She nodded, those huge eyes in that emaciated face pulling me in, forcing me to connect.
It was about the time I would normally get back on the road. But there was just no way, not with this poor woman in the state she was.
So I returned to my house on wheels and stayed put.
While waiting, I went over some photos I wanted to play around with. I’m big on Photoshop. Tweak a little here and there to bring out the full reality.
My photos have been published in many places, but I don’t really circulate my best stuff. Not yet. I’m building an absolutely unique portfolio.
The vast majority of camera buffs—and pros, for that matter—are talentless hacks. But in a world such as we live in, everybody is a fucking artist. So you have to be really unique. I intended to make my big debut in a year or so. Shock the world with what I had to offer.
I spent maybe twenty minutes dealing with one very powerful photo of this woman. I decided I wasn’t ready to stylize it yet, but it didn’t need much.
Every little while I’d check on her, see what she was doing.
Nearly an hour after I’d returned to my motor home, distracted for a bit, I looked up and there she was at the screen door.
Being a very aware person, as I had to be out on the road and alone, it surprised me that she’d crossed the distance without my noticing. Shocked me, actually.
“Hi,” I said, opening the screen door.
She had her small backpack there on the ground next to her. She studied me a moment. “My car—I hit a rock or something coming in here and I don’t think it’s drivable. I want to go to Bridgeport if you’re going that way.”
“No problem,” I said. “And I’m going in that direction. I’ll take you to Bridgeport.”
She was so underweight, so frail, I didn’t know if she could come up the steps.
“I’ll pay you,” she said.
“I don’t need your money. You’re going to leave your car? I didn’t remember seeing one coming in.”
“I left it a couple miles from here. A nice man gave me a ride here. The car’s junk. I won’t need it.”
She reached for the assist handle. I put out my hand, grabbed hers, and helped her up the step.
She was all bone and skin. Maybe ninety pounds at the most. I helped her into the one chair I had apart from my table and its bench seats.
I went out and retrieved her red and blue bag.
“I’m very thirsty,” she said.
I got her a bottle of water from the small rack above the refrigerator and opened it for her.
Sitting at my small dining table that’s also my work station, watching her sip water, I said, “You don’t appear to be well, and you’re just abandoning your car. I don’t want to be nosey, but I can’t help but ask what your situation is.”
She placed the water bottle on her thigh and fixed me with those huge eyes of hers. They were really much like a camera lens. She said, “I’m fulfilling the last thing on my to-do list. What they call the bucket list. I hate that term. Prefer the other.” She said it with a razor-thin smile.
She was a dying woman with a to-do list and an attitude. I liked her.
I stared at her and she in return studied me. Then she said, doing so with a bit of a beautiful and ironic smile, “I’m sick as hell, but I won’t cause a problem. I won’t die on you, I promise.”
“You’re going for treatment in Bridgeport?”
“No. I’m pretty well past treatment. I’m going there, as I said, to fulfill my last desire in this life.”
That’s one of those incredible, wow moments you really can’t process easily. If I thought this emaciated woman was, say, a drug addict, that’s one thing. But I knew she wasn’t. I’ve met plenty and know what I’m looking at.
I was ready to indulge in a conversation, but suddenly, she closed her eyes and just seemed to nod off for a time.
What if she just up and died right there in spite of her promise?
But her breathing, a little staggered at first, regained some symmetry, got back to a more normal pattern.
I fetched a light blanket from my bed in the back of the motor home, covered her, and waited.
Then she opened her brilliant eyes, looked right at me, and said, like she hadn’t been asleep at all, like she was right back where we left off, “The last thing on my list, before I die, is why I need to go to Bridgeport. You can help me get to where I need to go.”
To me, bucket lists are so silly. What does it matter what you do if you’re going to die? I never bought into that notion that you have to go here or there, see this or that. What the hell does it matter when you’re dead?
I said, “And what is this last thing on your to-do list, if I might ask?” I tried not to be condescending or sarcastic.
She gathered herself, sat up a little straighter, and said, with incredible passion and conviction that changed my attitude in an instant, “I need to go to Bridgeport to kill a man. I need to do this before I die. I need to kill a miserable bastard named Harry.”
2
That staggered my imagination a bit and took a long moment to process. Was this a joke? But she showed no indication it was.
This very ill woman, whose name I didn’t even know, who said she’s dying, wanted me to take her to Bridgeport to kill some guy named Harry.
How do you respond to that? Any normal person would find a way to get her out of his motor home and into the hands of somebody who can deal with this kind of thing. Was she crazy?
The problem with me is that artistic fault of possessing a morbid curiosity and maybe a little too much empathy. I just couldn’t resist being drawn into this woman’s world. She possessed a magnetic intensity.
When killing this Harry is the last will and testament of a young, dying woman, well, that’s more than just intriguing. I had to find out who this Harry was and why she wanted him dead.
I didn’t even know who she was. If she did die on me, I would find her license, see who she was. Find out on the Internet what happened to her family. But I wanted to learn it from her.
All these thoughts roamed in my head as I watched her doze again. She was breathing reasonably okay as far as I could tell. I knew that, healthy, she had to have been very attractive.
Two cars pulled in together. They got out, dogs and kids. Fifteen minutes later, they left.
She opened her eyes. “Do you have coffee by any chance?”
“I’ll make some.”
I made a small pot of coffee and she took it with a little milk. She said she didn’t want any food.
I know, from the death of my dear mother, that dying people don’t have appetites. Most people think that’s bad and want to feed them. But a brilliant scientist wrote an article about dying people, how their bodies are in a major war and food is only a distraction at that point.
All my life I’ve wanted to know why people behave the way they do, how they face the ultimate loss—their life.
So I sat down and drank coffee with her, and then, when it seemed right, I asked the first of my big questions. “Why are you going to kill this Harry, and who is he?”
It was a really uncomfortable question, but an inevitable one. I was more than a little bit fascinated at this woman and her ambition and that she wanted me involved, even if just to bring her to her destiny.
She didn’t answer, just looked out the window as she held the coffee cup in two slightly trembling hands.
“This Harry,” I said, “must have done something really terrible to you that you want killing him to be your parting legacy.”
I figured he was a wife beater, molester of her kids, somebody who’d taken the family money.
But what she said startled me, and I’m not easy to startle. And she said it with that kind of simple conviction you can’t deny. “Harry murdered my family. And he got away with it.”
“He killed your whole family?”
“Yes. He took everything from me and I’m not leaving this eart
h, this life, while that miserable bastard is still breathing.”
I’m no shrinking violet when it comes to the dark side of human existence. I’ve heard and seen it all. But this, coming from a woman in my space, my motor home, well, that was heavy.
I shook my head in commiseration, in shock at the incredible horror of having an entire family wiped out. I said, “If you know who did this, why is the killer not in prison on death row? How could he get away with something this horrendous?”
For what seemed like a very long time, she stared at me, but I figured she was seeing something else, the horror of the past. She finally said, “He’s one of the nearly forty percent that don’t get caught, or there isn’t enough evidence to convict.”
“You know for certain that he—”
“Yes. I know for certain. And I know where he lives. My greatest fear is, I won’t be strong enough to get there and do what I have to do.”
This was something I wanted to Google. This was big. I just needed her name. “I’m Ron Beechum,” I said. “I guess we should at least know each other’s names.”
“Julie,” she said, not giving a last name, as if she knew my intention.
Then she said, “Ron, I know you don’t want to be paid, but I can, if you change your mind, pay you ten thousand dollars in cash to just take me up near Bridgeport. Drop me off and go on your way. I don’t have a lot of time. I need to do this now. You don’t have to be any part of anything. You picked up a woman in need. You gave her a ride. Nothing more. I’m sorry I even mentioned my…my intention. Forget you heard that.”
She’s very bright and very sure of what she wants, I thought. She doesn’t want me to get too much. I wanted to push her about her last name, but at the same time didn’t want her to think I was going to call the authorities or something. You get into a chess match, you need to know who it is you’re sitting across from. I didn’t push it. I’d find out eventually.
I said, “I don’t need the money, and don’t worry about me.”
“Will you take me?” she asked.
Pulling a cigar from a humidor above the small sink, I told her I needed to think for a minute. I never smoke inside the motor home, so I excused myself and stepped outside.
The late-day summer sun was at its most fierce, still above the mountains. Another hour or so and it would disappear over the Sierras and fall toward the Pacific Ocean, leaving behind a long three or four hours of beautiful twilight.
The first drag is always the most powerful from a good cigar. It hits your brain, the wonderful smell at the same time. One of my few indulgences. I don’t smoke often, only when I really need to get my mind in order. Now was definitely one of those times.
My thing isn’t just photography, it’s people. It’s the human race. So I notice the details. The telling details. I’d noticed her eyes right off. The rest of her was weak and sick, but the eyes were still very strong. I’ve seen eyes like those before. They are where you can really see a person’s truth, whether they’re strong or weak, smart or not so smart.
Travelling the country to new places, returning to old places, taking thousands of pictures, that’s my life now. My pleasure and my struggle. The best of my photos are like family to me. My children.
Few things can distract me, and now I faced one of them. This woman and her problem had gotten into my mind in a big, unexpected way. So, taking a little walk, smoking a good cigar, was necessary to clear my mind.
Maybe my solitary existence was at fault. The horror of her whole family being killed and her need to fix things before she left this life is the kind of enthralling thing you can’t just walk away from.
Just like that, a new family was born to me. A murdered family and the lone survivor. I was caught up in it now. Taking this frail, determined woman to Bridgeport to fulfill her last desire, the last item on her bucket list, had to happen.
Yes, I argued, it was bizarre, crazy in its way, but irresistible. She had one single, last life desire, and I now believed I had no choice but to help her do what she had to do.
She needed to kill Harry and I needed—risky and irrational as it might be—to take the picture of the end result of this violent retribution.
3
“Okay, we’re going to Bridgeport,” I said after disposing of the cigar and climbing back into the motor home.
Her eyes lit up at that. She said, “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”
I helped her into the passenger seat, being very careful as she seemed very unsteady. I asked, “Where did this terrible thing happen? How long ago?”
I was still fishing for something I could look up.
She pulled her seatbelt around her frail frame as I got behind the wheel. She said, “If you don’t mind, I can’t talk about it. It hurts too much.” She leaned back. Closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them again. “Will we be there before dark?”
She was really crafty about not giving me anything. “It’ll stay twilight until around nine. We’ll get there well before it gets dark.”
“Good. I want to do this today.”
She said it as if she didn’t think she’d have another day. Or wouldn’t be able to do whatever she had in mind, even if alive.
I helped her with the seatbelt. “You have cancer?”
“Yes.”
That’s all she would say about it and I didn’t press. I really wanted to find out more, but later. She would tell me in time, once she became more comfortable.
I started the engine and adjusted the air so it wouldn’t blow hard on her. “You said you know where this guy Harry is. He’s there in Bridgeport now?”
“Yes.”
“If you get really tired, you can lie down on the bed in the back if you want.”
“No, I’m fine right here,” she said. ”I don’t like to move around anymore than necessary. I’m not taking much pain medicine so my mind stays clear.”
This woman, who said her name was Julie, laid her head back and closed her eyes.
I headed up 395 north toward Reno. It’s one of my all-time favorite roads, though much more active with cars and campers than in the past. It rises up through the eastern Sierra Nevada and has a special beauty that grows the farther you go toward the Tahoe Basin.
This road has very special memories for me. I’ve travelled the entire four-hundred-mile length of the Sierras. It’s a fantastic bit of geography and geology that includes, of course, the largest alpine lake in North America at Tahoe. And then there’s Yosemite and a dozen other parks. It’s probably my favorite haunt. My backyard.
Some of my very finest photographs were shot along this highway and its feeder roads. And here I was again on another strange, memorable journey. Maybe, the way it looked, it would be also the most haunting. Was I really going to go all the way with this? The idea was both a little chilling and very exciting at the same time.
What traffic there was dwindled after passing the Mammoth Lakes turnoff and then became almost nonexistent from Lee Vining north of Bishop. We hadn’t talked much. She seemed too weak and distressed for conversation.
At Mono Lake, I pulled into a Shell to gas up. I’d been mentioning some of my photos, my philosophy as a photographer, and she wanted to look at some of them. She also wanted more coffee and a Snickers bar.
I gave her my iPad, filled the tank, then went in and got more coffees and the Snickers.
When I came back, she said, “You really are a very talented photographer.”
It’s not that I need compliments, but somehow, coming from her, I was quite pleased. “Thanks. It’s a passion of mine. I take both digital and film. Sometimes videos. Depends on my mood and the atmosphere.”
“This is really nice,” she said. It was a photo of the tufa spires in Mono Lake.
“That was just at sunrise. The only reason those spires are visible is because the lake has fallen so far. Much of the water that fed the lake has been drained off to feed Los Angeles. Otherwise, they’d be under water.
”
“I didn’t know that,” she said.
Back on the road, we headed for Bridgeport. My gut tightened. I have to admit, I was getting into a bit of a tense state when the reality of what she intended to do came closer.
Sometimes things happen and you feel like a more powerful force is at work, selecting you for something. I felt my connection to this woman and her need for justice were somehow so necessary that there was no way I could deny it.
I do have a bit of a mystical side. I think all artists do.
“How you feeling?” I asked.
“I’m doing okay,” she said.
And to my surprise, though there was no reason to be surprised, I saw that she now had a gun next to her leg. She’d apparently taken it from her bag while I was in the store.
It looked like one of those small, hammerless snubbies. Probably a .38 or .357.
This is where I imagine most people would finally call a halt to the whole thing. The wake-up-to-reality moment. That didn’t happen for me.
One of the things about seeing the gun was, I no longer doubted the veracity of what she wanted. No longer thought she was playing games. The woman was very coherent, matter-of-fact about what she had to do, and she was prepared.
We drove in silence for a time. I wondered just what kind of cancer she had. I figured it had to be Stage IV. Metastasized all through her body.
What if it was brain cancer? What if this whole thing was triggered by some weird brain meltdown?
I didn’t believe it was in her brain. She seemed way too coherent and fluid, mentally.
Whatever it was, I didn’t waver. She knew the end was coming and I was now determined to make it possible for her to carry out her final agenda, whatever her condition. Her whole family murdered!
As we neared Bridgeport, twilight deepening, the level of tension and excitement in me grew intense, a kind of epic feeling that something monumental was going to happen. The very strange thing was, I’d been here before and had experienced a very powerful moment.
Few people have a life like mine with experiences so intense they’re almost unbearable. The so-called average folks don’t really know—or would want to know—what I’ve seen and known. I have a very risk-reward personality. I put myself in situations. This was looking to be one of those supreme moments.
The Murder Option Page 7