“You hear everything, Pop,” Pete said admiringly.
“In my borough. What’s up?”
“just something I got interested in, I had a little spare time.” He explained about the Van Lier slashing.
“How many times was she cut?”
“Ten slashes, all on her face. He just kept cutting on her, even after she was down. That sound like all he wanted was a purse?”
“No. Leaves three possibilities. A psycho, hated women. Or an old boyfriend she gave the heave-ho to, his ego couldn’t take it. But you said the vic didn’t make him.”
“No.”
“Then somebody hired it done. Tell me again what your interest is in the vic?”
“Eighteen, nineteen years ago, she posed for John Ransome.”
Corin rubbed a temple and managed to keep his disapproval muted. “Jeez Marie, Petey.”
“My girl is up mere in Maine with him, Pop!”
“And you’re lettin’ your imagination—I see your mind workin’. But it’s far-fetched, lad. Far-fetched.”
“I suppose so,” Peter mumbled in his beer.
“How many young women do you think have posed for him in his career?”
“Seven that anybody knows about. Not counting Echo.”
Corin spread his hands.
“But nobody knows who they are, or where they are. Almost nobody, it’s some kind of secret list. I’m tellin’ you, Pop, there is too much about him that don’t add up.”
“That’s not cop sense, that’s your emotions talkin’.”
“Two damn months almost, I don’t see her.”
“That was his deal. His and hers, and there’s good reasons why Echo did it.”
“Didn’t tell you this before. That woman friend of his, whore, whatever: she carries a knife and Echo saw her almost use it on a kid in the subway.”
“Jeez Marie, where’s this goin’ to end with you?” Corin sat back in the booth and rapped the table once with the knuckles of his right fist. “Tell you where it ends. Right here, tonight. You know why? Too much money, Petey. That’s what it’s always about.”
“Yeah, I know. I saw the commissioner’s head up Ransome’s ass.”
“Remember that.” He stared at Peter until exasperation softened into forgiveness. “Echo have any problems up there she’s told you about?”
“No,” Peter admitted. “Ransome’s just doing a lot of sketches of her, and she has time paint. I guess everything’s okay.” “Give her credit for good sense, then. And do your part.”
“Yeah, I know. Wait.” His expression was pure naked longing and remorse. “Two months. And you know what, Pop? It’s like one of us died. Only I don’t know which one, yet.”
As she had done almost every day since arriving on Kincairn Echo took her breakfast in chilly isolation in a corner of the big kitchen, then walked to the lighthouse. Frequently she could see only a few feet along the path because of fog. But sometimes there was no fog; the air was sharp and windless as the rising sun cast upon the copper face of the sea a great peal of morning.
She’d learned early on that John Ransome was an insomniac who spent most of the deep night hours reading in his second-floor study or taking long walks by himself in the dark, with only a flashlight along island paths he’d been familiar with since he was a boy.
Sleep would come easier for him, Ransome assured her, as if apologizing, once he settled down to doing serious painting. But the unfinished portrait he’d begun in New York on a big rectangle of die board had remained untouched on his easel for nearly six weeks while he devoted himself to making postcard-size sketches of Echo, hundreds of them, or silently observing her own work take shape. Late at night he would leave Post-it Notes of praise or criticism on her easel.
When they were together he was always cordial but preferred letting Echo carry the conversation. He seemed endlessly curious about her life. About her father, who had been a Jesuit until the age of fifty-one, when he met Rosemay, a Maryknoll nun. He never asked about Peter.
There were days when Echo didn’t see him at all. She felt his absence from the island but had no idea of where he’d gone, or why. Not that it was any of her business. But it wasn’t the working relationship she’d bargained for. His inability to resume painting made her uneasy. And it wasn’t her nature to put up with being ignored, or feeling slighted, for long.
“Is it me?” she’d asked him at dinner the night before.
Her question, the mood of it, startled him.
“No. Of course not, Mary Catherine.” He looked distressed, random gestures substituting for the words he couldn’t find to reassure her. “Case of nerves, that’s all. It always happens. I’m afraid I’ll begin and—then I’ll find myself drawing from a dry well.” He paused to pour himself more wine. He’d been drinking more before and after dinner than was his custom; his aim was a little off and he grimaced. “Afraid that everything I do will be trite and awful.”
Echo had sensed his vulnerability—all artists had it. But she wasn’t quite sure how to deal with his confession.
“You’re a great painter.”
Ransome shook his head, shying from the burden of her suggestion.
“If I ever believe that, then I will be finished.” Echo got up, pinched some salt from a silver bowl, and spread it over the wine stain on the fine linen tablecloth. She looked hesitantly at him.
“How can I help?”
He was looking at the salted stain. “Does that work?”
“Usually, if you do it right away.”
“If human stains were so easy to remove,” he said with sudden vehemence.
“God’s always listening,” she said, then thought it was probably too glib, patronizing, and unsatisfactory.
She felt God, but she also felt there was little point in trying to explain Him to someone else.
After a silence the unexpected flood of his passion ebbed.
“I don’t believe as easily as you, Mary Catherine,” he said with a tired smile that became tense. “But if we do have your God watching us, then I think it likely that his revenge is to do nothing.”
Ransome pushed his chair back and stood, looked at Echo, put out a hand and lifted her head slightly with thumb and forefinger on her chin. He said, studying her as if for the first time, “The light in your eyes is the light from your heart.”
“That’s sweet,” Echo said demurely, knowing what was coming next. She’d been thinking about it, and how to handle it, for weeks.
He kissed her on the forehead, not the lips, as if bestowing a blessing. That was sweet too. But the erotic content, enough to cause her lips to part and put a charge in her heartbeat, took her by surprise.
“I have to leave the island for a few days,” he said then.
Ransome’s studio had replaced the closetlike space that once had held the Kincairn light and reflecting mirror. It sat upon the spindle of the lighthouse shaft like a flying saucer made mostly of glass that was thirty feet in diameter. There was an elevator inside, another addition, but Echo always used the circular stairs coming and going. Ciera was a very good cook and the daily climb helped Echo shed the pounds that had a tendency to creep aboard like hitchhikers on her hips.
She had decided, because the day was neither blustery enough to blow her off her Vespa nor bitterly cold, to pack up her paints and easel and go cross island for an exercise in plein air painting on the cove and dock.
Approaching Kincairn village, Echo saw John Ransome at the end of the town dock unmooring a cabin cruiser that had been tied up alongside Wilkins’ Marine and the mail/ferry boat slip. She stopped her putter-ing scooter in front of the cottage where a lone priest, elderly and in virtual exile in this most humble of parishes, lived with an equally old housekeeper. Echo had no reason for automatically keeping her distance from Ransome until she also saw Taja at the helm of the cruiser, which wasn’t much of a reason either. She hadn’t seen the Woman in Black nor given her much thought since the night of the artist’s show at Cy Mellichamp’s. Ransome never mentioned her. Apparently she seldom visited the island.
Friend, business associate, confidante? Mistress, of course. But if she kept some distance between them now, perhaps that was in the past. Even if they were no longer lovers Echo assumed she might still be emotionally supportive, a rare welcome visitor to his isolate existence—his stiller doom, Echo thought with a certain poignancy, remembering a phrase of Charlotte Bronte’s from Echo’s favorite novel, Jane Eyre.
Watching Ransome jump into the bow of the cruiser, Echo felt frustrated for his sake. Obviously he was not going to be painting anytime soon. She also felt a dim sense of betrayal that made no sense to her. Yet it lingered like the spectral imprint of a kiss that had made her restless during a night of confused, otherworldly dreams; dreams of Ransome, dreams of being as naked in his studio as a snail on a thorn.