“I don’t know. Anything.” I flung my hands open in frustration. “Where the Artist might have gone to earth. What she knew about Olympia and Rodney’s business. What she thought of Alexandra Guaman—the two had a brief affair the summer before Alexandra deployed.”
Tim did some more keyboard work and brought up a list of all Karen’s folders. She had virtually no documents except drafts of scripts for the commentary she made during her shows and outlines for possible future shows. Any financial records, or letters, or even e-mails, didn’t reside on this machine. We should all be so careful about our privacy, I suppose, but it felt eerily like walking through an empty house—like walking through Karen Buckley’s, or Frannie Pindero’s, empty apartment. She might carry a vast burden of emotional baggage, but physically she traveled light across the landscape.
“Her videos, then?” I said. “What’s in those folders that you didn’t see on her DVDs?”
That folder bulged, of course. Movies are very byte hungry, and something only five minutes long might use a megabyte of memory.
Tim got up so that I could sit at the controls. At first, he and the others watched as I browsed through Karen’s junk footage, early shots of herself painting her own body, done with mirrors, in what I assumed was the darkened front room Petra and I had found yesterday afternoon.
After a bit, though, the two vets wandered off to join Mr. Contreras and Petra in my kitchen. The dog walker rang my bell. I sent Petra downstairs, with Staff Sergeant Jepson as protection. I kept watching videos as they came back up with the animals.
I saw footage of Leander Marvelle and Kevin Piuma dancing without their burkas. They moved beautifully—a marvel, a feather; they’d named themselves well—in a bare space that I guessed was the Columbia College rehearsal room.
Karen had taped herself with Vesta. They were in bed together. Vesta murmured something, low-voiced, out of mike range, and then sprang to her feet and ordered Karen to leave.
“Take your camera with you, Karen. And your clothes, your toothbrush—all those things. I don’t want you back here.”
And Karen hadn’t argued. She sat up in bed, her face as impassive a mask as when it was covered with paint. I saw her naked torso, her hand stretched out. She wasn’t beseeching Vesta but holding a small remote control and turning off the camera.
I looked for footage during the weeks Nadia had been visiting Club Gouge. I found a scene in Rivka’s bedroom with Rivka demanding to know what Nadia meant to Karen.
A chance to explore the world of art. She’s a tormented soul, little Rivulet. Don’t torment your own soul over her. And certainly not over me.
I moved on to other files. And came upon a crucifix with a doll’s head, black plastic hair tied around Jesus’ hands. That was the cross Nadia had kept over her bed.
Karen said, You’ve never done this before, have you? Her voice held cool amusement, no tenderness.
Wherever she’d placed her camera, it wasn’t quite close enough for good focus. I could tell Nadia was naked, but not what her face was registering. Her response to Karen was so soft that the mike didn’t pick it up.
Why did you hustle me so hard after the show, then? Karen said. Just out of curiosity.
A long tick of silence, except for the rustling of the bedclothes, and then Nadia said, You knew my sister. Alexandra.
I meet a lot of people, Nadia.
In Michigan, at a music festival. Maybe she told you to call her Allie; that’s her pet name at home.
Oh, yes. Beautiful girl, totally ashamed of herself. Are you the go-between? Is she ready to come out? Or did she tell you to use me for your own sexual experiments? If so, try this.
It wasn’t clear what Karen did next, but it hurt. Nadia gave a sharp yelp and sat up, wrapping a sheet around her shoulders.
Alexandra is dead. She was killed in Iraq.
Do you want me to stand at attention and play the “Star-Spangled Banner”? Karen’s cool tone didn’t change.
Do you have any feelings at all, for anyone besides yourself?
I figure chicks like you, emoting all over the place, have so many exhausting feelings that there isn’t room for mine. Karen was being sarcastic, but I thought there was an undercurrent in her tone—anger? bitterness?
If you had a sister like Allie and she was murdered, you might not be so cold.
Karen sat up in bed so fast that the camera recorded only a blur. I heard the slap, hand on face. Fuck you, bitch. I had someone like Allie who was murdered. So stop bleating at me like a sentimental sheep.
I hit PAUSE, startled. Did she mean Anton’s daughter, Zina? Was that a person Karen/Frannie had felt close to? If that was the case, then maybe Zina’s overdose had been someone else’s deliberate work. Or maybe Karen/Frannie just thought an OD was an act of murder. Impossible to know.
I clicked PLAY, and the recording began again. Nadia was apologizing. But my sister was tormented, she was hounded, she wrote it in her journal. All because someone where she worked in Baghdad found out that she liked, she preferred—that women—