"Was the concrete wet?"
"It was slick. But it dried fast. When the sun came back out, it got real hot."
"This was about-?"
"Three, maybe a little past."
"And the little boy – was he there when you went down?"
She thinks for a moment. "No, he came down later. Maybe he saw me fooling around in the pool and asked his folks if he could go down and play."
"So you played a while, then the man came into the courtyard?"
Kate nods. She thinks she remembers seeing the man in the raincoat came in through the arch. It was nearly four o'clock. That's when folks usually start checking in, so there was always someone coming and going around that time. She thinks she remembers him, that he seemed to know where he was going – right up to room 201. Maybe because of that she assumed he was a guest. Maybe that's why she didn't pay him much attention. The raincoat didn't register because a lot of people wore raincoats when it rained. But of course it had stopped, was muggy and hot, so maybe the raincoat did register. In fact, she does remember him coming in. In that kind of heat, the raincoat didn't fit and neither did the hat. Most people caught out in the rain would carry their raincoats on their arms in heat like that. And a hat was for autumn, not a steamy August afternoon.
Kate's trying hard to work for me now, putting her story together. And if she's distorting her recollections a bit, imposing adult logic on childhood memories, that's okay too. I've deliberately put off asking her to describe the shooter, wanting first to get her into a proper recollective state.
"I remember the shots," she says. "To me they were loud, a lot louder than people said. Some folks said they sounded like firecrackers, but down there in the pool – I was in the water, not on the concrete – they came to me like roars. I even think they made the water shake. So of course we looked up."
"We?"
"Me and the boy, Jimmy. It's coming back now. Jimmy was his name. We were right next to each other in the water, splashing around. That was the game – to splash the other kid, try to make him duck."
She didn't see the man come down. She was probably still turning around. But she remembers him appearing at the bottom of the stairs. That's when their eyes locked and she got a good look at his face.
He didn't look urgent or upset, surprising considering what he'd just done. He seemed calm. She thinks he may even have smiled at her. There was kindness in his eyes, at least that was her impression. He had a kind man's face, the face of a man who listened to you, listened to your troubles, cared about you, cared about how you felt.
My heart sinks. How is that possible? How could the shooter have presented himself like that just seconds after committing murder?
She insists on her description, that no matter what he'd done he had a kindly face. A certain amount of insistence can validate a description; too much will tend to impeach it. But if he really looked so kindly, I wonder, what was he doing in her nightmares?"
He had large, sensitive eyes. Nice eyes, she says. His eyebrows arched above them. He was clean-shaven, his cheekbones prominent, his cheeks slightly sunken, making him look somewhat gaunt. His chin was sensitive, too. He was probably in his late thirties. She couldn't see his hair – he was wearing a fedora – but she had the impression it was full…
"I'm sketching rapidly now, working from her impressions, altering features as she refines her memories.
"The eyes were bigger… the nose a little longer, I think… lips fuller. No, that's too much. A little less… yeah, like that… I don't think you got his eyebrows right. They weren't so heavy. Lighter, nicer… Can't remember anything about his ears. Maybe his hair curled down over them. Which means I saw his hair, doesn't it? So I ought to know what color it was. Brown, I guess…"
I assure her hair color isn't important, only its lightness or darkness since I'm working in a range of grays.
I ask her to show me his smile, imitate it for me. She tries, screws up her face several times before finding the right fit. In the end, she shows me a friendly half-smile. So… perhaps his face did show kindness. Perhaps he was the kind of sentimental killer who related well to children, a psychotic hitman who loved his mother, visited her religiously on Sundays, went all teary-eyed over the plight of orphans, broken-winged birds, and mangy, three-legged dogs.
There was nothing furtive about him, she says, no attempt to hide his face. His gaze was penetrating and direct, without challenging her or trying to force her to look away.
His skin was smooth. His teeth were even.
There was nothing mean about him, nothing predatory. His eyes and smile were warm.
"He was almost…"
"What?"
"Pleasant."
"Show me what you mean."
The face she shows me is almost sweet.
She didn't see the gun. Must have been hidden under his raincoat, though she doesn't remember a bulge. Could he have gotten rid of the gun before he came down the stairs? Impossible, of course, since the gun was never found.
"Oh, that's close!" she says. "I think you're onto him now. Maybe loosen the skin a little beneath the eyes. I don't remember him so young, so tight."
Seeing him in my drawing doesn't make her afraid, she says. She was never afraid of him, she says.
If that's true, I ask, why was he so fearful when she saw him in her dreams?"
"Because of what he'd done," she says. "He killed that couple, blasted them to bits. It was all the more scary that he didn't look like a man who would do a thing like that. My mom used to warn me about men who seemed nice but weren't. She said never get in a car with one, especially when he acts nice and seems to like kids. He'll trick you, she said, give you candy and stuff, then take you away with him, and you'll never be seen again."
I know what to do now. I start to sketch on a fresh page. No erasures this time, no changes. I work rapidly, drawing him just as she's described him from start to finish. She lights a cigarette, inhales, watches intently as I draw, fascinated as the face emerges out of the whiteness of the paper.
"This is amazing," she says. "You draw so quickly. I can't believe the way you make him come alive."
She nods when I've finished. "Yes!" she says. "That's the man! That's him, that's him!"
And then I know she never saw the man she's been describing so fully to me this afternoon. I have drawn a self-portrait. The face that stares back at me out of the paper is… my own.
9
Who can know the human heart?
We call it ‘transference,’ the phenomenon that occurs when a witness believes he or she can recall a face, and then, failing to do so, describes the features of the artist. In such cases, the witness does not intend to deceit and rarely recognizes what he/she has done. It's an unconscious process, but when it occurs the witness must be considered unreliable. Even if Kate were now to revise her description of the shooter, her memory has been contaminated. Any drawings made with her must now be held suspect.
After some serious drinking in Waldo's, I return to my room, tape the drawing to the mirror above the desk, sit before it, and gaze at the two images of myself.
Not a bad self-portrait, I think. In retrospect, I'm not surprised Kate couldn't recall the shooter. My wish that she could was founded more in hope than in belief.
Except… there's another possibility, one so abhorrent and painful I can barely bring myself to consider it.
I step over to the closet and retrieve the locked briefcase I keep hidden at the bottom of my garment bag. It's here I've secreted the folder I came upon last spring in he attic of my mother's house in L.A. when, following her death, my sister and I cleaned it out.