The Third Victim Read Free

sparse white clouds as background for the dark, heavy green of the fig leaves. Then, panning down, he’d pick up the texture of the redwood fence as he moved across low-growing ivy to play with the light-and-shadow-leaf designs falling on the brick. It was a good, tight composition. It would work. As background, it would work.
    But what about action?
    He had the setting. But he didn’t have a story line.
    A successful filmmaker, though, began with either a story or an action line. The story was the engine. Backgrounds were incidental. It was an axiom of the trade.
    Where had all the stories gone?
    As he watched, the sun seemed to lose its brilliance; the brick pattern lost its interest. The redwood textures faded; the ivy seemed bedraggled. The moment’s vision had passed, joining countless other illusions, long forgotten.
    He drew a long, soft sigh. He exhaled quietly, unwilling to wake the girl at his side.
    Why?
    Why was he unwilling to wake her? Because he knew she’d want to make love? Because he was afraid she wouldn’t?
    Which?
    Yesterday morning, they hadn’t gotten out of bed until almost eleven, love-sated. They’d eaten omelettes and finished a bottle of white wine left from the night before. Then they’d gotten into her car and driven to the beach. He’d brought his notebook, and worked on a few scenes. Cathy, too, had taken a notebook. She’d written three pages. “Stream-of-consciousness exercises,” she’d called them. Someday, she said, she’d write novels. Sagan-style novels.
    Finally they’d fallen asleep on the warm sand.
    His eyes were closing. He blinked, refocusing on the bricks and leaves and redwood. By an act of will; could he make the composition sparkle again? He squinted, simplifying the textures, making himself a camera’s viewfinder.
    I Am a Camera.
    It had been the basis of his first conversation with Joanna. New Year’s Eve, seven and a half years ago. He’d been drinking vodka and tonic, blearily blundering through a discussion on Kant. His antagonist had been a big, broad blonde with the build of a lady wrestler and a near-genius I.Q. By contrast, Joanna had seemed almost elfin—almost a pixie. She’d been standing alone in the center of the huge room—actually a loft converted into a studio-cum-apartment. She’d arrived in New York only the week before. In the whole city she knew only one couple, the hosts. Listening to the big blonde remorselessly pressing home her philosophical points, knowing he was beaten, he’d concentrated instead on the vision of the strange girl. Feature by feature, line by line, he’d assessed her: a good, supple torso, long legs with well-shaped calves but skinny thighs, a small, narrow face with thoughtful blue eyes and a firm, determined mouth. Her dark hair had been long then, loose about her shoulders. She’d been wearing a plaid wool skirt and a heavy cardigan sweater. Something about the tentative way she’d held her glass suggested a small town in Kansas. Something about her clear blue eyes suggested a certain playful innocence. He’d eased away from the blonde, executed one full circle, and come up on Joanna’s blind side, in good party-time position.
    He was conscious of Cathy’s water-borne movement. He felt a slow, lingering finger move down his spine.
    “Hi.”
    “Hi.” He turned to face her. She yawned, at the same time pushing her cornsilk hair back from her face. Her eyes were sleep-swollen. She had the smooth, untroubled, faintly petulant face of a willful child. But the facial musculature, he knew, was misleading. Only the eyes hinted at Cathy’s essence. The gray-green eyes were opaque—inscrutably, covertly watchful. Cathy revealed only what she chose to—when she chose to, to whom she chose.
    “What time is it?” she asked.
    “Eight twenty-five.”
    “We’re up early.”
    “We went to bed early.”
    The full lips curved into a slow, knowing smile. “Yes.”
    For a long, speculative moment they stared at