The Element Case

by Edward Kendrick

  "Yes. For reference."

  "So someone with a good pair of night-vision binoculars could focus in on them and read what you've written, unless you put them away at the end of the day."

  "I don't." Clay glanced up at the skylight, suddenly feeling very exposed.

  "Another question while we're at it. From this"—Quint gestured toward the painting—"and most of the ones I saw at the gallery, you tend more towards abstraction than reality."

  "In general, yes. The Element ones are definitely a variation from the norm, although even they are somewhat abstract."

  "Have you done any other… Well, I guess they're portraits, right?"

  "Right." Clay finally put the brush he was holding in with the others in a water-filled beaker on the table. "A little over three years ago, when Travis was still living here, I did one of him. And more recently I painted the son of one of the gallery's patrons, at the man's insistence. That didn't work out too well because he wanted it to be absolutely realistic, which in not how I paint and he knew it. He thought I could forego my usual style to make him happy." Clay snorted in disgust. "That did not happen and he refused to pay for the painting."

  "Do you still have them? Travis's and the son's?"

  Clay nodded. "I'm pretty sure I do. It might take some time to find them though. Why?"

  "Call it a hunch, but if the killer is trying to frame you for the murders, the three men in the Element series might not be the only people he's killed."

  "Well I know the patron's son is still alive. He was at the opening of my show last week, both he and his father."

  "All right. But you said you have no idea where Travis is. Presuming he's not the killer, he might be a victim."

  "Or he could just have moved on to a new life anywhere in the country."

  "True. Before you go looking for his portrait, do you have any photos of him?"

  Clay huffed derisively. "Not even. Trust me. I got rid of everything to do with him after the breakup." As he spoke, Clay went to a large closet at one side of his studio. It was filled with racks like those at the gallery, holding numerous canvases.

  "You must spend twenty-four seven painting," Quint said as he watched Clay search for Travis's portrait.

  "Not quite that bad and some of these are here because they didn't work, but I hate to waste a perfectly good canvas. So I'll sand down any bumps then gesso over it and use it for a new painting."

  Quint muttered, "Okay, I'll take your word for it," earning him sharp laugh from Clay.

  "Found it," Clay said a few minutes later, pulling out one of the canvases. It showed a nice-looking man with blond hair, blue eyes, and full lips.

  "You described him as pouty. You certainly caught that here."

  "Well…I might have gone a bit overboard," Clay admitted. "When I did this, I was well on my way to being ready to get him out of my life."

  "But it still looks like him?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  "Mind if I take a few shots of it," Quint asked, taking out his phone. "I want to run the picture past our cold-case detectives to see if it rings any bells."

  "You really think the killer could have murdered Travis," Clay asked in disbelief.

  "It's one possible explanation for your not hearing from him after your fight. Speaking from personal experience, when someone's kicked out of another person's life like that, they tend to keep trying to stay in contact so they can convince the guy to let them back in."

  "Pissed off girlfriend?" Clay said, lifting an eyebrow in question.

  Quint shook his head. "Boyfriend."

  "Now who would have guessed that," Clay commented, looking at the tall, muscular detective.

  "Stereotyping, Clay?" Quint asked with a grin.

  "Yeah, I suppose I was."

  "You'd think you'd know better, considering you told me you purposely went to clubs to look for subjects because of the variety of men you find there."

  "Touché." Clay waited until Quint had taken several shots of Travis's portrait then put it back in the closet. "You will let me know if…if your detective finds out Travis is one of his cold cases."

  "I'll let you know either way, actually. I do need some information on him—age, date of birth, and identifying characteristics such as tattoos, piercings, birthmarks."

  Clay gave him the details he'd asked for, including the fact that Travis had a tribal tattoo of a key on the inside of his wrist. His mouth tightened when he explained, "He said it was the key to his heart and he wanted me to get one too. I told him that wasn't happening, which did not make him happy."

  "I'm sure it didn't if he got it because of you." Quint shook his head. "There are times when I wonder if I'll ever understand people."

  "You and me both." Leaning on the table behind him, Clay asked, "Do you think this is the end of the killings, since I don't have any more portraits in the works?"

  "We can hope, but I wouldn't count on it. Whoever he is, he didn't go to these extremes just to see you walk away, so to speak."

  "At least," Clay said with a wry smile, "he's not going to see you dragging me out in handcuffs."

  "Nope. We've pretty well eliminated you as a suspect."

  "We?"

  "Yeah. My lieutenant agrees that this seems to smack of some sort of frame-up by someone with a definite ax to grind where you're concerned."

  "Now if I only knew who it was."

  "Keep thinking about it and if you come up with anyone, no matter how off-the-wall it seems, let me know immediately."

  "Don't worry. I plan on it."

  * * * *

  "I really did make an ass of myself with that comment," Clay muttered once Quint was gone. "He was right. With all the men I see at the clubs, I shouldn't have assumed he had to be straight just because he looks like your typical macho cop."

  He returned to his painting, but in the back of his mind he was picturing Quint, not the men on the canvas. Realizing he was too distracted to continue, he cleaned up then grabbed a sketchpad and set to work. Half an hour later he had several drawings of Quint from various angles. "Element of…what?" he said to himself. "Integrity? Honesty? Duty? Protection? All of them work, but…"

  Unable to decide, he got out a fresh canvas and set to work, limning out the basis for the picture he had in mind.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "It's an idea, and at this point we need to do something to draw the killer out of the woodwork," Lieutenant Harber said the morning after Quint's visit with Clay.

  "Something that doesn't endanger Mr Richardson, per se," Quint replied. "Me? I can handle myself."

  "One would hope so," Harber replied with a touch of sarcasm. "The question is…will Richardson go for it? And if so, how long will it take him to finish a painting?"

  "I have no idea. I'll ask him when I broach the subject."

  "Any word on Travis Nelson?"

  "Not so far. He hasn't turned up in any of our files. Pat is running a facial recognition program to cross-check the photo of the painting with any of the victims on record in the cold-case files. He also sent a copy off to the FBI's NCIC along with what information we have on Mr Nelson. He warned me it could take time for them to respond."

  "Do you think Nelson's a possible victim of our killer?"

  "It's fifty-fifty," Quint replied. "Richardson did the painting of Nelson before he and Nelson broke up and, according to him, it was never on public display. So how would the killer have known about it? And that's presuming the paintings are a trigger for the killings."

  "That goes without saying, in my opinion, if the killer is jealous of the men in Richardson's life."

  "Those men were hardly that. Hell, they had no idea he even existed, other than possibly being aware he was sketching them."

  "True. But if the man who killed them perceived them as something more." Harber tapped his forehead. "In his mind, if he's fixated on Richardson, he could see them as competition—men who had to be eliminated."

  Quint nodded slowly. "Tha
t scenario might fit Nelson. As I said to Richardson, Nelson could have dwelt on what happened. He let it fester until it became an obsession. He did tell Richardson he'd regret kicking him out."

  "Have there been other men in Richardson's life, before or after Nelson?"

  "Not according to him. I also asked if there might be another artist who was jealous of his success. He couldn't think of any."

  "Which doesn't mean there aren't," Harber pointed out.

  "Yeah. I'll stop by the gallery and have a talk with Mrs Dane, the manager. She might be more aware of something like that than Richardson is. My impression of him is that his main focus is his work, to the exclusion of anything else in his world."

  "And yet he managed to have a boyfriend."

  "Who he said was bad for him. He might have thought that because he began to resent losing time from his painting to spend it with Nelson."

  Harber nodded. "Here's a thought. You said Richardson goes to clubs to find subjects for his paintings. Have you considered the possibility someone there might have taken an interest in him?"

  Quint chuckled. "Lots of luck if they did. The first time I met Richardson was at a club. Some kid was interested in what he was doing. Richardson shot him down then tried the same thing with me before I let him know why I was there. This man is the definition of unsociable unless he's forced to be."

  "That does not preclude the idea that a man at one of the clubs wouldn't find him interesting. If Richardson shot him down, as you put it, perhaps more than once…"

  "Interesting theory. I'll ask him if that's happened. It would fit in with the idea that the killer sees the men in the portraits as competition." Quint tapped his fingers together then told the lieutenant his theory about how the killer might have found the men by seeing Clay's notes through the skylight. "The roof is accessible at least to the tenants, since it only takes a key to get to it. If someone got into the building…"

  "I think you're reaching, Quint," Harber said when Quint had finished talking.

  "Do you have a better idea? Because I don't."

  "Doesn't he ever have people visit him at the loft?"

  "In his words, he has guests, but very rarely."

  "Guests meaning men he brings home to have sex with?"

  "That would be my guess."

  "Don't guess. Ask him."

  "Will do. Anything else?"

  "Not at the moment. Go talk to him about doing the painting."

  "On it." As Quint left the lieutenant's office, he took out his phone and called Clay to let him know he was on his way over.

  * * * *

  "Okay, are you a mind reader?" Quint asked, once he was inside Clay's loft.

  Puzzled, Clay replied, "Meaning?"

  "That." Quint pointed to the partially-finished painting sitting on an easel in the studio.

  "Oh. I got inspired after you left yesterday. You're a good subject and…" He shrugged.

  "I don't suppose you did some sketches of me first, when I wasn't aware of it."

  "Actually, I did them from memory. Why?"

  Instead of replying, Quint went into the studio to take a closer look at the painting. On the table beside the easel, a pad was open to one of the sketches Clay had done of him. "I'm impressed."

  "That I could draw you without your being here? I've seen enough of you that I'd better be able to. What does this have to do with my being a minder reader?"

  "In a way it's the reason I'm here, only you beat me to it. I came up with an idea and my lieutenant gave me the go-ahead to pursue it."

  It took Clay only a moment to catch on. "Use you, and this, to draw out the killer."

  "Yep."

  "But there aren't any notes on the sketches about where I saw you. Presuming he was on the roof again to see this." Clay pointed to the sketchpad and the painting.

  "If he's watching the building—and he has to be—he's already seen me coming and going. He might not know why though." Quint smiled dryly. "Let's hope he doesn't."

  Clay nodded, frowning. "So he might think you're my new boyfriend."

  "He might. That could push him to act again, especially if he did make another rooftop visit and saw the painting."

  Clay glanced up and shivered. "The idea that he's been watching me through there… I guess I should be glad I don't have another skylight in the bedroom."

  "Because you have occasional guests, as you put it?"

  Clay felt his face heat up. "Yeah, and?"

  "Hey, there's nothing wrong with that. You're only human. It does bring up another question though. When you've been at the clubs, doing your drawing, has anyone seemed interested in you? You personally, not just in what you're doing?"

  Arching an eyebrow in amusement, Clay replied, "How do you think I meet the men I bring home with me? Which, by the way, happens very, very rarely."

  "Damn," Quint exclaimed suddenly, an idea obviously hitting him that he didn't like.

  "Now what?"

  "As far as you know, are these men still present and accounted for?"

  "Hell." Clay began pacing, trying to remember if he'd seen any of them after the nights they'd been at the loft. "Since I broke up with Travis, there have only been three of them."

  "Three in three years?" Quint shook his head. "You have more willpower than I do."

  Clay shrugged. "Sex is nice, but hardly a necessity."

  "You honestly believe that?"

  "Let's just say that I'm not interested in having anyone in my life on a permanent basis again. Being with Travis taught me that's not what I really need."

  "That was just one man, Clay, and he was obviously the wrong one for you since you're the one who broke it off. That doesn't mean someone else might not be the right one."

  Clay cocked an eyebrow. "Says the man who is still single. I mean you are, aren't you? It sure sounds like it."

  "I am. This isn't answering my original question though. Have you seen the men since they spent the night here?"

  "Yes…" Clay said slowly. "I've run into two of them since then. Not that we reconnected, but I've seen them around."

  "What about the third one? How long ago was it when he was here?"

  "Maybe six, seven months ago."

  "So right around the time the killing started."

  "I guess."

  "And you haven't seen him since?"

  "No. Damn, you don't think he—?"

  "Do you remember his name or anything about him?"

  Clay grimaced at the question. "I may pick them up at a club, but I'm not totally insensitive. His name was, is, Hank Rivera and he told me he works at a sporting goods store."

  Quint wrote down the information, saying, "Describe him."

  "Maybe an inch shorter than me—and I'm six-foot—black hair, brown eyes, a decent body. He had one of those god-awful soul patches, not a decent beard like yours."

  Quint chuckled. "Got it. He's probably still out there but I'm going to run a check on him, just in case."

  "You really think it's possible he was murdered? Because he was with me?"

  "To be honest, probably not. After all, you didn't do a painting of him. Right?"

  "Good lord no. He came home with me. We had sex. He left."

  "Exactly. If we're right about the killer, his trigger seems to be your paintings. The ones that are portraits, not the abstracts, even though they do focus on men."

  "More than one—and in motion. That's sort of my trademark."

  "Do you ever do them in bed?"

  Clay snorted, finding the way he phrased that amusing. "No, the men I do in bed do not merit being painted."

  "That is not what…" Then Quint laughed. "Okay, you actually made a joke again."

  "Something I rarely do, unfortunately."

  "You do tend to have the whole 'I'm a loner and I don't get how to react to people' thing down pat. How you ever hooked up with Travis…"

  Clay smiled wryly. "I wonder that too, at times."

  "All right, once agai
n we've gotten off track. How long will it take you to finish that?" Quint pointed at his portrait.

  "A couple of days probably."

  "Are you willing to hang it in the gallery when it's finished?"

  "Yes. I actually was trying to come up with an Element title for it."

  "And?" Quint replied, studying what Clay had done so far.

  "Either Integrity or Protection, I think."

  "I don't look too protective in it."

  "I guess that came to mind because you're trying to keep me—or rather any more men I paint—safe from the killer."

  "You, Clay. There's going to come a time when he comes after you. Right now, unless we're reading him wrong, he's trying his best to frame you for the murders."

  "Or he's trying to tell me I'm not to get involved with anyone or they'll die too."

  "I think you might be right. And since I've been hanging around you and you're doing the painting, that could push all his buttons at once."

  "Making you his next target."

  "We can hope that's what happens. But just in case—I'm going to set it up for extra patrols to watch this building and the gallery whenever you're there."

  "The police have that kind of manpower?"

  "Yes, if it lets us catch a guy who had already murdered three men that we know of and possibly more. It won't be around the clock, but the patrol officers will step up their rounds and I'll be with you as much as possible when I'm not working."

  "Pretending to be my new boyfriend. I suppose that makes sense." Clay was not certain he liked the idea of Quint hanging out in the loft. He had the feeling the man could be too much of a distraction, even if he kept to himself. That was something Travis had been unable to do. He had demanded Clay's attention, even when he knew Clay was deeply involved with one of his paintings.

  As if sensing Clay's reservations, Quint said, "I'll stay out of your hair. I won't even turn on the TV. I promise."

  "That kind of thing doesn't bother me. It's…" Clay sighed then tried to push his dismay to one side. "As long as you stay out of the studio end of the loft, I'll be okay with it."