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If they didn’t get those answers, more people were going to die.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He had to admit that he was pleased with the way his work was turning out so far.
Each kill was unique, each inspired and crafted to produce something more powerful than he could have imagined before he started all of this. Back then, he’d been nobody. He’d been focused on other things. Art had barely crossed his mind, except as a passing interest that he’d never been very good at.
It turned out, though, that he’d simply been lacking the right muses for his work.
He sat in his studio, painting his latest piece, the fluidity and brutality of the work standing at odds with one another, the palette tending towards darker tones in this one. He always began each work with an idea of the subject, the setting, and the works that he would reference, yet the final pieces still managed to surprise him.
His paintbrush flew across the canvas as he worked, picking out the details of the body at the heart of it all in his usual photo-realistic style. That accuracy, that verisimilitude, was the supporting part that allowed the rest to flourish. Yetwithoutthe rest of it, without the abstractions that he would paint around it, what would he have achieved except a feat of accurate copying?
He considered the layers that he was going to add to this one, considered the layers that he hadalreadyput in place, because he was starting to consider the killing, not just a necessity for inspiration, but an active part of the artwork itself. There were layers of performance art to it, mixed in with the layers of abstract impressionism he used on the canvas. There was something thrilling about working at so many levels at once, something that felt like the finest balance, a bubble skin of tension that might burst if he got even one thing wrong.
His former life had held a different kind of tension, one that barely seemed as important now. Here, he felt alive, felt as though he could achieve anything.
Briefly, he considered a pile of newspaper clippings that he had collected today. Articles about the deaths, speculation about who he might be, note on the presence of the FBI. In that sense, the public outcry became a part of the moment, adding to the whole so that every scrap of feedback found itself incorporated into the art.
He incorporated it in a more literal sense as well, pasting the clippings around his canvas as collage, ready to be painted over. When he was done, there would only be glimpses of the words beneath, but those glimpses would add to the power of his painting.
There was no doubt in his mind that what he was doing amounted to a series of masterpieces. Each had a power and a sense of reality that came from being grounded in the most visceral of acts. Each would touch audiences in ways that would be impossible to ignore.
His hand kept flickering over the canvas, adding swirls of paint now to evoke anger, chaos, and blood.
Of course, he wasn’t stupid. Quite the opposite. He knew that the initial critical reaction would be harsh. People would be shocked. They might even call for his work to be banned or burned if they realized the extent of the connection he had to the deaths of his muses.
That didn’t bother him, though. There were many artists who simply couldn’t achieve greatness immediately. One of two things would happen here: either he would get away with what he was doing, disappear, and eventually be able to show his works, or . . .
The “or” seemed increasingly likely to him. Disappearing would mean stopping, and he wasn’t sure if he could do that now. Not when each successive painting seemed more important, more impressive, than the last. It was as if the art had a hold on him now, refusing to let go until this was done.
Of course, if he wasn’t going to disappear, wasn’t going to stop, then there was only one way that this ended: with him caught or dead. He wasn’t so foolish as to think that he could get away with this forever.
The prospect of that brought a note of fear with it. He had no wish to die. But if that was what the art demanded, then that was what he had to do. Great art had its price, and so far, others had been paying it, but that didn’t change the fact that eventually his time would be up. It only made it more imperative that he finish as many works as possible in the time he had left.
He stepped back from his canvas, looking at it with an appraising eye. He could think of a dozen things he might do to it, but he wasn’t sure if any of them would make it better. Part of the artist’s skill was in knowing when there was nothing left to add.
He found himself wondering if the people he’d killed would have made better art if they’d known that they were going to die. If they would have thrown themselves wholeheartedly into it, rather than existing on the fringes of the worlds they wanted to be a part of. Would it have inspired them as their deaths had inspired him, or would their lack of talent have won out regardless?
It didn’t matter now. What mattered was that he had completed one work and was ready to move on to the next. He already had an idea of what he would do for it. He had a whole list of potential ideas.
Thisidea was more ambitious, though. It was a scene that required two figures within it, two muses. He would have to kill two people for this, and if the idea of moral objections to that didn’t touch him, the potential difficulty of it did.
Still, he had to try. What great art was without risk? He already knew who his next sitters were going to be; it was simply a question of finding the perfect moment to kill them.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I still think this might be gang related.”
Across from him in an office in the Arnville PD, Paige shook her head. “The connection between the victims is too much to ignore.”
Christopher looked doubtful about that. “What, that they all have some connection to the arts? Paige, you just described pretty much everyone in the country. Find me someone who doesn’t draw a little in their spare time, or have a band, or think about doing an open mic standup slot.”
Paige couldn’t help thinking that if she hadn’t been the one to spot the connection of all the victims being artists, Christopher might be taking it a little more seriously right now.
The two of them were standing at opposite ends of a small office the local police had loaned them. Apparently, bringing in a major thief and dealer in stolen goods got them that much, at least. It was getting later than Paige would like, late enough that, on another day, she might have suggested heading back to their hotel and calling it a night. Paige didn’t want to do that, though, until they’d at least madesomeprogress on this case.
The trouble was that progress was hard to come by when she and Christopher couldn’t even agree on which direction to take next.
