John Miller - Too Far Gone

“The small edition means she won’t be signing very many copies.”

“She doesn’t ever sign them, because she just doesn’t feel comfortable doing so. She doesn’t think the book is about her, but her subjects. But I expect she’ll pen a note to me in one of the mass-produced ones if I pester her.”

The book, which Grace placed on the coffee table, was roughly ten-by-fourteen, and an inch thick. On it, what appeared to be a photographic print of a young woman had been mounted on the off-white linen binding. An acetate sleeve protected the cloth and the image. The child-woman portrayed in the shot had enormous, almond-shaped eyes that stared into Casey’s lens with the sort of mixture of intensity and revulsion of someone who was studying a spider in the process of capturing a luckless butterfly. The title of the volume was All Together/All Alone: Portraits by Casey West. Not Casey LePointe West, Alexa noted.

Grace said, “This is a show catalog published by the museum in Zurich that hosted the exhibition. The show is going next to the Corcoran in D.C., and then to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. She spent six months working as an intern for Avedon, but everybody thinks she’s far better than he was.”

“I’ll make a point to see it at the Corcoran.” Alexa opened the book and turned the pages gently. Grace put her hands together as if praying and studied Alexa intently as she scanned the introduction penned by Casey’s husband. “A better husband and father never drew a breath.” Alexa had heard a dozen times in investigations. “They broke the mold.”

The foreword was an affectionate critique, obviously penned by a fan.

Medium format camera somehow captures her subjects’ essence-their hopes, dreams, illusions, and fears laid bare for the viewer in equal measure. They say the eyes are mirrors to the soul, and Casey’s art seems proof that the soul exists, and that we-despite our differences-are all variations of a single being. To experience Casey West’s work is to not just see, but to experience our most basic and complex connections to one another.

How one person among millions is touched by the magic so they are able to show us so much about ourselves in others is a question that has puzzled man since the dawn. Art is most often created out of painful experience. Despite her amazing complexity, Casey is somehow able to see simple truths in those around her, and to capture those truths in such a way as to say, through light and photographic dyes, what Leonardo da Vinci said in oils, William Faulkner said with words, and Michelangelo said in marble. As her husband, I have been blessed and privileged…Casey is following a divine calling, following her inner vision armed only with a camera…

If Casey really lacked an ego, Alexa reflected, Gary’s words of praise must have made her squirm. Only love for him could have allowed his worshipful foreword to be connected to her work.

The first portraits hit Alexa with the force of open-hand slaps, each one more powerful than the one before it. The expressions on the subjects in the static and crisp images were like the unblinking eyes of cocked handguns, remarkable in their emotional power. The eyes of each subject-vulnerable in one, sad in another, and furious in yet another-had a hypnotic effect on Alexa. She was awed by Casey’s work. Most photographers would have been lucky to get even one picture the equal of these in the course of a long career, but here were scores of photographic masterpieces, gathered in one collection.

“That one says it all, and then some.”

Grace was referring to a portrait entitled “Husband and Daughter-2003, Monaco,” showing a shirtless and strikingly handsome man holding a small child against his chest, his hand positioned in such a way as to hide her features behind his fingers. Gary West stared into the lens with the naked emotion of a lioness protecting her cub from a gathering of starving hyenas.

“He looks protective,” Alexa said. It wasn’t the smiling man she’d seen in the snapshots of him she’d seen before.

“He didn’t even want that picture of Deana in the book. He lives for Deana and Casey. Protecting Deana is an obsession with him.”

“Does he have any flaws?”

“Well,” Grace said, frowning. “An obsession with anything might be a flaw, don’t you think so? Every person has flaws-only some people can’t see them.”

“Give me that!” Casey demanded as she entered the room-hand outstretched to Alexa. Her cheeks were bright red, and Alexa couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or angry. Her eyes were red from crying or lack of rest, and the fingers of her outstretched hand trembled.

“This is amazing-” Alexa began.

Deana ran over and held up her arms to her mother, hoping to be lifted. Casey looked at her, placed her free hand on Deana’s head gently. “Just a sec, darling. Mommy has to do something.”

“Uh-uuuuh,” Deana protested. “Ut.”

Alexa closed the volume gently and handed it to Casey, who sat beside her. “Grace, my pen.”

Grace went to a writing desk across the room and brought Casey back a lacquered fountain pen. Casey uncapped it, opened the book to the flyleaf, and carefully wrote something in the page’s center. After Casey capped the pen, she blew gently on the wet ink for a few seconds until she was certain it was dry. Returning the volume to its slipcover, she handed it to Alexa and smiled uncertainly. “This is for you.”

“I can’t accept it,” Alexa protested, honestly. Taking a gift from a subject in these circumstances-which might have been misinterpreted as an agent taking a gratuity from a vulnerable woman-could easily come back to haunt her. And a one-thousand-dollar gift at that.

“It’s just a book,” Casey insisted. “Are you resisting because you’re an FBI agent? Is it against some federal law?”

“That’s not it. I just know how dear this book is-how few copies you have,” Alexa said. Of course she wanted the book. Who wouldn’t?

“Well, I’ve already inscribed it, so unless someone named Alexa Keen comes along, it won’t be of any use to anybody else. I do hope you’ll enjoy it.”

Grace stood near the couch, looking as though someone had just told her they’d run over her kitten.

Alexa said, “It’s far too generous.”

“So you will accept it?”

“I guess you’ve left me no choice. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Deana was trying to climb onto the couch. With her eyes on the book in Alexa’s lap, Casey pulled Deana onto her lap. The child started pulling at the gold chain her mother was wearing. Casey allowed her to tug to her little heart’s content.

“Casey, Director Bender asked me to assist the police. I thought your uncle was responsible for talking to him, but I’m not sure he was.”

Grace looked away, her body language a blast of super-chilled air.

“Alexa, your director’s daughter, Alicia Bender, went to school with me. A portrait I did of her was in my first book. I don’t accept commercial assignments because what I do, I do because something I can’t explain about a subject attracts me. When people ask me to do their portraits, the pictures rarely ever work nearly as well, so usually they’re just technically pleasant likenesses. Alicia’s mother wants me to do her husband’s official FBI portrait. I’ve avoided doing it, and somehow I doubt he’d open himself up. I called Alicia early this morning, and I mentioned our desire that your expertise and assistance be made available to us, and I think I told her how much it would mean to me personally. She called her mother in Aspen.”

“I’m amazed,” Alexa said. She tried to imagine how the director’s wife felt about being called hours before the sun came up.