MOSAICS: A Thriller Read Online Free Page B

in slanted handwriting.
    I told him a scarf, damn it. A hat, a shoe, a sweater—something I can fucking smell .
    Katya Maria Krikorian, age sixty-two, had vanished on May 24. She got into her car in the early afternoon to visit a friend in El Sereno, spent about an hour with her, then left and never made it back home. Her brother had hired me to find her but he kept missing the point that I in order to find people I need to know what they smell like.
    I tossed the picture on the dining table, together with the rest of the photographs, and served the boys—Will and The King—dinner. I didn’t feel like eating, so I grabbed a Corona and a lime from the fridge and walked to the living room. Ass in recliner, feet on coffee table, laptop on lap. Will’s adoring eyes on me, The King settled on his windowsill, despising us both. I took a long swig of Corona and typed, “mosaic tiles.”
    Google’s my best friend.
    My browser told me that mosaics had been around for a long time. The Greeks and the Romans used them to decorate their homes until they became the primary Christian art form. Interestingly, whereas the Greeks and the Romans used mostly stone tiles for their mosaics, it was the Byzantines who introduced glass tiles for the first time.
    Glass tiles—the kind our killer seemed to like. I downed the rest of my beer. Four tiles, four different colors. Christianity had a fixation with the numbers three and seven. Wh at was the meaning of four? Four cardinal directions, four limbs, four elements, four states of matter.
    The Byzantine S trangler.
    My eyes fell on the painting propped against the wall, between the bookcases. A red woman lay naked in the grass, her bosom dappled with black stars, a cougar emerging from the shade behind her. Artist, friend, occasional girlfriend, Hortensia had given the painting to me four months earlier and I still hadn’t gotten around to hanging it. I flipped the cell open and punched in her number.
    “Still not available, Track.”
    “Hort. It’s been six months already. You don’t need to remind me every time I call.”
    She puzzled over that. “You mean you’re not calling to have sex? That’s not flattering.”
    I resisted the urge to hang up. “I need an art lesson. On mosaics.”
    There were noises in the background—glass jars clinking, water running. “I don’t do mosaics. I paint.”
    I missed the time when we had sex instead of talking. “Well, that covers it. Do you know people who do mosaics in L.A.? Would you know where they get the tiles?”
    “In the recycling. Broken bottles, colored glasses, crocks, what have you. Even pebbles. Artists are creative people. Hey, I have a friend who does pistachio shells on wire mesh. That’s pretty cool.”
    I thanked her and hung up, making a mental note to call her again should I find pistachio shells at the next crime scene. I got out of the recliner, trudged back to the kitchen, and tossed the Corona bottle. My answering machine was still blinking. I hit the play button.
    “Yeah. This is Joe from Jiffy Lu—”
    Skip .
    “Mr. Presius, your results are in. Dr. Watanabe wanted me to schedule—”
    Skip .
    “Hey.”
    I froze. My finger retreated from the skip button this time.
    “Thought you’d be home,” Diane’s voice crooned through the phone. “Guess not.”
    The answering machine’s beep at the end of the message rang like a long amen.
    I shuffled to the fridge, grabbed another Corona and slumped back in the recliner, my fingers itching to dial Diane’s number.
    She said not to call. Not to ca ll, Ulysses, can you follow one simple direction?
    Yeah, but then she called me.
    She left a message .
    I punched in her number on the cell phone. It rang once. Twice. Then her voice, snappish, nothing like the message she’d just left. “I still need time, Track.”
    “You left me a message.”
    “I didn’t—Sheesh, Track, how often do you listen to your messages?”
    I swallowed, squeezed the beer bottle in my