Clicking on an email, I did my best to focus all while worry gathered in my belly.
* * * * *
By four p.m., my self-restraint snapped.
Justin’s voice was a loop inside my head. “Another murder. Third girl this year.”
My thoughts were awash with gruesome killings of pretty girls camouflaged in paint. I didn’t know if I felt a kindred calling to them because I’d been painted or because I was in love with a body painter.
Either way, my instinctual drive to protect Gil demanded I know more.
Gil.
He had issues and complexities; he was prickly and hiding something monstrous beneath his icy façade.
But he was gentle.
Kind.
And mine.
Mine to guard against new and old horrors.
Chewing on my bottom lip, I opened a new internet search: Murdered painted girls in England.
My lungs stuck together as page results flickered over my screen.
Clicking on a link, I trembled as I read something normally reserved for other places, other counties, other populations.
Tragically, another young woman was found early last night by a dog walker in Nottingham forest. The girl appears to have died from dehydration and starvation while being restrained and gagged in the treetops. The police searched the area a few days prior, thanks to an anonymous tip, but were unsuccessful in locating her due to the significant paintwork over her skin mimicking the branches where she was tied. Because of the camouflage, she was effectively invisible to law enforcement and most likely saw them searching for her before she died.
Today, police have been criticized for their lack of use of sniffer dogs.
This is the third death of similar methods, which leads law enforcement to believe a serial killer is loose in the Garden of England. Two previous girls (Shelly King (22) and Moira Jonston (27)) where found in the shrub garden at Wightwick Manor and Cannon Hill Park. Shelly King was painted to match the undergrowth she was tucked beneath, and Moira Jonston was lashed to a tree with her skin the same texture and shadow of bark.
Both women were already dead upon discovery.
Police urge anyone who might know anything about these murders to call their emergency hotline. They also advise that young women avoid unnecessary travel alone until further notice.
No arrests have been made.
My stomach roiled.
What sort of sick bastard tied up women, silenced them, then made them invisible to the people trying to find them? What sort of killer left his victims to starve to death? Why bother killing at that point? It wasn’t like he got the thrill of taking someone’s life. He had to wait to read about their demise in the local paper, just like the rest of us.
Those poor girls.
Murders happened all the time. The world had turned into a dark, violent place. I’d heard about other crimes far worse...but those dead painted girls wriggled into my bones and scraped out my marrow.
A blizzard howled in my chest.
Gil...
Would he be able to help the police track down who’d done this? Could he even have met them? Did body painters share their tips and tricks? Attend seminars of talent?
There wasn’t any doubt that the killer had to be severely deranged.
Psychotic without a doubt.
He had to have transport.
Perhaps a van like the guy who tried to kidnap me?
I turned into a statue.
No...
I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t outrun the runaway train my brain became.
That guy is a bastard.
He hurt Gil.
He has something over him.
He wasn’t...normal.
Could it be?
If he was the killer, did that mean Gil was involved? What if he was next? What if he was trapped in something even worse than I thought?
The incessant whispers slithered and snaked. I couldn’t stop the what if, what if, what if.
What if Gil has something to do with this?
My heart stopped beating.
He was bleeding and dirty the night he was drunk.
Goosebumps scattered over my flesh as my mind unfolded the night I’d slept with him. How he’d poured alcohol down his throat as if running from something. As if he drank pure regret.
He’d smelled of earth and paint.
He’d looked beside himself with rage and despair.
Could he—
Stop it.
Just stop it.
He is no way involved in this.
He can’t be!
You know him.
You’ve known him since he was a boy.
But I couldn’t stop it.
It was a knife in my side; a pebble in my shoe.
It was stark fear that Gil was silenced by the devil and stuck in a torturous hell.
With my heart lodged in my throat, I grabbed my phone and opened messenger. Pulling up the conversation I’d had with Justin over Gil’s disappearance around the time the third girl was kidnapped, I froze.
What do you think you’re doing?
You’re seriously going to ask Justin if he believes Gil is involved?
Could I really think such atrocious things and ask his best friend to prove me wrong?
Gil saved me from the guy with the van!
Yes! Therefore, he couldn’t be the murderer.
But why did he make me lie to the police...?
I gasped at the barbed, thorny thought.
Why didn’t Gil beat that bastard into the ground?
What did that guy have over him as blackmail?
The air became thin and sour. I unbuttoned a few pearl clasps on my grey blouse, prickling with sweat.
I swiped at my hair again as my eyes fell on the awaiting message bubble. A fleck of silver paint fell from my strands, landing on the desk.
If I didn’t ask, I’d go crazy.
Olin Moss: Those murdered girls you mentioned this morning...do you think...and this is NUTS, but is there any way Gil could be wrapped up in...whatever is going on? I don’t know what I’m asking...but do you think he’s in trouble?
I squeezed my eyes and tapped send, unable to breathe.
Thirty seconds ticked past before his response blared across my screen.
Justin Miller: Wow. I know it’s been a long time since you’ve seen the guy but seriously?
Olin Moss: I know. I hate myself for even asking. I’m just worried about him. He’s hiding something, Justin. Something huge.
Justin Miller: He is not a killer. No matter what he’s hiding.
I wanted to leave it at that. I believed Justin. I trusted Gil. I knew in my heart he could never be capable of hurting anyone.
But...
But!
Olin Moss: The girls were painted. He went missing around the same time that last girl was kidnapped.
Justin Miller: He said he had family business to deal with. You know the jackass that was his father. His disappearance probably had something to do with that. And there are other body painters, O. Countless others.
He had a point.
The same wonderfully valid point my own mind had thrown at me.
A hundred other artists existed just like there were a hundred other office workers, authors, and politicians. And he was also right about Gil’s father. I hadn’t even factored that in.
Justin Miller: Your turn to answer a question. Do YOU think Gilbert Clark is a serial murderer?
The black and white finality of the words cut into my eyes and bled into my soul. A kaleidoscope of memories, recent and past, swirled together with the same vibrant colours Gil wielded so effortlessly.
A man with smiling sad eyes.
A man desperately trying not to kiss me.