There was a bundle of photographs inside a manila envelope. There were maybe thirty pictures and every one of them was of the same person. Ella at ten, Ella at fifteen, Ella at twenty and so on. She was a true beauty, all right. Her smile could jar your teeth loose and give you a concussion. She was innocence and guile in equal measure, and she probably couldn’t tell the difference between the two, and neither could you, not that you gave a damn anyway, she was trophy blond, eternal blonde, slender and supple goddess blonde, with just enough sorrow in the blue blue eyes to give her an air of fetching mystery, not ever completely knowable or possessable, this Ella girl and Ella woman, not ever.
I found it significant that there were no photos of them together. Ella was always alone. Beautiful and alone. The stuff of myth.
“Maybe he left town,” Shea said.
“Maybe.”
“She’s got plenty of money. They could go anywhere.”
“He isn’t finished yet.”
“Finished with what?”
I showed him the piece of Yellow Pages I’d just found in the bottom drawer. It had been ripped out, jagged. Under DANCE CLUBS, there were six names. He’d crossed off four of them.
“Looks like three to go,” I said.
“That crazy son-of-a-bitch.”
“We need to find him fast.”
Then I saw the edge of another photo sticking out from beneath a sack of cheap white socks that were still in their plastic bagging.
“You find something else?” Shea said, as I stooped over.
“Uh-huh.”
I snatched the photo and stared at it. “He a fisherman?”
“No way. Why?”
“He’s got a photo of the marina here.”
He took the photo from me. “Hey, I forgot about her houseboat.”
“Ella’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Big-ass houseboat. Really fancy. Out at the Ellis marina.”
“Sounds like it’d be worth checking out,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”
7
Ellis Park was the place to go to see summer girls. At least it used to be when I’d visit my Cedar Rapids cousins back in the sixties and early seventies. The girls came in all colors and shapes and sizes and they were probably just as afraid of you as you were of them but their fear was more discreet than ours, and they passed by on bare sweet grass-flecked feet and tire-thrumming ten speed bikes and in the backs of shiny fine convertibles and on the rear ends of motorcycles driven by boys with biceps like softballs.
The summer girls were long gone now. Autumn was on the land, and on the water too, and the bobbing boats, mostly cabin-style or house boats, looked lonely in the dusk and the first faint light of winter stars. Here and there you saw cabin lights. In the summer they would have been welcoming and beacon bright but now there was something faded and desperate about them.
We pulled up on the ridge above the marina. Matt said, “I want to go down there alone first.” Wimmers had been pulled on an emergency case, a bank robbery.
“The one you pointed out, there aren’t any lights on.”
“She doesn’t want any lights on. Ever. Her face. He told me that. She gets pissed when he turns lights on.” He shook his head. “All this shit comes out at the trial, I’m fucking dead meat. My father-in-law’s a wheel at the country club. They’re gonna be all over his ass.”
“Maybe you should concentrate on your brother right now.”
He glared at me. “Oh, I’m concentrating on him, all right. He’s some psycho and he’s going to destroy everything I built for myself in this town. So don’t fucking tell me about concentration, all right, Payne?”
He got out of the car and then ducked his head back in. “If he’s down there, I’ll bring him back. You got any handcuffs or anything like that?”
“No.”
“Great,” he said. “Fucking great.”
8
Every so often, Jim’d realize the significance of the moment. How long he’d loved her. How long she’d been denied him. And now, how free she was with him.
Lying in the big double bed on the house boat. In the darkness so she didn’t feel bad about her face. Right next to her in that silk sleeping gown of hers. God her body. Such a perfect body. No reason for her to feel bad about her face when she had a body like that. No reason for her to feel bad about her face when he loved her so much. And someday, she’d understand that. That her face didn’t matter as long he was there to protect her and comfort her.
Slight sway of boat, lying there; slight wind-cry outside in the night sky.
He worked himself against her spoon-fashion; a perfect match. Her sleeping. Careful not to wake her.
And then he heard it.
Somebody on the wooden walk of the marina. Footsteps coming this way.
Somebody.
He reached down to the floor where he kept the gun.
Somebody coming.
She’d argued with him about the gun at first. Guns scaring her. Guns going off when you didn’t want them to and accidentally killing people. A gun was something only bad people owned. (Forgetting that she’d pulled a gun on the loverboy bartender.)
Now, he was glad he’d talked her into letting him keep it.
9
By the time Matt Shea reached the dock, he was lost in the dusk. Only as he passed lighted boats did I get a glimpse of his silhouette.
I wanted to be somewhere else. In a nice restaurant with a nice lady. Or in my Cedar Rapids apartment with my cats reading a book and dozing off under the lamp.
But not here with Matt Shea and all his country club concerns, and his sad crazed brother, and the once beautiful Ella. Sometimes, it’s fun, the pursuit; but sometimes it’s just sad, you learn something (or are reminded of something) you’d just as soon not know — the knowing changing you in some inalterable way — and then you wish you drove a cab or bagged up people’s groceries.
He was gone fifteen minutes before I started to think about going down there.
All sorts of possibilities presented themselves. I’d kept the window rolled halfway down so I could hear shouts or screams. The marina was settling in for the night. A few cars wheeled into the parking lot. Men and women with liquor bottles tucked under their arms trekked from cars to boats. They laughed a lot and the laughter seemed wrong, even profane, given the moment, crazy Jim and scarred-up Ella. I waited another few minutes and then went down there.
The board walkway pitched beneath my feet. I could glimpse people behind houseboat curtains. They were searching for summer, even if it was only the memory of summer their boats offered them.
Ella’s boat was three slips away from its nearest companion. This gave it a privacy the others lacked. No lights as I approached, no sound except the soft slap of water, and the tangle of night birds in the tangle of autumn trees.
I jumped aboard and went to the door. Locked. I walked to the window to the left of the curtain. The curtains were pulled tight. I listened carefully. Nothing.
And then I heard the sobbing. Male sobbing. Throaty and uncomfortable, as if the man didn’t know how to sob, hadn’t had sufficient practice.
I went to the door. Tried the knob again. Useless. “Matt? Are you in there?”
The sobbing. Barely audible.
I got out the burglary tools I keep in my pocket most of the time. I went in and clipped a light on.
Smell of blood and feces. And something even fouler. He brought it with him when he staggered up off the chair and fell into my arms. Matt Shea.