For Decker, photography was more than just a hobby, it was a way of looking at the world. He had been cursed with a short temper and a cynical outlook, so the darkroom became a soothing place, and the ceremony of making pictures a gentle therapy.
Much to his frustration, the studio-photography business proved unbearably dull and profitable. Decker did weddings, bar mitzvahs, portraits, and commercial jobs, mostly magazine advertisements. He was once paid nine thousand dollars to take the perfect picture of a bottle of Midol. The ad showed up in all the big women’s magazines, and Decker clipped several copies to send to his friends, as a joke on himself.
And, of course, there were the fashion layouts with professional models. The first year Decker fell in love seventeen times. The second year he let the Hasselblad do the falling in love. His pictures were very good, he was making large sums of money, and he was bored out of his skull.
One afternoon on Miami Beach, while Decker was on a commercial shoot for a new tequila-scented suntan oil, a young tourist suddenly tore off her clothes and jumped into the Atlantic and tried to drown herself. The lifeguards reached her just in time, and Decker snapped a couple of frames as they carried her from the surf. The woman’s blond hair was tangled across her cheeks, her eyes were puffy and half-closed, and her lips were grey. What really made the photograph was the face of one of the lifeguards who had rescued the young woman. He’d carefully wrapped his arms around her bare chest to shield her from the gawkers, and in his eyes Decker’s lens had captured both panic and pity.
For the hell of it Decker gave the roll of film to a newspaper reporter who had followed the paramedics to the scene. The next day the Miami Sun published Decker’s photograph on the front page, and paid him the grand sum of thirty dollars. The day after that, the managing editor offered him a full-time job and Decker said yes.
In some ways it was the best move he ever made. In some ways it was the worst. Decker only wished he would have lasted longer.
He thought of this as he drove into Harney County, starting a new case, working for a man he didn’t like at all.
Harney was Dickie Lockhart’s hometown, and the personal headquarters of his bass-fishing empire.
Upon arrival the first thing Decker did was to find Ott Pickney, which was easy. Ott was not a man on the move.
He wrote obituaries for the Harney Sentinel, which published two times a week, three during boar season. The leisurely pace of the small newspaper suited Ott Pickney perfectly because it left plenty of time for golf and gardening. Before moving to Central Florida, Pickney had worked for seventeen years at the Miami Sun, which is where Decker had met him. At first Decker had assumed from Ott’s sluggish behavior that here was a once-solid reporter languishing in the twilight of his career; it soon became clear that Ott Pickney’s career had begun in twilight and grown only dimmer. That he had lasted so long in Miami was the result of a dense newsroom bureaucracy that always seemed to find a place for him, no matter how useless he was. Ott was one of those newspaper characters who got passed from one department to another until, after so many years, he had become such a sad fixture that no editor wished to be remembered as the one who fired him. Consequently, Ott didn’t get fired. He retired from the Sun at full pension and moved to Harney to write obits and grow prizewinning orchids.
R. J. Decker found Pickney in the Sentinel’s newsroom, such as it was. There were three typewriters, five desks, and four telephones. Ott was lounging at the coffee machine; nothing had changed.
He grinned when Decker walked in. “R.J.! God Almighty, what brings you here? Your car break down or what?”
Decker smiled and shook Ott’s hand. He noticed that Ott was wearing baggy brown trousers and a blue Banlon shirt. Probably the last Banlon shirt in America. How could you not like a guy who wasn’t ashamed to dress like this?