She’s hiding something. I sense it. “So there’s no connection with the fact that these photographs are within feet of where the victims were found? What aren’t you telling me?”
Kaitlin bites her bottom lip, her upper teeth pulling at the fleshy pink. “There’s so much interest in the story…” Kaitlin tries to redeem herself.
Finally, I understand. Her calendar will feature each of the drop sites and the areas surrounding them. Which begs the question, is she certain there will be more deaths to fill the remaining months in the calendar? “But you’re not selling out, Kaitlin. Right?”
She scoffs at my words. “Even the Parisian artists drew profile sketches for tourists along the river for quick cash. I’ve gotta eat, you know.”
Kaitlin leads me to the far corner of the studio. “Art has always sold better if it has that element of violence. I’d be a fool not to use these sites.”
I barely contain my groan. No matter what Kaitlin throws into this argument, I’m not buying it. Rowan and I have hashed out the argument of art for money’s sake ad nauseam.
A framed, hanging portrait the size of a large poster confronts me and the breath catches in my throat. Soon the familiar rush of water rises around me, inching up past my shoulders.
“It’s a project I’ve been working on for some time.” Kaitlin’s voice gargles through the thickness of water.
My fingertips reach out through the watery veil with a tremor. The Andy Warhol–like composition wheels brilliant colors and bold shapes. My index finger traces the tiny square photos, all of the same size and composition but in varying shades of color. Together, these small squares form an oversized portrait of Marci. Her navy eyes twinkle out at me. She’s wearing the shirt I remember so well, the worn plaid in faded blues and greens.
Suddenly I hear Rowan’s voice. Karma, she whispers to me. Don’t let this wheel circle round again.
Like I said, I don’t really understand all of Rowan’s spiritual talk, but one thing I know for sure: karma can be a real bitch.
After my very first group meeting with One True Path, the Jamesons held a welcome party for me. Once I noticed Marci, I couldn’t turn away. I watched her sip water, nibble on a rock-hard cookie, flip the spray of golden bangs from her brow while she smiled and laughed with the other members. From that point on, I became stealthy in my observations of Marci, stealing small glances at her from the corner of my eye, hanging on every word she said. She had the air of the bad girl, playful and headstrong, sporty and curious. By some stroke of major luck, or maybe the push of God’s own hand, she sat next to me in the final group circle that first night. Cross-legged beside her, I watched Marci’s bare tanned knee bounce along the folded edge of her jean shorts. For a fraction of a second our knees met and a pure shot of electric rocketed through my entire body until every one of my little hairs stood on end.
Pastor Jameson closed the meeting the way he always did—with confessions. Had anyone been moved during the meeting to confess? Had Jesus put upon any of our hearts the urge to purge the dark secrets we’d been holding on to? It was the moment in every meeting that had the power to make my heart stop and my palms drip with sweat. I’d go on to have nightmares of the pastor fixing his gaze on me, demanding that confession of me. On that first day, though, as the newbie, I was spared. I’d already learned that the pastor was a force to be reckoned with and when the Lord moved him to question someone, all promises were off. That day, though, that beady stare fixed directly next to me. Marci’s nervousness was a boiled heat radiating at my side.
“Marci. I hear you’ve had quite a week.”
“It’s been okay.” Marci leaned forward with her elbows on her knees as if she was ready to spar. I never imagined that anyone would have the courage to take on this man of God.
“That’s not what your mother says.” The pastor coughed in the silence that filled with tension. “Does that mean you haven’t heard from the woman at the college?”
I watched Marci crack each knuckle. Strong hands.
“I ran into her.”
The room erupted in whispers and movement. As if on cue, Mildred broke out in fervent prayer.
“You must confess, Marci. This is vital for your recovery and relationship with Jesus.”
We all sat in a circle on the floor while the pastor stood in the middle. With the intense attention, Marci did something I never expected—she began to rock slowly back and forth and her eyes took on a distant glaze as if she was thinking of something that happened long ago.
“Marci,” the pastor coaxed, “remember your mother. She’ll be so disappointed to hear that you aren’t recovering.”
Marci groaned and threw up her hands. “We kissed, that’s it! I only saw her because I wanted to tell her in person it was over. I at least owed her that.”
“Owed her?” the pastor nearly hollered incredulously. His beady eyes could burn right through you.
“She’s been a good friend.”
“So said the sinners about one another in Gomorrah. She’s tempting you, Marci.”
The rest of us looked down at our hands, but Marci was defiant. Her rocking became quicker. She stared the pastor directly in the eye. Much later, after Marci’s death, I realized it had been that fierce refusal to give in so easily to the pastor’s ideals that caught hold of my heart that very first evening.
“I like her for who she is—all of her—not just for what she has between her legs.”
“Marci, that’s stinkin’ thinkin’.” The pastor stepped closer to her.
“Is it?” Marci didn’t let up. “We’re told to not be attracted to people only because of their looks, to not judge a book by its cover. Isn’t that exactly what you’re telling us to do? Only to be attracted to someone who has the right genitals? Isn’t it what’s inside a person that counts? That’s what Jesus taught. To look for a person’s soul and not what adorns their body.”
At first, no one could believe she said it out loud. I’d be willing to bet that everyone around that circle had had those same questions at one point or another, but no one dared to agree with her. We sat in silence for some time and waited for the pastor’s response while he prayed. Instead of speaking to Marci, though, he spoke to us all.
“Don’t you all see? Marci freed herself from this woman. The devil is doing all he can to pull Marci back. Look.” The pastor leaned in close and circled the group of us. “People who have the homosexual disorder lack healthy boundaries. This leads to gay relationships that are fraught with sexual and emotional addictions.”
Fraught. It sounded to me like the pastor was reading aloud from some sort of medical dictionary or a textbook. On the other side of me, Chaz nodded. The others agreed.
My mind, though, was on Marci. My throat swelled with jealousy. A college girl? I could never compete with that. The pastor ranted on about how the devil was alive and well and we were all seeing his work in Marci. Conversion therapy, the pastor said, would cure Marci—that and a tremendous amount of prayer. Our eyes met and held a few seconds until Marci gave me a smile that told me she found this amusing. It nearly knocked me over to look Marci in the eyes; a frightful ball of intensity rose from my stomach and lodged itself in my throat. But I could take these secret glances in small amounts. These treasures. The tiny blond hairs on her forearms rested against summer-tanned skin. The way our touch sent both shiver and sweat throughout my body at the same time.
My heart nearly collapsed inside my chest when I imagined those arms, those hands around me, her lips on mine. Those lips moving down. And the room swam around me when it came time to join hands in closing prayer. When my palm pressed against hers, our fingers entwined. My palm that was sweating so much, I nearly lost my grip on hers.
“Lord, we pray for you to cleanse us, make us new again,” the pastor called out. “Most of all, we pray to see your true light during these meetings, this gift of time from you.” He turned in the circle to focus on Marci. “Please, Lord, we pray that you gu
ide Marci into your light, loosen the grip that the devil has on her soul. He’s taken her hostage, Lord, and she needs you now.”
Marci’s fingers closed tighter around mine. A shock of…something ran through me, like a shot of liquor firing through every vein. Like one thousand hands stroking me all at once.
Later that night, alone in my bed, I untucked these images of Marci I’d hoarded away. My body burned and my cheeks flushed with the memory of Marci’s touch, and I called out to God.
Is this love? Is this a sign from you? Why are you letting me feel this way if it’s so wrong?
In the heavy silence, I listened for an answer, for any sort of response.
“God, please.” I resorted to presenting God with a bargain. “If you let Marci like me back, I’ll never do wrong again. Just this once.”
No answer dropped down from the heavenly gates. What did come was only more of the ache for Marci, the desperate want of her. Just to hear her soft breath. To smell her skin and hair. To feel those hands on me, over me, in me. My bedroom began to throb, pulsating around me until I could feel her against my skin, taste the heat of her lips on mine and feel the full weight of her body on top of me.
This, I reasoned with a shudder, must be love.
*
Somewhere through the thick waters around me, I hear Kaitlin. “It’s Marci Tucker. She was killed in 1989.”
I imagine my feet touching the floor of the sea. I bend into it and push myself up, up, up through the surface of the water.
“I wanted to play with this technique I never really used before.”
“Stippling. Only you’ve used photos instead of dots.” I rub my tired eyes and try not to look at Marci’s front teeth, squared and perfectly white. The likeness of this portrait is alarming—a photographic resurrection of sorts.
“Yeah, how’d you know that?”
It takes me a few seconds to collect my thoughts. I rub my throbbing temple. The mega-load headache’s just around the corner. “Why are you so interested in her?”
Kaitlin’s long hair’s tied back in a bun, similar to the way Rowan keeps her hair as she works. I notice for the first time that Kaitlin has blond roots—near white—growing in against the black hair dye, and the image reminds me of Sambino’s brown roots growing in. Doesn’t anyone around here present themselves as they truly are? Kaitlin rubs her hands together with nervous energy, like she’s trying to generate heat.
“Marci’s a legend around here. A ghost story. When I was younger, my older brother used to dare me to go into those limestone caves to see if I could find Marci’s ghost on Halloween night. It’s the big thing to do around here, light candles inside the caves and do some silly séance that never works.”
“Why did you do a collage of her?”
Kaitlin shrugs. “I felt for her, I guess.” I say nothing, only watch as she picks at the remnants of dark polish on her nails, the bones of her fingers and hands as delicate as a bird’s. “This will sound weird, but we had a sort of connection. Not that I talk to dead people or anything, but I understand her. I get what she was about. I mean, here she was, just this high-school girl who went to the caves to get away from this godforsaken town. She was the outcast. I can really relate to that. It’s not easy being different in Willow’s Ridge.”
“I’m sure it’s not.”
“She had this artistry to her. In the school library I found old yearbooks. The one they printed the year Marci died had a sort of memorial for her and included some of the drawings she’d done. They were all these intricate, looping designs that only form a picture when you step back from them. Sort of like stippling, but with circles.”
Circles and loops. I look down at my hands in my lap and, with my thumb, twist the silver ring from Rowan round and round my finger.
“My dad was a few years older than Marci. He told me she always was writing in this notebook, toting it around and making all these notes. I imagine her as a poet, really. The artist killed before her time.”
A notebook. Marci’s missing journal.
During one of our meetings, I sat on the edge of a stone and watched Marci draw circles with the end of a stick in the dirt outside the dusty cavern of Stonehenge.
“Scribbles,” she said, “until you look closer. Then everything makes sense.”
I thought about the real Stonehenge while I watched her draw that afternoon, how the English countryside held this place of great energy, a circle where all within was secure. It was a ring of safety, a giant hug for all who entered. Marci told me of how the real Stonehenge was thought to have healing and spiritual powers. The ancient people who frequented those magical stones came there to celebrate and to make offerings to a higher spirit. Was that how Marci saw her own Stonehenge? A safe ring of rock that kept all the bad out, a place where she could be sheltered by the environment? I certainly did. It was the spot not only where I came to see Marci, but where I could come and lick my wounds from an insensitive world.
“Our energy never leaves the circle,” Marci said. “You’re here. I’m here. Even when our physical bodies are not. We’ll always be a part of Stonehenge.”
Marci, I realize, has become the boogeyman to Willow’s Ridge. She’s the monster story that parents warn their children with, the ultimate cautionary tale. Me? Marci would say. The Willow’s Ridge boogeyman? And we’d collapse together in a peal of laughter. Kaitlin’s correct about one thing, though. Marci’s ghost is a palpable presence in this town, appearing when least expected.
“Do you really think the recent killings are linked to Marci’s?”
“We’re looking into it,” I say and follow Kaitlin back to the table with the file from my satchel. “What I am sure of, Kaitlin, is that there is so much you are not telling me.”
“What do you mean?” Kaitlin eyes the file between us. I wait for her to finally look up at me and then tell her with my eyes: Cut the shit.
I spread out the photographs of Sambino with the dead bodies, side by side, slow and methodical. Her body freezes into a rigid position that tells me she’s surprised I have copies of them. We sit this way, both of us looking down at the pictures on the table in silence. When it’s clear she isn’t going to talk, I pick one up. “I bet the families would slap a lawsuit on anyone involved in these photos faster than the media hounds could get here.” I pause. “It’s the border of the photographs, Kaitlin, that caught my attention.”
Kaitlin’s face visibly reacts to the word border. Her eyes close to avoid any sort of contact with mine and her body visibly tenses.
“I know a painter who tells me that every artist has something called a signature. So when I saw this image”—I take the tip of my pen and point at the marking of the miniature sun—“I knew exactly what it was.” I walk over to the portrait of Marci and tap at the tiny sun inside that border. “Your signature.”
Kaitlin’s like a deer frozen in the headlights, all eyes and tiny body focused on that small circle with outstretched lines in the border.
“I’m curious, Kaitlin. Why did you develop the pictures if you didn’t take them?”
A few beats of tense silence pass between us as if she’s trying to figure out if I’m joking or not. Finally, Kaitlin lets out a breath of relief. “How did you know I didn’t take the photos?”
“It’s obvious. The composition. The harsh lighting. It’s not your work.”
Kaitlin’s teething her bottom lip again around the chunky, silver lip band. “Sambino paid me. He wanted black and whites with a classy look. His word. This is the best I could do with what I had to work with.”
“How much?”
“I shouldn’t have, I know.” Kaitlin’s voice takes on a tone I recognize from earlier in our conversation, defensive justification. “There’s this art school in Chicago I really want to go to.”
“How much, Kaitlin?”
“A thousand dollars in cash for about two hours of work. You’ve seen my crappy apartment. How could I turn something like that down?�
�
So Kaitlin had been there earlier, at the apartment, and chose not to open the door. I let this slide but tuck the information back inside my mind. “Who’s the photographer?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he threaten you with?” I recognize the same type of fear inside Kaitlin’s eyes as I saw in Sambino’s. Picasso has gotten to them both.
“Nick told me that he slept with this person.” Her lower lip puffs out. “Nick said they’re dangerous. Powerful. If I told, I’d be in danger.”
“Danger of what kind?”
Kaitlin only shrugs.
“How do I know you’re being honest with me now?”
“I swear.” She grips at her chest as though the pleas cause her pain. Her arms are covered with goose bumps. Kaitlin’s much too thin and small to have committed these crimes on her own; still, she could have been there.
“I had nothing to do with what happened to those dead people. I just needed the easy money.”
“What gender is Sambino’s lover?”
“A man, I think. When Nick tries to hide that he’s been sleeping with a man, he’s cagey about his pronouns.”
“Is the photographer one of your partners from here?”
“Jen’s a painter. Alex? No way. He can’t stand the sight of a hangnail. Besides, his work is amazing.”
She goes to a bookshelf and pulls down a hardback book for me. “Alex published this collection a few years back. Never in a million years would he settle for these terrible images. He doesn’t need the money. This”—she taps her fingernail against one of the photos we’d found at Sambino’s—“is not a photographer. It’s a tourist shooter.”
There is something about the way she speaks, the quiver that’s left her voice and the direct eye contact. Kaitlin’s finally telling me the truth. “A tourist shooter?”
“People who only take shots of family and their trips on vacation. Somebody who doesn’t know how a camera works to save their life.”
I flip through the book of photography. Magnetic colors fill images of trees and the town of Willow’s Ridge until it’s cranked up on color overload. The photography looks like a vision through a spinning kaleidoscope, all the colors mixing and curling into one another. Kaitlin’s right; these photographs are fantastic. Any artist this good wouldn’t be able to dumb his work down to match the amateurish pictures we’d found hidden at Sambino’s.
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