THe NIGHT WAS BRIGHT

an original short story by James and Starr McKimmey

"My lovely Carole’s dead," Joe said bitterly. "Shot through the head."

We’d parked our cars at Pope Beach and walked single file along a narrow trail bordering Lake Tahoe; Joe Goddard in front, then me, Mark Whitney. Spring leaves unfurled on white-trunked aspen trees. Cumulus clouds drifted across a brilliant blue sky.

Joe, a large man with wide shoulders and slim hips, wearing jeans and an old photographer’s vest, moved with the grace I’d envied when I’d followed him along another trail in Viet Nam, seemingly a thousand years ago. A battered camera hung on a neck strap – a Leica M4 rangefinder with which Joe had taken some of the best photographs in this world, winning two Pulitzers in the process.

"It was murder," he said.

"I’m so sorry, Joe."

"God, how I loved her!" he said.

"Whoever killed her is going to pay."

I tried to think how it would be for me if I’d discovered my wife shot to death, but I didn’t have a wife and it was hard to imagine. Carole had been a stunning woman – Police Chief Freddie Swanson’s girl a long time ago. Her exquisite looks could have made her famous had she selected show business instead of deserting Freddie Swanson for Joe Goddard when Joe came to town. But that was before ravages of time and illness had descended on her. Perhaps, I thought, Carole’s diminishing beauty might be tempering Joe’s grief. I knew for certain I wouldn’t be as in control as he seemed to be.

"Burglar?" I asked.

"Who else?" Joe said. "I’d set aside cash for her birthday in the top drawer of the bureau in my bedroom. It’s gone. There were other things missing too, what all I don’t know yet. Burglar, all right. Shot her, took what he did, ran."

#

Joe left the trail by jumping down from a small earthen cliff to the sandy beach, where he stopped, profiled as he looked across the lake. Leanly fit, his angular face was tanned. Graying brown hair had thinned in front, with the rest worn longer than most men’s. Metal-framed round-lensed spectacles seemed a perfect complement to his rugged looks. Aging had only improved his appearance.

As a professional photographer, he lived what seemed to me an entirely glamorous life; whereas I, a semi-successful insurance agent who only dreamed of becoming a free-lance photographer one day, lived an entirely prosaic existence.

"I loved her so much," Joe said, watching a California gull swoop down to the shallow water beside the beach and pluck a mackinaw trout with its beak.

"Who didn’t love her?" I responded.

"Especially Chief Freddie Swanson," he said dryly.

"His department’s investigating?"

"Full tilt. All over the place, looking for the gun. They’ll find it when they find the burglar."

"You’ve talked to Freddie?"

"Interrogated by. Grilled by."

Carole and Freddie had been sweethearts for years, starting early in high school. "Well," I said, "you know how much Freddie loved her."

"Could I help it if she fell for me?"

Which had produced the immediate and final end of Freddie Swanson in her life. "Not your fault, Joe," I said. "But that’s not how Freddie viewed things."

Carole was the most beautiful woman Joe had ever seen; he’d told me that over and over. An only child, Carole was also rich. Having found her, I’m certain Joe would have immediately taken her away to see the world, but Carole loved Tahoe and never wanted to leave. Her tenacity had held Joe here. No other woman, lacking Carole’s looks and money, could have stayed Joe’s itchy feet.

"Freddie’s a simplistic baboon," Joe said. "Everything’s bad or good. I took Carole away from him. That was bad. So I’m bad! Maybe that kind of thinking makes him a good cop. You should know, Mark. You were on the City Council when it appointed him Chief of Police." Suddenly Joe stopped talking and stood transfixed. "See that willow tree down there all by itself? Ever look at it when dawn’s breaking?"

"No," I admitted.

"The luminescence it takes on is incredible. I’ve shot it so many times it’s ridiculous!"

Joe was an accomplished all-around photographer, but he’d been an especially talented combat photographer, in the same league as Larry Burroughs and Robert Capa. And now, out here with him on this windswept beach, I was remembering the first time I’d seen him, in Viet Nam . . .

#

I was in a rest-area bar having a drink when Joe Goddard, wearing Army fatigues, blew in with his dazzling smile and three 35-millimeter cameras, two Nikons and a Leica, strapped around his neck. He sat down beside me and put out a hand, saying, "How are you, sergeant? I’m Joe Goddard, free-lance photographer on assignment for Life Magazine."

Instantly impressed, I shook hands with him, saying, "My pleasure, Joe! I’ve been interested in photography all my life. Just haven’t had the time to get the hang of it."

"I’m from Stroudsville, Pennsylvania. How about you?"

"Lake Tahoe. Where’d you get the fatigues?"

"A supply sergeant I talked to happened to have my size."

That was my introduction to the fact that Joe could talk almost anybody into almost anything.

"You’re infantry?" he asked.

"Platoon sergeant."

"When do you go back to the line?"

"Tomorrow"

"How?"

"Helicopter."

"Where?"

"Can’t tell you."

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Sergeant Mark Whitney."

"I’ll talk to the guy in charge here," Joe said, "and see if I can fly with you tomorrow."

He was on the chopper next morning.

#

Scooby Hatfield, a muscular lieutenant who headed our platoon, said to Joe, "We leave on patrol middle of tonight. Stay between the sergeant and me, you got that?"

"Got that," Joe replied.

"Strictly noncombatant," Scooby added.

In the middle of the night we moved cautiously through the jungle, Scooby leading with his choice of weapon, an M14 rifle, Joe Goddard with his cameras, me with my M14, then the rest of the platoon.

As we approached a clearing, with morning light just beginning to filter through leaves and branches, the enemy fired. Scooby was the first hit. We all dropped. In the midst of a nightmare of frenzied fighting, noncombatant Joe Goddard picked up Scooby’s rifle and began cutting down the enemy, one after another. The Viet Cong patrol was gone as swiftly as it had arrived.

We got up slowly. Joe started shooting again, this time with his cameras. A month later I saw my picture in Life, with related photos. One of the most dramatic was of sprawled, fatally wounded Lieutenant Scooby Hatfield.

In the following weeks, Joe and I exchanged notes. Finally I went home to Tahoe. By that time Joe was back in Pennsylvania, pursuing nature photography in the Pocono Mountains. Then I received a letter informing me that he had an assignment to photograph Lake Tahoe. That’s where he met Carole, and remained.

#

Now, Joe and I stood on a beach beside the lake, talking about how a willow tree looked in the light of dawn. "Right here with this camera and lens," Joe said, "is the place to shoot that tree when the light’s right."

I nodded, listening intently as I always did when Joe talked photography.

"Well, hell," he said. He pulled the camera strap over his head and explained the Leica’s controls. Then he looped the strap around my neck so that the camera hung against my chest. "That’s a ninety millimeter Elmarit-R lens," he said.

I put my hands around that camera, thinking, my God, if I’d been a novice violin player, it would have been like Isaac Stern handing me his Stradivarius.

"Focus," he said. I lifted the camera to my right eye and looked through the rangefinder, bringing the tree into focus. "Now look through the viewfinder," he instructed. I did and saw the willow tree perfectly framed against the lake and sky and clouds. "Woohh!" I said.

I snapped the picture and started to lift the camera strap to return the camera to him when he shook his head. "Keep it. It’s yours."

"What?"

"It doesn’t have a light meter, so guess at the light and make the settings. Then bracket. Write down the figures. When you get the film processed, check it against what you saw. Make some pictures that’ll turn the world around," he said smiling. Becoming grim again he said, "Damn him!"

"Who?" I asked.

"Police Chief Freddie Swanson!"

His new tone made me forget the camera now strapped to my neck. When we began walking again, I asked Joe, "Does Freddie really think you killed her? Or does he just want to think you did?"

Joe’s eyes were hard. "Both."

"Explain."

"It was a bright night," Joe said. "A magnificent moon was hanging just over the mountains."

"I saw it, yes."

"I grabbed a camera and tripod and headed for the lake."

Joe and Carole had found a fine old house on a very large lot in an equally old neighborhood not far from the edge of this lake. Because of a lack of building restrictions, the area was a hodgepodge of dissimilar architecture. A stand of Jeffrey pines occupied their lot, giving privacy in every direction except where a miniature cabin stood, occupied by a retired couple named Keebler, as unattractive a pair as ever existed.

"I told Carole I wouldn’t be long," he said. "I shot two rolls of film while the moon was in the right position. Thought I heard a popping sound while I was doing that. But I didn’t pay much attention. Then I went home. Her bedroom was in back, remember?"

"Yes."

"Well, the screen had been lifted off and the window broken while I was gone. When I saw that, I ran inside and found her dead in bed. I phoned the police. That’s my story, exactly the way it was!"

"But what does Freddie think?"

"He says this ancient slimebag Keebler living next door phoned headquarters right after I called, said he’d seen me through a window of Carole’s bedroom holding a gun and pointing it at Carole’s head. Old bastard said he heard it fired and checked his watch. Said it was five minutes after ten o’clock. Then he said he saw me run out into the moonlight and lift off the screen and break the window with a rock and go back inside. The slimebag made up his whole tale!"

I could feel my heart pounding now. "How could he have just made that up, Joe?"

"I’ll tell you. Carole and I started sleeping in separate bedrooms even before she got sick. Carole wanted shades up in her bedroom and I wanted mine down. That allowed Keebler a chance to focus on her room with his damned binoculars. I caught him looking at her through them when she was undressing one night before she got sick. I warned him never to do it again. Obviously he didn’t listen. Keebler hated me! Called me a snooty high-and-mighty!"

"Jealous," I said, understanding why that ugly old man, living in his little cabin with his ugly old wife, spying on handsome Joe Goddard and his once-beautiful mate in their luxurious home, would hate Joe.

"I’m in big trouble, Mark," he said.

"You’re free."

"So far." His voice was bitter.

#

We walked on, in silence, until Joe said, "And so far I’ve said everything to you but what I intended to."

"Then say it, Joe."

"Not that easy."

We stopped again as apprehension began to flow through me. "Say it," I repeated.

He took a breath. "I’ve been lying to you. Fabricated the whole story. Truth is . . . I killed her, Mark."

His confession was a possibility that from the beginning had burgeoned deep within the recesses of my mind. Now his words brought it forward with the force of a blow to the back of my skull. I felt stunned.

"It was no good!" Joe said, plaintively now. "There was nothing left for her, living practically paralyzed like that! Lying in that bed, calling to me all the time. ‘Joe! Where are you, Joe? Are you in the kitchen? Are you in the bathroom? Joe! I need you! Now!’ Do you remember my describing how her voice could get, Mark?"

I remembered when her voice had been beautifully husky. But once she’d learned to talk again after her stroke, her voice could grate like a file on steel.

"So," Joe continued, "it was going on like that with her calling me again and again. There was some brain damage, you know. So I thought of the pistol in the room I use for an office, something I picked up in Viet Nam. And . . ."

"You could have put her in a nursing home!"

"I wouldn’t have done that to her!"

Instead, he’d shot her in the head! Some brain damage, he’d said. But not enough that Joe could have completely taken over her affairs, mainly her money, or he would have done it. I remembered he’d told me they’d signed a premarital contract.

"I wanted to take care of her!" he insisted. "Doing what I do for a living, I could manage that! So I was, day in, day out! But . . ."

He could have just said goodbye to her, I thought, but he would have been saying goodbye to her money too.

"Did she leave everything to you, Joe?" I could hear the sarcasm in my tone.

"Of course! No children. Both her parents dead. There was never any doubt about that!"

And so the only way he could have continued to enjoy her money and be on his own was to have killed her! My stomach knotted.

"Are you on bail, Joe?" I asked.

"A lot of it."

"You didn’t tell me that. So why are you telling me you killed her?"

"To play it straight with you, Mark," he said. "Don’t you see? I did Carole a favor!"

I was standing in sunshine and shivering. "What do you want from me, Joe?"

"An alibi," he said without hesitation. "I told Chief Freddie Swanson I was with you at your house when she was killed. I told him you could verify that."

I remembered his call the night before. I’d felt honored that he’d wanted to talk to me about Carole’s death. Now I knew he’d simply been verifying that I was home alone. I gave my head a shake. "You got to me before Freddie did. But he’ll be phoning as soon as I get back to my office!"

"He will, Mark."

"I’m not lying for you! You killed her in cold blood!"

"I did it for her, Mark! Oh, God, let’s not let this come between us. Listen, please. Even against the terrible tragedy of losing Carole, I’ve thought of what we could do together, you and I!"

"You didn’t lose her! You killed her!"

"You’ve never liked being in insurance, have you, Mark? Which is why it hasn’t worked out for you. You have to love doing something to make it work well, and you love photography. That’s what you should be doing! Sell your insurance agency. We’ll take off together. I’ll pay the way." Now his voice had become gently persuasive. "Costa Rica to start? Then the Amazon. Majorca. Kenya. New Zealand. How about Fuji? I’ll teach you everything I know. Mark! Do you hear me?"

"To hell with you, Joe!"

I started back in the direction where my car was parked.

"Mark!" he called after me. "Mark!"

#

Unlocking my car door, I realized I still had his camera slung around my neck and thought: I’ll throw the damned thing away! I drove off, tires screeching. Soon I was back in my office, sitting at my desk, the camera in front of me. I’d get rid of it pretty soon, I thought. Any minute now.

The telephone rang. I picked it up. "Hello?"

"It’s Freddie, Mark."

I listened to the flat, familiar voice of Chief Freddie Swanson outline the time sequence of events the night before. Then he said: "Keebler, Joe’s neighbor, says he saw Joe point the gun at Carole’s head at five past ten. Joe swears he was with you in your house at that time. What do you say, Mark?"

I was silent, running fingers across my forehead, looking at the Leica on my desk. I could hear Joe’s voice again, as I’d heard it on the beach, gently persuasive: "We’ll take off together. I’ll pay the way. Costa Rica to start? Then the Amazon. Majorca. Kenya. New Zealand. How about Fuji? I’ll teach you everything I know. Mark! Do you hear me?"

"Mark?" said Chief Freddie Swanson.

My heart was pounding again as I said, "Joe was with me."

 

Copyright© 2004 James and Starr E. McKimmey

***

 

STARR E. MCKIMMEY

I was born in 1933, christened Starr Baker in Sweetgrass, Montana, a small town adjacent to the Canadian line. My siblings, Troy, Gene, Ada and Juanita, were also born in Montana, where for awhile my father worked on the building of Fort Peck Dam, but his passion was guitar playing, running away and leaving my mother to waitress. Hoping for greener fields, he tried to get his act together and piled his family in a rickety 1940 car and headed for the green ripe grapes of Modesto, California. Soon he disappeared again and sadly, years later we learned he had hanged himself.

In Modesto my mother commenced waitressing again, and again I took care of my brothers and sisters. My mother told me I’d better learn typing and shorthand because I would never go to college. I was top student in the commercial field and twenty minutes after I left high school I signed up as a recruit in the U.S. Navy, stationed in Bainbridge, Maryland, where I was chosen as Honor Woman of my company (my grades all 4.0), and to my astonishment crowned Miss Pearl Harbor in a beauty contest.

At Pearl Harbor I met my first husband, George Lewis Epps, trumpeter extraordinary. We were married in a base chapel in Pearl Harbor and soon after "Lew," as he was called, whisked me away to his home in Georgia where our first two sons, Gary and Jerome, were born. Soon thereafter, Lew took his family to Las Vegas for better "gigs," where he played in relief bands on the dazzling Strip. A few months after that, Lew got a call from Lake Tahoe for a trumpeter extraordinary. In Tahoe, our third son, Michael, was born.

Lew died in 1991 after a brilliant career as first chair trumpeter in the golden days when such stellar stars as Sammy Davis, Jr., Johnny Mathis, Steve Lawrence and Edye Gorme, and Judy Garland graced the stage in the South Shore Room at Harrah’s-Tahoe. (At Lew’s memorial service, professional musicians Lew had worked with sent him off in style and tears with a Dixieland band.)

I have five lovely granddaughters: Nicole and Kelsi Epps who live in Grass Valley, California, with their parents, Gary and Diane (also a writer); Melissa and Danielle Epps who live with their mother and stepfather in Nashville, Tennessee. Mellissa and Danielle’s paternal father, Jerry, also lives in Nashville. Michael and his daughter, April, live in Gardnerville, Nevada. Michael’s late wife, Wendy Jo Epps, died during a transplant for Fanconi Anemia in the winter of 2001. We miss her every day.

Jim McKimmey and I were married on October 28, 1994. He’s lovely and I can get anything out of him that I want. (I don’t know that he can get out of me anything that he wants!) He loves having a large family as he and his late wife, Marty, never had children. We have much in common as I was a writer for the Tahoe Daily Tribune for five years and have recently written a facial exercise book, Cheshire Cat Face-Ups: Push-Ups For Your Face! BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW WONDERFUL IT IS THAT YOU DISCOVERED JIM!