It was a damp, cold, foggy morning. I could see my breath. British moor kind of weather. I drove fast, speeding past the entrance to the nature preserve. Then I remembered the police often lay in wait behind the bayberry bushes nearby. I slowed down.
The roads were nearly empty. I just kept driving and trying to absorb what I’d seen on television. What they were saying still didn’t seem possible. The man I met when I was twenty-five, the man I’d lived with and loved for more than twelve years had been murdered? Grief stabbed my heart. Then I remembered how Hugh betrayed me with Helene, and the jabbing stopped. The questions surfaced again: What kind of a monster had killed Hugh and the mother of his child? And why? I could practically hear Grace’s voice in my head saying, “Karma, baby. You can always count on karma.”
I reached into my pocket for my phone to try calling her again. But my phone wasn’t there. I tried the other pocket and came up with a crumpled five-dollar bill. Damn. I must’ve forgotten it.
I switched on the radio to hear more details on the crime. Static. Dense woods on either side of the road interfered. It began to rain and I turned on my wipers.
“What the hell?”
They were making annoying clicking sounds, like a desperate smoker flicking a Bic low on fuel, and they moved intermittently, maybe one stroke for the usual three.
“In four hundred feet, turn left,” my GPS ordered.
“Not now,” I said under my breath.
My Toyota was a lemon. I bought it used, and within a month the GPS jammed—it wouldn’t turn off. The electronic female voice gives me random instructions at random times. Fixing it would cost almost half of what I paid for the car, so I live with the malfunction. And now the wipers had decided to act up, too? I glowered as they made one of their irregular thumps.
“Turn left,” GPS lady ordered again. “Turn left.”
“Please shut up. If I turn left, we’ll drown.”
The woods had thinned out, and water appeared on my left. Dark gray water, stirred up and angry like the sky, which was now a moldy gray-green. The air began to smell briny, like sour pickles, as the road curved toward the bridge that connected the neighborhoods on this side of the harbor with downtown Pequod. Through my blurry windshield, I saw waves crashing into the harbor’s stone breakwater. The dozen or so sailboats that remained in the water late in the season rose and fell violently with the surf. Sirens screamed somewhere in the distance. Could the police be chasing down the killer? I tried the radio again and found better reception on WPQD, catching the middle of a report on Hugh:
“Walker became internationally famous for his unusual self-portraits. His most recent major New York show, Scenes from a Marriage, received stellar reviews last year. Stay with us. We’ll be speaking with Abbas Masout, Walker’s longtime art dealer, right after this message from Pequod Savings Bank.”
Abbas. Poor Abbas must be devastated. Hugh was one of the first artists he took on when he opened his gallery in New York. Originally, he made his reputation in Beirut selling modern art to visiting American and European collectors and movie stars during the city’s golden age. Then, in 1975, the Paris of the Middle East became a war zone, and Abbas spent the next five years struggling to survive. He finally managed to flee to the States and use his art world connections to set up shop, initially in Soho, then in Chelsea. He’d become one of the most successful dealers of the last decade. Collectors loved him for his charm. Hugh loved him for that, too, plus being tenacious as a terrier on his behalf.
“This is WPQD back with our breaking story on the murders of Hugh and Helene Walker. We have Mr. Walker’s art dealer, Abbas Masout, speaking to us from his loft in Lower Manhattan. Mr. Masout, what can you tell us about this tragedy?”
“I can tell you a great American artist who was my friend is dead, and my heart is crying. What evil creature did this? I don’t understand. It makes no sense,” he said. “How could this violence happen in such a peaceful place? And why to them?” His voice broke. “I can’t speak anymore . . . I’m sorry.”
“I understand. Thank you, Mr. Masout. Repeating, artist Hugh Walker, and his wife, Helene Westing Walker, were found dead in their home near Pequod, New York, this morning. An apparent double homicide. The police do not have a suspect in custody. Stay with us here at WPQD for the latest on the breaking story. And now for national news.”
I pressed “Scan” on the tuner for another station. Nothing landed. I shut the radio off. On the other side of the bridge, I turned right, aiming for Eden’s Coffee Shop half a mile ahead. My head was beginning to pound. Caffeine withdrawal. I hadn’t thought to drink my coffee before leaving the house.
The sidewalks and most of the parking spaces were empty—Corwin’s Market didn’t open until 9:00 a.m. It was quiet. No double murderer in sight. No posse forming in front of the Laundromat, which is housed in a renovated nineteenth-century jailhouse. The plaque by the entrance says, “Three pirates captured by the whaling ship Cuttamonk were incarcerated here until they were hanged.” It looked like a typical rainy, off-season Sunday morning in a quaint resort town.
Abbas was right. Despite the recent changes, Pequod was still an improbable setting for a double murder. A local homicide is the kind of story that gets framed and hung on the wall of the Courier office, along with coverage on bank robberies and hurricanes. We only have one homicide clipping up there—from 1972. The body of a teenage girl washed up on Crooked Beach. She wasn’t even from Pequod. The tides brought her here. She’d been hit with a heavy object and dumped in the water, not drowned. Turned out her boyfriend caught her stepping out on him and smashed her head in with a skateboard. They called it “a crime of passion,” which sounded to me like a justification.
The traffic signal in front of the pharmacy turned red and I stopped. I noticed Mr. Duck, with his dirty orange bill and mud-spattered feathers, sitting at the edge of the huge puddle on my right that forms during big rains in the alleyway between the pharmacy and liquor store.
Mr. Duck looked forlorn. And why wouldn’t he? He’d lost the love of his life. Mr. and Mrs. Duck never left each other’s side. You’d see the two of them mostly down on the wharf, except in a rainstorm. Then they’d waddle over to this puddle, ruffle each other’s tail feathers and snuggle. Until another gray day, when one of the Piqued had complained, and a green van from animal control pulled up. They captured Mrs. Duck, but Mr. Duck escaped. He comes and sits here whenever the puddle appears, watching for her. I wrote a small item about him in the Courier. It elicited higher-than-usual reader response. One letter read: My wife was taken by cancer. Some days I’m angry with her for leaving me. Other days I want to die and be with her. She was my best friend. I am Mr. Duck.