He sometimes caught himself wondering if fate was waiting to send a bullet into him that had missed that night. One caught in the air, like a video recording on pause, that would rip into him when fate hit the play button.
Had she?
Since he’d already concluded he could do nothing to change whatever button fate opted to push, he worked to live, and to make a difference, to try to at least. He thought Roberta Flisk had done the same.
He put the picture of her in his head. Black cap with its logo of a handgun in a circle with a slash through it over short, medium blond hair, earbuds in place. A dark blue support tank and dark blue running shorts on an athletic frame—scars on her leg a constant reminder of a nightmare—her house key tucked into the inner pocket at the waistband. Pink-and-white Nikes and white socks.
In his mind, she stopped her forward motion just for an instant.
Shock, awareness, resignation? That he’d never know.
Two soft pops, he thought, as ballistics verified a .32, silenced. Both struck center mass. Victim falls, he thought, once again crossing to the stains baked onto the grass by the summer sun.
Third pop—louder as the silencer weakened—angled from above to the back of the head.
Then the flourish of the sign, the message.
It struck him as wrong, just off. The killing had all the elements of a cold, even professional, hit; but the sign showed heat—angry and careless.
The killer had taken the time and caution to police the brass, to leave no trace but the bullets in the body, then adds a hand-printed sign announcing himself as a pissed-off defender of the Second Amendment?
It rubbed wrong because the killer hadn’t been pissed-off, the murder didn’t feel personal.
They’d cleared the ex-husband, Reed considered as he walked the scene one more time. He and the victim maintained a cordial relationship. He didn’t own a gun, and, in fact, gave an annual donation to her organization in their son’s name.
At the time of her murder, he’d been helping make breakfast—plenty of witnesses—for a couple dozen Boy Scouts, including his son, at a campground on Mount Desert Island.
She hadn’t had a boyfriend, dated rarely and casually, no problems with neighbors, volunteers, or the staff of her organization.
Some death threats, sure, from the very type who’d have written that message. But it just didn’t fit.
Or fit too well.
He walked back to his car, recalling that two people had crossed from their own yards to ask him what he was doing there when he’d parked. He’d had to show his police ID.
While statements from neighbors claimed they’d either still been in bed or been just getting up at the time of the murder, it seemed to him that the killer, in order to stalk the prey, had to have blended easily into the quiet, upper-middle-class neighborhood.
He got into his car, wrote careful notes on his observation and theories. Maybe his leading theory was just a rookie mistake, but he outlined it anyway.
The killer had patience and control, could blend in the victim’s neighborhood, had killed with efficiency and precision. And the message?
A countermeasure.
Of course, none of his notes, theories, and speculation helped Roberta Flisk or her now motherless son one damn bit. But he’d transcribe all of it, file it.
And he wouldn’t forget it.
*
When Simone heard about Roberta Flisk, and the violent death of a DownEast Mall survivor, she switched off the television.
She made it a point to forget.
She’d given Mi what she’d wanted: She sublet the apartment, went home.
And after one short week of sharing the house with her parents and sister, she’d fled to the island.
She loved her parents, truly. And if her sister’s perfection—like mother, like daughter in this case—bugged the crap out of her, she loved Natalie, too.
She just couldn’t live with them.
CiCi gave her space, literally, in the doll-like guest house over the glass-walled art studio. And she gave her space emotionally as well.
If she wanted to sleep half the day, CiCi didn’t ask if she felt well. If she wanted to walk on the beach half the night, CiCi didn’t wait up with a worried look on her face.
She didn’t get a furrowed brow over quitting her job, a long sigh over the color of her hair.
She ran as many of CiCi’s errands as she could, prepared some of the meals—though her cooking was nothing to brag about. She agreed to pose whenever asked.
As a result, after two weeks, Simone had to give Mi a virtual thanks. She felt more relaxed and easy than she had for months. Enough that she started to paint a little.
She set down her brush when CiCi came out on the patio with a tray holding a pitcher of sangria, glasses, a bowl of salsa and chips.
“If you don’t want a break, I’m taking this to my studio and drinking the whole pitcher.”
“Can’t have that.” Simone stepped back to study the seascape she’d worked on for the last three hours.
“It’s good,” CiCi told her.
“It’s not.”
“It certainly is.”
Since CiCi, floppy-brimmed hat over her black-and-white-streaked braid (her newest look), poured the sangria, Simone dropped down in one of the patio chairs.
CiCi’s latest tattoo wrapped Celtic symbols around her left wrist like a bracelet.
“That’s my grandmother talking, not the artist.”
“It’s both.” She tapped her glass to Simone’s, sat, stretched out her legs, crossed her Birkenstock-clad feet at the ankles. “It is good—you’ve got a sense of movement and mood.”
“The light isn’t right, and screwing with it’s made it less right. I love your seascapes. Your portraits are just incredible, every time, and you don’t do seascapes often. But when you do, they’re moody and magic.”
“First, you’re not me, and you should celebrate your youness. Second, I do sea-and landscapes, still lifes when I need calm, or my own mood strikes. Mostly I’d rather just sit here and look at the water. Portraits? People are endlessly fascinating, as is painting them. Painting, period, is my passion.
“It’s not yours.”
“Clearly.”
“You’re nineteen. Plenty of time to find your passion.”
“I tried sex.”
After a throaty laugh, CiCi toasted and drank. “Me, too. It’s a damn happy hobby.”
Amused, Simone scooped up some salsa. “I’m taking a break there.”
“Me, too. You’re an artist—and don’t contradict your grandmother. You’re an artist, with talent and with vision. Painting’s a good discipline for you, but it’s not your passion, and it’s not going to be your primary medium. Experiment.”
“With what? Dad’s still trying to nudge me into prelaw, and Mom thinks I should find a nice, reliable boyfriend.”
“They’re traditionalists, baby. They can’t help themselves. I’m not, but I can’t help it, either. So I’m going to say you’d be stupid to do either of those. Experiment,” she repeated, “with everything. For art, I’m going to give you what nobody wants: advice. You remember the August you spent here after the horrible?”
Simone looked out at the strip of beach, the rocks that edged it, the water beyond that never ended.
“I think it saved my sanity, so, yeah, I remember.”
“You and Mi spent a lot of time on the beach the week she was here. You built sandcastles. Mi’s were precise and pretty and traditional—very like her. And yours were fascinating and imaginative and fanciful.”
Simone took another drink. “So I should build sandcastles?”
“Create. Try clay for a start, see where it takes you. You took the basics last year.”
“How do you know?”
CiCi only smiled, sipped. “I know a lot of things. And knowing we were going to have this conversation, I ordered some supplies. They’re in my studio. We can share it, we’ll work out a rotation. Try it. If it’s not clay, it’ll be something else. Take the summer to start, see if you find out what your passion is.”
CHAPTER SEVEN