Fear itself

4

September and October were what they called locals’ weather on the Monterey Peninsula. Not only did the tourists clear out after Labor Day, but so did the fog-if the winter rains held off, you could generally count on two months of sunshine.

Dorie had been too shaken by the news of Wayne’s death to get any work done Tuesday. Eventually, she knew, she’d end up painting it out, putting the fear and the grief, the whole mourning process, into one of her plein air scenes-just not during locals’ weather.

But when she walked down to Carmel Beach around six o’clock that evening, Dorie found herself wishing she’d brought her gear. You don’t need rain for mourning, she thought: a Carmel Bay sunset will do very nicely. There’s sadness in so much beauty, especially when it’s over so quickly. Then she remembered that Wayne Summers was only twenty-seven when he died.

Twenty-seven! And he was healthy, he had a job he loved and his career was flourishing; he was as close to taking charge of his ornithophobia as he’d ever been; and as if all that weren’t reason enough to live, he got laid a lot more often than Dorie did, usually by breathtakingly gorgeous men-what possible reason would he have had to kill himself? Drown himself, at that. Wayne couldn’t swim a lick. Dorie remembered how he used to joke that it was one of only three black stereotypes that could be applied to him. The other two, he added, were a good sense of rhythm and none-of-your-business.

Dorie found herself laughing through her tears at the memory. But after the tears came anger, and a resolution: She would not give up. She would keep trying, she would redouble her efforts, she would make a pest of herself at every level of law enforcement, until she had convinced somebody to open an investigation, and keep it open. Somebody like this female FBI agent. Because even if Abruzzi didn’t believe what Dorie was saying yet, at least she sounded as if she wanted to believe. That was something, anyway.