Deathscape

by Dana Marton

  But Sullivan would be wary now.

  Which meant the next trap had to be even better thought-out with a better bait, something the detective couldn’t resist.

  * * *

  Ashley added another small dab of white to the Prussian blue. No strange visions, no headaches—a good day. She mixed the paint carefully.

  She had finished four works in the two weeks since she’d promised Isabelle the new series. Her loft was a good place to hide from all the police and FBI agents who’d been coming and going on her property.

  She’d escaped into painting from sheer desperation, then kept up with the schedule even after they left.

  She needed at least three dozen works for a decent show, and four dozen would be better. If she had a show, if it was well received, got good reviews, was written up in the papers—maybe that would convince her father that she was back to normal. Maybe then he would let Madison come back to her.

  She missed her daughter. They hadn’t come last weekend after all. Her father had some emergency board meeting, trouble at the company. She hated not seeing Madison, but in a way, the missed visit came at the right time. She’d still had the police on her land.

  This way, the latest mess she was in had at least remained her secret. It didn’t become another weapon that could be used against her. And now that the police were gone, everything should be fine this weekend when Madison came. Things were back to seminormal again.

  She let the brush glide across the canvas, let her arm relax into a sweeping curve reminiscent of the curve of a shoulder, then another one, smaller, the two twined together the moment before being torn apart. Each color she mixed turned out more profound than the one before as she painted her emotions onto the canvas, poured her heartbreak out with every stroke of the squirrel-hair brush.

  “Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life.” She murmured George Tooker’s words to the shapes taking form.

  For three hours, in the perfect morning light, she had soared. She existed in the elusive zone of creativity where no anxiety existed, just bliss. She felt the pain she painted, felt every ounce of despair, but differently from the darkness that assailed her at other times.

  At times, painting could be terror, but on days like this… pure healing therapy.

  Not long ago, she’d been able to come and go from this place at will. Lately, she was lucky to find her way in, once in a great while, hacking ahead with sweat and desperation as an explorer in the deep jungle, trying to find a lost city.

  The sun trekked across the sky, going around the loft windows, changing the light. She stepped back to inspect what she had so far. A few more days and the painting would be finished. She contemplated whether she could squeeze in another half an hour, even twenty minutes, glancing toward the window again. A movement in the hemlocks caught her eye.

  Her muscles clenched as she felt her special place slip away. The wind, she told herself. But none of the other trees were moving. Maybe it had been a deer. It wouldn’t be the first time deer strayed this close to the house. But her growing anxiety refused to ease. Her muscles tightened further as she cleaned her brushes and put them away, cleaned up the loft, glancing toward the window every couple of seconds.

  She was probably getting cabin fever. She rolled her neck and headed downstairs. She hadn’t left the house in the two weeks since finding Jack Sullivan. She hadn’t liked all those investigators crawling all over her land.

  They hadn’t searched the house and the garage, at least. They probably wouldn’t at this stage. Still, it would be better to get rid of those paintings out there. Not only as a symbolic act, the representation of hope that this part of her life was now over—she’d saved a man—but also because she didn’t want Maddie to accidentally find them once her daughter moved back home.

  Since the ground was frozen, she couldn’t bury the canvases. Ice covered the reservoir, so she couldn’t dump them into the water, even if she could make herself go near the place. Taking them somewhere far away and leaving them in a Dumpster seemed too risky.

  That left burning, the only solution she could think of. But she hadn’t dared burn them while the police and the FBI were still coming by.

  She glanced toward the hemlocks again. All seemed serene in the yard. She had to fight her fears, not give in to the overwhelming anxiety that sometimes kept her housebound for weeks. She wanted her daughter back, which meant she needed to reclaim her life, starting now.

  She could do it if she did it little by little, just as it had been taken from her. She could start with reclaiming her small backyard. She would go out there and do what she needed to do. She refused to worry every time a breeze moved a bush.

  The temperature hovered on the freezing point, but no wind blew. She grabbed paint thinner for accelerant and padded down the stairs, swiping a box of matches from the kitchen counter where she’d been burning a scented candle earlier.

  Boots, scarf, coat, hat, gloves.

  Cold air hit her in the face as she stepped outside, making her draw a quick breath. Snow covered the landscape, an endless stretch of white. Up ahead, the town plow was hustling down the road. Eddie waved and turned into her driveway. The big plow pretty much cleared everything on the way in, stopping a foot or so from her car. That patch she’d have to do herself.

  After she got a new shovel. The handle of the old one broke recently, which meant a trip to the hardware store. She didn’t want to think about that right now. Hey, maybe they wouldn’t get any more snow this winter.

  “Thank you, Eddie, I really appreciate it,” she called up to him. “Good to see the big plow fixed.”

  “Gave me plenty of trouble. Need a crane to take this damn thing apart. But, hey, at least there weren’t any screws left over when I put it back together.”

  He drove the big plow in the winter and did whatever else needed to be done around the town hall the rest of the year. The fifty-something town handyman was the perfect guy for the job, a loner like her. When the town called, he went. He could fix a roof or fill a pothole and did it all with a smile.

  “Everything okay?” Eddie called down from his high perch. “I see the police are gone.”

  “Thank God.”

  “They found anything?”

  “I don’t think so. Not that they share with me.” But they looked just as gloomy leaving as they had coming.

  “Mind if I come by in a couple of days to grab some wood?”

  He had a woodstove in his workshop, and Ashley let him walk through her property and drag out whatever fallen timber he could find, chop it up and haul it away—the least she could do for him for keeping her driveway clean all winter.

  “Anytime you want.”

  He gave a wave of thanks and backed the plow out of the driveway, getting back to work.

  She waited until he was gone before she went around the house. The air was absolutely frigid, but at least no wind was blowing. She glanced toward the hemlocks as she opened the garage door. No movement back there now. Could have been a bird earlier.

  To her right, floor-to-ceiling shelving held some old art supplies and sketches. Her gaze caught on a charcoal sketch of the spring landscape she’d made when she’d first moved here. And it hit her how much like the drawing her life had become, a shadow image of what she’d once been, all her colors reduced to shades of gray.

  She was going to change that. For herself and for Maddie.

  She strode to the back wall and carried the paintings out by the armload, all wrapped in the paper bags from the local grocery store. Thank God for stores that stayed open around the clock. She braved a trip once every couple of weeks in the middle of the night, when she could be sure she would be virtually alone. During the times when she couldn’t go as far as the store down the road, she lived on pizza and Chinese delivery.

  That too would change, she thought as she tossed the first batch of canvases onto the ground in front of the garage, where the hard wind the previous day had blown a patch
clear of snow.

  When the phone rang in her pocket, she was tempted to ignore it. But what if it was the police? If they had another question, she’d just as soon answer it over the phone than have them come back here.

  But instead of Captain Bing, the caller turned out to be Graham Lanius, the art dealer.

  “Just checking in if you might have something for me. I’m going to do a big summer show this year. As one of my favorite local artists, I’d love it if you would participate.”

  He called every couple of months, trying to talk her into a show. But her agent, Isabelle, wasn’t crazy about the man. Neither was Ashley, truthfully. He was smarmy, for one. And the few times she’d met him in person, she’d gotten the impression that while he made a living off artists, he looked down on them.

  “I truly appreciate the offer. I’m working on a series, actually. But all my scheduling goes through my agent.”

  “Ah, yes, the lovely Isabelle.” The words were still complimentary, but the tone had chilled a few degrees. “I’ll be sure to get in touch with her as well. Would you mind if I just stopped by and looked at your new series in the meanwhile? We’re practically neighbors.”

  The work wasn’t ready. She didn’t like strangers in her house. Living in the same town didn’t make them neighbors. Yet she understood that since Broslin had three times as many galleries as the average small town, competition was rough. Although, her kind of art wasn’t exactly what appealed to tourists who came to see Franklin Milton’s birthplace and studio, his museum.

  Milton had painted barns and fields and covered bridges, the cows, the horse farms, quintessential Pennsylvania countryside. His grandson, Andre, continued in that vein. But Graham didn’t have Andre, and at least Ashley Price was a fairly well-known name in the contemporary art world.

  She had broken in, after years of hard work. But what she had achieved could be lost in a heartbeat. Her gaze stayed on the small pile of canvases in front of her. She needed to deal with that now.

  “I’m sorry. I’m in the middle of something. I really need to go.”

  “Sure. No problem at all. We’ll be in touch,” he promised.

  She hung up and carried the rest of her dark creations outside.

  She’d never destroyed a painting before. But now, once her pile was complete, she lifted the paint thinner and poured. The liquid splashed onto the top package, immediately bleeding through the wrapping. She set down the bottle and pulled the matches from her pocket as she shivered, feeling as if she was about to commit murder.

  But they weren’t right, those images she’d created. Jackson Pollock had said that paintings had a life of their own; his job was to let it come through.

  Her paintings had a death of their own. And her job was to destroy the dark images.

  She was so focused on her thoughts that the question, “Need help?” coming from behind her, nearly made her jump out of her boots. Her heart broke into a mad rhythm as she whipped around.

  The man had appeared out of nowhere, his hands in the pockets of his black coat, his wiry frame standing in contrast to the white background. His cerulean gaze sharp, he focused his full attention on her, and she couldn’t breathe for a second. She had pretty good color memory. She would have recognized that russet hair and those eyes anywhere.

  But he did introduce himself.

  “Jack Sullivan. I stopped by to thank you for what you did for me.”

  He had been covered in mud and blood the last time she’d seen him. Now she had no trouble making out his features, the square jaw and the planes of his face. He looked gaunt, had probably lost weight from his ordeal and while recovering. Yet his aura was definitely not weak.

  His unwavering focus and his intense gaze were complemented with a good dose of masculine energy. His sculpted lips made his face interesting. He would have made a great study for a painting. The edgy darkness in him made looking away from him difficult, something that would have come through in a painting if the artist did it right.

  Another woman might have found him handsome. She found him, his presence at her house, terrifying. She would have preferred never having to see him again.

  “Why don’t we go into the house?” She moved forward out of sheer desperation, against instinct. She didn’t want him in her house or anywhere near it, but she needed to draw him away from her paintings.

  “I don’t want to keep you from your work.” His gaze slid to the pile. He stepped closer. “How about I give you a hand with this?”

  * * *

  She might have been shooting him a cool look, but she was hot. He’d missed that before.

  Of course, the first time they’d met, he’d barely been conscious. And while he’d watched her nearly every day since he’d made his escape from the hospital, he’d watched her from afar.

  She had large green eyes a man could fall into, with shadows at their depth that pulled at him. Her perfectly symmetrical face, beauty without artifice, was the face of a distressed angel. All that purity somehow accentuated her swollen lips that looked as if they’d been made to sin. Her body was mostly covered up by her coat, except for her legs that were long enough for a pole dancer.

  As he looked her over, he felt a responding tug at his groin, which he ignored. He hadn’t come here for cheap thrills. He’d come to make her lead him to Blackwell.

  And she probably knew it. She was as nervous as a king crab at an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, although she tried to hide it. But she couldn’t stop her feet from shuffling over the frozen ground, her hands grasped tightly together in front of her.

  “I have a few questions about that night. I’m a police officer.” Jack watched for her reaction.

  His occupation set some at ease, carried a certain amount of respectability and trustworthiness, he supposed; others got decidedly nervous. Ashley Price didn’t relax. Nor did his revelation surprise her. She’d known, and he wondered how. Bing had kept all details from the media. Of course, there was no way to stop gossip from spreading in a small town like Broslin.

  “I was hoping I could ask you some questions.” He laid his first card on the table, the only one he was willing to show her.

  “I already told the police and the FBI everything I know.”

  Or everything she would admit to, he thought. He’d had his own tête-à-tête with the FBI, and given an official victim statement. He’d held back plenty. As nervous as she was acting, he had no doubt Ashley Price had done the same.

  “It will only take a few minutes,” he said in a tone that made it clear he wasn’t leaving.

  “All right, um… We should go inside.” She moved forward but stopped after only one step.

  He was standing between her and the house. She seemed reluctant to come too close to him.

  “I’m sorry if I was difficult when you rescued me. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  Her gaze flew up to his. “You kidnapped me.”

  So he’d given her a fright. He couldn’t rightly say he regretted it.

  “Sorry. Again,” he apologized for form’s sake.

  She nodded, pushing thick auburn waves out of her face with the back of a gloved hand. The face of an angel, he thought again. Except, he didn’t believe in angels, and he sure wasn’t predisposed to believe anything Ashley Price was about to tell him.

  He’d spent enough years on the force to know a person with secrets when he met one, and she was definitely hiding something. She wanted him gone and wanted it badly.

  He glanced at the makings of her strange bonfire, the reason he had revealed himself. He wouldn’t be a good cop if he stood by while a suspect destroyed evidence.

  “What are you burning?”

  “Some paintings of mine.”

  He tried for a light tone. “That bad?”

  “Worse.” She faked a ghost of a smile as she tapped her boot-clad feet. “It’s colder out here than I thought.” She made a move toward the house again.

  But the more she tried to drag him aw
ay, the more his instincts prickled. He did want to see the inside of her house, but he was, for the moment, more interested in what she wanted to burn.

  “It’ll get better once you start the fire. Let me straighten this up for you.” He stepped to the pile and shored it up, despite the protesting sound she made and the terrified look on her face.

  He could actually bend over now; his ribs had healed some while he’d been going over his files this past week or so, calling around, trying to find out what the FBI had, sitting on fallen logs in the brush, watching her woods, watching her house.

  She lived alone. He’d kept track of every man coming and going: Pete the mailman and Eddie the town handyman. He’d made a point to bump into both in town, but he didn’t recognize their voices as Blackwell’s. Still, he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure. He hadn’t been in his right mind. So he couldn’t completely rule out either man.

  He would have watched her house longer, put off a personal confrontation for another day or two in the hopes of catching someone else visiting her, if she hadn’t come out and begun building her strange pile.

  “Here you go.” He worked the package he was holding so his finger would get caught in the folds of the brown wrapping paper and he could rip it, making it look like an accident. “Sorry.”

  He held the partially exposed canvas. Green trees. Brown grass. Legs. Red.

  She dove for the painting, and he managed to rip more wrapping off as she pulled it away from him. He caught a glimpse of a prone figure before she snatched the painting away to cover it against her body.

  Everything inside him went cold, and it had nothing to do with the temperature outside. He picked up another painting by his feet.

  There was a time he would have followed the rules and wouldn’t have gone further without a warrant. Not today. By the time he could get back with one—if he could get one, considering he wasn’t on active duty—the paintings would be a pile of ashes. He needed to know.

  “Don’t,” she pleaded.

  He tore into the wrapper.

  A woman in a creek, pasty face, blankly staring eyes, the body bent at odd angles. Dark, insidious colors swirled in the water—except for the ribbon of red that looked violently vibrant. The scene pulled him in, pulled him under until he could feel the cold water on his own face. A shiver drilled down his spine.