The Collector Read online

Alan clicked on the link and was promptly taken to a webpage in his browser. What he saw was a page simply entitled My Art. Below the title were four images on a black background—two columns of two images each. He studied the paintings for a moment and realized that they were very much in the style of Edgar Degas, the nineteenth century Impressionist. The subject matter in all of the paintings was young ballerinas, favorite fodder for many of Degas’ works. In fact, all of these paintings looked like they actually could be by Degas. Except—

  Alan closely examined the first image of a young girl standing in a powder blue tutu with her back to the viewer. Her head was bowed down looking at the floor and there were three other ballerinas dancing in the background. He scrolled over to the next image of a solitary young ballerina in a large dance studio standing on one leg with her other leg extended horizontally backward. An arabesque position, he recalled.

  Something’s not quite right here, he thought. He just couldn’t put his finger on it. Alan right-clicked his mouse over the image and downloaded it to his desktop. He followed suit with the remaining three images then dragged all four files into Photoshop. Choosing the first painting of the ballerina staring down at the floor, Alan zoomed in three hundred percent and studied the magnified image. Although it was of low resolution and considerably pixilated, he was able to come up with a startling conclusion: this was not a painting after all. It was a photograph that had been modified using image manipulation software—most likely Photoshop.

  He zoomed in on the other three images one by one and came up with the same conclusion. The artist appeared to have created mock-ups of several Degas paintings by photographing the subjects then digitally manipulated them with painting tools and filters in Photoshop. Which meant that the models Alan was seeing here were living subjects, and one of them could be the sister that the Elen woman had referred to in the e-mail to Beth.

  But which one? There was no way to tell.

  He clicked on the tab of the third image and reexamined it. The image showed a ballerina sitting on a long wooden bench against a wall. The girl had her head bowed down with her elbow resting on her knee and her other hand grasping her ankle. Her feet were pointed outward, making the girl look rather awkward. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun and her face was not visible.

  He studied the fourth and final image. There were also four young ballerinas in this one, one in the foreground and three in the background. The one in the foreground was standing in profile while one of the remaining three was looking directly toward the camera. The third one was looking off to the side and the fourth stood with her back facing the camera. All four girls wore blue tutus and appeared to be in a dance studio with a rail running along the wall on either side of a stone or plaster column.

  And not one of the girls looked any older than fourteen or fifteen.

  So what in the hell is going on here? Alan thought. Do these images imply some kind of foul play or are they simply a showcase of some photographer’s concept of ripping off Degas and creating his own brand of digitized plagiarism? Was one of these girls actually the sister of the mysterious Elen and was she in some kind of trouble? Trouble enough that she needed to be “saved?”

  And if this were the case, why in the world would this woman implore Beth Lindsay to be her sister’s rescuer? Why not the police, for crying out loud?

  It had to be a hoax, he thought. Something cooked up by some bored idiot surfing the net with nothing better to do than to send an e-mail to Beth after stumbling upon her website—

  Alan suddenly recalled that Beth had indeed received the e-mail in question from what she referred to as “a visitor to her website.” Beth’s website, which Alan had designed for her a couple of years ago, featured a women’s rights platform and hosted a forum for battered and abused women, causes that Beth Lindsay tirelessly advocated for in her books and lectures. That lent to the possibility of legitimacy to the woman’s plea. But again, wouldn’t simply calling the police be the most logical route to take for someone seeking help for a loved one in harm’s way?

  And why had this Elen woman added the link to this website, anyway? Why not just attach a photo of her sister along with her name and whereabouts instead? Why all the mystery?

  None of it added up. Yet, Beth seemed to have a feeling about the e-mail’s legitimacy. It’s “sheer brevity,” as she had put it.

  Alan clicked out of Photoshop, returned to his e-mail program and reread the message. He had to admit that there was a sense of urgency in the body of the message—as though the sender was in haste to complete it. That could account for the minor typos and minimal content. Had this Elen woman—or was it actually Ellen with two L’s—written this under duress?

  Please do not reply to this, she had said. There was only one reason Alan could think of for this request. Ellen did not want someone to find out that she had written the message. A response would give her message away.

  His suspicions mounting, Alan read the return address of the sender, [email protected].

  He selected and copied the e-mail address, went to Google Search and typed in “trace e-mail locations.” He clicked on the first of several free sites that came up and pasted the sender’s e-mail address into the search box. No luck—unknown server.

  Alan copied the URL of the website link from the e-mail, opened his iMac’s utilities folder and double clicked the Network Utility application. After clicking the Traceroute tab, he pasted the URL into the search field. Several lines of text appeared as the software began at his current IP location and worked backward through a network toward the source until it finally stalled and went no further. It was likely that the site’s IP address was blocked behind a firewall or some other means, which meant that it would take a more sophisticated program than the one on his Mac to trace it down.

  He would have to give Charlie a call. If the site was traceable in any size, shape or form, Charlie Ling, Mr. Hacker extraordinaire, could trace it. Maybe Charlie could even locate where the Ellen woman had sent the original e-mail.

  Alan picked up the phone and keyed in Charlie’s number