Bridgeport is a really small place. Post office, a few buildings along the highway. Population around six hundred. It’s at the crossroads of 395 and 182. If it’s famous for anything, it’s the big Fourth of July celebrations, plus a nice lake and some good trout-fishing rivers and the old gold town of Bodie. I knew this place on a very powerful level. And now I was back. Life had its circles.
There’s a Marine Corps Mountain Training Center up off the 108 about half an hour off in the hills. Great area for photographs.
A convergence of old and new emotions entered my mind. It’s part of the reason why I travel as I do. I love being on the road, never knowing what lies ahead.
Always the anticipation. You never know what you’re going to find. At times, on some backcountry road, some small world, you snap that very special photo, capture that “decisive moment” in time and place. If you’re a real photographer, nothing equals it. Part art, part history, part indelible experience.
I spoke about that to this person who had become my current obsession. And she was a very good listener. I laugh at myself, how garrulous I can get when I have an open mind nearby.
She said as we approached Bridgeport, “If you want, you can let me off in town. I’ll rent a car and take it from there. You’ve been great. I really appreciate it. You don’t need to get further involved.”
I felt a little offended. “I’m involved,” I said. “I don’t see how, having come this far, I can possibly just abandon you. It’s not in my nature.”
She said, “There’s no way to know how this will turn out. Or what it could mean to you to be involved. You need to really think about that.”
“Oh, I have,” I said. “If you knew me, you wouldn’t even ask.”
She said, “I’d apologize if I thought different, if I doubted. But I don’t. Just wanted to make sure. You’re not just a photographer—those photos of yours have a depth to them that comes from having a special visual awareness. And you? You strike me as something special, as well. I won’t question your commitment again.”
“Thank you,” I said. I couldn’t believe how powerful was my feeling toward this woman.
She smiled. “If I get my way, you’ll get a photograph unlike any other.”
The connection was absolute in my mind between her anguish and my artistry. It was really weird, but we were on the same wavelength for different reasons, which led to this wonderful convergence.
When you’re a bit of a loner, and you have your own world view that’s very specific and intelligent, you don’t run into many people who get you. She did.
We were making a powerful pact. It’s such a joy, such a miracle, when two people make this kind of connection. The consummate artist and this woman with a final, ultimate need for justice. My heart raced.
“We’re some partnership,” she said with a dark, almost naughty kind of smile. Then she said, “Just down the road is where to turn. There’s a spot up the mountain we can park. It’ll be about a quarter-mile from Harry’s cabin.”
The mysterious connection that links destinies is what this life is all about. I felt that kind of power in this moment as I had a few times before. This, though, was the most intoxicating connection I had ever known. This Harry murdered this woman’s family. Because of that, she had gotten sick and was dying. But she had also hooked up with me. It all seemed somehow ordained.
I wanted nothing in this world, in this life, more right now than to see her kill this bastard. And I intended to photograph it so the world would know what she did and why she did it. When justice doesn’t come by normal channels, it must find other means.
My darker thought processes can be a little scary when it comes to what I’m willing to do for art’s sake. But I can’t deny who I am.
4
As I followed the road into the low hills, it grew quickly dark. She directed me into the heavy pine forest on a feeder road that was almost no road. Branches scraped on my roof. The headlights poked through the heavy growth past a few large boulders, then into a more open area along a meadow.
I felt that aliveness that only the most supreme moments can induce. We were now locked in some cosmic drama starring this dying stranger with her horrible past. The terror that was in her body and in her mind, the goal ahead, had me riveted.
“Pull over up here,” she said. “The headlights carry once you’re around the turn, and Harry will know somebody’s coming.”
I pulled off the road, back under the branches of a large pine.
“Thank you,” she said. “I can’t imagine many people would do this for me.”
“I feel on some level, doing this with you, for you and your family, is as completely right as anything I’ve ever done.”
“Yes, I appreciate that,” she said. “I couldn’t have asked for anyone better to help me.”
At that moment, looking at her in the dark of the parked motor home, only the slightest of moonlight reaching through the trees, she looked truly beautiful and yet scary cadaverous at the same time.
She said, “Bring your best camera. Let’s go see Harry.” Then she took the small-caliber automatic from her bag.
“You will be celebrated for this,” I said. “Believe me, there’s no doubt about that. If society can’t bring justice, justice can’t be denied. It must be gotten one way or another.”
“Yes, absolutely,” she said. “The world must see what happened to the monster who took my family. Justice done and recorded.”
That little voice in the back of my head that tried to throw some cold logic on the situation, the voice that told me I didn’t want to be caught up in her deal, that voice went dead silent. This had to happen, and I had to be the witness and capture that moment.
As darkness fell fully on the mountains, we got out and walked up along the narrow mountain road, me with my camera, her with her gun…two soldiers.
At one point she faltered a little, stumbled, and I caught her by the arm to stabilize her. Her arm in my hand was nothing but bone and a bit of muscle.
She got ahold of herself and we moved slowly forward up the dirt road toward a shallow light ahead in the trees.
The cabin we approached sat partially hidden in the trees. As we got closer, I saw that it was neat and quiet, with only one small light. There was a wraparound deck. Inside, no movement I could make out.
“I don’t see a car,” I whispered. “Maybe he’s not here.”
“He parks around the other side,” she said in a barely audible voice. “He’s here.”
We moved through the trees toward the back and side of the cabin. Beyond the back porch was a drop-off into a valley, giving the cabin a really great view.
She stopped, took a deep breath, and then looked at me and nodded.
We moved closer.
Was that music? Yes, something was playing in there. Harry was home and this was his last hour on the earth—in this life—forever.
We slipped up through the conifers, the needles and ground soft underfoot. The air smelled of mountain pine. Out there was a near full moon, cradled in distant trees.
A long way off a thin, sharp yelp that I assumed was a coyote. This was such a magical place. A grand stage for the epic drama ahead.
It hit me again. I was going to shoot pictures of this woman and her nemesis at the critical moment.
So edgy and cool and beyond anything I’d done.
“Maybe he has dogs.” I said.
“No. If he did, they’d be out and barking. He’s a bird person. No dogs or cats.”
She held her hand up to hold me in place. She moved to the side, and each step looked frail, a struggle. She was so weak, I expected she might fall at any moment.
But she reached the side door of the cabin.
She tried the door, and it was open.
Then she waved me forward with her left hand as she stepped inside with the gun in her right hand.
I was highly impressed. I went up and entered the back door moments behind her, movin
g softly, each step a surreptitious exploit of willpower to make no sound.
She was standing at an inner doorway, a phantom, a vision cloaked in darkness.
I could smell things I couldn’t quite identify. I have very powerful senses of smell and hearing. The low music was a female singer, but not someone I was able to identify.
The entire setting was just so dreamlike. So right. Walls of pine, wood ceiling beams, French doors leading out onto the moonlit deck. In the living room, I could see chairs with large, flat wooden armrests. Bookcases. No TV. Rustic, really nice. Harry’s world was simple, elegant, a perfect fit for these mountains. Yet he was a killer.
She turned, this stick figure, and held up her hand to stop me. Then she slipped like a shadow into the room.
I followed tentatively. A couple of steps, my heart in my throat, my camera ready.
It was, I have to admit, so electrifying I could hardly breathe. I was viscerally, almost erotically moved by the utter exquisiteness of the moment.
No one was in the living room as far as I could make out. Or out on the deck.
This frail, anemic, dying woman waved for me to sit. Waved her hand like a wand, like the wing of a dying bird.
Then she moved on down a small hall. Was she going to bring him into the living room to kill him? Of course. That was the perfect place for a great photo.
5
She wanted to do it here in this room. Has she been here before? I wondered. That hadn’t occurred to me before this moment.
God, how I loved this. The ultimate moment of life orchestrated by this angel of death.
But when she came back out of the small hall, there was no Harry and her expression was somehow much different.
I was a little confused. There was nobody with her. Had she even checked the rooms?
What was weird was how she was looking at me funny, those big, sad, dying yet powerful eyes. So familiar in some odd way. But there was something new in those eyes.
She moved to a leather chair and sat down across from me, the gun resting on her thin thigh.
“I want you to meet Harry,” she said.
What the hell is this? I wondered, looking around. No Harry to be seen.
She nodded to the coffee table.
I didn’t see what the hell she was referring to. I didn’t get it. “What?”
“There, on the coffee table. That’s Harry.”
I looked down at the book on the coffee table. It was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
I looked at her. Something was very wrong, out of sync. Was this some kind of weird, sick joke? Had I been played? How sad if she was, in fact, nuts. All the buildup for what?
But no. Something else was going on here. “What are you…what is this?” I said angrily, but a little concerned.
“I want you to take my picture with Harry.”
She stepped forward, took the book off the table with her free hand, then sat back down, putting the book on her lap. It now leaned against her ribs below her almost nonexistent breasts, the gun in her right hand on her thigh.
“What’s going on? I don’t get this.”
“Don’t take it until I tell you to,” she said. “I want it to be perfect.”
There was something so wrong here, something I needed to get but didn’t. She didn’t seem crazy at all. She seemed to be very much in control of herself and of the situation. “What’s going on here?” I asked. I felt a really sick quiver somewhere in my gut and a cold serration across my consciousness.
“That music,” she said, “that’s Selena Gomez’s Magic. It was dedicated to Nick Jonas.”
I didn’t understand where this was going.
She then said, “It was what my daughter was listening to on her headphones at the time of her kidnapping. That book was in her backpack. She read all the Potter books up until that one.”
It took a moment before the truth began to break into my consciousness. When it hit me finally, it hit me with crushing force.
A lot of things were happening inside my mind. I have a very, very busy brain, but now it was spinning wildly.
The eyes! Yes, the goddamn eyes. Could this be possible? Was this woman the girl’s mother?
“We stayed up here in the summers,” she said. “Just my daughter and myself after her father was killed in Afghanistan. We had a big Shepherd dog for security. And of course, being a military man’s wife and something of a mountain girl, I had a gun.”
This was too much. This was so incredible, so fantastic, I felt like I was drowning.
She rambled on, her voice now stronger than it had been earlier. “What I didn’t anticipate was my daughter’s state of mind.”
That pretty little thing with those eyes was her daughter? My God, yes, yes…the eyes!
“She was lost in her books,” the woman who said her name was Julie went on. “She was escaping the loss of her father. I guess for a young girl, that’s the ultimate distraction.”
Why didn’t I see it? I felt something wrong. I knew those eyes!
The terrible truth stared at me. It was really quite amazing. How did this woman do this? How did she find me?
“Do you see?” she asked.
“You’re her mother?”
“Yes.”
My mouth hung open for a moment. So much to understand. So many questions. “You were at that rest stop. That…that wasn’t an accident?”
“No.”
“But how?” After I’d been cleared, I was so very careful.
She smiled. “We knew you’d never stay away from your favorite hunting spots.”
I said, “How long…how long have you been tracking me?”
“About two years.”
“How…I don’t…when did you know? How did you know?”
“When that girl was killed in Silver City, I knew. You didn’t change it up much. You were confident. I found you, and then lost you for a while. I hired different private detectives, finally one found you. We thought maybe you’d changed identities, fled the country. But I never bought that.”
“How did you know I’d be—”
“The new motor home. That was your big mistake.” She had a glint in her eye. “You have a tracker on the motorhome.”
That day, it was enchanting, dreamlike. I saw the girl, so beautiful, so young, with the headphones wandering along on a back road not far from the park near the school in Bridgeport. She so intrigued me. I stayed for two weeks in the Bridgeport area because of that girl. She was like this lost creature. I fell in love. It is my tendency.
“How did you get her?” she asked. “I really want to know. She was so well trained to avoid strangers when they approached.”
The woman, like so many, was naive and stupid. “Like you said, she was preoccupied.”
But this woman who thought she’d set this all up, that this is where she’d kill the man who killed her daughter, was mistaken. I know the weakness of women.
I said, “You and I have something in common way beyond your daughter. We understand something. How to hunt. How to track. It’s a special kind of talent. In this case, yes, I was attracted. And yes, I hunted. But many have escaped. It was a matter of awareness. Your daughter wasn’t really prepared. And I found out a little detail. She loved birds. In the days and weeks I watched her, birds were important. I saw her try to take a wounded crow, a very nasty creature, to a vet. How sweet was that? And that’s when I knew the trick to get her to trust in me.”
“The parakeet that was found with her?”
“Yes. I drove all the way to a shop in Reno and bought one. Paid cash. No cameras in or around the shop, of course. I kept the bird in the van. I broke its wing.”
It was a very brilliant move and I was happy to tell the mother of this girl.
“You broke a bird’s wing?”
“Of course. It comes from studying a person. Finding their passions, weaknesses. You understand that very well. You’re very good yourself. You knew I’d approach you at the
rest stop.”
“Of course,” she said with a sly, evil grin. She was bad and smart and I liked her. The connection was now complete. We were family.
“So then what happened?” she asked.
I couldn’t resist the pride. I felt I had somebody who would really appreciate the brilliant simplicity of it as others would not. I said, “Well, I drove around the block, parked, and got out in front of the van, leaving the door open. I was holding the bird when she came along. ‘It just flew into my window,’ I told her. I was practically crying. That’s all it took.”
“You know that you’re a monster who needs to be destroyed.”
“That’s not sophisticated. I’m the expression of true nature uncorrupted by society.” She had angered me a little. I said, “You didn’t do so good a job. You didn’t really train her where it mattered. Her real vulnerability. I asked her to grab a towel right inside the van door so I could take it to a vet.”
“Yes, that was good, I admit.”
“Of course.” Now I liked her again. “The rag was well soaked in chloroform, but I couldn’t really get it on her face. I’ll give her this. She fought hard. I still have one of the scars. Little bitch. She made me very angry. So angry, I killed her before I could really have any fun. Real tiger, that girl.”
“She did that?”
“Yes. But let’s talk about now. That’s past. She’s dead. Killing me won’t bring her back. Won’t do anything. There are some things I can tell you she told me before she died. Something you’re going to want to hear.”
We locked eyes. This was a very telling moment. She looked extremely weak. On the verge of passing out.
I said, “But as long as you’re holding that gun on me, I won’t tell you. And I think you really want to know what she said before she died. You’re dying. You need to know how brave she was and what she said.”
I generally find women to be pretty stupid when it comes to all the emotional crap. But this wasn’t a typical stupid woman. I figured she’d have no choice but to play along if she could sustain. What I knew she wanted to do was hear her daughter’s last words.
The Murder Option Page 8
