Painted Walls

by Megan Mitcham

  “Apples and trees?” Keen hitched a shoulder, and then knocked on the blood-red front door. His other hand hovered near his gun.

  “Sometimes the apple falls far from the tree,” she whispered. Her gaze swung back to the door. “But most of the time it doesn’t.”

  They waited. No one came to the door.

  He tried again, knocking hard enough that the front of the house shook.

  A woman pale enough to make Ava look like she had a tan opened the door. Eyes of Irish green met them with curiosity. Her hair was pinned into a messy bun at the crown of her head with a splintered and stained paintbrush.

  “Good day to you.” The fragile beauty clenched a paintbrush and an accent between her teeth. The palate pinched with her left thumb was scattered with different tones of the same color.

  She wore a bright blue smock with bare feet. Her clothing and hands were both splattered with variations of red paint, some fresh, some cracked and stale. She stepped back, not waiting for introductions, and waved them into her house with a gleeful smile. Ava moved toward the door, but Keen took the lead, stepping inside first.

  Keen’s heart thumped inside his chest. Dread cinched tight in his chest. He scanned for hidden weapons and hidden assailants of the Coghlan variety.

  She guided them through the foyer to the living room and patted the cushions of a prim patterned blue and white couch, circa nineteen sixty.

  “We’re fine,” Ava said.

  “Please.” She slipped the brush from her teeth and patted the couch again. “I insist. I can’t carry on a conversation until you take a seat. You want to talk, don’t you?”

  They sat. Ava poised on the cushion edge. Keen lounged in a gesture meant to calm.

  The woman set her paints and brush on a wicker coffee table. A series of groans whined from the mismatched chair she sat in across from them. Her cheeks balled. Her eyelashes batted, cheerfully expectant. “So?”

  Ava gave a small smile and began. “Ms. Coghlan?”

  The woman nodded, a big grin spreading her lips. “Aye. Bree Mary Coghlan. And you?”

  “I’m Supervisory Special Agent Ava Shepherd. This is Special Agent Kenneth Hunt. We’d like to ask you some question about Rory Coghlan and James Red Hardy.”

  The woman’s head and one hand lifted to the sky. She hid the smile with the other. A throaty hoot soared. “Oh, he’s done it.”

  Bree Mary Coghlan slapped her knees. The sharp crack matched her shrill series of laughs.

  Hairs on the backs of Keen’s arms stiffened. Those laughs. Fuck, had he ever heard anything more sinister? Just one thing. The little boy’s father, after the kid had wiped out his team mate and forced Keen to shoot him. His stomach pitched.

  Her laugh dulled to a chuckle. “He said he would, but you know how kids talk. But my boy’s really done it.”

  Ava’s rigid posture and stalled breath, the hint of perspiration on the back of her neck and several failed attempts to swallow told Keen Bree’d caught her with an uppercut too. To have her suspicious and worst fears confirmed, was bad enough. But to have them chuckled at…it severed nerves, churned guts.

  Ava cleared her throat. He watched her turn the hurt into determination. He watched the heat turn to ice before his eyes.

  “You’re referring to Rory Coghlan as your son?”

  “Yes, dear. He is half my heart.”

  “To be clear, who is Rory’s father?”

  “The other half of my heart, of course, James Bloody Red Hardy.”

  Ava paused. The Bloody added to her father’s name had zinged her. It had surprised him, along with the half my heart bull shit. Clearly, this lady was as crazy as the man she’d screwed and the son she’d bore.

  “Ms. Coghlan, tell me about your relationship with James Hardy.”

  The woman clutched a slender hand to her heart. “Oh, hurt me he did, when he got himself caught. I told him to slow down. That sooner or later he’d lead the police to his doorstep. But he couldn’t, you know? He couldn’t stop killing any more than he could stop breathing. Killing was necessary for him as much as air and art are necessary for life.”

  Ava scooted so close to the edge of her seat Keen thought she might topple to the ground. “You knew James Hardy was the Blood Red Killer before he was apprehended by the police?”

  The woman nodded and grinned. “Aye, dear. There were no secrets between us. Besides, he could hardly hide the fact that he was a killer from me. I was to be his sixth victim.”

  She sighed like a girl remembering her first kiss. “I was living in New Orleans at the time, working late one night in my studio off the Quarter. I was locking up when this dashing fellow asked to use my telephone. I obliged with a flutter in my tummy.”

  Her hand touched the back of her bouffant do. “I remember waking on the floor of my studio with pain in my skull and a knot to boot. I looked around confused and found him standing in front of my gallery wall. He was transfixed on one of my paintings. I went to him and he took me there on the floor in front of it, body and soul. It was the greatest experience of my life. The beginning of my life.”

  Psycho.

  In a raw voice Ava asked, “What did the painting look like?”

  “Come, I’ll show you.” Bree stood.

  They followed her through a doorway and down a narrow corridor into a large white sunroom. Potted plants sat and hung through space cluttered with easels and tables stacked with paintings. The plants should have given the room a warm homey feel along with the countless rays of sunlight that filtered in through the walls of glass, but no amount of warmth—not a fiery kiln nor molten lava—could counter the effects of the paintings.

  They were bowel twisting, stomach-churning horrors.

  Every painting was a canvas of red, each with its uniquely grotesque act of violence. Murder. Torture. Rape. Crimson bled off the canvas. The white background contrasted the acts.

  Keen instinctively placed his hand over his gun, in reaction to the viciousness before him. He’d worked crime scene homicides, suicides, family slayings. Somehow this shook him more. Perhaps it was the way she had portrayed the act. In progress. The victim’s agony etched in each brush stroke. Wide eyes and gritted teeth. Gaping mouths and tear filled eyes. Fisted hands and screams for mercy. It all showed through.

  His voice sounded stronger than he felt. “Where is the one that captured Hardy?”

  She smiled and pointed to the opposite end of the room. In the center of the wall the massive canvas hung. A woman’s naked body was bound to a bed, blood dripping out of slit wrists into a bowl. The torturer, a shadow of red, painted the white wall above the headboard red with the victim’s blood.

  Keen’s voice seeped out between his lips. “Jesus Christ.”

  Bree looked on at the painting with near religious reverence. “Inspiring, isn’t it?”

  “Tell us about Rory,” he demanded.

  “He was one year old when James went to jail. He never had the chance to know his father. And James wouldn’t hear of us coming to jail to visit him. I would have, but he didn’t want Sarah or you, Ava, to know about us.”

  Every nerve in Keen’s body tingled and he went on high alert, eyes scanning everything around them.

  Ava only whispered, “What?”

  “He was afraid that you and your mother would hurt us, that you certainly wouldn’t understand us and what we meant to your father. So, we stayed away. Until a few years ago. Rory decided one day he would go visit his father. He said it was the best thing he’d ever done. They have developed a wonderful relationship. The kind you had with your father.”

  Ava’s red lips moved. “Resentment. He resents me and my mother for having the father he never did and not treasuring him the way you do, for not accepting him and all his habits.”

  “Aye, he was an angry child. There were so many things he couldn’t understand. But since he’s gotten to know his father the anger is gone. He’s been light and free. He’s even been painting with me.”<
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  Ava swept her hand through the air, gesturing at the paintings. “Show me what he’s painted.”

  They moved toward the easel she pointed to. A red cross loomed top center with a canvas-white man hanging from it, not centered like Jesus. The man was upside down, bleeding red from a large gash in his neck. His blood poured over a woman with blood-red hair, and red seeped from the cross carved with slashing brush strokes across her chest. To the right a man flew back through the air, a gun blast exploding red behind him. To the left another woman with lighter red hair matched the man on the right.

  Ava’s hand shot out to the painting to the name scrawled across the bottom right corner. Her finger came away with a little tack from the paint.

  “When did he paint this?”

  “Oh, he started it last week, but he finished it yesterday. He told me you might be stopping by and that I should answer all your questions.”

  “When do you expect him back?” Keen asked, Glock in hand.

  “Soon,” Bree purred.

  21

  A va stared at the pizza they’d picked up on the way to her apartment after their long debriefing with Winslow and Lara.

  “The digestive process begins with chewing.” Keen shoved the last bit of his third piece into his mouth and wiped his hand with the napkin. He leaned over the table, plucked Ava’s piece from her plate, and hefted it to her mouth.

  “I can’t believe he didn’t show.”

  “He’s not going to make it that easy.”

  “Think about it. He’s made everything else pretty easy. Maybe he’ll show up tonight.”

  “And maybe you’ll eat tonight.” He inched the hot cheese closer to her lips.

  “I’m not hungry. I don’t know how you can eat after that.”

  “That was hours ago. I hear men are better at compartmentalizing. There’s a book about it, I think.” He didn’t drop the slice.

  Her gaze centered on the gooey cheese before narrowing on Keen. She yanked the pizza from his hand and snapped off a bite.

  They were all on high alert after meeting with crazy-ass Bree Coghlan. Viewing the macabre painting of her demented offspring had been a square shot to the heart. The painting threatened Ava, her mother, Keen, and even her father—Rory’s father.

  Their father was the upturned body on the cross. Coghlan planned to kill them all to heal the wounds of an orphaned boy who envied a family relationship. The family to deny him that would pay, along with all who got in the way. Namely, Keen with a bullet to the chest as the painting depicted.

  She set the piece of pizza on the box.

  Keen’s phone chirped. Ava felt the bite of cheese and sauce slide down her esophagus.

  “Chill. It’s your dad. He got a throw-away and is entertaining your mom.” His brows waggled.

  “That doesn’t help the digestive process.”

  “If you’re not going to eat, go grab a shower. There’s nothing we can do but wait until someone spots him or the weaselly bastard shows his face.”

  She rose from the sofa and reached for the pizza box.

  “I’ll get it.” Keen pushed her hand away.

  The inconsequential contact thawed the chill that had cloaked her all afternoon. He withdrew his hand as though she’d burned him. They hadn’t talked about their shared orgasm. Judging by the way he collected the napkins and box and high-tailed it into the kitchen, they never would.

  She slammed the closet door, stripped, and tossed her clothes into the basket. The water helped melt the rest of the ice that clung to her spine—well, the water and deviant thoughts of Keen stroking himself.

  Ava turned off the shower. Butterflies replaced the coldness. They coursed ferocious paths down every nerve ending in her body. Her legs shook with excitement. She opened the shower door and stepped onto the plush rug in front of the vanity. Her hands trembled with it as she pulled the towel from its hook and blotted away the gleaming crystal droplets on her skin.

  After hand drying her hair for a moment she flipped it to her back. She studied the woman in the mirror. She knew every inch intimately, more so than most women knew their bodies. Such things happened when a woman with a naturally healthy sexual appetite hides herself from the world—from men especially.

  She refused to hide any longer. She had known pleasure a thousand times over and in a thousand different ways from her own touch. Now she was determined to know pleasure from Keen’s. She craved his touch. She craved his love. She’d craved him nearly her entire life and had denied herself, but no more.

  When she stepped out of the bathroom Keen’s back was to the door. He held the phone to his ear and faced the window. The street lights front-lit his hair, making it lighter around the temples. No one in their right mind would mistake it for a halo, though that’s what it looked like. Did devils have halos?

  The veins in the hand clamped to his narrow hip bulged. His suit jacket lay discarded on the couch. The cuffs of his sleeves were rolled up around his thick forearms. His blue tie hung loose around his collar, as it had been at dinner. Though his stance was casual he stood tall, his feet braced apart. He ended the call and turned into the room with it loose in his hand. He stopped dead when his gaze caught her.

  Fiery red hair, still damp, clung to her shoulders and the tops of her bare breasts. Her light-pink nipples beaded to small points. Her flat stomach quivered. The swollen lips of her sex throbbed. Ava stood boldly, excited, wanting.

  His expression changed in steps. She easily read them all. Stunned fit perfectly to the first. The second was pure animalistic lust. His grip on the phone tightened and his chest began expanding and contracting at an accelerated rate. If that weren’t clue enough the bulge in his pants and the look in his eyes were. Slowly the lust turned dark and anger settled. His jaw clenched tight and both his hands turned to fists. His gaze went cold.

  “What are you doing?”

  Ava stood her ground and maintained her composure, though she’d never felt more vulnerable in her entire life. “I’m through hiding.”

  “Good for you. Now put some damn clothes on.”

  “No. I’ve been running for so long and now it’s done. I’m ready now. I’m not scared anymore.”

  “So what, I’m the lucky recipient because I happened to be here? Am I part of a therapeutic process?” Anger poured off him.

  “I’m sure a therapist wouldn’t recommend doing what I’m doing,” she breathed. “Keen, I want you to touch me. I need you to touch me. No one else.”

  “If I touched you right now, I’d hurt you.”

  “Then hurt me if you have to. Just touch me.”

  “No!”

  He pocketed the phone and keys off the coffee table and headed for the door. He didn’t even look at her as he crossed the room and skirted past.

  She grabbed his arm.

  His normally steady voice shook when he said, “Let go of me, Ava.” Her hand tightened its grip. His arm straightened with a jerk, breaking her hold. He clamped her shoulders with his large hands. The breadth of his chest backed her against the entrance wall. His face came down inches from hers.

  “Please,” she begged. Each heaving breath pressed her breasts against his shirt. Only two luscious scrapes of her nipples on the starched fabric and he removed his body.

  He stayed her hand. It spread across her sternum, warming her insides to goo. A moan whispered across her lips.

  “Ava,” he warned.

  “Keen.”

  “Don’t,” he growled. “Don’t ask me to give you something I can’t.”

  “You don’t have to give me anything. No strings.” She laced her fingers with his on her chest and pressed. Centimeter by centimeter his hand moved under hers. Her head lolled. Her body arched. She pressed her left breast into his hand. “Yes. No expectations. I just want you to take away the—”

  He jerked his hand away.

  “That’s what you always wanted. Me, but not all of me.”

  He turned away and laced his
fingers behind his neck.

  “In the beginning you wanted my friendship. Someone who wasn’t bound to you by blood or marriage, who didn’t judge you by your father’s actions. Now you want my cock. Someone to erase the pain of the past few days and right your world.”

  His paced steps brought him to the door of the apartment. He strangled the knob.

  “That’s not true. I…” He stalled at her words. She knew what he wanted to hear. She knew how she felt about him. But the words stuck to her tongue.

  “I need some air.” His words echoed in her ears long after the door closed behind him.

  22

  K een needed time and space to calm his rage. He retrieved the phone from his pocket and ordered Winslow to put a car outside Ava’s building while he was gone. Fifteen minutes later, the agents showed. He briefed them on the situation, then left.

  He walked aimlessly, fists bunched at his sides. Everyone he came across gave him a wide berth. He had no idea where he was going, but he knew away was the only safe place.

  Horns blared. Pedestrians shuffled. Cars whizzed. Women of the night waggled brows. He pounded the pavement.

  When his fists finally relaxed he shoved into an old Irish pub and took a seat at the bar.

  Deep in brooding thought he didn’t order, only sat, fists on the bar, lost. After ten minutes the bartender, a seventy-something real McCoy, set a pint down in front of his face. “Beamish Stout,” the man said in a thick brogue. “A dark ale for your dark fret.” Keen gave a grunt and a sorry excuse for a smile.

  He pulled several long drinks off the draft. He didn’t survey his surroundings. He didn’t move, only sat and wandered through jumbled thoughts.

  Ava had hurt him so completely his heart had more scar tissue than his body. To a young man in love, down on one knee with a ring in his hand was the most vulnerable position there was. His hands had shaken and his voice had quivered.

  When she’d turned tail and run away she’d yanked half his heart out of his chest and taken it with her. As he replayed the scene in his mind over and over throughout the years he could see his heart, a string tied tight around it binding it to hers, leaving a trail of blood as she ran.