by Jeff Crook
Mr. Kim said something in Korean that didn’t sound like a prayer. Then he spat blood on the back of the seat. Waters glared at him in the mirror and continued, “I was just about to call Adam because I couldn’t get you to come to your door. He said you were supposed to stay put with the door locked. I’m just waiting on somebody to take over my babysitting job so I can drive this bastard down to 201 Poplar.”
“I don’t need a babysitter. My friend here is going to stay with me tonight.”
Her eyes flickered over James, taking him in, appraising him in one glance. “You sure?” Her frown said she didn’t like what she saw.
“I’ll be fine.”
“What’s your name?” she asked James. He told her. “Are you on television?”
“He gets that a lot.” I took his arm and started for the door. “We’re going inside now.”
“Adam said for me to wait here,” Waters called after us.
“Suit yourself.”
“What was that all about?” James asked when we were on the stairs.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
I paused at my door, listening. I heard a woman crying somewhere, just like before, only this time I was fairly sure it was Mrs. Kim two doors down. I unlocked the door and James followed me inside. I turned on the kitchen light.
“Your heat’s working,” he observed. He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. I locked the door and tossed my keys on the table. He stuck his umbrella in the sink and opened a cabinet like he lived there.
“I don’t have any cups or glasses. If you want something to drink, there’s a market downstairs.”
“Beer?”
“I won’t argue with that.”
“I’ll be back.”
I grabbed my laptop from under the couch and set it up on the table. My clothes were still wet but the apartment was warm enough and I was no longer shivering. While the computer booted up, I turned on Ashley’s Leica—my Leica, I reminded myself, even though I still hadn’t paid James the last five hundred.
I plugged the camera into my laptop and scrolled through the almost two hundred blank black images that had eaten up most of the space on the camera’s memory card. I opened one and used the photo software to adjust the light levels the way Deiter had shown me. This image caused my heart to hammer in my chest. I recognized it, because I had just been there. It was a photo of James’s kitchen. The next one was the hall. The next one the bedroom, as though the photographer were snapping photos every few feet. But the bedroom was empty. The photos continued, wandering through the house, back to the same rooms again and again. I stopped looking at them after the first twenty and scrolled to the end.
The last photo was different. It was my apartment, looking into the bedroom from the kitchen, the bedroom lit up by a flash of lightning. I had stopped even trying to figure out how these pictures came to be on the camera. The question in my mind now was why. What was it trying to show me?
I opened a second folder on my computer’s hard drive, sorted the subfolders by date, and scrolled down to the folder titled Playhouse. It contained the photographs I had taken of the Richard Buntyn murder scene at Playhouse on the Square. After working that scene and collecting my money from Chief Billet, I had left, bought a deck of scag and was stoned out of my skull when Adam called me later the same afternoon to photograph the Ashley St. Michael murder.
I had forgotten both murders happened on the same day. I clicked through the photographs of James’s bedroom from two years ago. Ashley lay on her stomach, right foot partially under the bed, right hand extended toward the closet, left hand under her body. Her face was turned to the left. She was wearing black heels, jeans and a green sweater. The heel of her left shoe was broken off. There was blood on her upper lip and the bottom of her nose, which had been broken in the struggle. A pair of Nike running shoes, laces knotted together, were wrapped around her throat and lay side by side at the base of her skull.
From my seat at the kitchen table I could see the lightning flashing in the sky outside my bedroom window. They were still only distant flickers, not the brilliant stabs of light that illuminated the night like day when a storm is right above your head. The only sound was the gentle unbroken roar of the rain hammering on the roof. I could see the floor of my bedroom where on two consecutive mornings last week I found my own running shoes lying with their shoestrings tied together. I could almost feel her there, watching me, willing me to put it all together. I stopped breathing, waiting for her to appear.
Maybe ghosts don’t cast shadows. Not real shadows, anyway. Shadows on the mind. I breathed again and wondered where James had gone with that beer.
38
I OPENED THE LEICA’S INTERNAL memory folder. Dozens of thumbnail images filled the screen, photos Ashley had taken that had never been erased. I clicked the first one on the list.
It was a party scene. I recognized several people, local business leaders and their spouses and dates at a fundraising dinner for the Boys and Girls Club. The next photo was a different party but the same people. Michi Mori posing with the mayor. Michi wore a red and white tuxedo and had his cane. He looked like a peppermint candy. The mayor had his arm around Michi’s shoulder, dwarfing him. His attention was directed off camera at someone else.
More photos of parties, openings, debuts, tennis tournaments, golf tournaments, fundraisers and gallery showings. The cream of Memphis society, presidents and vice presidents of industry and commerce, wealthy inheritors of old cotton money, graying politicians and their young wives, basketball players and tennis stars, authors, actors and directors, hot new artists and rappers, plus the tired old superstars who wouldn’t go away. Ashley St. Michael had freelanced as an entertainment photographer for just about every publication in the city.
I found a photo taken at the governor’s mansion in Nashville and spotted Cole Ritter in the background standing next to a tall, Arab-looking art dealer named Richard Buntyn. Richard was sipping red wine from a plastic cocktail glass and the gold watch on his hairy wrist, big as a can of snuff, caught the light of the flash. Just behind Buntyn and Cole stood their future murderer—Noboyuki Endo, leering out from the shadow of a Tennessee state flag.
I knew it was Endo, even though I hadn’t seen him since he was a kid. Although the photograph couldn’t have been more than four years old, he still had the same cruel yet vacant wedge-shaped face, eyes just a little too far apart, like the face of a cow, and two thick dark eyebrows that almost met over his nose. It was like he hadn’t aged at all.
The door banged open and I jumped to my feet, sending my chair skittering into the kitchen cabinets. James almost dropped his bag of beer and nachos. I had forgotten to lock the door when he left. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me,” he said as he recovered the bag from around his knees.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“That cop was still sitting out there when I went down, but she’s gone now. Are you OK?”
“It’s nothing. A friend ordered police protection for me.” I pulled the chair back to the table and sat down. My hands were shaking, my fingers already trying to curl around a needle. I could almost smell the hot metallic reek of a spoon full of boiling dope. I rubbed my tracks, as though I could rub them out, erase them, make the sudden ache go away. They’d heal eventually, if I could just let them heal, if I could quit picking at the scab of my addiction.
He set the bag on the counter and unpacked a twelve pack of Bud and a six-pack of Michelob, a big bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa. Almost like he planned to stay for a few days.
“Why do you need police protection?”
“They think maybe the Playhouse Killer is after me.”
He walked to the door and locked it. “Why would they think that?”
“He followed me here this morning.”
“Really?” He reached into the bag and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. Good man, I thought. He tossed them to me. “What does he want
with you?”
“I wish I knew,” I said. While he put the beer in the fridge and opened the salsa, I clicked on the next photo and peeled the wrapper off the smokes. I still had almost a full pack of generics, but I’d take free Marlboros over generics any day. I blew the smoke out through my nose. “I don’t think he’s following me anymore. If he’s smart, and I don’t think this guy is stupid, he’ll be a thousand miles away by now.”
The next image was hazy and gray. It had been taken in low light with a fast shutter. It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. It was the backstage of the Playhouse on the Square. The only light source was the ghost light, stage front. The rest was shades of black. I bumped up the light levels and the scene jumped out. Endo was working Richard Buntyn’s body headfirst into a malmsey-butt. The next three photos were variations on the same theme as he struggled with the body’s dead weight, but in the last photo in the series, Endo was looking back at the camera.
“What are you looking at?” James asked. He unscrewed the cap off a bottle of Michelob and handed it to me. I set it on the table without drinking.
The next photo was clear enough. It was Endo from about two feet away, reaching for the camera. “That’s the Playhouse Killer. Noboyuki Endo.”
“You were that close to him?”
“I didn’t take these photos.” The words barely made it past my lips. Endo had killed Ashley St. Michael. I clicked on the next picture.
A black Reebok basketball shoe consumed most of the frame, but there were recognizable things in the background, a dresser drawer, and something else, blurry, maybe hair. Blond hair.
I clicked the next picture. We peered into James’s bedroom from high up in a corner. I could tell it was shot from the closet, because I had taken a couple of photos from that angle myself. In the picture, Endo was leaning over her body, arranging the running shoes on her back.
James backed into the corner between the refrigerator and the couch. “Where did you get that?” he asked in a voice moaning and hollow with grief.
“Your wife took some of these photos before she died,” I explained. “These are from the camera’s internal memory. It looks like she photographed the killer before he caught her.” It also looked like someone else photographed Endo arranging her body. Question was, who?
He slid to the floor, his mind in shock. Buddy, you have no idea. Wait until I tell you she’s still here, still inside this camera, trying to take a picture of the freak who murdered her. Although I could see James was becoming overwhelmed, I still had too many questions. Questions that needed answers. “Why did Ashley go to the Playhouse? The building was supposed to be closed.”
“Monday night, she met some friends at Bosco’s after photographing a party at Donovan Enterprises.” His words sounded practiced, almost robotic, as though he had recited them over and over searching for the same answers I sought. “She left alone about ten o’clock.” His story confirmed what Jenny had told me.
I tried to fill in those blanks, outlining the storyboard of her last moments. “Bosco’s is behind Playhouse on the Square. Richard Buntyn’s Explorer was found in the parking lot outside. She had taken Buntyn’s picture before. She probably didn’t think anything about walking up to him to say hello. She told her friends she was going to say hello to a friend before heading home. Instead, she found Endo in the Playhouse doing his thing. She took some pictures.” It occurred to me then how incredibly brave this woman had been, but her bravery hadn’t saved her. It had cost her everything. She should have run, but she didn’t know what she was up against. “Then Endo spotted her. Maybe he heard the shutter. My guess is he murdered her inside the theater.”
James was shaking now, worse than I ever had, even in my worst withdrawals. He looked like he would fly apart. So much must have rushed through his mind—anger, hate, fear, remorse. Guilt. The inescapable guilt of not being there to protect her, drawn away by his meaningless job as a glorified overpaid delivery boy. “So why didn’t she call the cops? She had her cell phone!” he cried in anguish. He’d probably asked himself that question a thousand times, and there never was a good answer.
And here I was, dissecting the murder of the woman he obviously still loved more than life itself, because I had to know. I couldn’t let her go now, and I couldn’t go to him and comfort him in his hour of despair. I had to fit the pieces together. It was an addiction worse than smack, and I was made a monster by my need. I had used heroin to dull that need, make it recede into the brown fuzzy edges of existence, so I wouldn’t lie there torturing myself with the faces of the ghosts whose murders I couldn’t solve.
“By the time she knew what was happening, she may not have had a chance to call the cops.” My words not only made her last moments hopeless, they made them inevitable.
“Christ,” he whispered. Death came at her too fast to avoid. She had screamed and nobody but her killer heard it. She had struggled bravely and lost bravely. She never had a chance.
“After that, Endo drove her home,” I finished.
James struggled to his feet. He stared at the blank television. His chest rose and fell in shuddering gasps. He took a couple of steps, staggered and caught himself on the arm of the couch. I knew something was about to pop. He lurched another step and froze, a look of panic on his face.
I pointed to the bathroom. He dove for it and slammed the door behind him. I waited for the inevitable noises but it was several minutes before they came. Then they wouldn’t stop.
39
IT WAS BEGINNING TO THUNDER outside, a distant rumbling like an old man talking to himself in the next room. I drank my beer and scrolled through the photos of Endo’s victims. Adam rang while James was still in the bathroom. I’d been dreading this call, but I answered. “I can’t believe you’re with him, Jack.” He called me by Sean’s pet name again. That didn’t make this any easier.
“With who?”
“James St. Michael. I know you’re with him. Waters ran his plates.”
“You can send Waters away. I don’t need protection,” I said.
“He killed his own wife!” He sounded utterly exasperated. He must have thought I had a death wish, fraternizing with a wife killer and blowing off protection from a serial murderer. At least he hadn’t found the photos yet.
I said, “He didn’t kill his wife.” I couldn’t do anything about Endo, but I was ready to walk through fire to clear James.
“You sound so fucking sure.”
“I am sure.”
“Why?”
“Because I just found a photo of the killer standing over Ashley St. Michael’s body. It was Endo. Endo killed Ashley St. Michael.” He didn’t respond. Silence. It was like the call had dropped. Finally, I said, “Hello?”
“I heard you,” Adam said. “Where did you find the photo?”
I told him about the pictures in the Leica’s internal memory. He was quiet again for a long time.
“Ashley was with friends at Bosco’s that night, the same night Richard Buntyn was killed. Bosco’s is behind the Playhouse on the Square. My guess is while she was leaving, she spotted Buntyn’s car in the parking lot. Since she was a society photographer, she probably knew the guy. He was big in art circles, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. I wondered if Endo was out there, maybe driving by at this very moment, looking up at me. I backed into the shadow by my bed, just in case.
“Or maybe she knew Endo. He’s in some of the other photos I found on her camera. There’s one with Endo, Richard Buntyn and Cole Ritter at the governor’s mansion, if you can believe it. So maybe she sees the backstage door open, she pops in to see what’s up, say hello, whatever, but when she gets there, she finds Endo doing his thing with Buntyn’s body. She worked a big party earlier that evening, so maybe her camera’s memory card was full, because she used the internal memory to shoot the photos. She gets three or four shots before Endo hears the camera’s shutter. He chases her down, they fight, and eventually he strangles her wi
th whatever is handy, puts her in the trunk of her own car and drives her home. He sets up her body in the bedroom to make it look like somebody strangled her with her own shoes, then he gets the bright idea to lock the doors and make it look like the husband did it.”
Adam chuckled. “Bullshit, Jackie. How did he lock the door? Her keys were on the bed, inside the locked house.” That was the puzzle he had been trying to solve, and I finally had the answer.
“He found a spare key outside.”
“Outside, where?”
“In the flower box behind the garage.”
“Shit,” he swore. I couldn’t tell whether he believed me or not. It was still pretty flimsy, evidence-wise, but it provided reasonable doubt. Not enough to convince a cop, but certainly enough for a jury. “How do you know that?”
“Because I found the key holder,” I said. “It’s a fake frog. It was hidden in the flower box, but there’s no key in it. Why hide a keyholder if there’s no key?”
Adam didn’t answer. The bathroom was quiet, too, not even any running water. I sat on the edge of the bed and felt for my baseball bat. It wasn’t under the covers where I had left it.
Finally, Adam asked, “Who took the photo of Endo standing over the body?”
I didn’t have a logical answer to that question. Pictures had a way of showing up in the Leica’s memory all of their own accord. I couldn’t tell him what I really believed. “This camera’s kind of touchy. Sometimes it takes photos by itself.”
“Or maybe her husband took the photo,” Adam offered.
“From San Diego?”
“OK. His alibi is airtight. That’s why he’s still walking around. You’ve done some good work and surprised me a couple of times. Now let me tell you a story maybe you don’t know. James and Ashley St. Michael were the hot new thing in town. Ashley had a free pass to every society event. She was gorgeous, and as you know, James is no slouch. He’s a Goddamn Adonis, right?” I didn’t need Adam to tell me that.