The Bloody Canvas

by KJ Kalis

  The Bloody Canvas

  KJ Kalis

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 K.J. Kalis

  eISBN 978-1-7334480-9-3

  ISBN 978-1-7352192-0-2

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved, no part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise including technology to be yet released), without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

  Also by K.J. Kalis

  The Kat Beckman Thriller Series:

  The Cure

  Fourteen Days

  Burned

  The Blackout

  The Bloody Canvas

  Sauk Valley Killer

  Christian Non-Fiction (Karen Kalis)

  Miserable Christians: Eliminate Discontent, Rediscover Your Joy and Live an Abundant Life

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  “Sauk Valley Killer” — Book 6 of the Kat Beckman Thriller Series

  Excerpt from “Sauk Valley Killer”

  1

  Hailey walked slowly away from her last class of the day at the Savannah College of Art and Design, trying to stick to areas where there was still a little shade. She shrugged the black portfolio filled with her sketchbooks higher up on her shoulder. The strap was digging into her skin.

  Her phone vibrated in the pocket of her denim shorts. She pulled it out, realizing that she’d gotten paint on yet another piece of clothing. She shook her head and stared at the phone. It had stopped ringing before she could get to the call, the area code for New York City on the display. She smiled a little, wondering if it was another job. She’d reached out the week before to ask for changes to their business arrangement but hadn’t heard back. Now, they’d have to wait for her.

  Ahead of her was Calhoun Square. Savannah was littered with small parks celebrating important people of the South. There had to be more than twenty of them, each of them festooned with elaborate plantings, statues and benches. Calhoun Square was just one of the squares she walked through on the way back to her apartment each day. Her roommate, Missy Langford, who was from an old Georgia family, had taken Hailey on a tour of the squares when they first got to college. That was three years ago. It was hard to believe she was a junior already.

  Hailey stopped at one of the benches that faced the green lawn in the middle of the square and sat down. She pulled a water bottle out of her bag. It rested on a post just below a sign that described Calhoun Square as the memorial park for John C. Calhoun, former Vice President of the United States. She took a long drink of water, using her free hand to thumb through her social media. She sent a quick text to Missy. “Stopping to sketch at Calhoun. Be back later.” Her phone chirped almost immediately, a red heart on her screen.

  Hailey glanced around the square. There was a City of Savannah truck at the other end, the whine of a weed eater bouncing off the buildings. A family passed her, stopping to read the sign. “Mom, Mom, can we mark that one off?” the little girl said. In the far corner of the square, there was a small group of boys. From where she was sitting, she couldn’t see what they were doing, though they all appeared to be looking at something.

  From inside her portfolio, she pulled a medium-sized sketchbook and a set of pencils. She kneaded the gray eraser between her fingers as she looked at the buildings, warming it up. Calhoun Square was one of her favorite places to sit and sketch. The arching trees and the buildings made for a depth of interesting angles and shadows. Every one of them had a story to tell.

  Hailey chose a section of the Abercorn house to sketch. Built in the mid-eighteen hundreds, it had wrought-iron camellias on the railing of the upstairs balcony. Hailey’s art history professor thought it was beautiful. Hailey thought it was weird.

  As she started to rub the graphite gently onto the paper, she heard voices. Kids, rustling and jostling against each other. There were always kids around in Savannah, everything from babies being pushed in their strollers to the wayward toddlers who tried to run from their families while on vacation. She shook her head but didn’t look up, ignoring the ruckus.

  She glanced up at the Abercorn house, choosing a darker pencil to build more structure into her drawing. As she pressed down onto the paper, she felt the air move as though someone was close to her. She looked up. The boys who had been at the other end of the park were now right by her, running by. One of them tugged at her bag. “Hey!” she said, standing up. “That’s mine! You can’t…”

  Hailey didn’t have time to finish her sentence. As she turned, she saw the glint of something metal coming at her as all of the boys, save one, ran off. The pain as she was stabbed in the stomach was paralyzing. With nothing but a groan, Hailey slumped back down on the bench, a pool of blood seeping out through her shirt and down through her shorts. She tried to make noise, to get someone to help her, but the drone from the maintenance equipment at the other end of the square drowned out her whispers for help.

  With the last bit of strength in her body, Hailey reached for her phone, which had clattered just out of reach. She watched her hand as it moved in slow motion, trying to retrieve it, but for some reason, she just couldn’t get to it. Numbness filtered throughout her body. She looked down, seeing the red patch expand on her abdomen, soaking through her thin t-shirt. She put her hand on it to try to stop the bleeding, but blood oozed out. Her head rolled to the side, toward the spot where she had tossed her sketchbook as the boys interrupted her work. She saw the lines of the Abercorn House beginning to take shape. They were lines that she would never finish...

  2

  The beeping of the police radios didn’t bother Detective Carson Martino anymore. He was well used to them, as well as the baking heat of Savannah summers. He parked his car on East Gordon Street, one of the small roads that flanked Calhoun Square. Before he got out of the car, he straightened his tie and made sure his badge was hanging in the center of his chest.

  The officers that had beat him to the scene had erected a line of y
ellow police tape to prevent visitors from sullying the area or getting a look at something that wouldn’t exactly be considered southern hospitality. “Carson,” the officer manning the tape nodded.

  “Ginny, how are the kids?”

  “Good.”

  “I’d like to come and see them sometime.”

  “Anytime you’d like.”

  Carson managed to have the whole conversation without breaking stride. In the Savannah Police Department, Carson was known to be matter-of-fact and focused. Maybe too focused. “Hey, Byron,” he said, approaching the scene. “You beat me here.”

  Carson watched Byron Zachs, the county coroner, for a moment. He was a stick of a man, long and thin in every way from his arms to the length of his nose. He was peering at the body as if he were perched. His eyes didn’t move to Carson until he started to stand up, unfolding his narrow limbs until he was a couple of inches taller than Carson.

  “Yeah, I was doing a lecture around the corner. ‘The Tales Dead Bodies Tell,’ was the title.”

  “Fascinating. What is this dead body telling you?” He didn’t want Byron to get off into one of his speeches on medical forensics.

  Byron pulled his gloves off and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Well, I can’t know for sure until I get her back to the lab, but it looks like a stab wound hit a major artery. Which artery it was, I can’t tell you.

  Carson shook his head. He didn’t care which artery it was. That was something that wouldn’t help him solve the case. “Any idea what kind of knife.”

  Byron pursed his lips, staring back at the body. “Something about four to six inches long. I’ll be able to tell if it was serrated once I get some tissue samples.” He stared at Carson. “She didn’t have a chance. If it was a severed artery, she bled out within a couple of minutes. Was probably unconscious in less than thirty seconds.”

  Carson looked at the pool of blood on the ground and all over the girl’s clothes. “Yeah, that’s a lot of blood.”

  Byron nodded, “Looks like a good chunk of her blood volume. We’ll check that out when we get her back. You need a couple of minutes?”

  “Yeah. Just want to get a better feel for what happened here. Five would work.”

  Byron nodded. “Let my assistant know when you are ready, and we will pack her up and get her out of here. I’ll be in the truck starting the paperwork.”

  “Thanks, Doc.” Carson looked more closely at the scene as Byron walked away. Carson sighed. Coming to a new scene was never easy. He had gotten used to it as much as anyone could in his fifteen years on the job. He’d made his way to detective after only three years with the Savannah Police Department. It was a record. Savannah needed more beat cops than detectives with the number of vacationers in the area. But Carson’s chief had seen the detective in him, and he was added to the bureau, solving his first case just a week into his new placement.

  Carson lifted his eyes to look across the square. He had walked Calhoun Square many times before with its perfectly maintained planter beds and painted benches. Back to the body, he told himself. He started his mental rundown. That’s what he called it at least. Finding details was what made him good at what he did. The girl looked to be somewhere between eighteen and twenty years old, blonde hair, a single braid hanging down. She was wearing a blue t-shirt that had a picture of a zebra on it and a pair of cutoff jeans shorts, the rims of the pockets hanging down below the seams. On her feet were a pair of canvas tennis shoes, no laces, with paint spatter on the toes. A portfolio was on the ground next to her, a sketchbook nearby, the pencil she had been using on the ground near her phone. It was a lonely scene.

  “We have an ID on her yet?” Carson said to Byron’s assistant, Adam, who was hovering nearby waiting for Carson to be done.

  “Not yet. I’d guess she was a SCAD student. As soon as you are ready, we can start going through her things to see if she has an ID on her.”

  “Did you take pictures?”

  Adam nodded.

  Carson stood up. “Let’s do that. I’m ready.” He took a step back and waited, while Adam started to move items toward Carson. Carson pulled a pair of blue gloves out of his pocket and started going through the bag that was nearest the body. He found a set of keys on a long lanyard. A SCAD ID was attached. “Hailey Park.” Carson handed the keys over to Adam, who put them in a bag that had a strip of red adhesive at the top. There was no telling what they’d find on any given piece of evidence at the scene, hair, DNA, spatter. It paid to be overly careful in case they needed it in court, that was, if they could find the killer. “Says she’s a junior.” Carson shook his head. “Now the question is what happened…”

  As he pulled the blue gloves off of his hands and stepped away, letting Byron and Adam take over moving her body, Carson’s eye saw something across the square. In the alcove of the entrance for the Abercorn House stood a man in the shadows. He was too far away for Carson to make much out about him other than he seemed to be of average height and was bald with glasses. “Hey,” Carson said to the officer that was nearest him. “That guy been here long?”

  The officer shook his head. “I think I saw him when I got here. Has been just kinda hanging out there. Hasn’t made a move.”

  Carson looked at the man again. His gut told him there was more to the man staring than just curiosity. What the connection was, he didn’t know. Carson took a couple of steps forward, lifting the yellow tape. As he did, the man in the alcove moved off, hands in pockets, head down. Carson stopped. The guy was too far away for him to catch up to unless he started a foot chase. “Strange,” he muttered to himself. He motioned to the officer, “Keep an eye out for him, okay?”

  “Will do, detective.”

  A shout caught his attention. “Over here!” A uniformed officer was waving to Carson. “I’ve got something!”

  Carson walked to where the officer was standing. On the ground, lodged between two plants in an immaculately maintained planting bed, was the glint of something metal. Carson knelt down and pulled another pair of blue gloves out of his pocket. Byron had followed. “Let’s get a picture of this before I move it.” Adam took a couple of pictures, the click of the shutter the only break in the silence. “Done?” Carson asked. He wanted to make sure the pictures were good before he moved anything.

  “Yep. All good.”

  Carson brushed some mulch off the metal and picked it up. It was a six-inch hunting knife, the kind that folds in half to make carrying easier. The blade was blackened with blood and mulch. “Looks like we have our murder weapon,” Carson said, dropping it into an evidence bag.

  “Well, we can’t know for sure until we test the blood and the wound…” Byron said.

  “I know, Doc. I know.” Carson shook his head. Byron, ever the scientist, was a bit of a stickler for details to the point it was annoying.

  Carson shrugged his shoulders as he stood up, the bag in hand. They had a body; they had the weapon. The question was, who was Hailey Park? And who would want her dead?

  He glanced back at the Abercorn House, the entry now empty. The man who had been watching them was gone. Was he connected to the case? Carson sighed, rubbing the bottom of his nose. It itched from the pollen of the summer blooms in the park. It was going to be a long couple of days ahead, probably ones without much sleep. It was always that way with the cases he landed. The images stayed with him until he had it solved.

  Carson was sitting at his desk when his email chirped. The forensics report on Hailey Park was ready. He took a sip of lukewarm coffee and opened the email. The cause of death was exactly as he expected. The knife had punctured her hepatic artery causing massive blood loss. He clicked on the next page, looking for more information when Ginny Thompson walked up to his desk. “Get any more information on the murder from today?”

  He and Ginny had gone through the police academy together and had a brief fling before she met her husband Dan and had two kids. Pregnancy had put her on a desk for a while, but she quickly rebounde
d. Carson knew that she aspired to become a detective someday, but raising the kids came first. He didn’t look at her, still staring at the screen, “Report just came back. Stab wound cut an artery. She didn’t have a chance.”

  “Must have been a wickedly sharp knife.”

  Carson clicked on the report details. The forensics team had run a standard test protocol on the knife. As he scanned the report, he saw they had confirmed that it was Hailey’s blood on the blade. He clicked over to the next page, hoping they had been able to pull fingerprints. “You’ve got to be kidding me…”

  Ginny leaned forward in her chair, staring over Carson’s shoulder. “What? Something come back?”

  “The prints on the knife belong to a kid.”

  3

  “Beckman! Wait up!” Kat Beckman turned just in time to see Zara Reid running up after her. Their session at the National Conference for Independent Journalists had just let out. Kat had sat on the panel, answering questions about her work and her methods. She stepped off to the side, letting people pass, some of them mouthing “thank you” or “good job” as they walked down the hallway, rushing to their next session.