Face on the Wall (37 page)

“Well, I hope to God they find the bastard.”

Chapter 55

The whole castle was surrounded by a thicket of thorns that grew ever higher. No longer could anything be seen at all.

The Brothers Grimm, “Little Brier Rose”

B
ertha Rugg was a small homely woman who had been taking pictures all her life. She was an experienced and clever photographer, the only survivor of her generation on the staff of the
Boston Globe.
Gone were the old Linotypists, skilled operators of the deafening machines that had turned reservoirs of molten lead into slugs of type. Gone too were the compositors who had clamped the slugs into chases, who could read them backward and upside down. Everything was done with computers nowadays. All over the building there was a soft perpetual clickety-click, as kids barely out of school turned copy into print.

Bertha was painfully conscious of her incompatibility with the current staff of the
Globe.
She had nothing in common with the burly guys and classy girls who were her picture-taking colleagues. She wasn't
with-it,
if that was the right expression. She didn't understand their jokes. She didn't speak their language.

But Bertha knew how to do one thing very well. She knew how to get a picture, and by God she was going to get one now.

There was something else she knew that the young ones didn't, and that was how to get up early. On the day after Homer Kelly and Sergeant Bill Kennebunk unearthed the body of Pearl Small in the woods in Northtown, it was only eight o'clock in the morning when Bertha pulled her car to the side of Baker Bridge Road and took out her binoculars.

From here she could see only the battered roof of the house. The rest was hidden by a tangle of shrubs and a thick stand of trees with bushy new leaves. It was a green blur, a dense jungle, directly in the way.

Twisting the knob of her binoculars, she brought the trees into focus. Very slowly she swept her gaze across them, examining every branch and twig, raising her sights every now and then to check the lineup of a particular tree with the roof of the house behind it. Then she took out her pocket diary and drew precisely what she saw in one place, a little to the left of the tall aspen that was next to the short aspen that was next to the oak tree. When she was done, she reached into the back seat for her long-handled clippers, slung her camera over her shoulder, and set off across the cornfield in a straight line.

The field was like a battleground, with deep trenches between the emerging rows of corn. Her shoes sank in. She could feel small pops along her heavy calves as her pantyhose burst into runs.

Two hours later, she returned to her car, bitten by mosquitoes, stung by a hornet, scratched by thorns and brambles. Her hair stood on end, her arms were sunburned, her face was dirty. Tim Foley shot past her on the road and gave her a surprised look. It was ten o'clock in the morning.

Bertha smiled. The early bird catches the worm.

Once again Harvey Broadstairs looked up at the seven young photographers crowded around his desk. This time he was smiling. He shuffled through the sheaf of pictures—Minnie Peck in her studio, Charlene Gast with a swimming-pool brochure, Homer Kelly coming out the front door, Mary Kelly with a bowl of salad, Henry Coombs with a cake—and picked up a big glossy photograph of Anna Swann standing in front of the dark cavern of her ruined house, her face brightly lit by the sun. She was smiling directly at the camera. Beside her a man stood upside down, his head nearly touching the ground, his feet in the air.

“Hey, this is great,” said Broadstairs. “Who took this one?”

The seven young photographers looked blankly at each other. Then they stepped aside to reveal a small dumpy shape at the back of the room. “It's mine,” said Bertha Rugg.

“Well, good for you, Bertha,” said Broadstairs.

“Who the hell is the guy?” said Tim Foley. They all bowed over the picture, making room this time for Bertha Rugg.

“As a matter of fact,” said Broadstairs, rubbing his chin, “I just happen to know who it is, but I promised not to say.”

Next morning the picture appeared on page one, and Bertha was paid at page-one rates. But next morning was too late for Bertha Rugg. That very afternoon she faxed it directly to CBS News in New York, and there it was on the evening news. At last the whole country knew what Annie Swann looked like.

Flimnap, who might have been cut out of the picture if he had been standing on his feet, was included as an oddity.

Chapter 56

Like one, that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread …

Because he knows, a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

J
oe had abandoned his new book months ago. But lately he had started to work on it again. He sat now in the cab of his truck with his sketchbook in his lap and sharpened a pencil to a stiletto point with a tiny razor-edged grinder. As usual, his nimble fingers were in perfect control. His large images filled the space, nudging the edges of the page.

The story was common as dirt, the old folk tale of Hansel and Gretel. Joe's Hansel was a generic moppet with a Dutch haircut, but Gretel was a real person, a tall stocky child with big hands and feet—Annie Swann to the life. The wicked witch was a sly portrait of Roberta Gast. She was urging Annie into the oven—
Just creep in and see if it is hot.
Clever Annie was holding back, begging for a demonstration—
I
don't know how. Show me!

The drawing was done, ready to be rendered in color. Joe looked at it critically, and touched the face of Gretel. Then he closed the sketchbook and laid it gently on the shelf under the rear window. Gripping the handle of the door, he inspected the surrounding woods.

The trees stood silent, the undergrowth was empty. Satisfied, Joe got out, locked the pickup doors, and ambled down the hill, turning now and then to glance at the road behind him.

As always, he had to take care. All it would take was a single shot.

The television set shone brightly in Annie Swann's dark fortress. Annie, Flimnap and Homer Kelly played gin rummy at the rickety card table. Homer boldly picked up fistfuls of extra cards and couldn't get rid of them, Annie was too cautious, Flimnap always won. Their heads turned as the voice of the late-night newsman pronounced the name of Anna Swann.

“My God!” said Annie. There she was, as big as life. The camera zoomed in on her face, then moved sideways to show Flimnap upside down. It was the picture taken by Bertha Rugg from the cornfield, after wrenching off with her clippers the branches of a dozen scrub oak trees and slashing her way through a forest of maple saplings.

“Oh, Christ,” said Flimnap, jumping to his feet.

“There you are, the two of you,” said Homer gleefully, “on network television.”

The newsman's interest shifted to a scandal involving a senator's wife. Flimnap knocked over his chair, took Annie in his arms and kissed her, then let her go, started for the door, came back to kiss her with more passion, and vanished.

“Good Lord,” said Homer, “what was that all about?”

Annie was speechless.

It did not occur to Joe that the late news might be a repetition of a broadcast five hours earlier. He walked up the hill to his truck. There was plenty of time to clear out.

He was wrong. Millions of television viewers had already seen the photograph taken by Bertha Rugg. One took a special interest in the six o'clock appearance of Anna Swann and her upside-down friend. In his rented room on a back street in the city of Worcester, Frederick Small stared at Joseph Noakes, thunderstruck. Leaping to his feet, he shouted in triumph.