Free Deathscape by Dana Marton

only ten, living in Philadelphia with her parents, at the time of Shannon’s disappearance. One of the tightly wound springs inside him marginally relaxed.
    He stared at the images, and a faint memory popped into his head at last. The woman in one, lying in a dark alley, had been a rape/homicide case in West Chester six months back. The case belonged to a different police department, but Jack made it his business to look into cases of women disappearing, then turning up dead. This one he’d quickly ruled out as Blackwell’s, and the West Chester police had gotten their perp within a few days, a rock-solid case. She’d been murdered by her ex-boyfriend.
    No link to Blackwell. Yet there had to be a connection to Ashley Price, since Ashley had painted her. How and when?
    “ What do you know about these people?”
    She shifted her gaze away from him. “Nothing.”
    “ Stop lying.” Frustration raised his voice, which made her jump in her seat.
    “ Just what I read in the paper.”
    He drew up an eyebrow. “You only know them from the news?”
    She nodded without looking at him.
    He picked up the painting he’d been staring at and held it up for her. “I don’t remember the papers detailing the exact position of the body when she was found. You need to come up with a better story.”
    She paled, fighting more tears.
    His cop instincts said she didn’t have what it took to kill. Maybe in self-defense, but not in cold blood and regularly. She seemed messed up, granted, but cold, calculated murder wasn’t in her.
    He’d interrogated enough people to know when to go soft as well as when to push hard. He could do bad-cop-good-cop all on his own just fine.
    “ Look.” He gentled his voice. “I’ve got all these paintings now. I know you’re connected. I don’t think you harmed these people. We both know who did. You have to tell me where he is so I can stop him from doing this again.”
    She rubbed her arms, breathing erratically. “I don’t feel well.”
    “ You’ll feel better once you get this off your chest. It’s over. It’s the end of the line. You need to come clean.”
    Some strange energy seemed to zap into her then, and she shot to her feet, vibrating with nerves. “I can’t breathe.” She gulped air.
    Whatever her connection was to the people she painted, he knew this: Brady Blackwell had put him in a shallow grave, and Ashley Price had been there when he came to. For what purpose, Jack wasn’t sure yet, but he didn’t think she’d just randomly wandered the fields in the twilight and accidentally tripped over him as she claimed.
    And what about all these other people? They hadn’t been on her land. How had she come to see them dead? See them from close enough and well enough to render the scene with accurate detail?
    “ Tell me, Ashley, where, when, and how did you come to paint these?”
    She moved to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. Drank. Then, as if someone had taken out her battery, she collapsed against the counter and slid to the floor, leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees, her face buried in her slim-fingered artist hands as she hyperventilated.
    “ I see them in my mind.” She choked up the words. “I don’t want to. They are just there, and I have to get them out.”
    What she implied… Screw the good cop. Anger pumped through him. Did he look stupid? If she was going for this kind of bullshit, he seriously needed to work on his I-mean-business face. “So you’re psychic?”
    “ No.” The denial came between two gasps.
    “ What then?”
    Her hands fell away, and she looked up at him, the desperation on her face gut-wrenching. “I don’t know.” Tears filled her eyes all over again. She blinked them furiously away.
    A woman on the brink of falling apart. Good. Suspects usually told the truth when they came unhinged. Time to push harder.
    “ What is Blackwell to you?” he challenged. “Are you willing to go to prison for him? Is he your