“I did bring you milk, Mom,” he said ever patiently. “I brought it to you yesterday, and I brought it to you again today.”
“Well, I’m out,” she said, in that sad voice, denying the evidence in front of them, which was that she couldn’t remember anything.
“Open the fridge, and you’ll see the milk in the left-hand door.”
He heard her shuffling across the room, heading to the fridge, and the small click that said she had opened it.
“Oh, you’re such a good boy,” she said. “The milk is here. I just didn’t realize you came and went without stopping to visit.”
He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mom, I came and had lunch with you.”
“Are you coming today?”
He looked over at the clock and frowned. “If I do, it’ll be late.”
“That’s okay,” she said in delight. Her words were followed by the click of the phone.
It made him really sad to think of the bright fresh mind of his mother, now reduced to an old lady who couldn’t even remember if he’d brought in the milk. He knew he wasn’t alone in this scenario, and he knew that maybe a good son would have brought his mother in to live with him. But no way he could. No way she’d understand the obsession with his artwork.
He stepped back from the piece he’d been working on, moved the canvas under the lights, nodded, and set up his own easel. People had been capturing and imitating the great artists of the world since time began. He was determined to do the same with the work of Cayce Matlock. The woman was a genius. If he could just figure out how to capture that very essence that made her paintings so special.
He picked up the paintbrush and made his first stroke.
Chapter 2
Cayce sat on the bench in the police station. She kept checking her watch because, damn it, her appointment was twenty-five minutes ago. She understood that they considered themselves busy, and this was important, but she was the one who just had to wait. In her world, she had things to do too, and twenty-five minutes late was unacceptable. She shuffled once again on the hard bench seat. She looked up for the tenth or thirtieth time and searched around her. She swore she was being watched, but she couldn’t see anyone. Finally she pulled out her phone again and checked the time yet once more, groaned, and sat back. She’d already told her assistant she would be late. She just hadn’t realized how late.
“Cayce Matlock?”
She looked up to see the detective, Richard Henderson, staring at her. She bounced to her feet and frowned at him. “How long will this take? I’m already late.”
He gave her a slight tilt of his head, his gaze hard and assessing. He motioned for her to follow him. She was okay to do that but wished she knew what this was all about. She was led into a small interview room.
He motioned at a chair on the opposite side of the table and said, “Please, take a seat.”
She sat down, dropped her oversize purse on the floor beside her with a thunk, put her folded hands on the table, and said, “I hope this won’t take long, Detective. I’m really late.”
“It’ll take as long as it takes,” he said in a mild tone of voice, as he opened up a file folder in front of her.
The flash of a photograph before her had her breath catching in the back of her throat as she stared at it. She snatched the headless picture, just a torso shot, her other hand covering her mouth in shock. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Is this Elena? Is this what he did to her? He ruthlessly hacked away at her body like that?”
He looked at her, then down at the picture, and she shook her head wordlessly. Tears flowed down her cheeks. He grabbed a tissue box she hadn’t seen and switched out the photograph for the box. She quickly plucked several from the package and covered her eyes with them, as the tears flowed in an incessant stream.
When she finally regained her voice, she asked bitterly, “Did you do that purely for shock value?” She closed her eyes again, more tears flowing, trying to stop them with tissues again. “She was my best friend, you know?” When she had dabbed her eyes enough, she looked up, catching just a hint of regret on his face as he stared down at the photograph.
She sniffled, wiping her nose, still taking short, halting breaths. “Did he mutilate her back too?”
Richard frowned.
“The painting continues on her back.”
Richard shook his head. “How did you identify her?” he asked quietly.
She swallowed hard, clenched her fist around the tissues, then reached for the photograph again. “See this portion here? He didn’t take all of it. At the collarbone it’s much harder to paint. I have to take a lot of extra care when we get close to the surface of the bone because the light hits it differently as she moves.” She pointed out the deep purple color still along the top.
“I know it’s probably an impossible thing to ask, but is there any way to know if that color was changed or altered in any way?”
“You mean, other than the fact that it’s been brutally and haphazardly cut off?” She stared at him suspiciously.
He nodded. “We need to know anything that might help make sense of this.”
“My best friend was skinned by some crazed hack,” she said softly. “There is no making sense of this.”
“No,” he said, “but there’s a reason. It made sense to somebody.”
“A psycho,” she said immediately.
“That’s because, in your mind, you can’t see any real value to skinning somebody, I presume.”
“I’m sure there are cultures where it’s done for either reasons of tradition or revenge,” she said, “but no.”
“We do it to animals all the time,” he said mildly.
She raised her
