Нельсон Демилль - The Best American Mystery Stories 2004

Fulfillment. Jackson found it in his time. Few men do. I too am blessed by a cruel and righteous God for my heart is an organ of iron.

From Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

The thing on its side at the bottom of the wooden-walled hot tub was not human. Whoever it had been, it wasn’t human any longer. Just a brown, shriveled husk, lying in a foot of slimy-black water. Protein for the small animals and insects that had drawn me to look inside.

Nothing now to get upset about.

At least that’s what I was force-feeding my mind to consider as I lowered the folding lid and started breathing again.

Jesus, I thought. Poor Carole...

I felt dizzy with shock and moved away, back toward the bench, where I started to sit, but the odor now was suddenly overwhelming. So much so, I stumbled off the porch, into the cold rain, and walked away from the cabin.

Down to the dry creek where I sat on a large rock and for a moment just breathed.

Good God, I thought. Poor Carole!

After a while, though, the rain came harder, so I moved myself back up onto the covered porch, shivering, and sat on the steps. I still felt dazed and did a bit more deep-breathing, trying to focus on the rain and the thick woods that were all around me, trying to think of something other than what was lying dead only a few feet away. But it wasn’t easy.

After another few minutes, I did start to feel better, and thoughts about what to do next — like calling the police — began to come to me, but I stayed sitting a while longer. There was no hurry now.

Looking up through the trees toward the mountain, lost behind the clouds, brushing my hand at the flies which buzzed my head, wondering where Dirty Hairy had got to and just how “harmless” he really was.

Finally deciding to make the call, I reached into my pocket for my cell phone, but finding the photographs there I brought those out instead and looked them over for a moment.

The photographs I’d taken the day before. Photographs of Carole’s wonderful paintings, the artwork that had brought me there.

I’d first seen the paintings only the day before at Wellman’s Gallery — a tiny art dealership in Pike’s Place Market near the bay.

I was on leave at the time — two weeks worth taken for no reason but that I’d been feeling a little stale around the office, not myself for some reason, grouchy, maybe old. I was sick of the sight of my room at the BOQ. So I’d moved myself off-post.

Up to Seattle and a room in the condo of an out-of-town friend, where I’d been spending my leave thus far, doing not much at all — mostly walking here and there around town, spending a lot of time in coffee shops, reading some, taking pictures. Doing nothing, really — until yesterday.

I was a week into this hard way of life, having just stopped off at a nearby fish market where the prices were just short of astronomical, when I passed by Wellman’s, which hadn’t yet opened, peered inside, and saw the paintings.

Four of them. Large watercolors, prominently arranged. All of them were of various views of Mount Rainier. It was the style that caught my eye — something recognized that clicked in the back of my mind — and then as I stepped closer I saw the name of the artist on a placard in large black letters, CAROLE DORIN, and although the name didn’t match, right beside the placard was the framed photograph of a face that did.

“Carole Dragnich,” I said. “I’ll be damned.”

I stood there a few moments, then went to a phone booth, where a scan of the directory showed no Dorins nor Dragniches at all. Then I went to a bagel stand, grabbed a coffee, and waited for Wellman’s to open.

Remembering Carole Dragnich. Sergeant First Class, United States Army, Retired.

Short, red haired, feisty, and fun to be around. We’d been stationed and teamed together out of the same office at the 30 MI Detachment in Berlin, nearly five years earlier.

And it had been a good match, her and I, while it lasted.

At the time we’d been assigned to NATo’s Counter-Terrorist Division, which in our case meant surveillance of various individuals and groups with subversive or terrorist ties — and, on occasion, long dreary hours of watching streets, doors, and windows.

Spent, in my case, brooding or dozing, but in her case sketching, filling pad after pad with renditions of whatever crossed in front of her bright eyes.

Later finishing in watercolor some of those sketches — most of which I thought, even then, were really very good.

We were friends, though never really close, which was nothing very unusual for people like us. She’d opted for early retirement after her tour in Germany, and we’d lost touch — also nothing unusual.

But we’d been partners, and close enough to make the idea of seeing her again a fun idea, so I decided to try.

Wellman’s opened at nine A.M. I was in the door a minute after, giving the four paintings a close look-over — all bright and lively with color, all priced at fifteen thousand dollars.

Carole, I was thinking, was even better than I remembered.

A young woman clerk eventually approached and offered help.

“These are wonderful,” I said, nodding at the watercolors.

“They certainly are,” she agreed.

“I’d like to get in touch with the artist, but she’s not listed in the Seattle directory. I wonder if you’d know how I might find her.”

“Oh,” she said, “I couldn’t say, really.”

I smiled at her. “Who could?”

She smiled back. “Well the fact is, I’m not sure. Ms. Dorin’s husband is the one who placed these paintings with us, and we do have his number, but I’d feel funny about giving it out.”

“I see.”

“When Ms. Carter, the manager, comes in, she might be able to help.”

“When will Ms. Carter be in?”

“After lunch.”

I looked at my watch. It was 9:05.

“Maybe her agent could help you,” the clerk suggested.

“And her name?”

She excused herself and went away, returning shortly with a business card and saying, “I do know Carole Dorin lives in Washington.”

“Oh?”

“This isn’t her first showing,” she said. “She’s really very hot right at the moment.”

I looked at the card she’d handed me and saw that the office of Jess Collier, Artist Representative, was walking distance from where I was just that moment.

“Well,” I told her. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” she replied. “And, if you do find her, let her know she has a big fan here.”

I nodded and looked back at the paintings.

The clerk did too, saying, “I wish I had half the talent she does.”

“Who wouldn’t?” I agreed.

Jess Collier’s office on the thirty-second floor of a very upscale building on Fourth Ave. had a large, mostly empty outer office, carefully carpeted and furnished in gray-black tones, carefully muraled with obscure black-and-white photography, and carefully receptioned by a young, leggy platinum blonde dressed in white and seated at a curved, black-tinted, glass-topped desk.

She doubtfully asked if I had an appointment and seemed relieved to find out I hadn’t, then announced me on the intercom to her boss as if I’d been expected all along. After that she tentatively asked me to have a seat.

Which I took, though a few seconds later a tall woman in a severe black pants suit entered from a short hallway, looked at me, and said, “Mr....?”

“Virginiak,” I said, standing.

She looked expectant. “I’m Jess Collier.”

I gave her my hand to shake, which she did, briefly.

“And how can I help you?” she asked.

“Well,” I told her, “I’m looking for a friend of mine — a client of yours, I think — Carole Dorin?”