Christopher Bohjalian - The Double Bind

He looked at her carefully. Their relationship was so completely void of emotional intensity that she didn’t believe either of them had ever scolded the other. “Be my guest,” he said, though it was clear that he would have preferred that she wait till tomorrow. Nevertheless, he motioned toward his chair and his computer.

“Really, this will just take a second,” she continued. “Aren’t you curious?”

“I am curious. Not obsessed.”

“Well, I’m not obsessed, either. I simply want to find this Reese so I can call him. I want to ask him why he kicked Bobbie out-or why Bobbie chose to leave on his own.”

“Maybe he just died,” David said, unable-or unwilling-to hide the exasperation in his voice.

“Reese?”

He nodded. “It could be just that simple. The man died, and Bobbie went back to the streets. Tell you what: You Google Reese and see what comes up, and I’ll go check the obits. What month last year was Bobbie brought into BEDS?”

“August.”

“Fine. I’ll look through last summer.”

Laurel had the sense that he was making the offer both because he felt badly for being short with her, and because he still hadn’t done his promised LexisNexis search on a car accident involving Robert Buchanan. Nevertheless, she was grateful for his help.

RIGHT AWAY they learned two things: There was a sizable number of sites on the Web where Reese’s name appeared, and-exactly as David had suggested-the old photo editor had passed away fourteen months ago, in July of the previous year. David returned with the obituary that appeared in the newspaper, while she found a series of shorter obits online. She read the clipping about his death at David’s desk, while David stood beside her, pleased with what he had discovered.

MARCUS GREGORY REESE

BARTLETT -Marcus Gregory Reese, 83, died unexpectedly on July 18, at his home in Bartlett. Marcus-who used his full name professionally but was always called “Reese” by his friends-was born in Riverdale, N.Y. but moved to Bartlett after he retired from a distinguished career as a photographer and editor with a list of esteemed newspapers and magazines.

Reese was born on March 20, the youngest of Andrew and Amy Reese’s five children. After graduating from Riverdale High School, he enlisted in the United States Navy, where he served with honor as a seaman in the Pacific theater in the Second World War. When he returned to the United States he took his interest in photography and turned it into a career, shooting pictures first for the Newark Star-Ledger, then for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and finally for Life magazine-where he served also as a photo editor for almost thirty years.

Along the way he married twice. His first marriage, to Joyce McKenna, ended in divorce; his second, to Marjorie Ferris, ended when Marjorie died of cancer in 1999.

Reese is survived by an older sister, Mindy Reese Bucknell, in Clearwater, Fl.

A mass of Christian burial will be celebrated Wednesday, July 21 at 11 a.m. at the Bartlett Congregational Church, with interment to follow in the New Calvary Cemetery.

Arrangements were made by the Bedard McClure Funeral Home.

The fellow in the photo looked closer to sixty than eighty-three, so Laurel presumed it was an old picture. In it, Reese was a heavyset man with wild eyebrows and wavy white hair, and a chin that slid without interruption into a neck the size of a log. He was wearing tinted eyeglasses and a crewneck sweater with an Oxford button-down shirt, and he was grinning at the camera in a manner that could only be called rakish. Perhaps even smug.

David smiled grimly when they had finished reading the obituary. “I’ve always loved that phrasing: ‘Died unexpectedly.’ How unexpected can death be at eighty-three?”

“It always sounds like someone was murdered or killed himself, doesn’t it? Or some doctor made a howling error.”

He sat on the edge of the credenza behind his desk. “Heart attack, probably. Nothing mysterious, I imagine.”

She presumed he was right, but said nothing. In large measure because of her meeting with Pamela Marshfield and the lawyer’s phone call to BEDS, she was primed to see mystery everywhere.

“And I think we now know where your Mr. Crocker got those photographs,” he continued, his chin in his hands.

“What do you mean?”

“He probably took them from this Reese fellow. From what you tell me, Bobbie wasn’t exactly a paragon of mental health.”

“You think he stole them?” she asked, astonished by the very notion.

“First of all, I didn’t say steal. That implies too much mental competence. All I’m saying is that maybe he…commandeered them. Maybe after Reese died.”

“I think that’s still stealing.”

“Okay, then: He stole them. Or, perhaps, this Marcus Gregory Reese gave them to him.”

“But why would you think that?”

“Because neither of us saw Bobbie’s name on the Life masthead.”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t take the pictures!”

“ Laurel, the obit said Reese was a photographer,” he insisted, cutting her off, and then he motioned at the computer monitor on his desk that showed the Web sites she had found with Reese’s name. “And look there: That site is all about Reese’s photography. And so’s that one. And that one. I wouldn’t be surprised if you actually find that Hula-Hoop image or one of Muddy Waters with Reese’s name as the credit.”

It was possible, she thought, but there was a missing step in his reasoning. She tried to remain calm, to not become defensive. Eventually, it came to her.

“We’re presuming that Bobbie did live with Reese,” she said slowly.

“Yes.”

“And that he was living with him because the state hospital had released him into Reese’s care.”

“Agreed.”

“And that they knew each other because they had worked together at the magazine. That’s what Serena told me, remember? It seems to me, Bobbie came to Vermont because he knew that Reese lived here. I only looked at one year of Life. Nineteen sixty. Maybe Bobbie worked for Life in the mid-fifties or the mid-sixties. Maybe when I have more time at the library, I’ll find whole years of Life magazines with Bobbie Crocker’s name on the masthead.”

“And so you’re suggesting that Bobbie knew Reese because Reese was his editor.”

“Am I vindicated?” she asked.

“No. That’s a big leap. They could have known each other at the magazine in a thousand ways that had nothing to do with Reese being his editor. Even if the two men did meet at Life, for all we know Bobbie was the custodian. Or the security guard. Or the elevator man. Years ago, they did have elevator men, you know.”

“I should check 1964-the issues of Life magazine from 1964. The other night I developed some pictures from the 1964 World’s Fair. I might find Bobbie’s name there.”

David nodded carefully, the way a father might at his child when he is on the verge of exasperation. Then he rose from the credenza, reached for the mouse, and started clicking the boxed Xs in the upper-right-hand corner of his monitor to log off. He had already clicked off the browser before Laurel was able to stop him, but he hadn’t yet begun to shut down the computer. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m getting us out the door so we don’t miss our movie. We need to leave now if we have any chance at all of getting there before it starts. Incidentally, I have something very funny to tell you about Marissa. She wants you to take her headshot. Can you imagine?”

He said more, but she was no longer focusing. With the browser disconnected she couldn’t see the summaries of the pages and pages about Marcus Gregory Reese and, almost as if she were an addict, she had to. Physically. She didn’t want to see them; she needed to see them. And so, even though she understood that he was trying to get the two of them out the door and was starting to tell her something about his daughter, she clicked back on the icon for Internet Explorer.