9-12-2020 - Paint By Numbers

 Paint By Numbers

IDEA - 9-12-2020

by

Patrick Ryan

1,616 Words

Alfonso Romero, a world-famous artist, has a secret. He is a serial killer known as the San Salvadorian Monster in the Spanish-speaking world and the Four Pints Killer in the English-speaking world. Starting in El Salvador, a struggling painter killed his first woman when he picked her up as a hitchhiker. She came from Spain, and nobody knew she was on holiday. Running the numbers in his brain, he knew that it would be difficult to solve the case if she was killed. Being a good looking man, Alfonso convinced the young woman to come home with him, where he cut her throat. He kept the floor clean while the blood dripped on his canvas; it was the most beautiful art. Then he took some mason jars and began gathering blood; he collected what turned out to be about four pints in the imperial system. He was inspired by the murder, painting through the night; it was a masterpiece. Leaving the dead body on the side of the road with no connection to him, he'd get away with the murder.  The artwork turned out to be worth a lot of money, and Alfonso's days of struggle were over. The artist tried to return to his traditional painting style, but he could not be motivated to create a successful follow-up like the blood painting. He decided to kill again, not because he had an urge, but because it felt lucky. Alfonso drove hundreds of miles, picked up a woman, subdued her, drove her hundreds of miles back to his studio, cut her throat, gathered about four pints of blood, and then drove her hundreds of miles back to where he found her. He tried to make it seem like an accident, but the murder ended up being the front page news anyway. Alfonso has never been deemed a suspect. His second murder painting validated his inspiration; it was a colossal success. So, over and over, he'd repeat this process, and his reputation was growing in the area. He developed so much fame that after about ten murders, someone realized that he was at the scene of the crime. He decided to move to the United States in a panic. He had the resources and the artistic cache to make a move, and his investigation stalled. He'd pursue his spree of murder in the United States, but he wasn't as famous there. Two serial killers, one artist, and a collection of paintings that contain the DNA needed to catch him.