Free The Art of Death by Margarite St. John Page A

years fatal to her claims? And what result did she want -- money for herself, revocation of Dr. Beltrami’s medical license, jail time for him, or simply his public humiliation?
    The idea of punishing Dr. Beltrami was alluring, but Kimmie shrank from two consequences: she would have to stop being his patient, which despite his unorthodoxy she didn’t want to do. He was the only authority figure left in her life. And the notoriety that befell him would inevitably fall upon her too.
    Several years ago, after a second half-hearted suicide attempt, she had decided to confide in Amber, hoping for sympathy. To her surprise, Amber had reacted more like a therapist than a teary friend. “You’re such a girl, Kimmie. Stop turning your anger inward. Focus it on the real culprit, why don’t you? The way a man would. If you don’t, someday you really are going to wake up dead.”
    Then they both laughed hysterically at the idea of waking up dead. But Amber’s words had taken root, though not in the way she envisioned. Upon reflection, Kimmie decided she wasn’t angry so much as she was hurt. So, deluding herself that she didn’t want to punish the doctor but instead only wanted her hurt to go away, she decided to seek an apology. If Dr. Beltrami confessed to having misused her, then her hurt would vanish and she’d be ready to forgive and forget. There would be no need for anything to become public, nor any reason to end their professional relationship.
    Otherwise, she would have to get things off her chest whatever way seemed best, not only her memories of the way he treated her when she was thirteen but also the flashbacks she had when she saw Nicole’s reconstructed face in the paper.
    Giving a wrongdoer options to settle a dispute peaceably was the way good people did things, wasn’t it?
    Kimmie stood up and got back on her bicycle. She would go home and, instead of starting another jigsaw puzzle, send Dr. Beltrami a text politely assuring him that she had no wish to tell anyone about what he once did to her, instead asking for his private apology so she could rid herself of demons. “It’s our little secret,” she would write in reassurance of her kind intentions. Surely, he would be grateful for her discretion and empathetic with her pain.

Chapter 14
Thousand Points of Light
Saturday, May 11, 2013

    In a conference room at the Conrad Hotel, Madeleine Harrod took her place at the podium with more nervousness than usual. Getting an award from the Association of Forensic Artists was not the highlight of her life, for she’d received many other awards, but still it put the cap on a weekend of triumph in all three of her professional interests: unique toys for a global market, oil paintings that were now selling nationally, and three-dimensional forensic art that actually solved cold cases.  
    It was not the fact of speaking publicly that made her nervous but the subject of today’s presentation. She would lead the audience step by step through her reconstruction of Nicole Whitehead’s face, focusing on advanced traditional and digital imaging techniques and on stereolithography (three-dimensional printing), concluding with the shocking fact of how the face turned out to be that of the very girl she once tried to save from drowning. The difficult part was explaining that even before she recognized the skull as Nicole’s, somehow she “saw” the details that complete a face and distinguish one from another -- the mole on the cheek, the almost invisible eyebrows, the blue eyes, the shoulder length hair, the cleft chin. Only when they were in place did she know who had died.
    In the case of Nicole Whitehead, the convergence of Madeleine’s insight with the victim’s identity seemed to other professionals somehow more than coincidence, though no one could quite explain why that was so. Putting a face on Nicole’s skull had made Madeleine both the subject of great acclaim and the object of much suspicion and