William Bayer - Blind Side

We found my car, and when she saw the mess in the back, she shook her head and smiled. She helped me clean out the discarded snack bags, then we drove to the Spanish Moss, where we fell asleep in each other's arms.

I think it was around three in the morning when I woke up and saw her sitting across the room. She was in the chair staring out the window, sobbing almost silently.

"Hey, what's the matter?" I went to her, put my arm around her, tried to wipe away her tears.

" Scared," she said.

"Why? It's over now."

"It's what you said about Key West."

"What did I say?"

"That it's like a box canyon, one way in and one way out. "

"That was just talk," I said.

"I think you're safe here, very safe."

She shook her head.

"If you found me, they'll find me, and they kill people, don't forget. I think they're still looking for me and they still want to kill me and now I don't know where to go."

"they won't find you, I promise," I said. Then I tried to coax her back to bed.

"they will find me! Of course they will. You did! So why not them?"

"they won't," I said.

"they can't. You see, I really missed you. And I had a clue."

"What clue, Geoffrey? What are you talking about?"

She looked so frantic then, so sad and desperate, that I thought it only fair to tell her what I'd done. I went through it all: the unexplained number on my telephone bill, my research at the library, my trip to Cleveland, finding Grace, tracking her to the topless joint. Then our date, the massage, and how, the following morning, I'd broken into her house and found the return Key West address on the envelope.

Kim nodded at me through it all. She smiled at my surprise when I first saw Grace topless, and giggled as I recounted my misadventures with Heidi the dog. When I was finally finished, she shook her head.

"Did you know I was that girl?"

"Which girl?"

"The one Grace fell in love with," she said wistfully. was a waitress in that bar in Shaker Heights. . . ." I looked at her. There was still something that knotted My stomach: the ever-loving tone in her letter to Grace.

"Are you still in love?" I asked.

Kim laughed.

"Me and Grace?" When I nodded, she turned serious.

"I think maybe she's still a little in love with me. And certainly I feel something for her, though I wouldn't exactly call it love."

"What would you call it?"

"I care for her. She launched me. Loaned me the money so I could go to New York, even though that meant I'd be leaving her forever. I feel about her the way you probably feel about your friend in New Mexico-that she's my closest friend, a sister almost. Did you read my letter to- her?"

"It wasn't in the envelope," I lied.

We woke early, kissed, made love, showered, ate breakfast, then drove to Smathers Beach. There was hardly anyone on that southern crescent of the island, just a few joggers running along Roosevelt Boulevard and a couple of purveyors of soft drinks and tacos positioning themselves for the mobs that would descend later on.

I parked behind a van with a map painted on its side showing its owners were in the midst of a five-year drive around the world. Then we walked out onto the sand, actually ground coral, and strode along the water's edge.

"Oh, Geoffrey, Geoffrey. . . ." She spun around on her heel.

"How the hell am I going to get myself out of this?"

I took off my shirt. Though it was only eight o'clock, the sun felt wonderful on my back.

"Seems to me there aren't too many choices," I said.

"I'll call Scotto, tell him what happened, and turn over the photographs."

She stopped whirling.

"What are I you talking about?"

"I think that's the best solution.'

"What photographs?"

"The ones of Darling." She looked stunned.

"You've got Rakoubian's photographs?"

"I took them from him. I thought I told you that."

"Where are they, Geoffrey?" Her voice was urgent.

"In my suitcase back at the motel."

"Jesus!" she said.

"I can't believe this! You've got the pictures. Oh my God!"

She broke away from me, ran into the water, then high-stepped through it like a drum majorette.

"We've got the pictures! We've got the pictures!" She sang out the phrase like the refrain of a song. She must have noticed me staring at her because she ran back out of the water, and took hold of my hands.

"Don't you see?" she said as she pulled me along the sand.

"We've got them, Geoffrey. Now we've got them! Now we're really safe!"

It took me a while to calm her down, get her to explain what she meant. When finally she did, we were sipping tea in the loggia at the Casa Marina Hotel, looking toward the gardens and the sea, and she was stone-cold serious.

"When Sonya was killed, they covered it up, made it look like an accident. The pictures of Darling don't prove all that much, just that he's a kinky guy who likes to wear a mask. But Shadow's different. She's a 'Model Torture Slaying." There's a real police investigation going on. And the pictures tie into it because, really, they're the reason she was killed."

Ceiling fans slowly revolved above us, while elderly hotel guests, in straw hats and lime Bermuda shorts, shuffled by complaining of the heat.

"Fine," I said.

"I know all that. Now what does my having the pictures have to do with us being safe?"

"Don't you see? We have something to bargain with. It's the pictures that made them hesitate. If they didn't care about the pictures they would never have let me go-they would have killed me then and there. And they would have killed you too, Geoffrey, since they think you were the photographer. But they didn't. they threatened you, broke in, threw some lye, talked tough to you on the phone, but they never harmed you."

"All right," I said "so they care about the pictures."

She nodded.

"A lot more than they pretend. Mrs. Z says, 'Oh, they're not important, you've probably made copy negatives, the pictures are just a nuisance." But now that Shadow's been killed they're no longer just a nuisance. They're valuable because they're the motive. Give the cops the pictures and they start looking very hard at Darling and Mrs. Z. Eventually somebody talks or makes a deal, and then the two of them go on trial for murder."

"Which is why I want to call Scotto." She shrugged.

"That's one way to go."

"Is there some other way?"

"Yes . . . if we have the guts." I knew then what she was about to say.

"No way! Forget it, Kim. Absolutely not!"

She touched my arm, stroked it.

"Think about it. In the first place, the way it looks, Darling isn't soiling his hands anymore. He's brought' in pros. That guy who called you, the boy who threw the lye, the people who parked the car at Newark Airport-they sound like hired goons.

"Doesn't that worry you?"

"Sure. Because once you go to the cops, both of us are targets. The pictures don't mean anything without the story. And you and I are the only ones who know it."

"There's Rakoubian."

"He won't talk, He doesn't want to die."

"Neither do I," I said.

"Really, Kim, haven't you had enough of blackmail? Your best friend was killed. You're stuck down here. Isn't it time to lead a normal life?"

She stared at me, then shook her head.

"Not yet," she said. "See, Geoffrey, this isn't finished yet. Darling and Mrs. Z-they have to pay."

We didn't talk about it anymore, just spent the morning lying lazily on the beach. Then I took her to her apartment, waited for her to change, and drove her on to her restaurant, as she had to work a double shift. I spent the afternoon by myself, walking around Key West. After three and a half days of staking out the Post Office, I needed to break out and move.

Toward the end of the afternoon, I wandered up to the Southernmost Point. It was a curious place, a dead-end intersection with a large striped concrete buoy bearing the words: SOUTHERNMOST POINT CONTINENTAL U.S.A. Beside the buoy stood an old black man behind a display of shells and sponges. That was it, there was nothing else.