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To lure the couple closer to where he wanted them, he used his phone to start a speaker down near the spot where he’d erected the scaffolding. The music that came out . . . well, he’d recorded that earlier. One of their pieces. The quickest way to attract the attention of a wannabe artist was with their own art.
Itdidcatch the couple’s attention, leading them towards the small courtyard space where he’d set up his scaffolding ready for the work. They stepped into it together, looking for the source of the sound.
“It looks like some kind of speaker,” the banjo player said. He was in front, the big, strong man taking the lead.
“I can see that,” the singer replied, “but why is it playing our song and what’s all that scaffolding about?”
“How would I know?” The banjo player moved to crouch by the speaker as if it would give answers.
That was when he struck—when they were separated and weak. He moved up quickly behind the singer, an arm around her throat before she even had a chance to cry out. He put all his strength into the choke hold, feeling her struggles waning quickly.
Some sound must have alerted the banjo player because he turned.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Get your hands off her!”
Fear filled him for a moment. If the banjo player started calling for help, or if he had a weapon, this might all go badly wrong. He had a knife of his own, obviously, but that was for the art. He didn’t want to ruin the scene by killing one of his subjects when they weren’t even in position.
There was no time for hesitation now. He felt the moment when the singer lapsed into unconsciousness, her weight slumping against him. He let her fall before charging towards the banjo player now. There was no time for subtlety, no time to let him call for help. He swung an elbow around, clubbing the other man’s jaw. He grabbed the banjo player, pulled his head down into a rising knee, then slammed another elbow down onto the back of his skull.
That sent the banjo player down, already unconscious before he hit the ground. It gave him time to stand there for a second, catching his breath, reveling in the exhilaration of how close that had come to going wrong.
There was still no time to waste, though. He went over to the scaffolding to collect the ropes and hoods he’d left there. It was time to make art.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
The boardwalk was emptying as Paige walked it, trying to make sense of what Lucien had said about the paint. The words of a madman weren’t much to go by, but Paige was sure that there wassomethingimportant there.
Around her, people were heading home. Couples were walking arm in arm in a way that she and Christopher never would. Groups of diners were heading back to their cars. The last of the performers who entertained the passing crowds were packing up. Paige saw a painter putting away a couple of finished canvasses, looking faintly disappointed that she hadn’t managed to sell them.
Paige looked at images of the crime scenes as she walked, scouring each one to attempt to find answers. She didn’t look at the bodies this time, though, but instead stared at the swirling, seemingly abstract designs of the paint.
Those were surprisingly similar in each case. Almost identical, in fact, with only a few minor differences to tell between them, owing as much to the abstractions introduced by the artist as to any real divergence. That had to be significant, didn’t it?
Paige found herself looking around for any signs of trouble. If Lucien wasn’t the killer, then someone else could still be out here, looking for victims even now. Paige saw a young man on a skateboard moving along the boardwalk at speed, saw a couple of young women taking selfies every few paces, saw a couple in a corner kissing in a way that made her ache with the memory of being kissed by Christopher.
“Hey, pervert! We’re not putting on a show, here!” the woman snapped at her.
Paige kept walking, trying to focus on the paint rather than on her memories of things between her and her soon to be ex-partner.
Was that what this was? Was she going over the evidence on a hunch as a way of spinning this out a little longer, putting off the moment when she was going to put in her request for a transfer?
“Maybe Lucienisthe killer,” Paige murmured to herself as she kept walking. Maybe the whole thing with the paint was there as a way for him to distract her. Maybe she was looking for something that wasn’t really there, trying to find a way to draw this out and make this more complex. Maybe she was trying to make sense of things thatdidn’tmake sense, except in Lucien’s mind.
Yet Paige found that she couldn’t let go of the idea that there might be more to this. That what Lucien had said might actually have some significance.
She kept walking. She’d gone a couple of blocks now, getting further from the car with every step. Paige hadn’t intended to go so far, but walking helped her think, and she needed to be away from Christopher at the moment in order to do it.
He clearly thought that it was Lucien. Paige wouldn’t be entirely surprised if he’d decided to leave her there and head back in the direction of the police department to declare that the FBI had caught the killer.
Paige had to admit that there were a lot of factors pointing towards Lucien as a suspect. He had a history of violence. He was clearly unwell. He was an artist. He worked close to the boardwalk. The circumstantial evidence pointed towards him well enough.
But there was something about him that made Paige wonder if he truly was the killer. Her read on him was as a fantasist. Maybe a dangerous one, maybe one who was capable of lashing out, but one who could do this? The more Paige had heard Lucien talk, the more she found herself convinced that he couldn’t have planned a string of murders like this.
Maybe he had. Maybe Paige was just misreading the whole situation as badly as she’d misread things with Christopher. Paige would feel more comfortable about it all if she could simply work out what was going on with the patterns of paint that the killer had left behind. Maybe they would even provide some concrete evidence that would link Lucien, or someone else, to the crime.
They were all so similar that Paige found herself more and more convinced that there had to be a point to them all. They weren’t random; they couldn’t be, or they wouldn’t all be so similar. At the very least, they meant something important to the killer. If Paige could work out what, then maybe she would be able to tie them to a particular person.
Paige found herself looking over Lucien’s works. It struck her that nothing like those lines of paint occurred in his works. More than that, his pieces had always been originals, working without reference to pre-existing paintings. The more Paige thought about that, the less convinced she was that he was the one who had done this. Yes, it was possible that he had shifted to a new kind of art, but to change everything about the way he made marks? Was that even possible?
