“That’s right, Garner,” Rice said. “Listen to me.”
Behind her, on the platform, Blackmoor’s painted plaster figures sat, stood, danced, crouched, and bled; but mostly they burned. Not the way wood burned—or at least not at this stage. The flames weren’t charbroiling. They licked white and clean, eliciting a noxious odor that jabbed at my lungs. “Beth, please.” I coughed.
“Don’t worry, darling,” she snarled. “I’m not about to kill another one of his girlfriends for him—”
Blackmoor took a step forward. “Elizabeth, you don’t understand—” His voice sounded faint over the roar of the fire.
“Would-you-stop!” Rice screamed. “If you only knew how sick and tired I am of people saying that!” She continued in a mocking tone, “Elizabeth, you don’t understand! Elizabeth, you don’t know how!”
She turned to me. “Do you think he’d have any of this, any of it, if it weren’t for me?” She gestured wildly around the burning studio. “Who do you think is responsible for this?”
“You are,” I replied obediently.
“You and your smart mouth and smug eyes!” She paced, within burning distance. “You think I’m nothing, don’t you? Well, I’ll have you know I’m a very capable woman.”
“I believe you,” I croaked.
“Don’t patronize me,” Rice said bitterly. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” She reeled around with the propane torch, hosing down another sculpture with its small, mean flame.
“Go ahead, show her!” she ordered Blackmoor. When he didn’t move, she shot a snaking tongue of flame, backing him toward the audiovisual cabinet in the corner of the room. “Show her!”
Dane picked up a videocassette and put it into the VCR. “What is it?” I asked.
Beth smiled sweetly. “It’s what you were poking around looking for all afternoon.” She aimed the torch, motioning me toward the platform steps. “Sit. I want you to enjoy the performance.”
Twin images appeared on the video projection screens overhead.
Elizabeth Rice, a blood-streaked smock over her designer clothes, faced front, addressing the camera as one would a friend. “After locating the seam with my knife, and slicing it open, I’m faced with the formidable task of re-enclosing the model’s head,” she said, waving a plaster-whitened fingertip. “Are you paying attention?”
Her video image broke into a dimpled smile. “I said, I’m going to re-enclose the model’s head!” She dissolved into uncontrollable giggles.
“Hit the fast forward,” Rice ordered Blackmoor. “The lighting in this section makes me look lousy.”
He did as he was told. The tape jerked forward. I watched in horror as Beth picked up Torie Wood’s severed head and fit it inside the casing, her fingers repeatedly plunging into the basin of water, and out, caressing the plaster surface, at triple speed—dip and sculpt…dip and sculpt…dip and sculpt…
The platform steps felt hot on my buttocks. I sensed the fire at my back. But Rice was closer. “Stop here for a minute,” she told Blackmoor. He slowed the video down to real time.
“My plaster-bandage technique is much more difficult,” Beth told the camera, “because not only do you have to align the seams, you need to moisten the entire mold, so that you can shape it gently to the face. The final creation is less of a life mask, than a death mask.”
The flames that had been lapping the bottom of the left projection screen leapfrogged over each other, consuming it whole.
“Damn,” said Rice good-naturedly. “But I think you get the picture, right?” She started walking toward Blackmoor. “Dane didn’t think I had any talent, but he was wrong. Weren’t you, Dane? Weren’t you?”
I stood, ready to run for my life.
“Deserting your lover?” Rice taunted. “What makes you think I want him anymore?” Blackmoor’s plaster sculptures were in the final phase of destruction, collapsing toward each other in a great funeral pyre of flame. A fragment of what had been my own face—a life mask? a death mask?—curled under the ravenous heat. But Rice seemed to have lost interest in them, turning instead to wander back toward the burning platform.
I ran to Blackmoor, wrenching his arm. “We’ve got to get out!”
“Come with us, Elizabeth,” he shouted.
Her crazed eyes went crackle-snap like the flames. “You think I care?” she screamed. “You think I care about anything but destroying you?”
She stepped off the dais, brandishing the torch at a scaffold. Its trail of winding muslin went up like a waxless wick. Fire had reached the trolley, skimming over the water tray, square-dancing on the floor. Trails of twisting, burning fabric created a cyclorama of flame all around. Blackmoor’s figures were shriveled to scorched crisps no bigger than slivers of burnt toast.
That’s what we’re going to look like if we don’t get out of here fast, I thought. A phrase kept buzzing through my mind—I don’t want to die…I don’t want to die—and the words had a face, and the face was Temple’s. “Can’t you see she’s not coming?” I cried.
Dane pulled away from me. “Elizabeth!”
Rice shot a rasping funnel of flame, so thin and colorless as to be almost invisible. Blackmoor grabbed his arm, wincing in pain. I latched onto his belt, dragging him toward the door.
We were almost at the threshold when I broke away from him, running back, fighting my way through the smoke. It was there, still intact, within a circle of fire. I covered my hand with the cuff of my sweater and pushed the button. The cassette popped out of the VCR. I looked up and saw Elizabeth Rice, climbing the winding staircase to the gallery.
Blackmoor found me seconds before the first explosion hit. The second and third followed immediately, increasing in force until we were propelled outside into the snow, he on top, shielding me with his body. The videocasette cut into my ribs. We struggled to our feet and scrambled toward the water.
Sirens wailed in the near distance, an insistent panoply of ruby lights reddening the white night; but I turned away from them, toward other sounds—glass shattering; a piercing scream. Elizabeth Rice, in a coat of flame, came crashing through the glass of the large arched windows. She hurtled through the air and landed on the frozen canal. The force of her descent cracked the ice into a million pieces; Elizabeth merely into two or three.
Blackmoor pulled me so tightly to him, he felt it—felt the cassette between us. “Is that what you went back for?”
“It has everything.” I nodded. “Everything.”
He glanced toward the trucks. Fire fighters were already jumping off, hauling hose, shouting to each other. “Throw it into the canal,” he whispered to me. “Let it all come to an end, with her.”
It was a strange request, and I soon forgot it in the confusion of the moment. A man in a protective uniform, the shield of his hat up, bounded over. “Anyone in there?”
“Not anymore,” Blackmoor said, grimly.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I sobbed. “I just have to make a call. I have to talk to my daughter—”
A patrol car arrived on the scene. We started for it, Blackmoor’s arm around me, protectively, the cassette nestled safely under my sweater. Later I would discover it was marked simply “3/15.”
March 15. The Ides of March.
V — THE TRUTH
GARNER QUINN MANAGES, AS HAS NO ONE SINCE CAPOTE ININ COLD BLOOD, TO TAKE US BEYOND MERE FACT, INTO THAT NETHER REGION OF ESSENCE. HER BOOK IS AS STARK AND INEVITABLE AS GREEK TRAGEDY—AN EPIC TALE THAT NEITHER JUDGE NOR JURY HAS SEEN BEFORE, AND EVEN THE VICTIM AND THE MURDERER HAVE GLIMPSED IN ONLY DISTORTED AND FRAGMENTED GLIMMERS. BY THE FINAL PAGE WE FEEL THAT QUINN HAS CHIPPED AND CHIPPED AWAY AT THESE EVENTS UNTIL THE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, IS LEFT.
REVIEW OFROCK-A-BYEBABY: THEBALLAD OF DULCIE MARIAH
(LOS ANGELES TIMES, 1981)
GARNER—
HAVE READ YOUR BOOK. CONGRATULATIONS. YOU SEEM TO HAVE INHERITED YOUR OLD MAN’S TALENT FOR MAKING PEOPLE BELIEVE. I T
HINK IT WILL COME IN HANDY IN YOUR CHOSEN LINE, AS IT DID IN MINE. EVER SO MUCH BETTER THAN HAVING TO RELY ON THE TRUTH ALL THE TIME…—D.
LETTER FROM DUDLEY QUINN TO HIS DAUGHTER
UPON THE PUBLICATION OFROCK-A-BYE BABY
“FUCK THE TRUTH. THE THING THAT’S IMPORTANT IS THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY.”
DANE BLACKMOOR
AS QUOTED IN APLAYBOYINTERVIEW (1993)
ONE
Six hours later we were roaming through the rubble of what was once the Mill. My legs still felt wobbly. “I thought this place would be indestructible,” I said, lamely.
Blackmoor sifted through a pile of ashes with the hand that wasn’t bandaged. “Well, the walls are still standing.” His five-o’clock shadow was working on a second shift, and the skin above his beard line looked unnaturally pale. We wandered around, picking up small tokens that had somehow escaped incineration: several glass eyes, dull as old marbles; a rhinestone necklace; a silver belt buckle.
Jack had wanted to come get me, but I’d vetoed the idea. My wrist was in decent shape, and although I hadn’t slept in over forty-eight hours, I knew it would be hours before I crashed. Through the shattered windows, we watched the sky turn from rosy pink to blue. The local police knew where to reach me. I was free to go. If I left now I’d miss the flocks of reporters who would soon come streaming into New Hope in their network vans and beat-up rental cars. And yet I couldn’t bear the thought of it ending like this.
“What are you going to do?”
Blackmoor shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
“Why don’t you hang out at my place for a while?” I heard myself say. “I have a small guest house. It’s very private. You could rest up before the inquest—” I felt compelled to stumble on. “I’ll be working on the book, and I’m sure there are things we’ll need to go over together.”
“Okay,” he said. He retrieved a studded leather wristband from the debris. It looked as if it might have belonged to Lucy Moon. “I have the insurance people to deal with. How’s the end of the week sound?”
It sounded awful. Ridiculous. Frightening, even. “Fine,” I said.
Temple was sitting on the front gate, looking small and cold. She wore her Lakers warm-up jacket over denim cutoffs, and her legs were bare—no socks, just unlaced Keds in the freezing weather. When my car pulled up, she didn’t smile, didn’t wave, but still I knew. How many times had I seen her sitting, just like this, sometimes even in her nightgown, waiting for me to come in from some airport, after a long trip, far away from home?
I managed to put the car in neutral before jumping out. She hopped off the gatepost and ran to me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
“What you need,” said Cilda, setting a cup of tea down on the table, “is sugar. Blow the shock right out your system.”
“What I need is about twenty-four hours of sleep.” I sank down onto the hard kitchen chair. There was no use in prolonging this. “Listen, we’re going to have a visitor in a few days. Dane Blackmoor.”
Temple just nodded, not exactly the response I was looking for, but I guess I couldn’t blame her for being cautious. Cilda’s reaction was more predictable. “It’s your ’ouse,” she muttered. “You can ask Jack the Ripper if you care to.”
“He didn’t murder that girl,” I told her.
“There’s killing ladies,” Cilda said, cryptically, “and there’s lady killing.” I remembered what Blackmoor had said at dinner. “People change.” That was not a working concept for Cilda Fields. Cilda had learned all she needed to know about men like him from watching television. Her favorite program was Divorce Court. Every morning at ten she’d sit in the old rocker, sheer righteousness in motion—crooked hands knitting and purling; the chair swinging back and forth on its runners; head nodding, tongue clucking, “Oo-ee, ’e’s an evil one,” or “’Er be lyin’ to you now, mister!” And when, at the very end, the white-haired judge had his say, her lightning-quick knitting needles clapped together like long, thin, pleased fingers. “You tell ’im, judge,” she’d holler. “Thought ’e’d get away with it, did ’e?”
For Cilda to accept that Dane Blackmoor had changed would be tantamount to saying that they’d replaced the cheating husband at the commercial, and they just didn’t do that. During her years as a viewer, that had never happened.
The phone rang. “Emory,” Temple said, running upstairs to get it.
I sipped my tea in silence. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I said, “I’m going to take a nap. Remind me to call Ben about opening up the guest house, will you?”
When I left, Cilda was scrubbing the kitchen sink. It was almost three o’clock. In a few minutes she would snap on General Hospital, where people were not only pretty, they acted just like you expected them to.
TWO
I woke the next morning, still fully dressed, under a mess of covers. I felt stiff and my wrist was throbbing. The Bride of Frankenstein stared back from the bathroom mirror: hair on end; mascara raccooning my eyes; the lace edge of a pillowcase tattooed across one cheek. Showering didn’t help much.
Cilda was mopping the kitchen floor when I came downstairs. “And ’ow you feeling this morning?”
“Barely alive. Thanks for letting me sleep. Did Temple take the bus?”
“So she say.”
I poured myself some orange juice. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She put me in mind of a young lady I knew in Jamaica.” She clucked her tongue. “Girl who got pregnant for two men.”
I was not in the mood for one of Cilda’s bizarre morality tales. I threw an old cardigan over my long winter underwear. Even this slight exertion made my body protest. “I’m going to the office.”
“Hey, boss.” Jack smiled when I opened the door. I tried to remember whether I’d combed my hair. “You okay?”
“Sure. Swell.”
“Max called.” He followed me into the next room.
“I have to talk to him,” I said. “With Blackmoor staying here, we should have a first draft in no time.”
I watched his face change. “You’re kidding.”
“I didn’t have a chance to tell you”—it bothered me that I felt guilty about this—“but I think the arrangement’s going to work for all of us. He really has no other place to go.”
“What are you, on drugs? The guy must own three or four estates, not to mention luxury apartments all over the world.”
“We don’t want him all over the world,” I reminded him. “We want access to him so we can finish this book.”
“So I’ll reserve him a room in the Marriott.” Jack sat across from my desk. “Dammit, Garner, the man is—”
“What? The man is what?”
He pulled on his beard. “Well, we don’t know that yet, do we?”
“What do you mean we don’t know? I was there, Jack. I saw the tape. I heard Beth Rice confess.”
“So?”
“So?”
“I just don’t think we should tie this up until we’ve explored every possible angle,” he said.
I laughed. “That’s my line you’re using.”
“I mean it. It just seems…shoddy…not to pursue—”
“So pursue, if you want.” He got up to go. I picked up the phone and dialed. “Ben Snow, please.” Jack was still well within earshot when I said, “Ben, it’s Garner. I need you to do some work for me.”
My agent was the only one pleased with the news.
“Darling,” Max drawled over the line. “That’s a fabulous idea.” I could almost hear the wheels turning, as he wondered, What’s the catch? Garner Quinn can’t actually be telling me she’s writing a book that takes the facts for face value as the facts.
“I want to get this wrapped up as quickly as possible.” I imagined him checking his pulse. Pinching himself. “Then I’m going to retire. Maybe try my hand at a different kind of writing.”
So that was it. His money client wa
nted to leave a multimillion-dollar career in true crime to write slim books on gardening. Max took a long drag of his cigarette. “Darling, you know I’ll support you whatever you decide to do.” He emitted one of those phone sighs that went on for days, like the north wind. “But we’ll have plenty of time to discuss that later.”
Later. As in, after the book was delivered. After it became a Main Selection, and the movie rights were finalized. He’d represented me long enough to know that I’d probably change my mind twenty times by then.
I was walking back to the house when I heard the man. “Miss Quinn?”
He strode briskly in my direction from the enclave of heavy machinery. A worker sat in the crane, depositing huge metal jawfuls of tow stone into the gaps in the seawall.
“Tom Tolano, Coastal Engineering.” He was trim and still had a summer tan. “We’re trying to fix this little potential flood problem you got going here.”
“That would be nice. We were evacuated twice last year.”
“Goes with the territory.”
I thought of the spread in People magazine. True-crime writer Garner Quinn has built her home, and her career, on dangerous ground. After finishing this book, it would be time to move on. “I hadn’t realized the rebuilding of the seawall would be so complicated.”
“It’s a bitch. The original rocks have settled so much you got caves big enough to fit Volkswagens in there.” We watched as the crane operator drove the machine up a ramp onto the wall. Another worker in a hooded sweatshirt stood on the ground giving hand signals.
“For my money,” Tolano said, “there are only two men in the whole state who know anything about building a wall like this.” He didn’t mention if they were on this particular job.
“Would you like some iced tea? A soda or something?”
“No, thanks. I’m just checking to see how it’s going.” He handed me a card. “Listen, give a call if you have any problems.” He sauntered off toward his men.
Graven Images Page 22