of that building, either. I’ll call Rohrshak to see if Gunn ever had a roommate with that name.”
“Don’t bother. Lubbert Das never lived there.”
She looked up from the pages and over at him.
“You know who Lubbert Das is?”
“Sort of.”
Her brow creased deeply.
“Sort of?
Sort of?
What about Jerome Van Aiken?”
He nodded. Winston dropped the pages on the box between them. She looked at him with an expression that imparted both curiosity and annoyance.
“Well, Terry, I think it’s about time you started telling me what you know.”
McCaleb nodded again and put his hand on the door handle.
“Why don’t we go over to my boat? We can talk there.”
“Why don’t we talk right here, right fucking now?”
McCaleb tried a small smile on her.
“Because it’s what you’d call an audiovisual demonstration.”
He opened the door and got out, then looked back in at her.
“I’ll see you over there, okay?”
She shook her head.
“You better have one hell of a profile worked out for me.”
Then he shook his head.
“I don’t have a profile ready for you yet, Jaye.”
“Then what
do
you have?”
“A suspect.”
He closed the door then and he could hear her muffled curses as he walked to his car. As he crossed the parking lot a shadow fell over him and everything else. He looked up to see the Goodyear blimp cross overhead, totally eclipsing the sun.
17
They reconvened fifteen minutes later on
The Following Sea.
McCaleb got out some Cokes and told Winston to sit on the stuffed chair at the end of the coffee table in the salon. In the parking lot he had told her to bring the plastic owl with her to the boat. He now used two paper towels to remove it from its box and place it on the table in front of her. Winston watched him, her lips tight with annoyance. McCaleb told her he understood her anger at being manipulated on her own case but added that she would be back in control of things as soon as he presented his findings.
“All I can say, Terry, is that this better be fucking good.” He remembered that he had once noted on the inside file flap on the first case he ever worked with her that she was prone to using profanity when under stress. He had also noted that she was smart and intuitive. He hoped now that those characteristics had not changed.
He stepped over to the counter where he had his presentation file waiting. He opened it and took the top sheet over to the coffee table. He pushed the Bird Barrier printout aside and put the sheet down at the base of the plastic owl.
“What do you think, this our bird?”
Winston leaned forward to study the color image he had put down. It was an enlarged detail from the Bosch painting
The Garden of Earthly Delights
showing the nude man embracing the dark owl with shining black eyes. He had cut it and other details from the Marijnissen book. He watched as Winston’s eyes moved back and forth between the plastic owl and the detail from the painting.
“I’d say it’s a match,” she finally said. “Where’d you get this, the Getty? You should have told me about this yesterday, Terry. What the fuck is going on?”
McCaleb raised his hands in a calming gesture.
“I’ll explain everything. Just let me show you this stuff the way I want to. Then I’ll answer any question you ask.”
She waved a hand, indicating he could go on. He went over to the counter and got the second sheet and brought it over. He put it down in front of her.
“Same painter, different painting.”
She looked. It was a detail from
The Last Judgment
depicting the sinner bound in the reverse fetal position, waiting to be delivered to hell.
“Don’t do this to me. Who painted these?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.”
He went back to the counter and the file.
“Is this guy still alive?” she called after him.
He walked the third sheet over and put it down on the table next to the other two.
“He’s been dead about five hundred years.”
“Jesus.”
She picked up the third sheet and looked closely at it. It was the full copy of the
Seven Deadly Sins
tabletop.
“That’s supposed to be God’s eye seeing all the sins of the world,” McCaleb explained. “You recognize the words in the center, running around the iris?”
“Beware, beware . . . ,” she whispered the translation. “Oh, God, we’ve got a real nut here. Who is this?”
“One more. This one really falls into place now.”
He went back to the file for the fourth time and came back with another reproduction of a painting from the Bosch book. He handed it to her.
“It’s called
The Stone Operation.
In medieval times it was believed by some that an operation to remove a stone from the brain was a cure for stupidity and deceit. Note the location of the incision.”
“I noted, I noted. Just like our guy. What’s all of this around here?”
She traced the exterior of the circular painting with a finger. In the outer black margin were words that were once ornately painted in gold but which had deteriorated over time and were almost indecipherable.
“The translation is ‘Master, cut out the stone. My name is Lubbert Das.’ The critical literature on the painter who created this piece notes that in his time the name Lubbert was a derisive name applied to those who were perverted or stupid.”
Winston put the sheet down on top of the others and raised her hands, palms out.
“All right, Terry, enough. Who was the painter and who is this suspect you say you’ve come up with?”
McCaleb nodded. It was time.
“The painter’s name was Jerome Van Aiken. He was Netherlandish, considered to be one of the greats of the Northern Renaissance. But his paintings were dark, full of monsters and phantasmic demons. Owls, too. Lots of owls. The literature suggests the owls found in his paintings symbolized everything from evil to doom to the fall of mankind.”
He sorted through the sheets on the coffee table and held up the detail of the man embracing the owl.
“This kind of says it all about him. Man’s embracing of evil — the devil owl, to use Mr. Riddell’s description — leads to the inevitable destiny of hell. Here’s the whole painting.”
He went back to the file and brought to her the full copy of
The Garden of Earthly Delights.
He watched her eyes as she studied the images. He saw repulsion as well as fascination. He pointed out the four owls he had found in the painting, including the detail he had already shown her.
She suddenly pulled the sheet aside and looked at him.
“Wait a minute. I know I’ve seen this before. In a book or maybe an art class I took at CSUN. But I never heard of this Van Aiken, I don’t think. He painted this?”
McCaleb nodded.
“
The Garden of Earthly Delights.
Van Aiken painted it but you never heard of him because he wasn’t known by his real name. He used the Latin version of Jerome and took the name of his hometown for a last name. He was known as Hieronymus Bosch.”
She just looked at him for a long moment as it all clicked together, the images he had shown her, the names on the printout, her knowledge of the Edward Gunn case.
“Bosch,” she said, almost as an expulsion of breath. “Is Hieronymus . . . ?”
She didn’t finish. McCaleb nodded.
“Yeah, that’s Harry’s real name.”
• • •
They were both pacing in the salon now, heads down but careful not to collide. Talking in sprints, a bad but fast-moving jazz in their blood.
“This is too far out there, McCaleb. Do you know what you are saying?”
“I know exactly what I’m saying. And don’t think that I didn’t think long and hard about it before I said it. I consider him to be a friend, Jaye. There was . . . I don’t know, at one time I thought we were a lot alike. But look at this stuff, look at the connections, the parallels. It fits. It all fits.”
He stopped and looked at her. She kept pacing.
“He’s a cop! A homicide cop, for God’s sake.”
“What, are you going to tell me it’s beyond the realm because he’s a cop? This is Los Angeles — the modern Garden of Earthly Delights. With all the same temptations and demons. You don’t even have to go beyond the city limits for examples of cops crossing the line — dealing drugs, robbing banks, even murder.”
“I know, I know. It’s just that . . .”
She didn’t finish.
“At minimum it fits well enough that you know we have to take a good hard look.”
She stopped and looked back at him.
“We? Forget it, Terry. I asked you to take a look at the book, not run down the leads. You’re out after this.”
“Look, if I didn’t run some of this down you’d have nothing. This owl would still be sitting on top of that guy Rohrshak’s other building.”
“I’ll give you that. And thank you very much. But you’re a civilian. You’re out.”
“I’m not walking away, Jaye. If I’m the one who puts Bosch under the glass, then I’m not walking away from it.”
Winston sat down heavily in the chair.
“All right, can we talk about that when and if we come to it? I’m still not sold on this.”
“Good. I’m not either.”
“Well, you sure made a nice show of giving me the pictures and building your case.”
“All I am saying is that Harry Bosch is connected to this. And that cuts two ways. One, he did it. Two, he’s been set up. He’s been a cop a long time.”
“Twenty-five, thirty years. The list of people he’s put in the penitentiary has got to be a yard long. And the ones who have been in and out is probably half the list. It’ll take a fucking year to run all of them down.”
McCaleb nodded.
“And don’t think he didn’t know that.”
She looked up sharply at him. He started pacing again, his head down. After too long a silence he glanced up and saw her staring at him.
“What?”
“You really like Bosch for this, don’t you? You know something else.”
“No, I don’t. I am trying to stay open. All avenues of possibility need to be pursued.”
“Bullshit, you’re driving down one avenue.”
McCaleb didn’t answer. He felt enough guilt about it without Winston having to apply more.
“Okay,” she said. “Then why don’t you step it out for me? And don’t worry, I’m not going to hold it against you when you end up wrong.”
He stopped and looked at her.
“Come on, step it out for me.”
McCaleb shook his head.
“I’m not all the way there yet. All I know is that what we have here is way,
way
beyond the realm of coincidence. So there has to be an explanation.”
“So tell me the explanation involving Bosch. I know you. You’ve been thinking about it.”
“All right, but remember, it’s all theory at this point.”
“I’ll remember. Go.”
“First of all, you start with
Detective
Hieronymus Bosch believing — no, make that
knowing
— that this guy, Edward Gunn, walked on a homicide. Okay, then you have Gunn turn up strangled and looking like a figure out of a picture by the
painter
Hieronymus Bosch. You throw in one plastic owl and at least a half dozen other connection points between the two Boschs, let alone the name, and there it is.”