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K ylie walked to the captain’s office and knocked on the door. When no answer came, she hesitated and knocked again.

A woman behind her said, “He’s having a nap.”

She turned and nodded to one of the women who answered the phones. “Okay, I’ll just leave him a message.”

The woman eyed the sketchbook in Kylie’s hand and suggested, “Unless you want to leave that behind.”

“Nope, I sure don’t,” she replied cheerfully, as she turned and headed toward the elevators, leading back down to her little basement room. The last thing Kylie wanted to do was to leave any of her artwork behind. Just as she approached the elevator, a roar from behind her had her spinning around.

There was the captain, shoving his hair out of his eyes. “I told you to come in,” he snapped.

She frowned, as she headed back toward him. “I didn’t hear you. Plus, I was told you were having a nap.”

He snorted. “Hardly a nap.”

“You’re entitled to catch a few minutes.”

“Doesn’t matter whether I’m entitled to or not,” he muttered. “Get in here.” He motioned for her to get inside his office. As soon as she stepped inside, he slammed the door shut. She winced at that, then he frowned.

“Sorry, not trying to upset everybody.”

“It’s an upsetting time,” she murmured.

“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” he agreed. “Have you got anything for me?”

She studied him for a long moment and nodded. “I feel as if an undercurrent of something is here.”

“Yeah? I don’t really have time to waste,” he noted. “So did you or did you not find anything?”

“I found all kinds of things,” she replied cautiously.

He waved his arm in an irritable manner. “Stop with the constant prevaricating,” he said. “Did you or did you not find anything?”

“What is it you expect me to find?” she asked, as she walked to his desk and dropped her sketchbook on it. She watched as he walked around the room.

“I don’t know what I expect you to find, but I feel as if you’ll find something.”

“That’s nice. Maybe you should tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for,” she snapped, “before you start giving me orders that I don’t even understand.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “So, do you not understand, or don’t you want to see it?”

She let out her breath slowly. “I think an explanation is in order.”

“If I had an explanation, I would give you one,” he growled. “At the moment I’m a little overwhelmed with all kinds of shit happening.”

“Of course, but I feel as if you’re looking for something from me that I don’t necessarily have to give.” He didn’t seem to like hearing that.

“Look. I was told you could do more than just sketch.”

She froze. “Do more than just sketch?” she repeated. “What does that mean?”

He glared at her. “I don’t know what it means. However, because I trust the person delivering that message to me, that is the only reason why I have you here at all.”

She sank into the visitor’s chair. “Meaning that I wouldn’t have a job except for this person?”

He shrugged irritably. “To a certain extent, yes, though you do a great job when we have people who need something. However, I’m not sure we need a sketch artist in a full-time position.”

“Maybe not,” she agreed. “So, are you firing me?”

“No, I’m not firing you, damn it,” he snapped. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“You didn’t ask me a question,” she stated in an equally forceful tone. “And who suggested I could do more than just draw?” The captain glared at her, not saying anything. She sighed. “His name is not Stefan, is it?”

His eyebrows shot up, and he shook his head. “Who is Stefan?”

She stared at him in confusion. “Look. Obviously we have different expectations of what’s going on here,” she began. “Could you please answer the question as to who suggested I might do more?”

The captain glanced at his shut door, as if seeing the bullpen on the other side, and shrugged. “It’s probably not a good idea if I do that.”

“Maybe not,” she conceded, “but it might make my life a little easier.”

“Sure, but it’ll make mine worse,” he admitted, with a wry look. “So can you or can you not?” When she just stared at him, he reached for the sketchbook, flipped it open, and sucked in his breath. “Christ.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Your drawings pack a punch.”

“Art is more personal than snapshots,” she explained, as she stared at him and the sketchbook in his hands. “A photograph allows you to distance yourself, but hand-drawn pictures like these are pretty hard to separate yourself from the emotions tied to the scene.”

“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” he declared, still a bit unnerved. “Why the hell do you want to do this work anyway?”

“At times I would have said, Because I don’t have a choice , but I’m not even sure that is the truth.”

“And that’s what I’m talking about. Something’s… off about you. I’m sorry. That came out wrong.… Something’s different about you,” he corrected, waving his hand. “I’m not explaining myself well, or maybe it’s more like I can’t explain it.”

“If you told me who said something about me, then I could at least clarify expectations with them.”

“Nope. I can’t do it,” the captain replied. “It was a recommendation given to me in confidence. I started this journey on my own, and I won’t involve them.”

Frustrated, she could only groan at him. “If you won’t tell me what you want or expect from me, how is it you expect me to do my job?”

“I was hoping for more, although this”—he stared at the gruesome scene on the page—“is fucking brilliant. Mind you, it’s disgusting, nasty, and horrible, but it’s also fucking brilliant. Christ.” He closed the sketchbook, leaning back to compose himself for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Was I supposed to draw these in some way other than just as I see them?”

“No, no.” He waved a hand at the sketchbook. “Obviously you’re supposed to draw them just how you see them. Yet there’s sketching, and there is real life, and this is a whole lot closer to real life than any of us were expecting.”

She nodded. “I’m a realistic artist. I’m sorry if that’s not what you were expecting.” Then she hesitated. “Though I have done drawings for you before.”

“I know. I know,” he snapped, covering his face with his hands.

“Maybe I should come back later.”

He glared at her. “There won’t be a later if we don’t get this solved.”

She stared at him for a long moment and nodded. “Do you think my drawings will highlight something that’ll help you solve this casino case?”

He dropped his hands and asked her, “Can you?”

She was so surprised that she wasn’t sure what to say to him.

“I mean, seriously, can you? Is there something you can find in any of your artwork that can help us? I’m grasping at straws here, but that’s exactly what I need.” He almost looked relieved that he’d finally gotten it out.

“I’m not sure. I just draw what I see.”

“No,” he countered, “you’re drawing more than you see. That’s obvious because we were all there, and we didn’t all see this. Christ, you got the expressions nailed and even pearls on this woman’s neck.”

“Yes, and I am sure anyone else would have seen them too. She was wearing pearls after all,” Kylie noted. “I got the impression they were a family heirloom, something passed down from generation to generation. This killer didn’t just destroy one family. He destroyed multiple families.”

He stared at her and added, “But I don’t think anybody else would have noticed the pearls under all that gore and blood.”

“Maybe not,” she said, “but they would have eventually. I see the details.”

“Yes, and I need those details,” he declared, and then glared at her shrewdly. “Anything else that you might feel is important?”

Her lips twitched. “Sure, I would like to know who recommended me to you.”

He sat back, obviously feeling as if he were on safer ground. “Yeah, I might have another talk with him about it later.”

“Of course,” she replied smoothly, then smiled at him. “Do you want to go through the sketches now?”

“No, Christ, no, I don’t want to,” the captain admitted, glaring down at them. “But apparently I have to.” He opened her sketchbook again, took a deep breath, then slowly, wincing a couple times, went through the pages she had drawn. He stared at the sketchbook for a long moment. “I feel as if you almost did a time capsule of their individual lives.”

“Maybe I did,” she noted cautiously. “It’s what I saw.”

“An awful lot of detail is here, but that may not be all of it.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “You tell me. A lot of pages were ripped out.”

“Yes,” she confirmed, taking a careful tone, “not all of them were ones I could show.”

“How so?”

“Sometimes… I draw uncontrollably, things like the families crying,” she explained. “I left a bunch in, but they’re really not part of what I saw.”

“Yet they’re just as important perhaps.”

“Some people were moving dead bodies,” she shared. “Some people were covering them. Some people were lying on top of them because they couldn’t stand to leave them.”

“I know,” the captain acknowledged, trying to calm down. However, his gaze still held a look of wildness. “I’ve looked at various scenes similar to this, and it’s horrific.”

Kylie nodded. “Everybody goes to pieces, and, therefore, some of the crime scene areas were changed.”

“Yes.” When he flipped through to the second-to-last drawing, she stiffened. He glanced up at her curiously. “What’s important about this one?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

He flipped to the last one and stared, then flipped back through several others, and she slowly relaxed. He glanced at her and asked, “Okay, so what did you expect me to see?”

She shook her head. “One of them is different.”

“They’re all different,” he snapped. “They’re all horrific. Christ, I’ll have nightmares forever after looking at this.”

“And yet the real-life pictures, the photos, would do that to you as well. It’s nothing you haven’t seen already.”

“Yes, they will affect me too,” he conceded, “but the photographs allow me to step back a bit. These are just way too real.” He closed the sketchbook, crossed his hands together on his desktop, and asked, “Which one is the one that you were expecting more of a reaction to?”

She suggested, “Go through them again, but look at them from more of a detective’s point of view.”

He rolled his eyes at that. “I’m always a detective.”

“No,” she replied, taking a deep breath, not sure if he would ever get it. “You’re a father. You’re a husband. You’re a mother. You’re a wife. You’re all things to all people, and you’re also trying to keep the department together on one of the most horrific incidents you have ever seen.” He stared at her in surprise, and she could see the emotions working over his face, as she nodded. “I saw it, even if you didn’t want anybody to.”

“You can just un-see it, damn it.” He started flipping through the pages, stopping to look at each one briefly. When he got back to the last one, he wanted to close the book, then backtracked to stare at this second-to-last drawing.

He looked from the page to her and then back at it again. “Jesus, did you actually see this one?”

She nodded. “I did.”

He stared at it and shook his head. “And just like this?” She nodded. “I haven’t got the crime scene photos yet to match up with your sketches,” he muttered, staring off in the distance.

“No, they’re not out yet, but you should get them soon.”

“Yeah, but how the hell did you do all of these by hand so much faster than the photographers could develop their films or print their digital images or whatever the hell they do?”

She shrugged. “My sketches come from the heart, not from technology.”

“I don’t even know what that means, and I don’t even think I want to.” He went back to the same drawing and tapped it. “This one is staged.”

“Yes,” she confirmed, adding a long hiss.

He lifted his gaze, narrowed it, and asked, “What the fuck is going on?”

*

Hearing the captain shout for him, Porter stood up from his desk, turned, and watched as Kylie walked away, no sketchbook in sight. Porter immediately walked to the captain’s office, who waved him inside and ordered him to shut the door. As he closed the door behind him and sat down, the captain glared at him.

“What did she say?” Porter asked.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on with that one,” the captain began, “but I need you to look at a few things.” He pointed to the sketchbook.

Porter nodded and reached for the sketchbook.

The captain sat back and stared at him. “Why the hell did you tell me that I should bring her on board?”

“Because she sees things,” he stated, “and you know that.”

“I know you see things too,” the captain pointed out, “and it’s gotten us into trouble before.”

“Yes, it has, but only generally on things like the budget,” Porter clarified, as he flipped open the sketchbook. The first picture made him sit back, all the air squeezing out of his chest, as he stared down at the picture of the father holding the young child, the bullet having gone through both of them. She was a realist when it came to her drawings. Everything looked exactly as in real life, only more painfully emotional. She caught the victims’ expressions. She caught the heart of each person on her page. Something just magical and devastating appeared each time. “Christ,” he murmured.

“Right,” the captain agreed. “I can hardly even look at this. Nobody does work like this.”

“She does,” Porter stated, “and obviously, as you can tell, she does a hell of a job at it.”

“Yeah, I know. I see that, but holy shit.”

Porter flipped through the pages one at a time, wincing at the clarity and the emotions, the pain, the loss, the suffering on each and every one of the victims and even the survivors. It was so evident that she had picked up on all the things that caused the emotions, and it was hard to forget. In a low voice, he murmured, “I keep wanting to tear away my gaze, but I find I’m fascinated and can’t.”

“Exactly,” the captain muttered, as he leaned across his desk, his arms clasped in front of him. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this.”

As Porter made his way through the sketchbook, her images were impaled into his memory, and he knew he would never forget them. Even though he had seen many of these same things, he’d learned to distance himself from the crime scenes, taking a step back so he could sleep at night, but these? These were more haunting, were more personal in some way. They were shocking, and yet, at the same time, the artwork involved was absolutely incredible.

When he got to the last one, he wanted to close his eyes and bow his head in grief, when suddenly it hit him. His eyelids flew open, and he turned the page to the previous sketch, his gaze narrowing. He lifted his gaze to the captain and then looked back down at the second-to-last drawing.

The captain waited.

“She’s fucking posed.”

The captain nodded with satisfaction. “Right.”

“Kylie told you that?” Porter asked.

“She waited to see if I caught it first, and I admit that I didn’t see it the first time through. So, you caught it sooner than I did.”

Porter stared at the woman, her thighs wide, her skirt ridden up high, her arms and legs outstretched, almost as if struck midflight, yet still landed gracefully. He leaned into the picture. “Is that a bullet wound in each hand?”

“Yes,” the captain agreed. “That was my take on it and with her feet too.”

Porter asked, “He crucified her to the floor? With bullets?”

“I think so. Did you notice that her clothing has been cut from top down? I won’t know for sure until we get her into the morgue, and we have the autopsy results, but she was definitely treated differently.”

“She was the target then,” Porter declared, as he closed the book, then sat back and stared at the captain. “Who the fuck is she?”

“I don’t know. At present, we know nothing, so I need you on it. This is your case. Thoughts?”

“We’ll need to know everything about her life and everyone in her life because, whoever did this, isn’t the same killer as the one who took out everybody else.”