Flirting with Disaster

“I think she likes the solitude more than she lets on. She sold her last restaurant for a bundle, and her cookbooks sell nicely. People still love cookbooks, apparently, even in this age of ebooks and internet recipes. It’s the pictures, I think.”

“And you? You must be a pretty great artist. Jackson is hardly a cheap place to live.”

“I do all right.” She didn’t elaborate. She was clearly more comfortable telling him about Jill than speaking about herself.

“I read some stories about the judge,” she said as they trudged up the steepest part of her drive. “Do you really think he’s in danger?”

“Obviously, we take any threats seriously, but these guys associate with some groups that have strong feelings about the federal government. And they already killed two troopers.”

“I know.”

“Better safe than sorry. And the judge is isolated out here. You should be careful. I mean it.”

She nodded and stopped at the foot of her steps. “Okay. I guess I should thank you for walking me home, then.”

“You should, but I’m not sure you will.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say something gracious like ‘Just doing my job, ma’am’?”

“I would, but you didn’t actually thank me yet,” he reminded her.

“I guess I didn’t.” She smiled before she jogged up the porch steps. “Have a nice walk home, Marshal.”

Tom rolled his eyes when she opened her door. “You didn’t lock the door?”

“Oh.” She paused halfway in and winced. “I meant to, but I’m not in the habit.”

Tom shook his head. “Listen, I don’t want to piss you off, but could I take a quick look around before I leave?”

“Is this a ploy to come in for a nightcap?”

“No.”

“Peek at my etchings?”

He kept his mouth flat.

“Find out more about that internet porn?”

“Now you’re definitely doing it on purpose.”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Are you complaining?”

He hadn’t been complaining, exactly. It wasn’t that he minded her talking about sex. He just wanted to be prepared for it so he could act like a seasoned and stoic officer of the law instead of a blushing teenager.

“I’m not letting you in my house,” she finally said. She was haloed by the entryway light, and she wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Please?” he tried.

“I might have left my laptop open,” she said drily.

Okay. So she didn’t want to be alone in her house at night with a strange man. He could certainly understand that. “You could wait here. Watch from the doorway.”

Her head tilted as if she were confused by the suggestion. “Oh,” she finally said. Her forehead creased. “Look—”

Whatever she’d been about to say, it was cut off by a loud thud from somewhere behind her. Her eyes went wide, and Tom put his hand on the gun at his hip. “Step outside, please, Ms. West.”

She actually did as he’d asked, her hostility forgotten in the fear of the moment.

“There’s no one else staying here?”

“No,” she whispered.

Tom drew his gun and stepped slowly in, switching off the light to make himself less visible from the dark rooms deeper inside the house. “Stay out of the doorway,” he said to Isabelle, relieved when her shadow disappeared and left a clean rectangle of moonlight on the wall.

He was reaching for his cell to call for backup when something shot from the darkness and moved toward him. Before he could aim, it was past his feet and still moving.

Isabelle shrieked when the shadow flew out the doorway. He spun and ran toward her.

“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “It was just Bear.”

“A bear?” He scanned the porch and driveway.

“My cat, Bear.”

Tension fell from his shoulders like a weight tumbling off. “Your cat.”

“You scared him. He doesn’t like people.”

“Big surprise. But we don’t know that he made that noise. Wait here.”

She didn’t object. The strange man you knew was better than the one you didn’t, apparently, so she let him move past her back into the house.

Enough light came through the front window to let him navigate the living room. It didn’t take him long to discover a framed photograph lying facedown on the carpet. It appeared to have fallen from an end table that held a small plate with half a sandwich on it. He picked up the metal frame. It was heavy enough to have made the sound they’d heard.

Tom switched on the light and saw that some of the meat had been pulled from under the bread. He put the gun away. “I think I discovered the crime. You didn’t finish your lunch, and your cat was cleaning up for you.”

She poked her head around the door frame. “Oh. Sounds about right.”

She switched on the overhead light, revealing the rest of the room. It was simpler than he’d expected for an artist. A couch and chairs and a flat-screen TV along with a bookshelf stuffed full of paperbacks. And the laptop sitting dark and seemingly harmless on a desk that was crammed into a corner.

He looked at the photo in his hand, hoping for a little more insight into this woman. It was a picture of her with two other women, their arms around each other. Sisters or friends, maybe.

He glanced around for more photos, but only found two paintings on the walls.

One was a man, turned away, his eyes focused somewhere distant. His hair curled over his ear, and wind blew his shirt tight to his back. Pine trees rose up in front of him.

If not for the signature across the bottom corner, Tom would’ve thought it was a photograph at first glance; it was that stark and crisp.

The other painting was a completely different style. It was a watercolor of a golden field with shadows of mountains rising far away and storm clouds rolling closer.

“Is one of them yours?”

“Yes, the portrait. I suck at landscapes. And watercolor.”

“The portrait is striking. Really spectacular.”

“Thank you,” she said simply, not offering any protest. She knew she was good, and he liked that. He was about to ask who the man was, but Isabelle’s mouth tightened as if she was waiting for just that question—and resenting that he’d ask it—so Tom tipped his head toward the dark doorway on the other side of the room. “May I please check the rest of the house? Just to be sure?”

Her eyes narrowed. She watched him for a long moment then looked around the room, as if trying to see what he was seeing. “If you really think it’s necessary. Watch out for the laundry when you get to my bedroom. I haven’t quite kept up with it this...week.”

“Got it.” He flipped on the hallway light and moved to the right toward two open doors. The first was a small bedroom with no piles of laundry and no intruder. He checked the closet and moved on.

The second door was clearly her bedroom. A king-size bed was piled high with silver-and-blue pillows on top of a rumpled gray comforter. Despite the massive size of the thing, it looked as though she used the whole big mattress. There wasn’t a smooth spot of blanket on it. Or she’d had a guest sometime recently. He couldn’t rule that out.

Other than that, the bedroom was fairly unremarkable aside from the pile of laundry at the foot of her bed. There were also a few clean clothes stacked neatly on top of a dresser as if she’d gotten distracted before putting them away.

Tom moved toward a door in the far wall and found a large bathroom, empty aside from a can of turpentine on the counter and a smaller pile of laundry. He checked the closet, surprised there were still clean clothes remaining in there, then shut off the lights and headed for the other side of the house.

It was quick work. There was one more bedroom that seemed to be used for storage, and past it, a laundry room with a door that creaked in protest at being opened after so long. The last door led to the garage, which was empty aside from an SUV and a few very large canvases wrapped in plastic.

He found Isabelle in the kitchen, pouring a glass of water and not the least bit concerned about the security of her home. He shook his head. “I guess I should’ve asked you to wait in the living room until I’d cleared this area.”

She shrugged. “I would’ve yelled if I found someone.”

“Is that the last room?” he asked, tipping his chin toward the double doors.

“Yep, it’s my studio.”

He hesitated a moment. He’d never been in the home of a real working artist before. “I won’t be invading your privacy if I look inside?”

“You’re invading it right now, but I think I’ll survive.”

He opened the doors to cool air and a strong smell of paint. Even before he reached for the light he could make out easels highlighted by the moonlight that streamed through tall windows. Their shadows stretched across the wood floor, the long shapes making his neck prickle with alarm. Anyone could be standing there. He’d unbuttoned his gun strap, but he hadn’t drawn it. The likelihood that anyone was actually here was minuscule, but he still put his hand on the butt of his gun as he swept the wall with his fingers.

They finally found the switch, and the darkest shadows vanished in the sudden onslaught of light.

Her studio was a large room, and the scattered canvases blocked a lot of the view, but Tom could see practically every corner when he dropped down to peer past the forest of easel legs. It looked clear. He blew out a sigh, but his relief lasted for only the two seconds it took him to stand and refocus his eyes on the nearest canvas.

This time his breath left him on a rush, and he stepped back in alarm.

What the hell?

His gaze skipped off that painting and moved to the next one, trying to escape the sight or just make sense of it, but the second one was no better. Just a mess of blood and sinew and flayed skin and glistening muscles.

Narrowing his eyes, he forced himself to step closer to the first easel, but that only made it worse. Her painting was of a human abdomen, except that this person’s skin had been peeled off to reveal the connective tissue beneath it. It was so incredibly detailed that he could make out the smallest capillaries on the underside of the peeled skin.

Even worse than the paintings were the photos taped to the sides of the canvas frames. These were actual pictures of bodies stripped of their skin and humanity. They were corpses. And she was re-creating them.

“You don’t like them?” she asked from only a few feet away. Tom jumped, spinning toward her, his hand tightening on his gun. He didn’t draw it, though. He had that much sense left.

“What the hell kind of art is this?” Was she a provocateur or just some sort of sicko?

She grinned at him, and he changed “sicko” to “serial killer” in his mind. Clearly, she was sociopathic. “I’m an anatomical painter.”

“Yeah, I damn well see that.”

Now she was actually laughing. “You should see your face.” She wiped a tear from her eye. She was laughing so hard she was crying.

“What is this?” he barked.

“Just what I said it is. I work on commission for textbooks and medical art companies.”

He blinked and forced his tension down a notch, but it wasn’t easy. He hated seeing dead bodies. Really hated it. “Textbooks?” he managed to ask more calmly.

“Yes. Biology. Anatomy. Some surgical instruction. Photos don’t really work well. There’s not enough definition and contrast, usually. And digital art sucks. Don’t tell anyone I said that. Ninety percent of work is digital now. 3-D rendering has its uses, I suppose. But my niche is oil. Not very common these days. It’s specialty work.”

He looked at the nearest painting again then turned back to her. He could feel the horrified confusion etched into his face, and he could see it in the laughter that still swam in her eyes.

“I also do posters for doctors’ offices. You know, the ‘This is your knee joint’ kind of thing.”

“This is—” he shook his head “—awful.”

“Really?” She shrugged, as if she couldn’t fathom his reaction. “You probably don’t want to see the comparison ones, then. A small child winding up for a softball pitch on one side, and the same small child as a skeleton in the next. They’re a little morbid, but the kids love them.”

“The kids?” he gasped, looking over his shoulder again. His eyes focused on the next easel and a photo taped there. It was a thigh, half the flesh removed, the other half still intact, a tattoo of a dragon livid against the pale skin. He felt the blood leaving his head and took a deep breath to try to steady himself. “Jesus, Isabelle. How can you do this?”

Her smile finally faded. “What do you mean? It’s my job. Medical students need to learn about the body. So do high school kids. Would you rather schoolkids had to work with cadavers?”

The word cadaver was almost too much for him. The memory of his brother’s pale, stiff body flashed into his head, but he forced it back. He could control it. It was the same every time he had to deal with death, and death was part of his job. But this...

“This is your home,” he said. “Where you sleep at night.”

“I work here, too. It’s no big deal.”

No big deal. Right. Here he’d been warming to her, and the woman was a freak. A freak who looked at pictures of dead people all day. In her secluded cabin. In the dark woods. “Well,” he managed to say, “the house is all clear. You’re safe.”

“Thank you. Want to sit down and stay awhile?” she teased.

“No, thanks,” he muttered as he brushed by her. Her laughter followed him to the front door. “Have a good night,” he called over his shoulder. “And lock the door.”

Or bar it. From the outside.

Maybe this woman’s secret was more dangerous than he’d suspected.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS 11:00 P.M., and Tom was staring at the computer instead of sleeping. He’d planned to get right back to Judge Chandler’s basement and do some research into Isabelle West, but instead he’d walked in to find his second-in-command, Mary Jones, yelling at their tactical commander over the phone.

Mary, the senior deputy marshal whenever Tom was out of the room, had rightly made the decision to move the judge’s twenty-six-year-old daughter into his home for the trial. Veronica Chandler lived alone in an apartment just off Jackson town square, and Mary had decided that the woman would be safer in her father’s home, where the security detail could keep an eye on her, as well.

Chris Hannity, the tactical command specialist, had bristled at being cut out of the decision, especially as he’d already scouted Veronica’s place and had made schedules to patrol her block.

An acute case of male pride, as far as Tom was concerned, and he’d quickly dismissed the issue with a few curt words for Hannity.

“He’s still pissed about that disciplinary hearing,” Mary said from behind him, her Southern drawl ruining the hard edge of the words. She set a plate of cookies at his elbow. “The cookies are courtesy of Veronica Chandler.”

“Thanks. And he’ll get over it.”

“You think? It’s been a year. I told you not to report it.”

Tom grabbed a cookie and shot Mary a look, noticing that she was chewing on her thumbnail. She did that only when she was tired enough to forget. “He called you a dyke. In front of me.”

“It’s not the worst I’ve heard.”

“Then he chose the wrong place to say it. And you’re chewing your nail again.”

“Shit,” she muttered, clenching her hand into a fist and forcing it to her side.

“He’ll get over it,” Tom repeated. “And he won’t disrespect you or anyone else on the team again.”

Mary was forty-five, but she looked a lot younger. Couple that with her small frame, curly blond hair and heart-shaped face, and she sometimes had trouble commanding respect. Actually, that wasn’t true. She commanded respect. Her men followed her orders to a T. But there were always a few holdouts on other teams who considered her authority an insult to their testicles.

She made it a policy never to show weakness in front of those assholes, and she hated giving away that she might be stressed.

“I already read the day’s report,” he said as he polished off a second cookie. “Everything’s in place for the trial?”

“Yes. You still think we’ll hear from the brother again?”

“I hope not,” Tom said, rolling his shoulders to release some of the tension. “But I’ve got a bad feeling. And the judge? How is he handling the detail?”

Mary shrugged. “He seems entirely comfortable with an entourage. Like he was born to it.”

Tom snorted. That was no big surprise. The judge was a blowhard and pretty damn impressed with his position in the community.

“He actually calls Wes his ‘driver.’”

Tom guffawed at how much that must chap Wes’s hide. “I’ve got to see that myself.”

Mary grinned. “It’s pretty awesome.”

They both turned toward the stairway when the door to the first floor opened, expecting Wes to head down, but these footsteps were soft and light.

A young woman Tom recognized as Veronica Chandler stuck her head past the wall, her blond hair swinging. “I just wanted to check and see if you needed anything before I turn in.”

Tom stood. “No, we’re all set up down here. Thank you for the cookies.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Do you know Jill Washington up the road? She’s an amazing baker.”

The woman smiled. “No, my father only bought this house two years ago, and I was living in New York then. And these cookies went straight from the tube to the oven.”

“The perfect recipe,” Mary said.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Veronica called as she headed back upstairs. She looked happy enough to be here. Tom suspected she was relieved. She’d spent two of the past three evenings here already. What was the point in driving home in the dark to sleep?

It was the same reason Tom was in the basement, after all.

“I’m heading out,” Mary said.

“You can take the cot, if you want. I’ll sleep here. It’s a fold-out couch.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. If I wanted to wake up to obnoxious men, I’d change my dating habits.”

“Are you calling me obnoxious?”

“No comment.” She eased her feet into the heels she wore on duty to add a couple more inches to her height.

Tom cleared his throat. “So what’s your age range?”

“For what?”

“Dating.”

She frowned at him and grabbed her coat. “That’s a weird question.”

“I’m just making conversation.”

“Bullshit. You know somebody? Is it that new girl in Intake? She’s only twenty-one. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“It’s no one,” he said. “Forget I said anything.”

“Stop trying to take care of me. I’m not one of your lost causes.” She tugged a knit hat over her blond curls and glared at him for a moment before heading toward the staircase. “Ten years on either side,” she tossed back without slowing down.

“Good to know,” Tom responded, not bothering to hide his smile.

But as soon as Mary’s footsteps hit the first floor and the door closed behind her, Tom was left alone with his thoughts. And those thoughts were not on Jill anymore; they were on her freaky-ass neighbor. What the hell was up with Isabelle West?

He closed his email program and opened his browser to try her name again, but there were still no good clues, so he searched for anatomical art instead. He clicked around for a good half an hour, learning what he could about it. What he saw was pretty on par with what he’d glimpsed at her house. He didn’t like one bit of it.

He could handle seeing dead bodies on the job. It was rarely a complete surprise. He usually had the chance to brace himself against the sight so he wasn’t snapped back to that long-ago moment when he’d found his brother. But tonight had sneaked up on him.

He took a deep breath and cleared the search window then tried a new one for “medical paintings” and her name. He got back garbage. That was weird. She obviously did well for herself. She must have a legitimate career. So why was she missing online?

Tom sat back in his chair and tapped a pen to his chin for a minute then thought of the other painting he’d seen in her home. The vivid realism of it. The beauty. And the very short signature in the corner.

He typed in “I. West” and “anatomical painting” and hit the mother lode.

“Bingo,” he breathed. Here was her career. She’d been telling the truth.

There wasn’t much to get from the search results, other than that confirmation. Her work wasn’t meant for private buyers. The hits were all sites where posters and textbooks could be purchased. There was no author biography anywhere. No pictures or stories about her.

Still, the morbidity of the whole thing niggled at his brain. Combined with her initial hostility, Tom decided he couldn’t ignore that prickling he’d felt on the back of his neck earlier.

He signed in to the National Crime Information Center to do a quick check on her background. Two hours later, he was even more confused. Isabelle West didn’t seem to be a criminal. There were no warrants, no arrests, not even a traffic ticket as far as he could tell. So she wasn’t a criminal. But she also hadn’t existed before 2002.