Free Deathscape by Dana Marton Page B

trash.
    When the image of the fourth body invaded her thoughts, she’d been forced to paint on the back of an old kitchen cabinet with leftover household paints. After that, she’d accepted that she couldn’t fight the curse and no longer tossed the odd canvases friends brought by or the paint and brush samples sent by companies she’d frequently ordered from in the past.
    When the next terrible urge came, she simply painted the young woman, Megan Keeler, the first who had a name. Ashley had recognized her in the Inquirer a few days later. Missing College Student’s Body Found in Southeastern PA.
    She’d thrown up twice before she could finish the article.
    With the next victims, she searched the papers obsessively until she found them. She didn’t dare go to the police. What help could she be? They were already all dead. What could she say? I paint dead people?
    The man with the cerulean-blue eyes, Detective Jack Sullivan, had been her ninth.
    She was not going crazy. There had to be a way out of this. She would find it.
    “ When did it start?” he demanded.
    God, not that. She couldn’t go back to Dylan. But looking at the man’s face, she finally understood that she wasn’t going to get a choice. “An accident happened on the reservoir.”
    He nodded.
    Did he know about that? Of course he did; everyone around here knew the whole sordid tale.
    “ We fell through the ice, Maddie and Dylan and I.” She rubbed her hands over her arms, feeling the deadly chill all over again. “I was under for twenty minutes, but they pulled me out and revived me. I was in a coma for a week.”

The cold water had slowed down her metabolism to the point where she didn’t suffer any brain damage from the lack of oxygen, the doctors had explained later, declaring her a medical miracle.
    “ And after that—” It killed her to have to think back to the accusations, the tremendous guilt, the depression.
    The Millers, her neighbors, had lost Dylan. But she had lost her daughter too. Her father had taken Maddie while Ashley had been in the hospital. And considering the state she’d been in even after she’d gotten out, he’d been reluctant to give Maddie back.
    She wanted her daughter more than she wanted anything. But she was scared to the bone that there was something seriously wrong with her, that she was going crazy, that she would never get better, would never get Maddie back, would end up dying in a mental hospital like her mother, strapped to the bed.
    None of which she could share with anyone, not ever.
    All she could give Jack Sullivan was the most basic truth, which he had already seen and had refused to believe. “And now I paint the dead.”
     
     
     
    ~~~***~~~
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    Jack smashed his fist into the boxing bag, the sharp slap the only sound that broke the silence in the small workout room in the back of the police station. The gym was utilitarian, nothing but the basics. He didn’t need much. He just needed a place to build his body back.
    He lost himself in the rhythm of his punches. He liked it when he was alone in here. He was still on leave—not by his own choice—but he could at least use the gym, part of his physical therapy. Maybe he was doing it a little harder than he was supposed to, but he didn’t have time for a slow recovery.
    So he came in, once a day, for the gym, and because he could usually sneak a few minutes at his computer, check on things, ask around about what progress the FBI was making.
    None whatsoever.
    Pretty much the same as he. His home visit a week ago with Ashley Price had netted more questions than answers.
    He’d spent the intervening days with identifying everybody on the paintings he’d taken from her. Other than himself, he couldn’t find a single link to Blackwell.
    Punch, right, left. Forearms, right, left. Elbows, right, left. Knees, right, left. He exhaled sharply on each blow. He was focused on the bag, but not as deeply as he would have liked