THE NEXT TO DIE (38 page)

He shucked down his briefs, then ran in after her. The water was like ice, but he didn’t care.

Amber wrapped her wet, cold, slippery arms around him. She was laughing and shivering. He felt her bare breasts pressing against his chest. Her nipples were so hard. He kissed her deeply.

With a squeal, Amber pulled away and splashed him. Then she swam out toward deeper water. Preston swam after her. But she splashed him again. He got water in his eyes and stopped for a moment. Standing on his tiptoes, he kept his head above water as he rubbed his eyes. He could hear her giggling and catching her breath.

When Preston focused on her again, Amber was dunking under the surface and swimming the length of the beach. He realized that if they were going to have sex, she planned to make him work for it. Once again, he started after her. She was a fast swimmer, with a good lead on him. “Come and get me!” she called, then dove below the surface again.

Preston was in over his head and had to tread water. Suddenly, he felt something brush against his leg. It felt slick. He wasn’t sure if it was a fish or a piece of seaweed or what, but it gave him the creeps.

Preston shuddered. He quickly swam toward the shore—until he was standing in shallow water, up to his chest. Then he glanced around to see where Amber had gone. He no longer heard her laughing and splashing. He didn’t see anything breaking the water’s slightly rippling surface.

He felt a sickly pang in his gut. Preston told himself that Amber was screwing around with him. He glanced over to where they’d undressed. In the distance, he could see the piles of clothes near the shoreline. He turned and looked out at the deep water again. Nothing.

Preston tread closer to the shore. The cold air swept over his wet, naked body, and his teeth started chattering. He gazed over at the opposite side of the beach from where they’d shed their clothes. In the darkness—and the distance—he hadn’t noticed anyone there earlier. But now Preston saw someone sitting on one of the park benches.

“Amber?” he yelled. The water was just below his waist.

Suddenly, something squirmed behind him in the water. Before he had a chance to turn around, he felt it grab his ass. Preston let out a howl, then swiveled around.

Amber sprang up from under the water. She was laughing.

Preston felt as if his heart was about to explode in his chest. But he managed to laugh too. He grabbed her and pulled her toward him.

With a finger, Amber traced a line from his chest down his lean torso. She drew a little circle around his belly button, gently tugging at the hair there. Amber grinned at him, but then her eyes shifted away—to something past his shoulder. “Who’s that?” she asked, frowning. “Is she staring at us?”

Preston glanced back at the person on the park bench. He moved a bit closer. He could see now, it was a woman. She hadn’t budged an inch—not even when some birds came and perched on the bench with her. She seemed to be sleeping. Her legs were spread apart in an awkward, sort of boneless way. Her green wraparound dress was bunched up to her thighs, and a huge dark stain ran down the front of it.

“Who the hell is that?” Amber repeated. Covering her breasts, she crept closer to the shore—toward the sleeping woman. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

Shivering, Preston covered himself up as well. He stared at the woman slumped on the bench. Had she been in the water? Her face was shiny, and her short, platinum-blond hair was matted down on one side.

Amber let out a shriek that must have woken up half the residents of the apartment building nearby. The birds flew away. One grazed the woman’s head, but she didn’t move at all.

Several lights went on in the building—including an outside spotlight. It illuminated the ripples on the surface of the lake.

Now Preston could see the gun in the woman’s hand. Now Preston realized the woman’s face and hair weren’t dowsed with water.

It was blood.

Sunlight sliced through the blinds in his studio loft. He’d been up all night, and had lost track of the time. That often happened when he was painting.

He favored classical music while working on his art. Wagner was on the stereo, cranked up to
Twilight of the Gods, Funeral March
. The orchestration was rousing. He felt goose bumps covering his near-naked body.

He wore only a pair of snug black boxer-briefs as he put the finishing touches on his latest masterpiece. His lean, chiseled body was flecked with several different-colored paint smudges. It was almost as if he’d become one with the canvas.

A tracklight from above illuminated the painting. On either side of the easel stood a pair of tall, cathedral-type candleholders he’d bought in Paris. The candles were almost burned down to stubs. It was his own fault they burned so fast. Every once in a while, he’d take one of those tapers out of its ornate holder, then tip it over his chest. The hot wax splattering on his skin gave him a delicious little jolt of pain that kept him going.

He was exhausted, having been up the last thirty-plus hours. He wasn’t sure how long ago they’d left Olivia Rankin on that park bench by Lake Washington. But he could still smell her flowery perfume on his skin—along with the oil paint and his sweat. The combination of scents was arousing; it smelled of sex.

His drive from Seattle to Portland had taken three hours. He’d arrived home at dawn, then immediately shed his clothes and gone to work on his masterpiece. He wasn’t going to bed until he finished.

The painting was of Olivia, sitting on that park bench by the shoreline—just as they’d left her.

In his one and only art show—given in a Portland café nine years ago—a critic commented that his work was “derivative of Hopper with its vivid colors, heavy shadows, and melancholia.” He didn’t sell anything at that exhibition, and he didn’t have another art show. But he didn’t change his style either.

Olivia Rankin’s “death scene” was indeed full of intense colors, shadows, and pain. And it was almost finished.

To his right, he had a cork bulletin board propped on an easel. It was full of location photos he’d taken last week: the beach at Madison Park, the beach house and park bench. Working from these “location shots,” he’d completed the background and the setting—right down to the
DO NOT FEED THE WATER FOWL
sign in the far right of the painting—a couple of days ago. All that remained was filling in Olivia. He’d done preliminary sketches from pictures he’d taken of her while she was out shopping—and again when she ate lunch in the park. She’d been an oblivious subject. Those photographs and his preliminary sketches were also tacked to the bulletin board—along with three snapshots he’d stolen from her photo album a few nights ago.

He stepped back and admired his work. He’d captured Olivia’s blank, numb expression as she sat there with a bullet in her brain. He was proud of himself for that little gleam of moonlight reflecting off the gun in her hand. He used the same method—adding just a few slivers of white—to make the blood look wet.

He’d decided to call the piece
Olivia in the Moonlight
.

Absently, he ran his hand across his chest—over the sweat and the dried flecks of candle wax and paint. His fingers inched down his stomach, then beneath the elastic waistband of his under shorts.

The telephone rang.

Letting out a groan, he put down his paintbrush and started across the room. His erection was nearly poking out of his underpants.

He passed a wall displaying several of his other masterpieces. There was a painting of a woman floating facedown in a pool; a vertigo-inducing picture of a man falling off a building rooftop, a businessman sitting at his desk with his throat slit; a naked woman lying in a tub with her wrist slashed open; and several other “postmortem portraits.” Some of the subjects in these paintings appeared to have died accidentally or committed suicide; but all of them had been murdered. He’d killed them all for money—and for the sake of his art.

He grabbed the phone on the fourth ring. “Yes?”

“Did you get any sleep yet?” his associate asked. “Or have you been painting all morning?”

“I’m just finishing this one,” he answered coolly. “What do you want?”

“We have another job—for the same client.”

“How soon does it have to be done?” he asked. “I need time to prepare, and I won’t be rushed.”

His associate let out an awkward chuckle. “Relax, you’ll have time. The client likes the way you work.”

He said nothing. Of course the client liked his work. He was an artist, and they were commissioning him to create another masterpiece. To him, each one was special. Each murder, each painting.

“Call me later and we’ll set up a meeting,” he said finally. “I can’t talk right now. I’m painting.”

“God, you’re a quirky, kinky son of a bitch.” His associate let out another uncomfortable laugh. “You and your
artistic temperament
.”

The artist just smiled and gently hung up the phone.