Murder 42 - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries Book 2) by Victor Methos Page A

as eight to do their killing for them. They figure that if the boys can kill from the time they’re young, by the time they’re adults, that’s all they’ll know. They won’t hesitate when called upon to commit genocide and mass rape.”
    She looked at him again. “How do you know that?”
    “Sorry,” he said, holding out his hand. “Oliver Farkas.”
    “Oh, wow.” She took his hand. “Mr. Farkas, I’m so glad to finally meet you. I’m Natalie Gibb, with Arts in the City.”
    “Right. I thought I recognized you. I love your magazine. The piece you did on billboards as mind pollution was fascinating.”
    She grinned bashfully. “I don’t think the billboard lobby would agree with you. They tried to get me fired.”
    “The insecure are hammers, and they always look for the tallest nails to hit.”
    “Well, I appreciate it. But what I do is nothing compared to this. You risk your life for your art. I do it for a paycheck.”
    He brushed past her, gently rubbing the back of his hand against her thighs. The photograph was black and white. Farkas could’ve probably stopped the shooting had he wanted to, but he’d had no intention of doing that. The image was perfect in its horror: one child killing another and not feeling a bit of remorse. In fact, the boy’s face seemed to betray a hint of pleasure.
    “I’ve seen this picture in every country on the planet,” he said, his eyes not leaving the photograph. “The darkness in us that’s waiting. This boy, before the war, was a normal child. Given the right opportunity, he willingly became a monster.”
    Farkas turned to her and saw the wide-eyed look of someone who had just seen or heard something terrifying but not enough time had passed for them to be truly terrified. True terror, he had always believed, took time to develop.
    So he smiled and said, “But what do I know? I point a camera and press a button.”
    She blinked, as though pushing away what she’d just heard, and then grinned. “I think you don’t give yourself enough credit.”
    “Olly!” a tall woman in a thin red dress shouted as she crossed the gallery. She threw her arms around Farkas’s neck and kissed air next to his cheek. “I have some people you must meet.”
    With that, Farkas was dragged away. He mingled, always smiling, always having anecdotes and witty retorts at the ready. People would say he was nothing if not charming and likeable, or so he thought.
    The final piece of the exhibit was going to be revealed at around ten thirty, and as the hour approached, he grew excited. He took his place at the back of the gallery, away from everybody else, as the gallery owner’s wife stood next to a piece covered by a blue tarp.
    “And now,” the woman said, “the pièce de résistance we’ve waited for all night. I give you Boy with Wolf, by Oliver Farkas: the new piece accepted into the Guggenheim as of twelve days ago.”
    She reached over and pulled the tarp off, and murmurs went up from the crowd. Before them was the skeleton of what would be a boy, next to the skeleton of a she-wolf. The boy was suckling from the wolf in a pose reminiscent of the famous sculpture of Romulus and Remus suckling at the she-wolf’s tit. A bit of organ in the shape of udders hung down from the empty wolf ribs.
    But the center of the piece sat in the boy’s chest: a heart. A bloody, crimson heart that shone with wetness as it began to beat in a slow rhythm in tune with a similar heart inside the wolf.
    “The hearts are beating from an electric shock administered every two seconds,” the wife said, staring at the organs. “And I believe, Olly, you used calf hearts for the piece and horse bones for the skeletons, is that right?”
    Farkas smiled, sipping at the wine he held in a plastic cup. “That’s right.”
    “Simply amazing,” she said. “A beautiful piece worthy of the Guggenheim.”
    A few people came up to Farkas and congratulated him, but most gathered around the piece. Many bent