often happened when he was painting.
He favored classical music while working on his art. Wagner was on the stereo, cranked up to
He wore only a pair of snug black boxer-briefs as he put the finishing touches on his latest masterpiece. His lean, chiseled body was flecked with several different-colored paint smudges. It was almost as if he’d become one with the canvas.
A tracklight from above illuminated the painting. On either side of the easel stood a pair of tall, cathedral- type candleholders he’d bought in Paris. The candles were almost burned down to stubs. It was his own fault they burned so fast. Every once in a while, he’d take one of those tapers out of its ornate holder, then tip it over his chest. The hot wax splattering on his skin gave him a delicious little jolt of pain that kept him going.
He was exhausted, having been up the last thirty-plus hours. He wasn’t sure how long ago they’d left Olivia Rankin on that park bench by Lake Washington. But he could still smell her flowery perfume on his skin—along with the oil paint and his sweat. The combination of scents was arousing; it smelled of sex.
His drive from Seattle to Portland had taken three hours. He’d arrived home at dawn, then immediately shed his clothes and gone to work on his masterpiece. He wasn’t going to bed until he finished.
The painting was of Olivia, sitting on that park bench by the shoreline—just as they’d left her.
In his one and only art show—given in a Portland cafe nine years ago—a critic commented that his work was “derivative of Hopper with its vivid colors, heavy shadows, and melancholia.” He didn’t sell anything at that exhibition, and he didn’t have another art show. But he didn’t change his style either.
Olivia Rankin’s “death scene” was indeed full of intense colors, shadows, and pain. And it was almost finished.
To his right, he had a cork bulletin board propped on an easel. It was full of location photos he’d taken last week: the beach at Madison Park, the beach house and park bench. Working from these “location shots,” he’d completed the background and the setting—right down to the DO NOT FEED THE WATER FOWL sign in the far right of the painting—a couple of days ago. All that remained was filling in Olivia. He’d done preliminary sketches from pictures he’d taken of her while she was out shopping—and again when she ate lunch in the park. She’d been an oblivious subject. Those photographs and his preliminary sketches were also tacked to the bulletin board—along with three snapshots he’d stolen from her photo album a few nights ago.
He stepped back and admired his work. He’d captured Olivia’s blank, numb expression as she sat there with a bullet in her brain. He was proud of himself for that little gleam of moonlight reflecting off the gun in her hand. He used the same method—adding just a few slivers of white—to make the blood look wet.
He’d decided to call the piece
Absently, he ran his hand across his chest—over the sweat and the dried flecks of candle wax and paint. His fingers inched down his stomach, then beneath the elastic waistband of his under shorts.
The telephone rang.
Letting out a groan, he put down his paintbrush and started across the room. His erection was nearly poking out of his underpants.
He passed a wall displaying several of his other masterpieces. There was a painting of a woman floating facedown in a pool; a vertigo-inducing picture of a man falling off a building rooftop, a businessman sitting at his desk with his throat slit; a naked woman lying in a tub with her wrist slashed open; and several other “postmortem portraits.” Some of the subjects in these paintings appeared to have died accidentally or committed suicide; but all of them had been murdered. He’d killed them all for money—and for the sake of his art.
He grabbed the phone on the fourth ring. “Yes?”
“Did you get any sleep yet?” his associate asked. “Or have you been painting all morning?”
“I’m just finishing this one,” he answered coolly. “What do you want?”
“We have another job—for the same client.”
“How soon does it have to be done?” he asked. “I need time to prepare, and I won’t be rushed.”
His associate let out an awkward chuckle. “Relax, you’ll have time. The client likes the way you work.”
He said nothing. Of course the client liked his work. He was an artist, and they were commissioning him to create another masterpiece. To him, each one was special. Each murder, each painting.
“Call me later and we’ll set up a meeting,” he said finally. “I can’t talk right now. I’m painting.”
“God, you’re a quirky, kinky son of a bitch.” His associate let out another uncomfortable laugh. “You and your
The artist just smiled and gently hung up the phone.
