smeared some of the blue paint on the wall. She
drank. She painted. She let her mind wander.
Jordan
thought about Amy. She thought about Amy's face. She was beautiful in an
unassuming, unpretentious way. Jordan thought about using Amy's face in one of
her illustrations. She might be perfect for her book-in-progress. Jordan had
been working on her children's book for the past year. She drew picture after
picture but was never satisfied with the end result. Using Amy's face might
give her the inspiration she needed.
Jordan
had a photographic memory. She could recall in startling detail every face
she'd ever seen. That talent came in quite handy in art school when she never
finished a drawing class by the time the bell rang. She'd simply go home,
finish from memory and hand it in the next day. This talent would also come in
handy if she were ever mugged or kidnapped or a victim of a senseless crime.
Which hadn't happened, thank God, but if it did she'd be able to draw her own
police sketch.
While
she painted the wall, she thought about Amy's eyes. They were beautiful, sure,
but so were a million other eyes Jordan had seen. The thing that made Amy's
eyes different was that what was behind them leaked out. Okay, leaking wasn't
the best word choice. What she meant was Amy had eyes with a depth past the
ordinary blue. They were a blue so deep that they seemed to get darker near
the center and swallow her up.
And
her lips. Perfect bow-shaped lips. Teeth that showed when she smiled. She
had one tooth in the front that was a tiny bit crooked. Just enough to not be
perfect. Cheeks with just a hint of color. A dimple in her right cheek. Not
in her left. Just her right. Her hair wasn't long, wasn't short, wasn't
straight, wasn't curly. It defied description. It was perfect.
Jordan's
thoughts were interrupted by a whirring noise. She turned and saw the little
remote control car roll into the room, travel across the floor and stop about a
foot from her feet. There was a manila envelope duct-taped to the top of the
car. Written on the envelope in Edison's scrawl were the words Dossier of
Dr. Amy Stewart .
Jordan
peeled the envelope off the car and opened it. Inside were several pages of
paper.
"What's
all this?" Jordan called out. She knew Edison had to be somewhere close
by.
Edison
leaned in the doorway with the monitor sunglasses perched on top of her head.
She froze when she looked at the wall. "A better question is, what is
that?" she said, jabbing a finger at the wall.
Jordan
followed Edison's stare and gasped. She had painted Amy. A large blue
portrait of Amy on the wall. She hadn't even realized what she'd been doing.
She raised her left hand and took a gulp of wine. She choked. “It’s an
illustration I’m working on.”
“Uh
huh,” Edison said. “It looks like a blue Amy if you ask me.”
“I
didn’t ask you.” Jordan waved the papers in the air. “You Googled her?”
“I
found out a bunch of stuff."
"Oh?"
Jordan tried to act only mildly interested while her heart pounded.
Edison
looked at Jordan's mug taped to her hand. "Ingenious."
"I
know, right?"
Edison
took another coffee cup off Jordan's drawing table, poured the dregs of
Jordan’s early morning coffee into an old paint can and filled it to the brim
with wine.
Unable
to look at the dossier, Jordan put the envelope on her desk. "Are you
going to tell me what you found out? She’s a murderer? A black widow? An
angel of death? A Lorena Bobbit?"
Edison
took a drink then said, "About what you'd expect really. She's thirty
years old –you were right on the nose. Grew up
here. Got her medical degree in San Diego, interned in Phoenix, practiced two
years back in San Diego and then came here. She graduated at the top of her
class, has some awards of excellence – I couldn't understand what they were
for, medical mumbo-jumbo of some sort.