My mind goes sleepwalking while I’m putting the world right.
—Elvis Costello
IF I WAS searching for some sort of closure, I certainly didn’t get it from my conversation with Augusta Taft. The sheriff of Blackstone Falls left me with as many questions as answers, and frustrated enough to throw in the towel and go to bed.
After that fitful night at the Stumbull Inn, I had a new appreciation for the comfort of my own crisp, clean sheets and thick comforter. As I snuggled under the covers, I tried to relax, but sleep wouldn’t come.
Behind my eyelids a medley of colors flashed and danced like fireworks—saffron yellow, ice blue, rich dark red, and deep, shadowy black. Soon those colors coalesced into a single image—Nathan Brock’s painting of Ruby Tyler.
With that depiction of frozen violence burned into my imagination, I fell into a kind of half sleep. I imagined myself getting out of bed and walking with bare feet in my long, flannel nightgown to the front door of the apartment. As if from far away, I saw myself open the console and tap into the security system.
It was the quiet chirp of deactivation that snapped me back to consciousness, and I discovered I hadn’t imagined a thing. I was actually there, at the front door, poised to go down the staircase—and with no question about where I was headed.
I decided to consciously follow the commands of my unconscious mind.
With an undetermined draft billowing the folds of my nightgown, I descended the stairs and entered the bookshop. I couldn’t tell you the time, only that the world outside was dark and silent. Fog had crept in from the ocean and blanketed our little town with a thick gray mist that rolled past our store windows like waves of ghostly smoke.
I made my way back to the stockroom, certain I’d turned off the lights earlier. Yet now they were on, and the Nathan Brock painting of Ruby was the first thing I saw.
Taking my time, I took in every detail. Ruby’s exuberant expression, the saffron yellow curtains, the knife-wielding killer—
“Wait,” I whispered, my gaze freezing on the killer’s image.
Something about that big, scary pockmarked man drew me closer. I’d seen that man somewhere else. But where?
“Jack? Are you there?”
Another chilly draft lifted my hair, but there was no voice, only a shivery, electric feeling through my body and a sudden urge to turn. When I did, I found myself staring at that cowboy-and-dinosaur painting, the one my son had gushed about.
This Roland Prince pulp illustration was expertly rendered, bold and striking, and a little unsettling in its utterly realistic portrayal of the cowboy shooting at the T. rex.
“The cowboy,” I realized. “That’s it!”
He had the exact same hulking build and rough-looking face as the killer in the Nathan Brock painting of beautiful Ruby Tyler.
There were some minor differences: Ruby’s killer had dark hair and pockmarked cheeks. The cowboy’s hair was blond and his cheeks were smooth. So either Roland Prince had brushed clean the pockmarks for his painting’s cowboy, or Nathan Brock had painted in those pockmarks for his knife-wielding killer.
Regardless of the hair color and skin condition, the shape of the face and the wide brow and large hawklike nose were identical. The same man had served as the model for both paintings.
As I compared the two pictures, I realized the menacing man wasn’t the only thing familiar. The saffron yellow of the curtains in Nathan Brock’s painting appeared to be the same shade as the desert sun in Roland Price’s cowboy-shoots-dinosaur painting. I compared the reds and blues and realized the color palettes were almost identical.
Perhaps the pulp magazines suggested these colors to their painters. Did they suggest models too? Did Roland Prince ever paint Ruby Tyler?
After staring for a long while at Ruby’s sapphire blue eyes, I began to wonder what I was doing down here. If anyone saw me, they’d probably think I was acting as obsessed as Seymour—or as crazy as Harriet. That’s when I turned off the stockroom’s lights, went back upstairs, and reactivated the security system.