Justin Speer’s photography studio was in one of the Neolithic-looking buildings I’d spotted from the channel. It had four stone walls and a turf roof. He wasn’t lying about the quarters being tight.
Fortunately for everyone, Spinney had no interest in sitting in on the interview, maybe because he’d concluded there was nothing new to be learned. Instead, he’d asked, in a tone that sounded more like a demand, that Jonathan Goodale show him around the new Hinckley in the harbor. The elder Goodale, I gathered, captained both the sailing yacht and the picnic boat for Clay Markham.
To say the studio consisted of a single room would be both true and false, for in one corner was a darkroom partition, created by suspending heavy black curtains from the timbers overhead. It was cool in the stone house, although a pungent metallic odor threatened to choke us until Speer opened a window.
“You develop your own film,” I said, between coughs.
Speer grabbed the only stool in the room, leaving Klesko and me to stand. “I wouldn’t be a real photographer if I didn’t.”
“Not a fan of digital?” said the detective.
He had leaned against the door as if to indicate that no one would be going out or coming in until we’d finished our discussion. His expression remained friendly, relaxed. There was nothing threatening in his affect, but the message was unmistakable. He was in charge.
Speer removed his long-brimmed cap, a tuft of greasy hair standing upright on his head. He was oblivious to the comic display he made. His stained T-shirt fit tightly around his elongated torso. I realized now what he reminded me of: a weasel.
“Everyone thinks they’re a photographer these days,” said Justin Speer as if returning to a former conversation we’d never had. “Fucking smartphones.”
“You sound like a man with a grudge,” I said.
“Computers are incapable of reflecting the real world,” he said bitterly. “I don’t know how much you know about the history of photography, but the first modern cameras—created by Louis Daguerre—literally captured light on silver-treated plates. There was no intermediating device. Digital cameras translate reality into ones and zeros and then re-create it as an essentially false image.”
Klesko brandished his smartphone. “The pictures I take on this look true enough to me.”
“You’re talking about facsimiles of truth rather than objective truth. With digital cameras, the computer has already manipulated the image, because it has, by definition, created the image, even before you see it.”
Through the open window came the unexpected sound of a goat bleating. I hadn’t noticed livestock before, but it explained how the islanders kept the grass short.
“You sound like a philosopher,” I said.
He sighed and waved a long hand in the air. “I get it—you’re indulging me with these questions. Because you know I was taking pictures of the researchers at Baker Island, and that inevitably makes me suspicious if not a suspect. They probably called me a stalker. I know you were the one who hailed me on the radio yesterday, Warden.”
“Why didn’t you respond?”
His laugh echoed off the hard walls. “And say what? You knew perfectly well that my boat wasn’t in distress. You wanted to scare me off, but I was already done shooting for the day. I indulged you by leaving.”
“Why were you taking pictures of the researchers?”
“Because I’m a pervert, naturally.” He let the silence stretch as if it were elastic; I waited for the inevitable snap.
“Is that a confession?” I asked.
“Hardly!” Then he said mysteriously, “Who watches the watchers?”
“Is that a line from a movie I should have seen?” asked Klesko.
“My professional interest is in the experience of the uncanny,” Speer said, growing animated. “You’ve heard the word before, right? You probably think uncanny just means strange, but it’s more than that. The term describes the psychological discomfort of encountering a seemingly familiar person or object in a confusing context. Like seeing a mannequin that looks a little too lifelike. Or a person with a glass eye that doesn’t move in concert with the natural one. ‘That creeps me out,’ a person will say, but they can’t explain why the experience creeps them out.”
“Mr. Speer, you have an unusual way of not answering simple questions,” said the detective. “Our time is limited, you understand.”
“Justin is getting to his point,” I said. “He needs us to understand some things first.”
Speer looked at me with a quizzical expression, unsure whether I followed his zigzagging line of conversation or was merely mocking him.
“When a person says someone is creepy,” he explained, “it’s because they’re struggling with an ambiguous situation that might or might not be dangerous. It’s a survival instinct that doesn’t have much use in the modern world. Psychologists have done studies. For instance, one of the things that most unnerves us is a person silently watching.”
“I don’t need a psychologist to tell me that,” said Klesko.
Speer struck me as someone used to giving monologues and was exasperated by these interruptions. “But it’s not just the strange man on the street staring at you. It’s any kind of silent watching. Psychologists have found that even a harmless hobby like bird-watching creeps out a lot of people. It provokes the experience of the uncanny valley, where we feel threatened without knowing why. Here, these will explain what I mean.”
He reached for a leather portfolio and unzipped it and removed a series of black-and-white photographs. He handed the top one to me.
The picture showed Kendra Ballard outlined atop a hummock on the island, as if she had paused while crossing the ridge. She was staring into Speer’s camera with her binoculars half-raised, about to train the lenses on the photographer. Her brow was knitted, her mouth was drawn taut.
I passed the first photo to Klesko while I examined the second. This one had caught Garrett Meadows unaware, studying a laughing gull posed on a rock. The gull was looking out to sea.
I began to understand something of what Speer was saying. The photographer was watching the birder who was watching the bird, which was watching God only knew what. The image was a meditation on the act of observation.
The third photo was of Hillary Fitzgerald and Kendra Ballard hanging laundry on a line in a brisk wind. The two women had stopped to gaze directly at Speer’s unblinking camera. There was nothing remotely lurid about the image, but it sent chills up my spine.
“Memento mori,” I said.
“But not intentionally so! I didn’t know they were going to be killed. I was merely trying to provoke a response.”
“In them or us?” asked Klesko. “Because it certainly weirds me out.”
“You know they were murdered, but I believe you would have had a similar response even if you didn’t possess that knowledge.”
“Who watches the watchers?” I said.
“Exactly!”
I knew Justin Speer would appreciate being quoted.
Klesko passed back the photograph in his hand. I was struck again by how weary my friend, the new father, looked. “Let me get this straight. You were going over there and taking pictures as part of some sort of art project?”
“It was paramount that I not speak to them. They couldn’t know why I was there or what I was doing, or they wouldn’t react honestly.”
I could see Klesko’s growing frustration; he had passed the point where he might have endured an elliptical conversation.
“Where were you last night, Justin?”
“Home with Brenna and the baby.”
“What size shoes do you wear?” the detective asked next.
Speer couldn’t help but glance at his sandals. “Tens. Sometimes ten and a halfs. Sometimes even elevens. Why?”
“We found prints on the island that didn’t belong to any of the researchers.”
“Garrett Meadows told me he saw you rowing away from the island one morning at dawn,” I added. “He believed you were looking to come ashore or maybe already had.”
“What? I had no reason to land on the island. It was imperative that I not communicate with them.”
“So you say,” said Klesko.
“I have never set foot on Baker Island, not once in my life,” he said. “And Brenna will tell you I was home all night. Both of us were up at times with the baby. I’m a photographer. It was raining! Why would I have gone there in a storm? Hook me up to a polygraph if you doubt I’m telling the truth.”
The man was so arrogant I couldn’t resist needling him. “I thought you didn’t trust machines to tell the truth. Or does that only apply to cameras?”
Speer slid off the stool, causing it to wobble, and advanced on Klesko.
“My boots are in the house. You’re welcome to take them to examine. You can take my fingerprints and a DNA sample while you’re at it. I won’t hide behind a lawyer because I have nothing to hide.”
“We’ll take you up on the offer,” said Klesko. “I’ll tell a member of our Evidence Response Team to pay you a visit. There’s one last thing, though.”
“Yes?”
“What do you do here when you’re not taking pictures of strangers without their consent?”
The remark brought color to Speer’s pointed face. “I’m Clay Markham’s chief photographic assistant. Seven years ago, he saw an exhibit of my work at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and invited Brenna and me to come live on the island. He was a terrific teacher at first. Less so recently. I’ve outgrown him, you see. Now I assume you’ll want to check my quote-unquote alibi for last night. I’ll take you to Brenna, who will verify everything I’ve told you.”
Klesko opened the door. “We appreciate your cooperation.”