Sketched Read online

  Blackness.

  Her unconscious self had scribbled like a madwoman onto the page, ripping holes with the intensity of her efforts. There was no face, no sad eyes to look out at her, no point of reference that the figure was even that of a human. All she could make out was a violent, black vortex of darkness. She had pressed so hard that she could even make out the shimmer of the pencil lead where it piled on top of itself.

  There was no need to question who this was a portrait of.

  Adam would say it was a portrait of her own impending insanity.

  There was a light knock at her door, causing Piper to jump. She wadded the torn paper back up tightly.

  “Come in,” she said, her throat sore with the tension she still felt in her neck. She tossed the paper away from her, watching with satisfaction as it bounced off the side of the bed and onto the floor. She quickly moved the pictures of her mother and the boy to the side and pulled the blanket up around her chest.

  Adam’s furry face emerged in the doorway, peeking discreetly through the narrow opening he’d created.

  “Are you decent?”

  Piper couldn’t help but scoff. It came out far more vulnerable than she’d intended, an unsteady noise that only served to make her friend frown with concern. He pushed the door open farther to get a better look.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, stepping into the room. “You look stricken.”

  Self-consciously, Piper pulled her blanket up higher. She sighed, disappointed at the lump that appeared in her throat as soon as Adam stepped in. With a still trembling hand, she picked up the pictures and offered them to him.

  His brow knitted with concern, he crossed the room and took the two rumpled papers. The lump threatening to turn to sobs, Piper watched Adam’s face as he scanned her drawings.

  “This…” Adam tapped the picture of her mom. “This is exceptional. It’s your mother, isn’t it? I recognize her from those photos you showed me. I didn’t know you were working at night?”

  “Neither did I.” Piper angrily wiped the tears out of her eyes.

  Adam looked confused.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I woke up and the pictures were there, crumpled up in my lap. I was still holding the pencil for god’s sake. See?” She held out her palm, still red from the grip she had on her pencil, her fingertips black and smooth with lead.

  “You…let me get this straight.” Adam squinted down at her as he tried to understand. Piper could see the professional veil fall over her friend’s eyes and a small part of her began to panic. He wasn’t going to believe her. Of course, he wouldn’t. He was the one that suggested the sketch book by the bed to help deal with the dreams, that was true. But he didn’t expect her to be unconscious when she used it. “You don’t remember drawing these?”

  Piper shook her head.

  “Just like all the times before, Adam. I had a dream.” When she spoke, she ensured her voice was as calm as possible. Even though her mind was one big flashing warning light of impending doom, she tried to keep herself as even as she could. “Another one. Look at the second picture.”

  Adam tucked her mother’s picture under the second page. He immediately went still. Piper watched as his eyes flickered over the boy’s image, trying in the same way she had done to place him in some logical part of their lives.

  “It’s very arresting,” he said at last. “Who is he? Should I even ask?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Adam sighed and sat down on the side of the bed. He reached out with the hand not holding her work and squeezed her duvet covered knees.

  “It’s just the images again Piper. Really good ones granted, but just images from your dream. That’s all. Don’t be tempted to see something that’s not there.”

  “Adam, I swear. I woke up a few minutes ago and there they were. I’m not trying to trick anyone, I’m not looking for attention. It’s just…” She stopped for a moment to steady her voice. “Before I was shot, before I went to that house, Harrison wanted me to interview that girl that had survived a kidnapping. Beth was her name, remember? In the middle of the whole thing, in the middle of the interview I blacked out and the same thing happened. I woke up with a picture I didn’t remember drawing. And you know that’s not the only time, Adam. I’ve told you everything.”

  “Exactly. You blacked out. Passed out. Whatever you want to call it. It’s not a trance, not a message or a warning. It’s that mind of yours working over time,” He squeezed her knee again, looking at her with far more pity than she was comfortable with. “It’s a side effect from being as gifted as you are, that’s all.”

  There was something missing from Adam’s comforting rant. Even though she was only half listening, as usual, it was lacking his usual enthusiasm. Piper noticed for the first time since he’d come into the room how his face was tense with what she could only think of as nerves.

  “What is it?” she asked, swinging her legs out of the covers and to the side of the mattress. “What’s with that look on your face? What’s going on?”

  Adam folded the pictures lightly, not out of necessity but for something to expel his nervous energy. He cleared his throat.

  “You have a visitor,” he said simply.

  Piper groaned. Annalisa. Back to poke around some more. The burst of annoyance felt good, it gave her a power that the dream and resulting pictures had drained. She flopped back on the bed behind her, her head sinking into the pillows.

  “Seriously? Aren’t nightmares and strange pictures first thing in the morning enough? Tell Annalisa she’ll get her paintings when I’m done.”

  Adam had stood up. He looked back at her over his shoulder, stuffing the pictures into his pocket. He needed to get them out of sight before telling the exhausted woman behind him exactly who waited for her downstairs.

  “It’s not Annalisa,” he said. “You’d better get dressed, do a little something with that mop of yours.”

  “Why?” Piper sat up, frowning. She was doubly confused. Firstly, no one came to the house but her agent and secondly, Adam never suggested she do anything with her hair. “This visitor sounds like kind of a big deal.”

  When Adam looked at her, his face was a study of concern and dread.

  “It’s Chris Harrison,” he announced, “Head detective of the Dixon City Police Department. He says he has something he needs to talk to you about.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  * * *

  Piper’s Living Room

  Piper had done very well for herself over the last while. The room he stood in was a far cry from the one where he had first met her. Back then she had been no more than a scrawny little kid who had sat across from him at the cigarette burned table, dry-eyed and unbelieving as he broke the news her mother was missing.

  There were no stained sofas, no doors marked by the scratches of dogs desperate for attention, no broken televisions or holes in the walls. He was the one that felt shabby now, like a piece of furniture taken from that hovel she was raised in. He was an awkward and unmistakable relic from a past that she had managed to get away from.

  He caught his reflection in the wide mirror above the fireplace. He looked ragged and overworked. If he were here to see her under any other circumstances, he would’ve at least stopped for a haircut and a shave on the way up. As it was, his cheeks were bristly with greying two-day stubble and his untrimmed hair was long enough to almost hang below his nose. Even his once expensive jacket looked like he’d hauled it from a thrift store bin. He had spent over a hundred dollars on it but it was as if the elegance of the home around him only served to point out how cheap it actually was.

  How cheap he was.

  How long had it been since the accident? He’d been the one to find her, of course. Unwilling to call in any reinforcements for what he believed to be the hunch of some unbalanced girl, he’d finally gone to help her. As a favor. He’d taken his time finishing his cocktail, he remembered that. He’d even lit another cigarette, si
tting back in his lounge chair and staring, unseeing at Dixon’s elite as they fluttered around him like insects.

  Forty-five minutes after her initial call, he’d given up pretending not to care and decided to make the drive over to whatever address she’d been so adamant about. Of course, he had been much too late. He should’ve left when she called. He should’ve taken her at her word.

  Harrison felt his chest clench with guilt. It was a familiar feeling. He’d been living with it for the last half-decade. It had become like a war wound for him, a reminder of all the bad choices that the universe had for some reason let him get away with. This one though, that was the choice that in his deepest, most drunken moments, he prayed to get punished for.

  What was it he said when she had shown him the picture she had drawn during that interview all those years ago? He stared at himself in her mirror, smoothing his hair down over his forehead. That was it. He told her it didn’t look like anyone he knew.

  Of course, it did.

  He’d recognized the face in the drawing immediately.

  Harrison jumped when the French doors that separated the large front room from the entrance hall opened. He flushed, hoping he hadn’t been seen fiddling with his appearance like a nervous teenager. He flushed even deeper when he made eye contact with the young woman standing framed in the doorway.

  He’d seen her in magazines and online. Even though he had little to no interest in art, he’d kept up with her career with the dedication of a parent. Those paintings she’d completed after the accident had made a massive impact on the art world and for a while, her picture had been everywhere. He’d even done a search before leaving Dixon to see if there was any recent news.

  There had been nothing. But no picture could’ve prepared him for the girl transformed into woman before him.

  “Look at you,” he said, and immediately regretted it. He struggled to regain his footing, making his way past her expensive furniture to shake her hand. “I mean, it’s only been five years but holy shit, you look…”

  Harrison was really struggling. Older was one word that came up, but he knew that wouldn’t go over well. Tired was another. The word that sat on the tip of his tongue was the worst. Damaged. She looked damaged. She was overly thin and dark-eyed. She had always been lovely, but the wide-eyed doll like appearance he’d always associated with her, had become more haunted than innocent.

  Standing barefoot, an oversized cardigan pulled over a white nightdress, she reminded Harrison of something from a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. She was the tortured heroine, the girl that existed only to be broken.

  Now close enough to embrace her, Harrison decided instead to put his hands on her shoulders. All he could feel beneath his palms was bone.

  “Oh, don’t bother, Harrison. I know how I look.” Despite the annoyed tone in her voice, Piper smiled tightly at her old friend.

  “How have you been? I mean, obviously, you’re doing well.” He wanted to hug her. He felt he should. After all, he had practically raised her those years after her mother had disappeared. There was a stiffness to her body when he touched her that made it clear that kind of closeness wouldn’t be welcome. It never had, it was silly for him to think it would be now.

  Instead, he gestured lamely to the house around them. “Your house is incredible. It looks like the painting is working out?”

  “Illustrating,” Piper said. Harrison had forgotten how blunt she could be. “That’s what pays the bills. The paintings are just…” She paused now, at a loss for words. Just torture? “They’re supplemental, I guess you’d say.”

  “And fantastic. I mean, I don’t even know anything about art, but I followed your career.” He blushed. “The internet and all that. I saw what an impact you made, you ought to be proud.”

  There was a rattling in the hallway behind her and the short, bearded man who had met him at the front door walked in, balancing a tea tray.

  He smiled at the two of them. Harrison thought he could see Piper’s face relax. She was relieved to have someone else in the room to dilute the awkward dynamic.

  “Thought I’d bring in some tea.” The man cheerily stated the obvious. He placed the tray on the table between the two overstuffed couches. “That’s a grueling drive from Dixon, isn’t it?”

  “You better believe it. Especially when my GPS couldn't find your place. According to her, your house doesn’t exist. I ended up having to actually stop my car and talk to a local.” He smiled at Piper, watching her face for some kind of connection.

  There wasn’t one. She smiled at him fleetingly, tugging her cardigan even closer to her willowy body.

  “Well, then you really need a cup of tea after that.” Adam began to pour the tea, “Sugar? Lemon? I made an assumption. Americans are rather fond of lemon.”

  “You assumed right Dr. Broughton.”

  Piper blinked at him, her large eyes growing wider. When she had meat on her bones, her eyes weren’t quite as shocking as they were now. Looking into them, Harrison felt embarrassed, it was as if he were intruding on the quiet workings of her mind. Although those workings didn’t seem so quiet this morning. There was something absent in them that made him worry that he’d made the long trip for nothing.

  “You two know each other?” Piper asked, confused. She sank slowly to the couch, shaking her head at the cup of tea that Adam placed in front of her.

  “We’re old friends,” Adam said. “We met fifteen minutes ago when I opened the door. How time has passed.”

  Harrison laughed overly loudly. He sat down on the opposite couch of Piper. When he crossed his legs, he noticed a hole creeping up from the heel of his sock and out of his shoes. His scuffed shoes. This whole scenario was too rich for his blood.

  “Actually, Detective Harrison, I know more about you than you know. That’s the benefit of being a therapist, you tend to get the good gossip.”

  Harrison’s face went blank, he stared from Adam to Piper and back again, the block of guilt he carried in his chest suddenly that much heavier.

  “I’m kidding.” Adam handed him his tea. “She’s only ever said kind things about you. You were quite an influence. How you made sure she was safe with that uncle of hers? Rest his soul.”

  Harrison was reminded of Piper’s uncle, his ass permanently hanging out of his pants, his eyes constantly matte with whatever opioid he was currently hooked on. He had felt a twinge of sadness when his body was found a few years ago, not because of his death but because of how long it had gone unnoticed. He was one of Dixon’s faceless hoards; too beat up by poverty and disappointment to want to do much but slip away into self-induced comas.

  They’d had to put down the three dogs living in his house. When they’d finally found him, the dogs had sustained themselves off of his flesh. The only reason anyone had called the police was because the starving dogs had taken up continual barking once their food source started to dwindle.

  This was a detail they’d kept from the press. Looking at the state of Piper now, he figured he’d keep that detail to himself a bit longer.

  “I am so sorry about that,” he said to Piper. “Your Uncle might not have been greatest guy, but I know he loved you.”

  “Why are you here, Harrison?” No longer able to suffer the bumbling politeness of her old friend, Piper decided to address him in the way she knew he used to be most comfortable with. He was a no-nonsense man as far as she remembered.

  Adam’s cup of tea halted midair, his own careful social temperature slightly rattled by her abruptness. He was shocked to see Harrison smile.

  “Oh, thank god, I thought we’d be stuck in formalities forever.”

  Piper inhaled through her nose and exhaled slowly, Dr. Broughton style.

  “It isn’t my mother, is it?” She was dismayed to hear a tone of hope in her voice. No hope. Hope made one weak. It prevented people from moving on, right Adam?

  Piper wasn’t surprised to see Adam frowning as he took a sip of his tea.

 
Harrison shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not. Your mom was filed away in cold cases years ago, you know that.”

  “Well, I’m having a hard time thinking of any other reason why you’d drive eight hours to come see me.”

  Harrison fiddled with the tea cup Adam had passed him, embarrassed. She had every right to be furious. He had been the only family she’d had besides her tragic uncle and he’d chosen to disappear as soon as the bullet tore through her young brain five years ago. His biggest fear, the one that turned him into a coward and forced him away from her was that she’d ask why.

  Please don’t let her ask why.

  He lifted one hip and reached into the pocket of his shabby jacket. He slipped a large manilla envelope out. He had folded it in half so that it would fit easily and he could feel the paper snap back into place as he offered it to her.