Painting With Fire

Painting With Fire

By
K.B. Jensen

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wonderful husband, my ocean. Thank you for putting up with all my daydreaming and helping turn this book into a reality.

Prologue:

Steve J
ackson was trying to get his Honda Civic through the snow, but the tires spun loudly and the vehicle wouldn’t swim through. “Come on baby, please, please, we need to get out of here now,” he coaxed and swore.

But the Civi
c couldn’t climb out. It slid back into its final resting place, crooked against the curb. He turned off the ignition and slumped forward with his gloved hands on the wheel and his forehead against the top of it. He felt drained, empty. He had said what he needed to say and it wasn’t wise to linger. They let him walk out the door but they could still change their minds.

“Thank
you, God, it’s over,” he said. “Now, please help me get the hell out of here.”

He was surprised
they hadn’t stopped him after he gave his “notice.” Drug dealers aren’t normally so courteous. They don’t give you a card and a goodbye lunch before you walk out the door. But the worst of it was over now and he just had to drive home in the storm.

Blinking the snow out of his eyes, h
e glanced up at the old, three-story brick building through the blur of snowflakes and saw a dark face in the oversized window. It moved back behind the curtain.

He got out of the car and started digging out holes behind the tires, kic
king the snow with his boots. He shivered. He was only wearing a puffy black vest over a flannel shirt. He had been too preoccupied to listen to the forecast that morning, too nervous about getting killed to worry about what clothes he’d be wearing when the shots would ring out. Snow had been the last thing on his mind when he showed up to tell them he couldn’t work for them anymore. His conscience wouldn’t allow it, that feeling in the pit of his stomach every time he made a delivery. A 13-year-old girl had thanked him, for what? For helping her kill herself slowly. He knew he had to answer to God one day and the day was coming soon, sooner than he’d like.

H
e bent down and dug out the snow with his gloved hands. The blur of white snowflakes stung his eyes so he could barely see. He didn’t hear the footsteps in the snow behind him through the whistle of the wind. He didn’t hear the metal slide through the air as it sliced down and cracked open the top of his head. He spun sideways from the blow and fell.

For a matter
of seconds, he lay there flat on his back in the snow bank watching the flakes twirl and land on his face. His vision whirled. He had bitten his tongue, but he could still taste the snow melt and mix with blood as it dropped into his open, gurgling mouth. He thought of his mother, what she would say when she found out? Did she know that he had changed? She’d never know.

“Jesus,” he gurgled. It was a prayer this time.

Then the heavy metal blade came down again, and the white out turned to a permanent black out.

Chapter 1: The View

The radiator pipes were like the coils of an albino viper. They hissed, bitingly hot. White, cracked paint peeled off the iron like an old set of skin. The boiling air bent as it wafted out of the open window. Claudia and Tom sat in sweat, wondering when it would turn off, praying in 95 degrees for an end.

“We pay too much for this apartment,” Tom said. “The vintage vibe is overrated, and the neighbors suck. I’ve got a bad feeling this neighborhood is only going to get worse, too.”

Claud
ia pulled her thick, dark brown hair back away from the base of her moist neck and then let it fall back down.

“If I
move, I’m part of the problem,” she said. “I’m not moving. You’re sweet to stay, but you don’t have to, if you don’t want to. I’m a big girl. I’ll figure it out.”

“
Sure, so you’re gonna magically pay the rent without a job? Would you really be OK without me?” he asked.

He shrugged like he didn’t care, but Claudia could see the slump in his shoulders.

“That’s not what I meant. I wouldn’t be better off, but you might be,” Claudia said. “I just want you to know you don’t owe me anything. You know, it’s nice having you here. I like living with an artist.”

“I work retail, Claude,” he rolled his eyes.

“You’re going to make it one day,” she said. “I’m not the only one who loves your work, am I? Are you saying I have bad taste in men and art?”

He laughed.
A strange irony was that when he first moved in, he was the unemployed one without any money. Claudia had been looking for a roommate in any case, but he was the one without a job at the time. The only thing he had to offer was his artwork. It hung all over the apartment walls, images of old buildings, lost architectural relics, and women in white walking on the beach in shimmering silver moonlight. He had a strange monochromatic style where he would pick one color and just run with it, shades of purple and black, shades of red and black, silver, gold, shades of orange.

Lately, she had noticed more than a few canvases draped in white sheets in his room. It made her uneasy, like he was hiding something
. There was also something unsettling about waking up on the couch only to find him hastily putting his pencil and sketchbook away, like she had caught him doing something dirty. Why was he so secretive about his art, she wondered. Were all artists like this?

Claudia thought of saying more. She reached over and touched the damp, bare skin of his arm lightly then pulled her hand back. After
four months of sharing the same apartment, she still didn’t know him that well.

There was always something he kept hidden away.
When he first moved in, she had asked him about his past and he had responded with clipped answers to her questions about where he was from, his childhood, even his art.

“Where did
you learn to paint so well?” she had asked him once.

He had paused a long time and then finally answered. “I took some courses.”

He gave her a handful of words and a thousand images. His paintings covered every inch of the walls. He had no problem expressing himself in paint. But if she asked him what a painting meant, he would always ask her to find her own meaning. It was both a fun game and frustrating one. Tom was nothing else if not highly entertaining, she thought.

He
tapped his fingers against the arm of the couch. The sound brought her back to the present.

He was shirtless
. Claudia was so used to it she didn’t notice it much anymore, except when the neighbors knocked on the door. She tried not to notice anyway. Things could get awkward, but maybe it would be a good thing if things got awkward, she thought. The neighbors must’ve thought it was odd to be greeted by a chestful of hair at eye level when he swung open the door, but with the heat blasting out the radiators she was sure they understood the dilemma. Tom was just over six feet and almost Mediterranean looking, in a classic dark sort of way.

“I’m grateful
,” she said. “I’ll find a job soon. I promise. But after I do, you don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. You can find a nice place on your own. You don’t owe me anything anymore.”

“Yeah
, I do, Claude. And I love the light in this place,” he said, his dark brown eyes shifting away from hers and up toward the ceiling and around the room. The silhouettes of tree branches danced across the sun-streaked walls.

“But I don’t like the radiat
or heat,” he added. “Or the neighbors fighting next door.”

“I’
ll open another window.” she leaned forward to get up and the skin on her lower back peeled off the sticky leather couch, from the gap between her sweaty tank top and jeans.

Looking down at the dirty snow banks below, from the window, she saw something strange sticking
out of the freshly fallen snow – fabric and a small something, grayish blue.

“Christ,” she said. “That’s not what I think it is, is it?”

Tom came to peek over her shoulder, three stories down into the wintry lunar-like landscape.

“It looks like a sleeve, part of an old flannel shirt.” He breathed on her neck. “Someone must have tossed it on the ground or dropped it.”

“I don’t think it’s just a shirt.” Claudia squinted. She inhaled sharply and couldn’t seem to let go of the breath. Her face turned pale. “What if there’s more under the snow? I’m going down there.”

“It’s not like it’s moving. You’re paranoid,” Tom said, but he tossed on a shirt and followed her to the closet where they bundled up in wool coats and hats.

“It’s not right,” Claudia said. “It’s almost like an outline of…” Her voice trailed off shakily. Maybe the neighborhood kids were playing tricks on her.

“Since when did you have laser vision?
” Tom said. “I didn’t see anything besides a shirt.”

She buttoned up her jacket in the old, dimly lit stairway. Then she bolted down
stairs with a series of quick, frantic thuds. Her boots kicked up a haze of musty dust, emanating from the blue, floral carpet snaking down the wooden steps.

“You’re
just imagining things.” Tom shouted as he trailed slowly behind her down the three flights. He let his fingers slide slowly down the long wooden banister. “I’m sure it’s nothing, just a reflection on the snow.”

“I don’t think so!” she shouted, the panic rising in her voice.

She thudded down the last marble steps, swung out the double doors in front of the building and ran to the corner behind the bushes, kicking up puffs of snow behind each step. There in the snow bank, she saw the flannel sleeve and something sticking up slightly out of the melting snow – a bluish white thumb. She sank to her knees and Tom ran up behind her.

“Holy shit,”
he said, his voice shaking. “Don’t touch it.”

“What if he’s still alive?” she said.

In shock, Claudia’s fingers reached out and felt the frozen hand beneath the snow. Her fingers curled backward and immediately started to shake. She could still feel the hard, frozen hand. The rest of the body was buried under the snow. She dug out his face and recoiled.

“Fuck, shit, shit,”
poured out of her mouth as she tried to dial the police on her cell phone. Her fingers kept hitting the wrong numbers and the phone crackled in and out as she yelled at the dispatcher trying to tell them which corner they were on and what they had found.

“Police are on the way. We’ll send an ambulance,” the woman’s calm voice answered
.

“But he’s dead, he’s dead,” she said
, gasping in the cold air. She hung up the phone and repeated the words. “He’s dead, Tom. He’s dead.”

“It will be ok,” he said.

They stood there for a few minutes waiting for the wail of the sirens and staring down at the body.

The frozen, glass-like eyes and solid blue lips were parted as if he were about to whisper something fr
om another world. A frozen, red-crusted wound crowned the top of his head. Claudia started to cry and Tom put his arms around her.

“It’s ok, it will be ok,” he said, swallowing uneasily.
“Maybe it was an accident.”

“I don’t think, so,” she said, sobbing into his wool coat.
“Just look at him.”

Two squad cars slid up in front of the building and Tom backed away as four officers poured out and ran toward the front door
, slamming the doors behind them. They left their squad cars running, coughing up hot, gray exhaust into the cold air.

“They’ll think we did it. Shit.
” Tom suddenly looked like he was about to run.

“No
, they won’t,” Claudia said and grabbed his arm. “Why would they? Over here!”

An officer
leaned his husky frame over the snow bank and looked down. He pulled up the collar of his black coat.

“Damn it. The eighth body
this year and it’s only January,” he said.

His colleagues unfurled the yellow tape.

“I’m Detective Stan Hughes,” he said, shaking their hands. “Did you see what happened?”

“No,” Claudia said. “I just saw him out the window.

They shook their heads and the officer pulled them down the street about 20 feet away from the body and took out his notepad.

“Any idea who did this?” he asked Claudia.

“No idea.” She said. She stared at his badge.

“Ever see the guy before?”

“No.”

“
Darling,” he said, patting her on the arm. “Any information you might have that would be helpful?”

“Not really,” she said, sniffling.

Stan breathed on his fingers and wrote down her name and information on his notepad.

Claudia’s jeans were cold and stiff. She tried to brush off the snow with her numb fingers, but it had melted in patches across her legs, cr
acked and crinkled into the denim folds.

“Any people you know around here who might do something like this?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “The neighbors next door get into loud fights, but I don’t know that that means anything.”

“What kind of fights?” he asked.

“Nasty ones,” Tom interjected. “The two of them are always screaming, knocking shit over and we hear loud thumps and things falling on the other side of the wall. It’s fucking annoying.”

“Do you call us?”

“No,” Tom said.

“Why not?
” Stan said. “How’re we supposed to fix a problem we don’t know about? What if he kills his wife and you don’t call?”

“I didn’t think you guys really cared about loud noises,” Tom said.

“We care,” Stan said loudly. “We always care. Next time, you call me.” He handed them his cards.

“W
ere they making any noise yesterday or today?”

“No,” Claudia said.

“What were you two doing last night?”

“Sleeping,” Tom said.

“Me too,” Claudia said.

“No big plans for a Friday night?” Stan said. “You two are a lively couple.”

“We’re not a couple,” Claudia said.

“So you were sleeping alone last night,” Stan said.

“Yes,” Claudia said.

“Ok then,” he said and scribbled something down on his notepad. Tom gave Claudia a worried look.

She turned and watched the coroner’s white van pull up. On the side were the cheerful words, “It’s about life, not death.” What a lie, Claudia thought. She watched a man pull out a stretcher from the back. A camera swung from his neck.

“Looks like a blunt instrument hit him,” the man said to his colleague. “Quieter than a gunshot.”

Claudia tried not to look anymore as they went to load the body. She didn’t want to see the dead man’s face again, but she couldn’t seem to help looking. They pulled a sheet over the body, but it didn’t make her feel any better.

To block her from the view,
Stan stepped in front of her and pulled out a cigarette. It didn’t matter, but she wondered what ethnicity he was. His skin was light enough that he could’ve been mixed. He had light brown eyes and short, cropped, black hair. Claudia thought he was good looking for a man in his 40s. His breath came out in a mist mingled with warm smoke.

She
watched him hold his cigarette. Her hands ached to curl around the burning end just for the warmth. She kept shoving them into her pockets but there was no sensation left in them. The feeling of the dead man’s fingers lingered there but nothing else. She had shaken hands with a dead man, she thought with another shiver. Claudia tried to breathe on her hands and rub them to warm them up, but she couldn’t. She wondered if they’d stay cold forever.

“God, I wish
I had seen something,” she said, shivering.

“Well, someone must have last night,” he said, putting out his cigarette in the snow.
“The question is whether they’ll talk. That’s always the question, my dear.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Tom said
, putting his arm around Claudia. “It was snowing pretty hard last night. I couldn’t see a damn thing outside last night when I looked out the window.”