Tuesday, June 6
If it was possible Annie Everson appeared even thinner. Her face was so hollow it seemed as if it had collapsed in on itself. Her thick brown hair was lifeless and dull. She looked like she was wearing a bigger woman’s clothes.
The quickness was still there, but it didn’t seem to have a focus. She was wiping at the kitchen counter with a dishcloth. She’d been doing that since I’d sat down at her kitchen table.
“I’ve been meaning to call and thank you.” She wiped her hands on the cloth. “It’s just so hard. That’s no excuse, I know.”
“Annie,” I began. I didn’t know if I should tell her about my conviction that Ritter didn’t kill her daughter.
“I just find it all so hard to believe. That Stephanie’s dead. I expect her to walk in here any minute, and say, ‘Hi Mom, what’s for dinner.’ And Erik Ritter. I still can’t believe he would do that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I knew his mom. She took one of my weaving classes. Sometimes Erik showed up after class to take her back to the Island. He was a nice kid. But I know after his mom left, he had some problems. But to turn into a murderer. Maybe you never really know people or what they’re capable of. So much of ourselves are kept hidden.”
She put the cloth down on the counter. “I haven’t even offered you something to drink. Where’s my manners? You want coffee or soda?”
“Just some water.” I wasn’t thirsty, but it would give her something else to occupy her hands with for a while.
“Annie, do you remember that meeting protesting Russell Margaris’s developing the land on the Mink? Do you know if Stephanie was there?”
“Why you asking me about that?”
“I don’t want to say. In case I’m wrong.”
She put the water down on the table and sat down. There was so much pain in her face as she looked at me, it took all my strength not to look away.
“Yes, she was there. Ben and she went. She was part of that citizens group. She was pretty hyped up about that development. I remember how upset she was that night. Telling me about the meeting. She wanted to do something to stop the development. Move stakes, stuff like that. How she felt sorry for Janell with a father like that. That she could see why Janell was like she was. Stephanie always saw the big picture. And so kindhearted. I always worried about that. Her being so kind, so caring.” Annie was crying. Two lines of tears running down her sallow face.
“I’m sorry, Annie.” I reached out for her hand.
She let me take it. “Nothing to do. That’s what the pastor told me. Just let it come when it comes. Don’t fight it. As if I could.”
“Was Stephanie especially friendly with anyone in that group?”
“Not that I know of.” She withdrew her hand. “You don’t think Ritter murdered Stephanie, do you?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
“You have an idea who did?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to ask you who. I can’t bear to think of it right now. But you find out one way or another. Then let me know. Okay?” The tears were back.
“I haven’t forgotten my promise.”
* * *
I grabbed the baseball bat as I heard the wheels crunch on the gravel drive. When I opened the mobile home door, it was in my right hand held high like a club.
Martin’s black pickup truck was outside. Salinger let out a series of barks and bolted out the door. She greeted Martin with a combination bark and jump. Her tail was wagging shamelessly.
Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any worse, I told myself, leaning the bat back against the wall.
After leaving Annie’s place, I had returned to find Jake gone for the day. Marge’s only comment was, “If it’s important, call his cell.”
He’d left me the stringer’s notes from several town meetings along with a curt directive. “Write up.” Below that order was another: “Edit feature column and sports. E-mail me when you’re done.”
“E-mail him?” I’d thought. He must really be mad.
In addition, the rain had left everything glistening and gloomy. Or maybe it was just I who felt gloomy.
Martin didn’t wait to be invited in. He bounded up the steps past me and into the mobile home. He was still wearing that obnoxiously red shirt. Clumps of dried mud from his boots trailed him across the beige carpet.
“Make yourself at home,” I said sarcastically.
He pulled out a chair from the dinette and sat down. A sense of irony was not a part of Martin’s makeup.
He was carrying a manila envelope, which he opened and emptied on the table. A pile of black-and-white photos spilled out.
“I printed all of them. Nothing interesting here.”
Though he had said he would print up the photos, I hadn’t really expected him to do it, let alone so soon. That is, not without my asking him several more times with a few grovels thrown in. My guard went up immediately.
I picked out the blow-up of the picture Weathers had left on his refrigerator and studied it.
“Some of the quality was lost,” Martin said as he petted Salinger on her head. She was salivating all over him. “But that’s what happens when you blow it up.”
The photo was grainy. But aspects of it appeared that weren’t noticeable before. Margaris had a strange expression on his face. His jaw jutted sideways and his eyes were closed. He looked exasperated and maybe wary.
“What do you make of the look on Margaris’s face?”
I put the photo in front of Martin, pulled up the other chair, and sat down. “He’s pissed.”
Martin picked up Salinger’s ball from under the table and threw it across the room. Salinger ran after it, scurrying back and depositing it at his feet as if he were the one who fed her.
“Yeah,” I said slowly, “but there’s something else there.”
“Look, he spent most of the meeting shooting angry stares at the audience and whispering to his lawyer.” He smirked. “Say, maybe he’s your murderer.”
“Humorous. You remember what Weathers said?”
“Unfortunately, I do. He made this rambling speech about the importance of rivers. Which wasn’t the point of the protest. I kept thinking, why doesn’t this jerk sit down and let someone who knows what’s going on talk. We weren’t trying to save the Mink, we were trying to save the Hine’s dragonfly. Though I suppose it might amount to the same thing. But the point was the Hine’s is endangered, not the Mink.”
“What’d he say their importance was?” I was thinking of the letters and what the killer had said about a river running through her and soon me.
“I tuned him out. He was rambling all over the place. He did more to hurt our cause than help it. Weathers can be such a pompous ass sometimes. There’s a guy who can’t accept the fact that he fixes boats and crews a ferry for a living.”
“You got something against Andy Weathers?” I asked.
“Me? At least I’m not trying to pin two murders on him. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? The police have Ritter dead to rights, but you think they’re wrong. God, what an ego. Solve one crime and you’re cock of the walk. And why Weathers? He offend your feminist sensibilities in some way? I would have thought you’d a gone for one of those sex offenders. Too obvious?” He was squeezing Salinger’s ball in his hand.
“You’re the worst kind of journalist, you know that, Girard? To you journalism is an excuse to air your own biases. In fact, you’re not even a journalist. That piece of crap you wrote on those pervs. Talk about bias.” He had squeezed Salinger’s ball so hard, it had collapsed in his hand. Salinger slunk to a far corner of the mobile home, her tail between her legs, her ears down.
“Then why’d you bring me the photos?” His rant seemed to have materialized out of thin air—or had it been hovering between us for a long while? “Needed a reason to come here and dump all over me?”
His face went as red as his shirt. I thought he was going to take a swing at me.
“I want to see you go down in a blaze of glory. And if these photos can help, why not?” He threw the ball across the room. It hit the wall and landed on the bed with a dull thump. “And it’s going to happen. Jake told me about those letters you got. Somebody has it in for you.”
I could feel the heat flush my face. “You mean someone like you?”
He laughed. “Yeah. And I murdered those girls too.”
“Woman,” I said. “One of them was a woman.”
“Girls, woman. No matter what you call them, they’re still dead.”
“Why don’t you get the hell out of my place.”
He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs in front of him. He was looking at the wall.
“Sarah’s place,” he said in a low voice.
I followed his eyes. He was staring at Sarah’s charcoal sketch taped to the wall. A few sailboats, a pier, a man looking out to the horizon—all done with strong lines and an eye for what’s important.
So we were back to that. Rob Martin’s obsession with his ex-wife Sarah Peck. The fact that she’d rented her mobile home to me, that I was sleeping in the bed they had probably made love in, had sent him over the edge.
“Look, you don’t like me. I don’t like you. But we have to work together.” I was going to offer an olive branch, or in this case, maybe the whole tree if it would work. Martin and I were never going to be friends. The most we could hope for was civility.
“Do you think we could bury the hatchet for a while? And not in each other?” I asked.
Salinger slunk back across the room and sat between us.
Martin leaned down and ruffled the white fur on Salinger’s chest. “I got nothing against your dog,” he said.
“Is that a yes?”
He continued ruffling Salinger’s fur. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know if Weathers is the murderer, but he’s connected in some way. Either directly or indirectly. That I’m certain of. I won’t go into my reasons until I am certain. But it all centers on rivers. And according to you, he had a lot to say about rivers at that protest meeting.”
“You got copies of those two letters?” he asked.
I walked over to the bed, picked up the Shakespeare book, and took out the two letters.
As I sat down, I put them on the table in front of Martin. He picked them up and read them. Then placed them side by side on top of the photos.
“You sure that second letter was put in your mailbox after Ritter was arrested?” Martin tapped the letter with his index finger.
“About as sure as you and I are never going to be buddies.”
“What about the sex offenders? I could see these coming from one of them.” He rubbed at his goatee. I was used to Martin’s mercurial personality, one minute raging, the next reasonable. But even for him, this was an abrupt about-face.
“Monroe Parks paid me a visit. He was so angry he kicked Salinger. Though I’m sure he wanted to kick me too.”
Martin bent down, picked up Salinger, and held her over his shoulder like a baby. “You okay, girl?” His voice had gone up an octave. I wanted to puke.
“I know how to take care of my dog,” I said, resisting the urge to grab Salinger out of his arms.
After a few minutes, he put her down on the floor. “Could be him. Could be a lot of people. But, if, and it’s a big if, the police do have the wrong guy, these could be from the killer.”
I nearly fell off my chair.
“Could be,” he stressed. “Regardless of who it is, you’re on his hit list. So maybe it’s time to back off.”
I clenched my jaw. “I’m not backing off.” If one more person told me that, I was going to scream.
Martin laughed—a deep full-bodied laugh that relaxed the lines in his face.
“Like I said, blaze of glory.” He did a spiral downward move with his finger.
I glared at him, my body pulsing with antagonism, because he was right. I could go down in a blaze of glory. And this time I might not be so lucky. Why was I doing this, risking my life? I could tell Annie it had become too dangerous—that I’d done all I could do. She’d understand.
As I stared at Martin’s florid face, the quicksilver of emotions so evident, I understood for the first time what was really driving me. What had been driving me all along. Danger had become an addiction to me. I craved its adrenaline rush. It kept my dark cancer thoughts at bay.
Martin picked up the letters again. “Like a river running through her. A river running through her soon you.” He put the letters down. “You know, I always thought rivers were like people. Unreliable and unpredictable. You can never count on them. Too susceptible to their environments. And that’s especially true of the Mink. When the water level’s low in Lake Michigan, the water level’s low in the Mink. Cause and effect. The river depends on the lake. The lake even controls the Mink’s tidal current. Every thirty minutes or so the water moves upstream, then downstream. That’s what makes it an estuary.”
“And this means what?”
“You’re so smart, you figure it out.”