by Todd Borg
We flew north in the snow storm. I concentrated on the headlights coming toward us on the highway. If I flew too high, the snow obliterated my vision. But if I flew too low we’d be in constant danger of hitting power lines or even small hills. It was a risk I had no choice but to take. When the road curved I banked the little plane to stay directly over it. If I veered off the highway to the left or right we would likely hit a tree. It was like flying on a roller coaster with death as the penalty for any mistake.
“Tell me about Sam,” I said, hoping Alicia’s talking would ease my tension.
“You mean Joseph’s half-brother. Helga’s son.”
“Right,” I said, glad that Alicia knew his real identity. “He worked as caretaker at the Salazar mansion in Tahoe.”
“I don’t know him personally,” Alicia said. “He didn’t show up until after Melissa died. I’d already been in the hospital for several years.”
“But you knew of him. How?”
“Joseph told me. Sam was born ten years after Joseph. The family tried to keep Sam’s birth a secret from Joseph, but of course you can’t hide such things from smart children. Besides, Joseph and Helga were very close. Helga had done most of the work of raising Joseph. Joseph knew that Helga was pregnant and when she went away in the last month of pregnancy it was obvious to him why.”
“Did Joseph know who the father was?” The highway made a sudden turn to the left and started climbing up a steep grade. I banked the plane and pulled back on the yoke to follow the road.
“He said he had a good idea. Even to a ten-year-old boy, it was clear how attractive Helga was. And he’d seen his father give her certain looks.”
I thought about that as I flew. “Did Joseph ever say how it was handled when Sam was born? How they found a foster family and how they kept it quiet?”
“No. But when Joseph was a teenager he found some papers in Abraham’s safe. From them he learned about Sam’s whereabouts and how the family was taking care of his finances. Joseph always said that he gained a new understanding of Helga’s predicament that day. He said he felt much more sympathetically about her ever since. And when Joseph went off to Harvard he contacted his little brother. They maintained a secret correspondence until Joseph and Grandpa Abe were killed in the plane crash.”
Suddenly, the ground disappeared. There was nothing but snow out the window. I pushed in the yoke. We dropped fast, but the road didn’t reappear. I was afraid of coming down too fast and hitting the ground. Not knowing the lay of the land made it impossible to tell which course of action would be best. The snow made it impossible to see out the window. I decided to circle back.
I took a reading of the altimeter and the compass, then turned us into a tight circle.
Watching the compass I brought us around in a full circle, and then started back down, roughly returning us near to the point where we lost the road. Alicia sensed my tension and was silent. I strained to see through the snow. Not to find the highway now meant certain death.
There it was, down to the left.
I brought the Tomahawk back over the road. My chest hurt and my ears pounded from my runaway heartbeat.
When I calmed, I asked Alicia, “Who handled legal matters for Joseph and the family?”
“An old lawyer in Reno.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“No, but I can still see him in my head. He was bald, had a pot belly and walked with a limp. I went to a meeting once. The man’s son was there, fresh out of law school, getting ready to take over the practice. I remember because the son was the opposite of the old man. Handsome, lots of hair, the picture of fitness. He obviously worked out.”
“Think about the name. What was the ethnic flavor? Was it easy or hard to say?
I saw Alicia shake her head in my peripheral vision. “I’d guess it was English,” she said. “It might have started with an S. Like Smith, only not so common.”
“Smithson?”
“Yes, that’s it!” Alicia said.
We flew in silence for several minutes. I thought about the two Smithsons, father and son law firm for the Salazar family. Privy to secrets. Then my mind segued to the woman in the Hopper painting. I thought about her motivations and the motivations of people in general. Loneliness and heartache seemed to rule.
Alicia looked at me across the small dark cockpit. “You are frowning. Is there more trouble with the weather?”
“No, I think we’ll be fine. I was thinking about a painting by Edward Hopper.”
“I’ve heard of him. What is it a picture of?”
“A woman in a movie theater,” I said. “There are other people in the theater, but she stands by herself.”
“If she is alone amongst people, she feels isolated. Perhaps the painting is about isolation.”
I didn’t show my surprise. Alicia was as perceptive as her daughter Jennifer. And she hadn’t even seen the painting. “Yes,” I said. “Isolation and loneliness. I think Hopper wanted to show that a person who is in a safe place might not be safe at all. If he or she is suffering from loneliness, it could poison their judgement.”
“Emotional danger is as real as physical danger,” Alicia said. “The stakes are as high and the pain is greater.”
I realized that Alicia was talking from personal knowledge.
“It would be hard,” Alicia continued, “to make a picture that communicates emotional danger. An artist might have all the visual components, yet the picture could fall flat.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It’s what artists call content. Talent and skill can make for an interesting work of art. But content is an extra quality that’s hard to articulate, harder still to achieve.”
“It’s not just what’s in the picture,” she said. “Something is required of the viewer. For years people have visited me in the hospital. They all thought I was safe. Physically safe. You were the first to see that I was in emotional danger.”
I didn’t respond.
“Why were you thinking about the painting?” Alicia asked.
“When Jennifer hired me to investigate Melissa’s death, I started to realize that much of what motivates the members of the Salazar family is at first invisible. I was wondering if there were parallels between the Salazars and Hopper’s painting.”
“You mean what goes on behind the scenes. Content.”
“Yes,” I said.
“What did you find?”
“A lot of actions that I didn’t understand. I thought Hopper could instruct me on the terrors of loneliness and isolation and what it might do to an individual.”
“There’s a lot of that in my family,” Alicia said. She turned away from me and peered off into the darkness.
My mind drifted, no doubt from exhaustion, and the woman in Hopper’s New York Movie became Gramma when she had been young. As the painting’s viewer, I became Abraham, unfaithful husband, father by Helga of the bastard son Sam. And then out of my mental fog, came an image of the photograph Immanuel Salazar showed me. The happy Salazar family standing in a boat. I realized with a jolt that the photograph pointed to the answer to my questions.
The picture on Immanuel’s dresser showed most of the people involved. Gramma and Grandpa Abe when they were young. Next to them the older brother Immanuel and to his side the ravishing Helga who had her arm around young Joseph’s shoulders. The only people missing were Smithson and Alicia and those who were not yet born, Sam, Jennifer and Melissa.
I now saw a way to fit the pieces together, and it made a picture as dark and disturbing as it was revealing.
It was a picture of alienation, a picture with deadly consequences for Jennifer. It was finally clear why Jennifer was to be the next victim. If I could get to her fast enough, it might still be possible to save her life. But the killer would strike soon, very soon. Of that I was sure.
At that moment the plane’s engine sputtered and died. The cockpit became deathly silent. The only noise was the buffeting of the plane by
the storm’s wind.
THIRTY-THREE
