Thirty-seven
"I think Ronnie found a picture a long time ago,"
Wendy said.
Lori paused over a sink of dirty dishes. "I told you
not to snoop."
"I didn't snoop. We just talk about things, and it's
something he told me about."
Outside was a cold and gray morning, a bad start for
a Sunday. Lori wiped her hands dry with a towel and turned to face the
girl. "What do you mean by a picture?"
"A photograph. I showed Ronnie a picture from a
magazine and a picture we took with our camera last summer so that he
would know the difference. He found a photograph, just like you said
might have happened."
"Where?"
"Ronnie said he crawled through a tunnel to a room
with lots of pictures. I think he's talking about the old farmhouse."
Lori sighed, filled with anguish. Existence of a
photograph upon which Ronnie's drawings were based confirmed her worst
fears. "Does he still have the photograph?"
"He showed it to me, but there's nothing on it
anymore. It's all faded away and cracked from being bent and folded.
Ronnie says he's had it since he was a little boy."
Lori pondered the mystery and how best to handle the
situation.
"Mom? Are you spaced out again?"
"I'm thinking."
"I told Ronnie that Mr. Adler would send him away if
he knew about the picture or saw the drawings."
"I don't think we can expect much in the way of guile
from a boy like Ronnie."
Wendy laughed nervously. "Yeah, but he's gotten by
with murder so far, wouldn't you say, drawing all those awful pictures
without anyone ever knowing and window peeping all this time? Boys are
sneaky when it comes to things like that."
Grown men can be far more dangerous, she
wanted to add. "Stay away from the old Bates farmhouse," she said
instead. "You can see Ronnie, but visit here at the house. Never at the
farmhouse, and not ever alone in Ronnie's room."
"Gotcha."
Lori tried for a reassuring smile. "It's probably
nothing to get rattled over."
Wendy tried for a nonchalant shrug. "I've seen worse
in the magazines the boys bring to school."
Hopefully.
"Go get Leslie up,” Lori commanded. “He's missing
his cartoons."
The phone rang. Lori snatched the kitchen extension
from the cradle. “Yeah?”
"Lori."
The deep voice melted her insides and turned her
knees to rubber. How strange to be aroused and terrified, all mixed
together. "Good morning, Deputy Scarelli. What can I do for you?"
"Carol told me you've met Maggie. Do I get equal
time?"
"I'm listening."
"I had a tour of my studio in mind."
Lori considered the offer. "A short one, perhaps."
"Carol said she'd watch the children at the diner
this evening."
"Sounds fine."
He had more to say. A phone put too much distance
between them. "I'll pick you at the diner at about seven this evening?"
“I’ll be there.”
She hung up and explained the situation to Wendy.
"Carol's going to baby sit us?" Wendy said with a
wrinkled nose.
"Would you rather visit Ralph?"
Wendy stuck a finger in her mouth and made a gagging
sound.
"Rather jog with Karen?"
"Oh, give me a break!"
The clocks in the house ran slower. Minutes became
hours. She showered and dressed and walked Wendy and Leslie to the diner
in the gray dusk of twilight. Wendy broke the silence only once during
the quiet walk through town. "You and Trent aren't getting along."
"We don't know one another as well as we thought,"
Lori said.
"He scared you. I can tell."
The diner was closed for business, but both Carol and
Greg spent an hour or two in the evenings scrubbing and polishing for the
new day to come. Trent's car was parked outside. Carol greeted Wendy and
Leslie with strained enthusiasm and offered a milk shake.
Trent rose to his feet from a booth alongside the
door. He was still in uniform, his ominous revolver tucked in a low-slung
holster at his side. Wendy and Leslie watched in dismay as she went out
the door with him. Trent held the car door open for her, but had nothing
to say until they had driven through Sorrel and started down the blacktop
toward Jumer.
"Maggie watches me like a hawk, you know. Nobody
comes or goes in Jumer without her knowledge. I'll bet she has a written
record somewhere. If you ask to borrow it, we'll take my transgressions
one item at a time, straight down the list."
Lori refused the small talk. She didn't want the man
feeling her out and feeding her what she wanted to hear. She wanted to
make him nervous, knowing that he would try to explain away the things
that made him feel guilty, the things he feared would turn her against
him. Those were the things she wanted to hear about.
"You want to know about Laura," he said finally.
Bingo.
"She was my agent once upon a time. Law enforcement
was my career, but photography has always been an important part of my
life. That's how we met. Laura ran a studio. She was beautiful,
vivacious, and we turned each other on, personally and professionally. We
worked together for a few months, and then we married. It still seems
like yesterday, but it's been almost ten years now. I've given up hope of
ever seeing her again. I don't think it would have lasted anyhow."
"Why?" Lori said, satisfied to have started a flow of
the useful information.
Trent shrugged off the question. "You know that
expression about ships passing in the night? We were more like high speed
jets zipping by in the clouds. Laura wanted me to broaden my interest in
photography, but I was satisfied with my career in law enforcement. She
opened studios in a few other cities and overextended herself
financially. Being apart so much put a lot of stress on our
relationship."
Trent drove at thirty-five miles an hour along the
deserted highway.
"We had nothing in common but our passion," he said.
"It would have been enough, had we compromised a little. At that age, who
compromises? Everything fell apart. Laura came home to sort things out.
I should have stayed away. I guess it wouldn't have mattered one way or
another. One afternoon, she was gone and nobody ever saw her again."
"Maybe she went back to Los Angeles."
"I went back to look for her," Trent said. "A few of
her friends said they thought they had seen her about, so I couldn't be
certain she hadn't simply abandoned her old life in an attempt to start a
new one with a clean slate, me included. She wouldn't have abandoned her
family, though, so I came back here to wait for her."
"And you've been here ever since?"
He gave a reluctant nod. "Laura's mother had cancer
and needed her affairs looked after. When she died a few months later, I
discovered that she had changed her will and left the house to me. After
the funeral, I just hung around on a day-to-day basis. The thought of
Laura returning home and finding her mother dead and the house deserted
was too painful to risk. There was a local job open as a county sheriff's
deputy, so I took it. When I settled in, I found a new agent in Chicago
and opened a studio."
"And your models come all the way out into the middle
of nowhere to have their pictures taken?"
"I'm good at what I do,
I'm cheap, discrete, and I have good equipment."
"What are you good at?"
Trent warmed to the subject. "My job is to work with
specialty clients. Advertisers usually require only part of the model's
body, a face, a hand, maybe just a nice pair of eyes. They have an
advertising budget to stick to, just like the rest of us, and they can
live with bony knees if all they want is a nice pair of lips. If the lips
are already sold, it’s my job to show the bony knees to their best
advantage so that their introductory portfolios will look their best.
We're almost home. I'll let you judge for yourself."
Trent pulled into the drive of his dark blue
Victorian. He led the way inside looking totally incongruous in his brown
uniform with the revolver at his hip. The house was sparsely and
inexpensively furnished, and the rooms looked empty. "The furniture that
came with the house was on its last leg and the house is too big for me,"
Trent explained. "I've never had the need to refurbish.
I'll show you the studio and get changed while you look around."
Trent led the way down a flight of stairs off the
dining room. Fluorescents flashed on below and lured Lori into a finished
basement with low ceilings and recessed fixtures. There were no
partitions and no windows except for a combination bath and dressing
room. The walls were darkly paneled with a white stage at the far end
surrounded by a sparse forest of high intensity lighting fixtures. Trent
pointed to a desk. "There's some stuff to look at over there. I'll be
right with you."
He walked to a closet, rattled
the locked doors, and then pounded back up the carpeted stairs. When
she heard floorboards creak on the stairs to the second floor, she turned
her curiosity loose, judging the doors of the closet Trent wanted locked
to be metal-covered with wood veneer.
What would Trent be keeping
hidden from the world under lock and key? She inspected the dressing
room, then wandered the circumference of the basement before discovering
another set of doors well blended with the wall. Here, an old wine
cellar had been converted into a darkroom.
Aside from a computer and printer on the desk and a
filing cabinet standing alongside it, the studio was as sparsely furnished
as the upstairs. The couch and some chairs, a bunk and small refrigerator
and hotplate were of no consequence. A cupboard was filled with the
makings for coffee.
Trent had tried to bait her with a large photo album
on the desk. She went to it finally, and opened it.
Turquoise eyes blazed up at her. The woman in the
photograph may have been Indian for her dark complexion and square, strong
face, but her blue-green eyes were unearthly. Behind her glared a setting
sun of orange against purple mountains with a bloated moon of pale amber
drifting in a cloud of stars.
She turned a page. A nude woman lounged on folded
satin, an incredibly tall and slender woman with the curves and contours
of her body brought to life by intense patterns of light and shadow.
The woman on the third page was oriental with pale
green eyes, heart-shaped lips, and tan hair that surrounded her face in a
halo of tight ringlets highlighted in rich, golden light. The overall
effect was stunning. She was like a human being of a race Lori had never
seen before.
Trent came down the stairs a few minutes later. He
smelled of soap and his hair was still damp. He wore trousers and a black
T-shirt, but slippers rather than shoes. He draped his holster and
revolver over the back of a chair and placed a bulky walkie-talkie
alongside it. "I'm on call still," he
explained. "We shouldn't be disturbed unless something important comes
up. So, what do you think?"
Lori gestured to the computer and printer on the
desk. "Did you use that for photo manipulation? Some of
your pictures are beautiful, but they hardly look real."
He grinned with pride. "Nope,
no photo manips except for the backgrounds. It’s just me, the
model, and the camera. I hire out the background work and do digital
print-outs through an online outfit I especially like, but I'm not all
that high tech otherwise. It's more art than science.”
"Are these the women Maggie sees coming and going?"
"One or two a month at best. They’re never here for
more than a few hours."
"Do you ever have sex with them?"
Trent hesitated before answering. "I did with
Trina. She's the mixed Asian with the curls. She couldn't pay, and it
was a matter of honor to her. I don't generally. It's not safe."
"Because you're afraid of catching something?"
"I prefer not to get attached to someone passing
through," he said gently, and with a smile. "I tend to do that when I have sex with
women."
"Does any of this have anything to do with the reason
you don't think we should have a relationship at this time?"
"I just didn't want you to get the wrong idea about
me because of my sideline."
"I don't understand why I matter to you. I'm just a
frumpy housewife with two kids."
"Lori, you're not frumpy. You're an absolute doll.
As for the housewife thing, it's want you want out of life, not the best
you can do. It happens to be the kind of life I'd like to have, if
it's not too late. I like your
kids. I think your daughter is in love with me.”
Lori grinned. "God, you're good."
"You think it's just a line?"
"I'm afraid it might be, I guess."
Trent frowned, sighed unhappily, and changed the
subject. "Lori, I was wondering if you and your children would like to
move to Clayton."
The comment caught her off guard. "Move to Clayton?"
"I can find a nice place for you and the kids to stay
in town. The kids will have a broader smorgasbord of friends. You can
get a grant or a student loan for some business or trade courses at the
community college."
Lori was astounded. "You're serious."
"I can have you out of here in a week. I don’t spend
half of what I make. I can finance you until you’re on your feet. After
that, if we’re not getting along, you can tell me to leave and I’ll be
gone."
"Why? Why would you do all of that
for me?"
"Because there will be days this winter
when I won't be
able to get to you if there's trouble."
The man was wrought with anxiety, and Lori knew
better than to refuse his offer outright. He had good reason to be
making it, and she needed to know that reason. "Give me time to think about
it," she said.
He tried to pass off his smile as casual and
unconcerned. It looked strained.
"Trent, I've lived here for fifteen years. My
children were born here. I'm a creature of habit."
"But you'll seriously
consider it?"
She didn't have to lie to soothe his agitation.
"Trent, I'm going to lose the house. Now that I think about it, going
back to school is my only hope of ever supporting the three of us.
I'm sorry for being so paranoid, but scary things have happened this summer."
He drew closer and
self-consciously played with the collar of her blouse. "I'm sorry
about tearing you dress. I thought you’d panic and scream rape."
In a round about way, he was asking if she wanted to
do it again. She didn't know how to back away without loosing
ground. Trent was either her salvation or her damnation. She
needed him close to find out one way or another. "Tear anything you want,"
she said carelessly. “I'm just as lonely and deprived as you are."
He reached for her. "Lori, I never meant for this to
happen."
But it was happening, and when she kissed him, the passion
that sparked between them was too intense to bother with tenderness. His
rough hands swept away her clothing and her legs caved beneath her. All
too soon she lay sprawled beneath him on the rug in the middle of the
floor, wondering about the monster who had bound the body in Ronnie's
drawing and the monster of her dream of the glass eye and the question of
whether this was the same man. She could not imagine Trent taking part in
such madness, as if she knew anything at all about madness of that
magnitude, but when her eyes flew open at the exquisite culmination of her
passion, her gaze fell upon an enlarged photograph hanging on the wall
above her. She had seen it earlier. The image had not registered. It
did now, and although it did not quell the ecstasy sending her body into
gentle convulsions, it rekindled the possibility that she lay beneath the
thrusting body of her monster after all.
She had known this moment of discovery would come
sooner or later. She had assumed it would be a deeply embedded secret to
be pried loose from the surviving detritus of the past. Instead, it had
been a beacon shining in her eyes so brightly that she had not seen it at
all.
It was the image that Maggie had almost recognized.
It was the fourth and last of Ronnie Bates' pencil drawings. It was the
woman with the body given to the others.
She didn't have to guess at its identity. Who but
Trent Scarelli's long vanished wife, Laura Scarelli, would hang larger
than life and alone on that spacious wall?
