Duma Key

Mary dragged her. The blood-trail led across the living room/kitchen (the smell of the burnt sketch very likely still hanging in the air) and down the short hallway between the bedroom and the nook that served as Illy's study. In the bathroom at the end of the hall, Mary filled the tub and in it she drowned my unconscious daughter like an orphan kitten. When the job was done, Mary went into the living room, sat down on the sofa, and shot herself in the mouth. The bullet exited the top of her skull, splattering her ideas about art, along with a good deal of her hair, on the living room wall behind her. It was then just shy of four AM. The man downstairs was an insomniac who knew the gunshot for what it was and called the police.

"Why drown her?" Wireman asked. "I don't understand that."

Because it's Perse's way, I thought.

"We're not going to think about that right now," I said. "All right?"

He reached out and squeezed my remaining hand. "All right, Edgar."

And if we get this business done, maybe we'll never have to, I thought.

But I had drawn my daughter. I was sure of it. I'd drawn her on the beach.

My dead daughter. My drowned daughter. Drawn in sand for the waves to take.

You will want to, Elizabeth had said, but you mustn't.

Oh, but Elizabeth.

Sometimes we have no choice.

iii

We swallowed strong coffee in Big Pink's sunny kitchen until sweat was standing out on our cheeks. I took three aspirin, adding another layer of caffeine, then sent Jack to get two Artisan pads. And I told him to sharpen every colored pencil he could find while he was upstairs.

Wireman filled a plastic carry-sack with supplies from the fridge: carrot stubs, cucumber strips, a six-pack of Pepsi, three large bottles of Evian water, some roast beef, and one of Jack's Astronaut Chickens, still in its see-thru capsule.

"Surprised you can even think of food," he said, with the tiniest touch of reproach.

"Food doesn't interest me in the slightest," I said, "but I may have to draw stuff. In fact, I'm positive I'll have to draw stuff. And that seems to burn calories by the carload."

Jack returned with the pads and pencils. I pawed it over, then sent him back upstairs for art-gum erasers. I suspected there would be more stuff I'd want - isn't there always? - but I couldn't think what it might be. I glanced at the clock. It was ten to twelve.

"Did you Polaroid the drawbridge?" I asked Jack. "Please tell me you did."

"Yeah, but I thought... the German measles story..."

"Let me see the photos," I said.

Jack reached into his back pocket and produced some Polaroids. He shuffled through them and handed me four, which I dealt out on the kitchen table like a short hand of solitaire. I grabbed one of the Artisan pads and quickly began sketching the photo that showed the cogs and chains under the opening drawbridge - it was just a dinky little one-lane thing - the most clearly. My right arm continued to itch: a low, sleepy crawl.

"The German measles story was genius," I said. "It will keep almost everyone away. But almost isn't good enough. Mary wouldn't have stayed away from my daughter if someone had told her Illy had chicken p - Fuck! " My eyes had blurred, and a line that should have been true wandered off into falsehood.

"Take it easy, Edgar," Wireman said.

I glanced at the clock. 11:58 now. The drawbridge would go up at noon; it always did. I blinked away the tears and went back to my sketch. Machinery spun itself into existence from the point of the Venus Black, and even now, with Ilse gone, the fascination of seeing something real emerge from nothing - like a shape drifting out of a fogbank - stole over me. And why not? When better? It was refuge.

"If she's got someone to attack us with and the drawbridge is out of commission, she'll just send them around to the Don Pedro Island footbridge," Wireman said.

Without looking up from my drawing, I said: "Maybe not. A lot of people don't know about the Sunshine Walkway, and I'm positive Perse doesn't."

"Why?"

"Because it was built in the fifties, you told me that, and she was sleeping then."

He considered this a moment, then said, "You think she can be beaten, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. Not killed, maybe, but put back to sleep."

"Do you know how?"

Find the leak in the table and fix it, I almost said... but that made no sense.

"Not yet. There are more of Libbit's pictures at the other house. The one at the south end of the key. They'll tell us where Perse is and tell me what to do."

"How do you know there are more?"

Because there have to be, I would have said, but just then the noon horn went. A quarter of a mile down the road, the drawbridge between Duma Key and Casey Key - the only north link between us and the coast - was going up. I counted to twenty, putting Mississippi between each number as I had when I was a child. Then I erased the biggest cog in my drawing. There was a sensation when I did it - in the missing arm, yes, but also centered between and just above my eyes - of doing some lovely piece of precision work.