Free Black River by G. M. Ford Page B

for?”
    “Because I said so,” Balagula said. He turned his hooded eyes toward Ivanov. “That’s all the reason you need, is it not?”
    Ivanov could feel the burning in his cheeks. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.
    He walked to the door and peeked out. Not because he was interested in what Elkins had to say but so Nico would not be able to see his face.

11
    Wednesday, October 18
    3:52 p.m.
    C orso kicked a rolled newspaper aside, stepped over the threshold into the apartment, and closed the door behind himself. He stood for a moment in the narrow entry hall, staring down at the silver key in the palm of his hand. He heaved a sigh. When Dougherty hadn’t bothered to ask for her key back, he’d figured it was because she’d changed the lock. That’s what he would have done. The fact that the key still worked saddened him and left him feeling hollow and cold.
    He pocketed the key and walked down the green carpet runner into the living room. Everything was as he remembered—the burgundy oriental rug and the bright green couch, the nest of rosewood Chinese tables, the framed posters. All of it—except for the photographs. The places that had once held pictures of him…of them…now showed a sandy-haired guy with a close-cropped beard and glasses, laughing, lounging, leaning his head against her shoulder.
    He turned away from the photographs and pulled open the mahogany door to what had once been a walk-in closet: an eight-by-eight space that Dougherty, before the advent of digital photography, had used as a darkroom and that now served as her makeshift office. At the back, a built-in desk held her computer. A trio of battered file cabinets lined the left wall. Overhead, a pair of shelves overflowed with books and magazines.
    The cops had been through her files, leaving the drawers open and the folders scattered about like leaves. A black-and-white picture of himself lay on top of the pile: standing on a rock at the apex of Stuart Island, the entrance to Roach Harbor barely visible in the distance. He reached out and turned it over. She’d written Frank Corso, Stuart Island, 11/9/99 . Must have been what sent the cops scurrying to his door.
    He sat in her chair and ran his hands along the arm-rests. He remembered the week on the island. No phone, no electricity, no nothing…except each other. Walking in the woods and digging clams down on the beach. Watching darkness fall from the deck and then retiring inside. And the nights filled with low moans among the rustle of the trees and the ragged songs of the night birds.
    Corso got to his feet. Ran one hand over his face and another through his hair. A voice in his head was getting louder, telling him to get to work, to stop spacing out and start looking for something that might give him a clue as to why somebody would want to do her harm. He gathered the folders that littered the desktop and tapped everything back inside before returning them to the file cabinet.
    The cops had her little black notebook, but that was just what she used when she was out on a shoot. At home, she kept track of her life in a series of six-by-eight journals she bought from Urban Outfitters. Her idea books, she called them.
    She went through two or three a year and never threw them out. The entire top shelf above the desk was filled with old journals, purple, red, blue, and green. Like the files, they were a mess. The brick she used as a bookend had been moved. A dozen journals lay sprawled on their sides. He stood them up, put the brick back in place, and eased out the purple book on the far right. Inside the front cover she’d written 1/00–7/00 Post-Corso Journal Number Two . His fingers felt thick and stiff as he thumbed through the pages. It was awash in her bold, looped handwriting. It also was full, which meant she’d started another.
    He went through the office slowly, looking for her current journal, cleaning up as he went along. There were only three possibilities: either