Not this time, thank God. “Nope. I guess I’m not always morbid when I draw.”
“Yeah, about that. I thought you said last week that you really only paint, don’t really ever draw.”
Paige gripped her coffee mug more tightly. How was she going to explain to him that she couldn’t draw like this normally? Pictures of dead women aside, that was the hardest part to accept about her ability to draw in her sleep: she didn’t have the same skill when she was awake. If he asked her to grab the pencils right now and draw him, she wouldn’t be able to do it.
Exhaustion poured over her. She was tired of having to hide this. Tired of it happening. Tired of the toll it took on her body every time she did one.
“Painting is definitely my primary medium,” she verbally side-stepped.
“It’s a good thing you’re already a world-renowned painter or I would say you need to switch to drawing. You definitely have a talent there.”
She just shrugged. Yep. She had a talent for drawing dead women in her sleep. That wasn’t bat-shit crazy or anything.
“So she’s not a real person? That’s a shame. I would think someone would really appreciate having a drawing of this caliber —a Paige Jeffries original no less— of herself.”
Paige would be thrilled if the woman wasn’t real. If she was just a figment of Paige’s imagination. If that was true then the next time she drew a dead face staring out at her she could say that woman was a figment also.
Not someone who had died a horrible death that Paige somehow saw in her sleep.
“Nope, not anybody I know. I probably saw her somewhere yesterday and my subconscious remembered her or something.”
“Have you done this a lot? Drawn people you don’t know?”
Paige walked over to study the drawing more closely.
“I do it every once in a while. Like I said, painting is definitely my primary medium. I don’t really… enjoy drawing like this.” That much she could say with utter truthfulness.
“What do you do with the drawings? I’m sure you could sell them.”
She didn’t want to tell him the truth. That she had tried destroying the drawings at first, particularly the ones with the dead women. But she had just drawn the same scene again each time she’d destroyed them. So now they were all stuffed in a portfolio file. At least that way she didn’t have to look at them.
“No, I don’t want to sell them.” She looked at the woman in the drawing. Young. Beautiful.
Was she dead? Paige had no idea. She closed her eyes, trying to take in enough air to tamp down her panic. She didn’t want to have a breakdown in front of Brett.
When she opened her eyes she found he had circled around to the other side of the painting so he could see her, rather than the woman on the easel.
He knew. Something about the look he gave her told her. His questions were all neutral and without judgment, but they were attempting to lead her down a path where she confessed to drawing in her sleep. He was a detective, after all.
“You saw me, didn’t you?” she whispered.
Even after the dozens and dozens of times she had done it, Paige wasn’t totally sure what happened when she drew in her sleep. Usually she woke up in some awkward pile on the floor, bloody and stiff from how she’d slept, her right arm sore from overuse. She never knew how she’d gotten there or how long she’d been there or how long the drawing had taken her.
“I woke up when you got out of bed,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what was happening. I thought maybe you were upset or overwhelmed by yesterday or… us.”
It was the first time since she had woken this morning that his eyes had softened and his voice wasn’t so distant. He wasn’t mad, she realized. Confused, but not mad.
“I really just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he continued. “Although I’ll admit my curiosity was a little piqued last night when you didn’t show me this room, so when you went in here, I didn’t hesitate to follow.”
Paige both wanted and didn’t want to hear the rest. But she knew she didn’t have any choice.
“I finally realized you were sleepwalking. Not uncommon. Lydia did it all the time when she was young. I tried to get you to come back to bed, but you wouldn’t leave the front of the easel. Standing almost exactly where you are now.”
She knew this spot. She had woken up here on the floor many times.
“And then I watched as for the next hour and a half you drew that picture right there.” He gestured to it with his hand from where he stood at the side. “Without waking up even once, or even looking at the easel.”
Paige wrapped her arms around her middle, certain she might fly apart any second. How was she supposed to explain this? It seemed like every day she had something more outlandish to tell Brett. She glanced over at the portfolio folder leaning against the wall. He didn’t even know the worst of it.
A folder full of drawings of women. Some fine, some beaten, some dead. Because she was sick. Because her brain had some sort of morbid fascination with brutality towards women.
He seemed to have handled the auras conversation yesterday without too much pause. And to his credit, he hadn’t left in the middle of the night when he found her drawing in her sleep. But to show him those pictures in the folder would mean the end of whatever this budding relationship was. Those pictures were abnormal.
She was abnormal. She gripped her stomach tighter and tucked her head down and away from Brett. Maybe even more than what had happened to her physically in the attack, this was the reason she had shied away from any sort of intimacy. No man in his right mind would want to deal with all this.
“Hey,” he whispered and she felt his hand stroke her arms where they hugged her body. “It’s okay, you know.”
She stepped back. “It’s not okay. It’s weird!” She could feel tears welling in her eyes but didn’t know how to stop them.
He stepped forward again, his palms cupping her shoulders for just a minute before he pulled her hard up against his chest. Paige knew she should step away but she couldn’t seem to force herself to do it.
His arms felt strong enough to protect her from the terrifying images she drew. From the evil black colors she sometimes saw swirling around people. Maybe he could protect her from her own mind.
“Lydia used to play outside on the swing in her sleep. That’s much more freaky than drawing,” he said into her hair.
Paige couldn’t quite laugh, but his statement at least stopped the tears that were threatening. When she didn’t pull away, he tucked her even closer into his hard body.
“I know I draw in my sleep. But I don’t know why and I don’t know how to make it stop” she murmured into his chest.
“Maybe you shouldn’t try to make it stop. Maybe it’s your brain’s way of trying to release something.”
She knew she should show him the other drawings; the more gruesome ones. They would make him understand why she wanted it to stop. Nobody wanted to wake up in the morning to those scenes.
He was a detective, so the images probably wouldn’t phase him. But it would change what he thought about her, wouldn’t it? It would have to.
She would show him the drawings eventually. But not today. Not this soon.
She just wanted to stay with him like this, for him to keep holding her, as long as possible.
“It’s just exhausting. Usually I wake up on the floor after I’ve drawn in my sleep.”
“Yeah, you might have done that last night, but I led you back to bed.”
“Thanks. That’s a lot more comfortable than in a heap on the ground.”
Brett pulled her back so he could look her in the eye. “Are you okay? It has to take a lot out of you to do that. Your poor arm was working non-stop for nearly two hours. I was exhausted just watching you. Your nose was bleeding.”
“Yeah, it’s not easy on my body.” And it had been getting worse over time. “I’m usually wiped out for the day after it happens. That’s why I wish it would stop.”
“Does it happen often?”
Paige shrugged “Five or six times a month.”
He led her over to the couch. “And you always draw people?”
She tucked her legs up under her as he sat next to her and pulled her close. She was grateful for his warmth. Even talking about this made her feel cold.
“Yeah, always women.” But not usually alive and relatively happy like the woman on easel. If that was the case, Paige would just chalk it up to more weirdness. But the death, the violence that she drew. Over and over. Always the same, just different women.
“I don’t really want to talk about it anymore, Detective.”
Because she knew where all these questions would lead: showing him the drawings.
Not today. Not this soon.
She moved from his side onto his lap so her legs were straddling his hips. She wrapped her arms loosely around the back of his neck, linking her fingers in with his hair.
“Isn’t there anything else we can talk about? Or maybe not talk at all?” she lowered her head and kissed him, nipping his bottom lip.
He was aware of her diversion technique, she could tell when she looked him in the eyes. But he was willing to let it go. “Anything else peculiar I should know about?”
Oh God.
She kissed him again. “Well, I do dance around naked during the full moon.”
Brett flipped her around so she was flat on the couch and he was lying on top of her.
“I might need a preview of that immediately to make sure it’s acceptable.”
Paige hooked her arms and legs around him and pulled him close. “Whatever you say, Detective.”
Chapter Fourteen
By mid-afternoon on Monday Brett wasn’t any closer to proving his serial killer theory even after focusing most of his attention on it the whole day. He didn’t want to admit it, but it was looking more like Captain Ameling was right: there wasn’t enough of a pattern tying the deaths of these women together to blindly attribute it to one killer.
He hadn’t been able to find any more deaths on “payday” dates in Oregon. He’d expanded his search to include the entire state, but had only found one more murder. That one had been six years ago, and although it did fit the right dates and a matching killing method as one of the other women, someone had already been arrested and found guilty of the murder.
Brett leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. Was he pushing? Looking too hard for a pattern that wasn’t really there?
His gut told him no. That there was something more. Something he was missing.
But his gut wasn’t going to get him anywhere with Captain Ameling. Brett needed something solid.
Maybe it would help if they could get more information about the woman from Friday’s crime scene. Brett walked over to Alex Olivier’s desk. Alex held the phone handset on one of his shoulders, but motioned to Brett to have a seat in the chair in front of his desk.
“What’s up?” Alex left the phone hanging on his shoulder. “I’m on hold waiting for some details about a homicide from a couple weeks ago.”
“Do we have any info from Friday’s scene? Confirmed cause of death? ID on the victim?”
Alex was the primary investigator on the case so all the info would go through him. Brett watched as the other man searched through some emails, phone still hanging off his shoulder.
“Let’s see. Here’s a tech report: in preliminary tests, nothing of any use found so far at the scene.” He scanned through more reports. “Victim ID? Nothing yet. Evidently there was some issue with the downtown coroner’s office and morgue this weekend. Water valve broke. Everything —including bodies and files— had to be relocated to secondary locations. It’s holding everything up.”
“Damn it.”
“Yeah, I want to find out who that lady is so we can notify her next of kin. Somebody’s got to be looking for her.”
“Thanks man, keep me posted.”
“I’ll do better. I’ll put your email on the list so you get any updates from the ME’s office or anything the crime techs find.”
Whoever Alex had been holding for picked up and Alex started talking. Brett waved and headed back to his desk. There was nothing he could do on this case until he knew a little more about the victim. Then he could see if she had anything in common with the other women besides gender and general age.
But Brett suspected that even when he could put a name to the victim he wouldn’t be able to tie her to any of the other women. The killer was too smart for that.
If there even was just one killer.
* * *
Paige walked into the downtown police station, the picture of the woman she’d drawn on Saturday night tucked in a file under her arm. It struck her as interesting that in the eight years she’d lived in Portland she’d only been here twice and both times were within forty-eight hours of each other.
When she’d been interviewed about her attack, the police officers had come to her, first in the hospital and then to her home. She’d been here on Saturday with Brett so they could call her security firm’s number. Although there had been people around then, it had been a weekend so anyone who wasn’t required to work hadn’t been around.
Now it was Monday and there were a lot of people here.
Her security team had given her a ride to the station and since they knew she was, ahem, friendly with Brett, they hadn’t given her grief when she told them she needed to go to the precinct.
But she wasn’t here to see Brett. As a matter of fact she was hoping she could get in and out of here without seeing him at all. She wasn’t visiting her boyfriend.
Because honestly, she wasn’t even sure if he could be called her boyfriend. They’d had a great night together Saturday night, and an even better morning yesterday morning —she could feel her core temperature rising just thinking about yesterday morning on the couch— but that didn’t mean she would call him her boyfriend.
But it didn’t matter because boyfriend or not she wasn’t here to see him. She had an appointment with a missing person detective named Schliesman because of what she had seen in the newspaper this morning.
A picture of a young woman. Not just any young woman, the exact one Paige had drawn Saturday night.
Her name was Teresa Cavasos.
There had been a missing person’s ad in the newspaper from the woman’s family. Evidently she had been missing since Thursday and the family and police were looking for any information.
Paige wasn’t stupid. She didn’t plan to tell the police that she had drawn the picture in her sleep. She already had a reputation as an attention-hungry kook around here. She would tell them she drew a lot and that she had drawn this picture of the woman in the last couple of days, and when she saw the woman’s picture in the paper thought it might help.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was better than admitting the truth.
It wasn’t the woman herself that Paige hoped the police would find helpful in the drawing. It was the details around the woman. She was obviously in a parking lot and there were buildings that were unique in their shape and size. Paige didn’t know where they were located, but she hoped someone working the case might.
For the first time Paige could put one of the faces she had drawn to an actual name, which both excited and terrified her. If somehow she could help the police find this missing woman, then Paige had to try. Maybe it would make all the nights she’d lost drawing those painful pictures worth it. Just helping one woman would do that.
The precinct was busy and pretty overwhelming, but at least she felt safe here. Of course, her sister Adrienne had once been kidnapped in the middle of an FBI building by a psychotic killer, so maybe Paige shouldn’t feel too safe. But she wouldn’t hang around. She’d just do what she needed to do and get out.
Unless maybe she happened to run into Brett. Her not-boyfriend.
She stepped up to an overworked uniformed officer who was attempting to single-handedly direct
people who came through the door and also answer the phones. “Excuse me, I have an appointment with Detective Schliesman who is working Teresa Cavasos’ missing person case.”
The man handed her a visitor’s pass. “Take a seat right there.” He pointed to some hard plastic chairs by the door. “I’ll call for your escort.”
The colors surrounding all the people were varied and dramatic, to be expected in a place full of both the best and the worst society had to offer. Although Paige did notice that sometimes it wasn’t always just the criminals with the dark, muddy colors. People’s intent wasn’t always obvious by the clothes they wore — uniform or not.
“Ms. Jeffries? I’m Detective Schliesman. You said on the phone that you have something pertinent about Teresa Cavasos’ possible disappearance?” She began leading Paige down a hall where it was a little more quiet.
“Yes, um, I’m an artist,” she told the older woman.
“I’ve heard of you.” The woman didn’t smile or give any sort of encouragement. The clear reds surrounding her assured Paige that Detective Schliesman was honest and a good person overall, but the woman was angry. Exhausted.
“I won’t waste any of your time, Detective. I just have this picture.” She got the drawing out of the file that held it. “It’s Teresa Cavasos, I’m sure.”
The detective didn’t take the picture like Paige expected. But the red surrounding the woman flared momentarily.
Although she hid it well, whatever Paige had just said caused a flash of irritation or anger to course through the other woman. That wasn’t good.
“Can you just hold that until we get to my desk, Ms. Jeffries?”
Paige didn’t understand, but nodded. “Sure.”
When they got to the woman’s desk, she surprised Paige again by pulling out a pair of latex gloves to grab the drawing. Without touching it anywhere with her own skin, Detective Schliesman placed the paper in a clear evidence bag.
So much for Paige’s concern that they wouldn’t take the drawing seriously or pay it any attention. Schliesman was definitely paying attention to it now.
Critical Instinct Page 10
