Chapter Seven
Bare
I sat staring at my monitor not really seeing anything on it. Rafferty came up and placed a book in front of me. I looked down and I saw it was the sketch pad that I had let the homeless man keep.
I opened it and it was like staring right back at myself. I kept turning the pages. All of them were of me.
The man had so much talent. What had led him to the life of a homeless addict? So many homeless people had great abilities like this. What made them choose the life of the streets?
“The next two are quite interesting and, if you’re wondering, I’m the only one who’s seen that book.”
I looked up at Rafferty puzzled, and then back down, as I turned the page. I gasped at what the next sheet of the sketch book revealed.
It depicted me walking along what looked like the deck of a yacht with only a bikini on. While the amount of exposure was, in and of itself alarming, it was who was walking beside me that had my breath escaping.
It was Flint!
In direct contrast to my nearly bare attire, he was dressed in a pair of crisp slacks and what looked like a silk shirt. The end of an automatic pistol stuck up from the waistband of his pants and his right hand went around my back to rest on my right hip in a very familiar and possessive gesture.
Everything about the picture was absolutely crazy!
Perhaps craziest of all was the contented smile on my face. It looked like I was really enjoying myself.
“Why would he draw something like that?” Rafferty asked, eyeing me closely.
“I have no idea!” I said, louder than I should have, which prompted a few looks by others nearby.
I quickly closed the book so nobody could see the picture. Rafferty gave me a comical, not-so-serious eye over before saying, “Not only was our artist friend gifted with a photographic memory, but he must have had x-ray vision to capture you so well.”
The picture had captured me rather well, but how would he know that? Then I remembered a sting operation two years earlier involving a group of high priced escorts that were systematically being knocked off.
I had gone undercover as an escort. That had been an embarrassing investigation, but I had caught the killer. Rafferty wasn’t done though.
“I wonder if he couldn’t see the future, too?” he said in a leading tone.
What did he mean by that?
Reluctantly, I reopened the sketch book to the last page with a drawing. I stared at the picture in shock. It depicted both me and Flint locked together in an extremely intimate and passionate looking kiss.
I slammed the book closed and kept my head down.
“Out with it, Lisa. I know you’ve been holding out on me,” Rafferty said knowingly.
I looked up, my face flushed with embarrassment, “He was at my apartment last night. He stayed all night,” I said quickly, before looking back down.
“And what happened?” Rafferty asked softly.
“He came to warn me to drop the investigation, said it would only get me killed and that he didn’t want that.”
“What else happened?”
I worked hard on the splintering corner of my desk, as I answered. “He watched me sleep, changed the locks on my door and left breakfast in the oven for me. That was all that happened! Nothing else happened, I swear!”
“That’s a lot, Lisa!”
My head sunk lower in mortification.
As if to himself Rafferty said, “He changed the locks on your door, made you breakfast and you slept through all that? You must trust him.”
I didn’t answer him directly, “I think him warning me was genuine and not just some ploy to get me out of his hair.”
“Kind of odd behavior though, you have to admit Lisa. Perhaps you two are meant to be together.”
I started to object, but stopped as I felt the need to look at the intimate sketch of me kissing Flint again. Were we meant to be together?
My hand started to open the book back up, but Rafferty’s hand slammed the cover back down, practically on top of my fingers, which is when I saw Sal approaching.
I quickly shoved the sketch book into a drawer and locked it. I’d never live it down if Sal saw those pictures. I came out of my embarrassment, as I caught sight of Sal's troubled face.
He came up to us. “They found our snake guy. Dead, shot through the back of the head.”
I stood up abruptly, “Where?”
“Right beside the precinct in the alley.”
I thought instantly of Flint, but this didn’t seem like something he would do. Or was I just protecting him?
I pushed through the crowd of officers for the second time that day and ducked under the yellow tape. I felt bile rise up in my throat as I looked down upon the man and the snake emblem tattoo that stared up at me.
“You all right Lisa?” Lauren asked and I quickly let a mask fall over my face and nodded.
“Definitely our man. He still has our victim’s belt.” Lauren said, as she pulled out a leather belt from a pocket.
“The gun shot is clean. Looks like it was a professional hit. Our shooter knew what he was doing and from the angle of entry I’d say our shooter was on the upper tier of that parking garage down the street.”
I nodded and left the scene. I’d seen more than enough. It would seem possible that there was a fourth party involved in the operation now, or maybe there were still just three and Flint was the killer.