Pretty as a Picture

by Elizabeth Little

  And then he turns the wheel sharply to the left and lays on the gas. The girls squeal as the car goes off-road.

  Maybe I do, too.

  Little Bob steers the SUV over a hill, between two houses, and around a tree. We drive straight through what looks an awful lot like a stable and emerge into a densely wooded area that Little Bob nevertheless navigates with ease, finding daylight where by all rights there should be none. Then he takes a hard right turn and, somehow, picks up a dirt road that can’t have been used in centuries.

  It’s like he has Google Maps implanted into his soul.

  Another two miles or so and we come to the center of a glade; the truck glides smoothly to a stop. A hundred yards ahead, through the trees, I can just make out a square brick building. There are two police cruisers parked out front.

  “We may not do much,” Little Bob says. “But we do it better than anyone.”

  I look back at the girls, speechless.

  “That was beautiful,” Suzy says.

  Grace nods, wiping a tear from her eye.

  We climb out of the truck and creep over to the edge of the forest, concealing ourselves behind the trunk of a silver maple.

  “What’s the plan?” I ask.

  “We’re going to go in first,” Grace says. “One of us will tell the nice lady at the front desk that we have extremely important information relating to the case.”

  “Except,” Suzy says, “we’re going to say everything super fast, using as much post-2018 Instagram slang as we can think of—”

  “I’m going to have Urban Dictionary open on my phone.”

  “—and we’re going to let our voices go all high and girly at the end of every sentence, like this?”

  “I might throw in some Spanish just for fun.”

  “No, don’t do that. These are real cops, remember.”

  Grace swallows. “Oh. Right.”

  “And then,” Suzy continues, “just when they’re really confused, that’s when I’m going to ask to use the bathroom.”

  “But I’m going to keep talking—”

  “So they won’t think to follow me—”

  “And while she’s in there, she’ll open that window.” Grace points to an awning window set high on the back wall of the building. “That’s your way in. Billy will be in the holding cell on the south side of the building.”

  Suzy eyes me. “You know, our original plan was that I was going to break into the file room and steal the crime scene photos. But—I’m assuming we’re past all that?”

  I chew on my thumbnail and stare at the window. “Yeah. Let’s just do one deeply ill-advised thing at a time.”

  * * *

  —

  When I enter the room, still smarting from the tiniest of tumbles through the bathroom window, Billy’s sitting on a metal chair in the holding cell, hands tangled together in his lap, staring at a space a few feet in front of him.

  I take a faltering step forward. “Hi, Billy.”

  His expression doesn’t change. Doesn’t he recognize me?

  “It’s Marissa,” I say. “We met—God, I guess that was just yesterday.”

  His head comes up. It takes a while for his expression to clear. “I remember. I’m so sorry—I really didn’t mean to push you. I hope you’re not hurt.”

  There’s a long list of terms I could use to describe what my vision does in that moment. A zido, a zolly, a smash shot, a trombone shot, the Long Pull, reverse tracking, the Vertigo effect. Me, I prefer the term “dolly zoom”—since a dolly zoom is, in fact, a dolly shot that zooms. Whimsical nomenclature has always struck me as something of a contradiction in terms.

  If you’ve seen Vertigo or Jaws or Goodfellas—or any horror movie ever, really—you’d probably be able to recognize the shot. Picture a long hallway: At one end, an unassuming doorway. In the foreground, the hero, going about his business. But then, the lights flicker—behind that door, a noise!—and somehow, as we watch, the hallway lengthens, the door falling away like it’s being sucked into another dimension.

  There’s something bad behind that door.

  The language of cinema may be forever changing, but the English-language translation of this particular shot has remained remarkably consistent ever since Marnie. So when the windows on the wall opposite me seem to vanish into the distance, I know exactly what my brain’s trying to tell me:

  Oh shit.

  “I panicked,” he’s saying, “and I don’t always make the best choices when I panic. Which I suppose is what makes it panic.”

  Billy was the one who stole the footage. He was the one who attacked me. That means—

  “Dammit, Billy,” I say, my voice small. “I came here so you could tell me you didn’t kill Liza.”

  His head snaps up, shock slackening the line of his lips. “What? No. I took the movie, but I never touched the girl. I swear.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I have a GPS tracker on my skiff. I was only on the island for twenty minutes, and you can place me in the projection room in that time. It would have been impossible for me to kill her, too.”

  “Oh.” I press my hand to my chest, half expecting to find my heart on the outside. “When people ask, that’s probably the part you should start with.”

  He lets out a little puff of breath that skates along the very outside edges of what I’d call a laugh. “Good advice.”

  I creep over to the edge of his cell. “Why would you go to all that trouble for raw footage?”

  He looks back down at his hands. “I don’t think it’s going to sound so good when I say it out loud.”

  “Try me.”

  He lets out a slow, steady breath. “Gavin told me he was quitting, and you said—remember? You said that if Gavin quit, they’d shut the movie down. And that meant I was never going to get to see it.”

  “You know the movie makes you out to be a deeply troubled murderer, right?”

  “Well, I’ve heard that one before. Doesn’t change the fact that those years were some of the best of my life. I—I guess I wanted to see if they looked the same as I remembered.”

  His hands twist into a new shape, and he loses himself in a thought I can’t follow.

  I let him come back to me in his own time.

  “But then I heard someone coming up those stairs, and I got scared, because, well”—a glance, fleeting, from under his eyelashes—“you sounded much larger than you are.”

  “Jumping up a metal staircase will do that.”

  He looks away. “You should be more careful. I chipped a tooth on that staircase when I was running the projector. I caught my toe on the way up, and”—he claps his hands—“boom.”

  “I still don’t understand. If you wanted the footage so badly, why’d you dump the computer in the ocean?”

  He casts his eyes up to the ceiling. “I did what I imagine most accidental criminals do. I came to my senses, realized I’d made a terrible mistake, and tried to destroy the evidence.”

  “Thereby creating more evidence.”

  “Not my finest moment,” he agrees. “Say what you will about our police force, they’ve got me dead to rights on robbery. On the other hand, it’s a heck of an alibi.”

  I glance back at the door. Through the square glass window I can see Grace gesticulating wildly to three policemen, all of whom are blinking owlishly and rubbing their chins. But the girls won’t be able to keep them occupied forever.

  “Billy,” I say, urgently. “I need to ask you a question.”

  His forehead creases. “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?”

  “Yeah, I know, but that’s a thing you’re supposed to say when you’re about to ask a really important one.”

  He gestures at me to go on.

  “You said Caitlyn had a few boyfriends
that summer—”

  “She went out on several dates, yes.”

  “Right. Do you happen to remember the boys she went out with?”

  His eyelids flicker. “Of course I do.”

  “Can you tell me their names?”

  His lips part; he hesitates.

  My hands come up and wrap around the bars. “He can’t hurt you, you know. It’s kind of a neat reversal, really. He finally has you where he wants you—which turns out to be the one place on this island even he can’t get to.”

  Billy gives me a flat look. “You got here.”

  “Yeah, but I have two teenage girls on my side.” I time my next words so perfectly not even Gavin Davies could find fault with my delivery. “Tony Rees doesn’t.”

  If I were another person, a regular person, the kind of person who doesn’t mind shaking hands or hugging hello or accidentally just-maybe brushing up against someone for a split second in a crowded room, if being this close to somebody were an everyday affair for me and not something that sharpened my senses well past the point of mild discomfort, if I were able to casually look at someone without being painfully, insistently aware that I’m looking at someone I’m looking at someone oh God I’m looking at someone, I honestly think I would have missed it.

  But I’m not another person. So I don’t.

  It’s fear that flashes across Billy’s face.

  I take a step back. “I’m right. Tony was here twenty-five years ago. He was in love with Caitlyn. Why didn’t you tell anybody?”

  “He nearly killed me once. I don’t doubt he’d try again.”

  “But surely now—”

  His hand slices through the air. “You movie people are all the same. You think just because you didn’t know something all along it must be a brand-new discovery. But this isn’t a twist—you’re just the last person to figure it out. Everyone on the island knows who Tony is. They love him—they loved him when he was coming here as a kid, and they love him even more now. Where do you think all the money is coming from? Not tourists—this is Delaware.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “They’re all friends, don’t you get it? He and Nick were drinking buddies; Francie taught Tony to fish. He got invited to the Fourth of July party every year. They’re working together—just like they worked together then.”

  “Why? To get justice for Caitlyn?”

  He nods.

  “But you didn’t do it.”

  He smiles tightly. “Yeah, well, try telling them that.”

  I look at the door, then to Billy—then back again.

  “What?” he asks, warily.

  I straighten my shirt and hike up my backpack. “I think for once you might have the right idea.”

  SUZY KOH: See? We told you he didn’t do it.

  TWENTY-NINE

  We need to talk about Tony,” I say.

  Nick studies me over the rim of his coffee mug. “You broke into my station, and now you’re making demands?”

  “Yes, well.” I shift, trying to find a comfortable position in the chair Nick directed me to. It’s one of those wooden chairs with the seats that are carved to cradle your butt, but I’m clearly the wrong shape. It’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round, really uncomfortable wooden chair. “The fact that he was Caitlyn’s boyfriend seems like a fairly important detail.”

  Through the open door, I hear Suzy tell the uniformed policemen that she has a cousin who works at the Justice Department, so they better not try any funny business. Grace, meanwhile, is on the phone to Little Bob, instructing him to call for a lawyer and post something to Twitter if we’re not out in half an hour.

  How did she even get Little Bob’s number?

  “So you know,” Nick says.

  “I’m honestly impressed you managed to keep it a secret for so long.”

  His smile is cold. “We didn’t keep it a secret. None of you thought to ask.”

  “You’re judging me? I’m not the one here who beat up an innocent man.”

  Nick sits back in his chair—his has a pillow, I notice—and steeples his fingers in front of his face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m sorry, were you not there when they put Billy in the hospital? Maybe you just stood by and watched?”

  “Look—I was a kid, and I was terrified. Everyone was saying Billy was some sort of deranged stalker, and I didn’t know any better. In the movies those guys never stop with just one. How was I to know he wasn’t going to come for me next? Then the cops had to go and fuck things up, and since prison time wasn’t on the table, yes, I thought we needed to send a message. It was wrong—I can admit that now. But that’s why I’m doing all this. I want to get it right this time.”

  “You really think he killed Caitlyn?”

  He scrubs a hand over his face. “You don’t know him. He’s a rude little prick—always was. And facts are facts: He’s the only viable suspect in Caitlyn’s murder. He’s the only person who knew her, who had access to a boat to move the body, and whose whereabouts are unaccounted for that night.”

  “I’m telling you, Billy didn’t do it.”

  “I hate to tell you, but feeling really, really strongly about something doesn’t count as proof.”

  I look off to the side, thinking hard. I clearly need to try another approach here.

  “But you agree he didn’t kill Liza May, right?”

  “It seems unlikely,” he allows.

  “Okay”—I lick my lips—“bear with me for a moment, then: Did you also know Tony was sleeping with her?”

  Nick straightens, clearly surprised. “Liza?”

  I lean forward. “And you see it, right? How much she looks like Caitlyn? You know who else looks like Caitlyn? His soon-to-be ex-wife.” I take a breath. “You have to admit, that’s some Hitchcock-level shit right there. Pardon my language.”

  Nick sets his elbows on the desk. “Jesus.”

  I have him on the ropes. I can’t stop now.

  “It gets worse,” I say. “He’d been tormenting Liza for weeks. Knocking her down, then building her back up—only to knock her down again. At first I was like, ‘Oh, that’s just how he gives notes,’ but it’s more than that. He didn’t think she was good enough to play Caitlyn.”

  “And you think he killed her for that?”

  “It’s as plausible as anything.”

  He opens his mouth to respond—then shakes his head. “He couldn’t have killed Caitlyn, I know that for a fact. I was with him that night—we sailed over to Cape May to meet up with this girl I knew.”

  I sit back. Dammit. I really thought I had him.

  There’s a sharp rap against the glass of the door. Suzy’s face appears. “I hope you don’t mind,” she says, “but I was blatantly eavesdropping.”

  I wave her in.

  Nick raises an eyebrow. “Yes, please, do invite a child into this discussion.”

  “Trust me,” I say, “she’s going to come in anyway.”

  Suzy pulls a chair up to the desk and plops down. “Have you considered that there might be two killers? I’m sorry, let me rephrase, it was two killers for sure, and before you say ‘How could you know, you’re just a wee babe?,’ you should probably look at these.”

  She pulls a file folder out of the waistband of her pants and lays it on Nick’s desk.

  “While Marissa was in with Billy, I found the original crime scene photos,” she says, laying two pictures out in front of me. “For both murders.”

  The first image is of Caitlyn; the second, Liza. Neither looks like I expected.

  For one thing, the police photographers made no attempt to strive for artistry or elegance or delicacy. And why would they? They’re paid to record the bare facts of the image.

  It’s just that I never knew: Dead girls aren’t
actually beautiful.

  Liza’s body also isn’t laid out identically to Caitlyn’s. Yes, they’re both wearing orange swimsuits and they’re both sitting in beach chairs, but only Liza is draped artfully across the chair. Caitlyn’s slumped forward, her arms flopped to one side, a narrow ridge of fat rolling at her waist.

  My finger lands on an even more glaring difference between the two: Caitlyn’s mouth. Hers is painted crimson. Liza’s is bare.

  “He definitely needed to fire that makeup artist,” I say faintly.

  “Right?” Suzy says, looking over my shoulder. “If it was the same killer, surely he wouldn’t have forgotten the blood-red lipstick. That’s, like, serial murder 101.”

  “What’s this about?” Nick asks.

  “Liza wasn’t wearing lipstick in the movie, either,” I say.

  “Why does that matter?”

  I huff out a laugh. “Because it means I’ve been wrong all this time.”

  I’ve been wrong ever since I first saw that shot of Liza back in Century City, a million years ago. It was too easy to assume I was looking at the truth.

  I reach for my backpack and fumble around inside until my thumb brushes across a sharp corner of resin-coated paper.

  I pull out the still Isaiah took from the editing bay and place it next to the police photos.

  Suzy sucks in a breath.

  Nick’s forehead creases. “I don’t get it.”

  “Liza’s body wasn’t arranged to look like Caitlyn’s,” Suzy says. She points to Caitlyn’s picture, then to the still. “It was arranged to look like Liza’s.”

  “But that can’t be right,” I say. I look up at Nick. “Didn’t you give the crime scene photos to Tony?”

  He shakes his head, his mouth slack. “I gave them to his assistant.”

  “Wait—seriously?”

  “Tony read all the files, but he refused to look at the photos. He said—” Nick’s hand goes to the bridge of his nose “—he said he didn’t want to see Caitlyn’s body through someone else’s lens.”

  Suzy stiffens. “And you just went with that? Like that’s normal? Has anyone ever said no to this guy?”