Mercurial Dreams

by Hadena James

  Henderson was less of a city and more of a suburb of Vegas. Granted, it was a huge suburb of Vegas, but it wasn’t far enough away to be considered an independent town. I didn’t know which city had expanded to invade the other, but it was something I was going to look-up when I returned to Missouri.

  The GPS gave us directions to the artist’s home. We pulled up in front of a single family adobe home in a nice neighborhood. The neighborhood didn’t reveal that a world-famous artist lived behind the doors of the unassuming house that looked like a starter home for a family. It was also not the only adobe house on the block. While there were several with brick or siding, the majority were adobe exteriors. I wondered if this was unique to the towns of Nevada or if it was a trend in the entire southwest.

  “Well?” I asked Lucas, who continued to sit in the driver’s seat with the motor running.

  “I’m unsure about this,” Lucas answered.

  “Because you are ambushing an artist, begging to buy work, at his home?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Lucas admitted.

  “Do you want to come back when you don’t have me with you?”

  “Your presence makes no difference. It’s mine, it just seems rude.”

  “That you used your status as a US Marshal to get the address of your companion’s favorite artist and are now planning to ambush him for artwork?”

  “You make it sound much worse than it sounds in my head.”

  “Sorry, I’m not good at adding sugar coatings,” I smiled at him. “Lucas, I’m sure it will be fine. You are a likeable guy and after the artist gets over the shock of you, the two of you are sure to become fast friends.”

  “And sometimes you speak in archaic speech patterns.”

  “Stop stalling.”

  “This is a bad idea.”

  “We look like freakish stalkers sitting on the curb with the SUV running,” I told him. “Come on.”

  The SUV rocked when the door reached the peak of its opening arc. I hoped it shook Lucas out of his new found shyness. Lucas was always the gutsy one and I tended to be timid. I didn’t like the role reversal. Famous artist or not, he would warm up to Lucas just like everyone else did and the two would probably become lifelong acquaintances, if not friends.

  The SUV ignition was cut. I closed my door easier than I had opened it. Lucas came up next to me. His eyes were on the ground.

  “He’s a human being, it will be fine,” I reminded the larger man.

  “I hope he doesn’t ban me from buying because I showed up at his house,” Lucas answered.

  “If he does, he’s an idiot,” I shrugged and started up the walkway.

  Unlike so many other houses I had seen in the area, this one had a lush green yard like I was used to. The others had some sort of strange spray on it that made it look green. To me, they looked like green sand and rocks, but to the untrained eye, it might look like Astroturf or some new strange fake grass.

  The door opened before we reached it. A tanned man with light colored hair and brown eyes stood in the doorway. He was wearing the male equivalent of peddle-pushers, with a loose t-shirt and sandals. The t-shirt had a smart ass comment on it regarding stupid people. I resisted the urge to smile.

  “Hi,” I gave a small wave.

  “Can I help you?” He asked.

  “I’m Aislinn Cain and this is Lucas McMichaels. Lucas is interested in purchasing some of your artwork, but we couldn’t find any galleries that carried it nor could we find a studio address for you. So, we’re ambushing you at your home,” I told him.

  “I keep a studio here at my house,” the artist still didn’t move out of the way. I was guessing he was sizing us up, trying to decide if he really wanted to let us in or not. If I was him, the answer would be a resounding hell no, but I wasn’t him and found people unpredictable.

  “I’m sorry to just barge in like this,” Lucas finally found his voice. “My life partner is a huge fan of your art, Mr. Summers. He has one painting from several years ago and we are working in the area, so I was hoping to surprise him with another piece of your work.”

  “Which painting?” Mr. Summers asked.

  “’Lady in Waiting.’ It’s a beautiful piece with a dark haired woman, nude, and posed as though she is waiting for her lover,” Lucas answered.

  “Ah, that was one of my favorite pieces to create,” Mr. Summers visibly relaxed.

  “Does one of the hospitals in Vegas have a piece of your work?” I blurted out.

  “Uh, yes, they do, why?” Mr. Summers, whose first name was still lost to me, asked.

  “Oh, I was there a few days ago and saw a piece that I thought might be by the same artist,” I answered.

  “I’m guessing you aren’t the life partner,” Mr. Summers said.

  “No, I’m just Lucas’s work partner,” I answered.

  “What do you do?” Mr. Summers countered.

  “US Marshals, we work for the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit,” Lucas answered. “We are here working a case and this is probably the only chance I will have to try and get a piece of artwork from you.”

  “Well, come right in,” Mr. Summers finally moved from the door and let us into his house. “I don’t normally let people see my studio, works in progress and things, but I have a gallery room here that you are welcome to go through and see if you like anything.”

  “Great,” Lucas smiled wide. “Trevor is going to love this.”

  “Trevor?” Mr. Summers asked.

  “His life partner,” I answered.

  “Is he a famous chef?” Mr. Summers asked.

  “I don’t know about famous, but he is a heck of a cook,” I answered.

  “He used to be a famous chef,” Lucas said. “He got out of the life because he couldn’t handle the stress of owning a restaurant and the stress of my job.”

  “I remember him, I met him at a gallery two dozen years ago or so. He told me he wanted it for himself, but he was going to hang it in his restaurant. He said something about nothing being more beautiful than the female form, which stuck with me because he was dressed like Elton John and I guessed then that he was gay,” Mr. Summers said.

  “He is,” I answered. “But he also thinks women are beautiful. And he still dresses like Elton John.”

  “And unfortunately, the painting had to be removed from the restaurant,” Lucas answered. “But it has hung in our bedroom for the last ten years. So I know he would love another piece.”

  “I’m sorry that I don’t remember his last name, but I have wondered if he kept the painting. At the gallery, he stared at it for about an hour before buying it. He admired most of my work at a time when critics were not nearly as kind. He left an impression,” Mr. Summers admitted.

  “Trevor is like that,” Lucas said.

  “Were you thinking another painting or something else?” Mr. Summers asked.

  “I think it’s time to pony up and get him a sculpture,” I said, remembering the card. “Trevor deserves a sculpture.”

  Lucas laughed as did Mr. Summers.

  “Well, you heard the lady, I guess I am more interested in a sculpture,” Lucas said as he finished his full body laugh that I loved to hear. I wasn’t sure if what I had said was worth a full body laugh, but sometimes, I struck a nerve with Lucas that would make him laugh even when I didn’t think it was funny. It was just part of our relationship.

  “We found your business card and there was a sculpture on it, is it sold?” I plowed ahead.

  “’Agony or Ecstasy?’ is sold, but I have others,” Mr. Summers assured us.

  We walked down a short hallway that needed painting and into a large room. It appeared that several walls had been knocked down to accommodate the new gallery space. My guess, it had been a row of bedrooms at one time.

  The paintings and sculptures in the room were of little interest to me. I think art is pretty to look at, but I see no need for it to fill the rooms of my house. Luckily for everyone else, Trevor decorates my house, so I own
several pieces by artists whose names I don’t know.

  However, one piece caught my attention. It was a sculpture measuring nearly five foot long and three foot high. The woman, fashioned out of a strange pink colored clay, was on her side, her arm jutting out at an odd angle from body, nearly twisted completely around at the elbow. Her head was also at an odd angle, the ligament on one side exposed through the skin, indicating the force being used to move her head. Her knees drawn up to her chest. Her face was contorted in pain. She was pretty, not beautiful, but pretty and just a tad homely.

  I had seen similar renderings in my studies. Arsenic poisoning created painful contortions. This sculpture reminded me of a woman suffering the early stages of acute arsenic poisoning.

  “I am so sorry to bother you, but this heat just zaps me, could I get a glass of water or something?” I asked, suddenly needing to leave the room.

  “Sure, I have bottled water if you prefer,” Mr. Summers left Lucas and I in the room.

  “Don’t move, don’t breath,” I told him quietly. Lucas gave me an odd look. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The room smelled oddly. There was paint and dried clay and something very faint, something ironish. My brain instantly conjured up a pool of blood. I opened my eyes and pointed at the sculpture. “I’m buying that one.”

  “What?” Lucas asked.

  “Buy whatever piece you think Trevor will like the most, I’m buying this one,” I told Lucas.

  “I’m not sure...” He stopped talking as footsteps began returning to the room. Mr. Summers entered with my bottle of water.

  “I’d like to buy this piece,” I pointed at the poisoned woman sculpture.

  “I didn’t take you as a lover of agony pieces,” Mr. Summers said.

  “I have a degree in Medieval History,” I shrugged. “Specifically, torture, there is beauty in pain.”

  “Ah, yes there is. I created this piece shortly after my wife died to show my own pain,” Mr. Summers said.

  “It is striking,” I answered. “Do you take credit cards?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Mr. Summers answered.

  “Lucas, can you write a check for both and I’ll pay you back?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Lucas said. “How are we going to get both sculptures back to Missouri?”

  “I’ll ship them,” Mr. Summers answered.

  “That would be great,” I said. “May I take a few pictures? I want to send them to Trevor. He does all my interior design work and he’ll need to know that it’s coming and find a place for it.”

  “No problem,” Mr. Summers smiled. I snapped pictures with my phone and immediately texted them to Xavier with one word in the message “arsenic.” Lucas picked out the piece for Trevor and wrote a very large check to Mr. Summers.

  We thanked him and left.

  Unease

  Kyle sat in his studio for about an hour after the Marshals had left. He’d been careless letting them in. But he’d been swayed by their devotion to someone who loved their art. The two might have been work partners, but they were also something more. They had a bond that Kyle respected as being intimate, but not sexual. If circumstances were different, he would have loved to have both of them and maybe their third, in one of his pieces. Both had been beautiful in ways that only he could bring to the surface and show the world.

  However, he knew it was not to be. The way Aislinn Cain had reacted to his sculpture told him that she had a clue. It might not be fully formed yet, but she knew there was something off about the woman in it.

  He considered his next move. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to continue as if nothing had happened. Somehow, he knew he had to though, he had works to finish. It would be a tragedy to leave all those works incomplete.

  Kyle tried to convince himself that he was reading too much into it. She had said she was a medieval history scholar. Maybe she really did find the beauty in pain. She had originally mentioned the “Agony or Ecstasy” sculpture.

  Suddenly, he wondered where she’d seen his business card. It wasn’t available online. There was no reason for anyone to have one that could be given to her.

  After several more minutes, he decided he was too agitated to work. He left his studio and went into the living room. He poured himself a drink before sitting down and flipping on the TV. Normally, he didn’t watch TV in the middle of the day, but he had been unsettled by the US Marshals visit.

  No, that wasn’t true, he had been unsettled by Aislinn Cain. Her face had been completely blank when he had returned. Not just hiding emotion, but completely emotionless. He had never seen that before. Even her eyes had been emotionless. There had been no excitement or joy or even enthusiasm buying his sculpture. She might as well have been buying a carton of milk. Even weirder, before that trip to get the bottle of water, she had been full of emotion, most of it disinterest. In thirty seconds, something had changed, something dramatic and it had been in her. Lucas had reacted to it, but he acted like he was trying to hurry Aislinn out of the artist’s house.

  Kyle would have nightmares about her. He was the exact opposite, full of emotions, they constantly raged and battled inside of him. He transferred them into his art. To see his counterpart, someone completely devoid of emotion, was disturbing. It frightened him, but he couldn’t say why.

  The National Geographic Channel was having a marathon on predators. Refilling his glass, he settled in to watch a few episodes and shake the feelings that Aislinn had created in him.

  He dozed after his second glass of whiskey. Aislinn Cain visited his dreams, stalking him like a predator. The dream woke him and he stared at the TV. That was it, like the tigers that now stalked their prey on TV, she had looked at him like a predator.

  Kyle considered that with his artwork of the last two decades. Some would consider him a predator. He was a killer, but he killed for his artwork, proving to the world that there could be beauty in death. Aislinn Cain was not like him. She would kill for the sheer joy of killing. It would probably make her smile. He found it distasteful and the clean-up even more so. He didn’t think Aislinn would have trouble with cleaning up.

  The sexual thrill had gone out of death when his wife had died. Killing no longer gave him a thrill, but it was necessary, like ordering paints and clay. Not for the first time, he thought that parts of him had drowned with his beautiful wife.

  Yet, he had been forced to continue to kill. He didn’t have a choice. If he failed to kill, he failed to create new art. He could only capture so much living beauty before he began to find it mundane and banal. That would have proved those original critics, when he’d just been a struggling, no name artist, right. If his work was uninspiring, it was because it was uninspired.

  Kyle thought about the bodies in the pool out back. Tonight he would have to get rid of them. He still didn’t know where, but they needed to go somewhere. It was a precaution. Aislinn Cain might come back and stare at him with her predatory eyes and see all his secrets.

  He shook the thought away, deciding it was crazy. Aislinn Cain could not look at him and see all his secrets. She didn’t have that sort of power. It was a combination of the whiskey and the unsettling sight of her emotionless state. He never could hold his whiskey.

  Still, he’d move the bodies. He got up, drained the third glass of whiskey and went to lay down for a nap. His head was hurting from the whiskey.

  When he woke, it was still daytime. He went into the basement and began scrubbing it down. He knew bleach would remove most of the blood. He kept gallons of it around for that reason. The basement floor was sealed, but the drain wasn’t. Bottle after bottle of bleach was poured around the drain and washed down into the metal pipes. It sounded like running water, which gave Kyle the idea of washing down each bottle of bleach. He turned on the hose and let it trickle into the drain. As it ran, he poured yet another bottle of bleach on the drain.

  The water was still running in a small stream into the drain as he righted the water trough. There was a c
an of black paint on the shelves in the basement. He spent time carefully applying multiple coats of black paint to the trough. When he finished the inside, he painted the outside. Now, he could claim it was art in progress, he’d tell anyone asking that he intended to use it as a prop for a sculpture.

  Turning off the water, he grabbed a large broom. He swept the entire room three times. All the dirt was collected near the drain. He found several strands of hair in the dirt that wasn’t his. It was a good thing he had swept. He turned the hose back on and washed it down the drain. When he felt the basement was clean, he moved upstairs.

  The studio was already much cleaner. He had someone that came in once a week and took care of cleaning it. However, it didn’t mean there wasn’t evidence. He took his boxes of photos and moved them into the attic. There were unfinished paintings and sculptures that needed to be put somewhere. He didn’t know where though, maybe his brother’s house. Although, his brother might think that was weird.

  However, his brother had been on him to move for decades. If he started packing things up and taking them to his house, he could tell him he was moving. He fell into a chair. Maybe it was time to move. He liked the desert and the climate and he didn’t want to move too far from Death Valley, but he could use a larger house with more room for his work.

  For more than twenty years, Kyle had been resisting attempts to get him to move out of the starter house he had owned with his wife. Now, it had been tainted by the presence of the emotionless Aislinn Cain. It took five minutes for Kyle to decide to move. He poured himself another whiskey. It was a big decision to move. He’d need to list his house and find another place. He needed to call his brother and see if he could use his place for storage of his unfinished art.

  Kyle drained the whiskey. His head was spinning and he felt unsteady, like his knees were going to give out. He sat down before he collapsed into a heap.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?” He asked the empty house. As he listened to the silence, it dawned on him that it was the first time he had ever felt alone in the house. It had never felt empty before. Now, it was just a shell that contained his belongings. It was no longer his home, his work space, his sanctuary.