The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

Author:Chris Bohjalian
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

REESE, SHE LEARNED, was a journeyman photographer: capable, but not, from the images she found online, especially gifted. He was probably a better editor, which explained his long tenure in that role with Life magazine. The Web sites she visited suggested that toward the end of his life, he was most likely to be displaying his work in such venues as the meeting room of his church—which he did about a year and a half before he died. She made a mental note to spend a day visiting people from the congregation, beginning with the pastor. She thought she might even attend a worship service that coming Sunday in Bartlett and meet the folks who had known Reese—and, perhaps, his eccentric friend, Bobbie Crocker.

One longer obituary in a photography magazine said that Reese had been a sports photographer back when he’d worked in newspapers, but with the exception of the print of the Hula-Hoopers there hadn’t been any sports shots in that box Bobbie Crocker had left behind—and viewing the Hula-Hoopers as a sports image, she decided, was a stretch. Nothing in Reese’s history suggested the interest in music or jazz or entertainment that marked Crocker’s work, and so—unlike David—she remained confident that Bobbie was responsible for the prints that had been found in his apartment.

The last thing she did before turning to Crocker’s Social Security number was to Google the names Crocker and Marcus Gregory Reese together. She came up empty.

Moreover, her research with Crocker’s Social Security number only left her more frustrated, more puzzled. The number did not in actuality belong to a Robert Buchanan, as she had thought for sure it would. Instead, it was linked to Robert Crocker. Her Bobbie Crocker: He was born in 1923 and he had died, according to the site, earlier that month. In Burlington, Vermont.

Likewise, there was no Social Security number in existence for Pamela’s little brother, which would make complete sense if what she had told Laurel was true: Pamela’s brother had been born before Social Security existed, and—if he had died in 1939 as she insisted—he would have died before he would have been assigned one for the purpose of declaring his income.

Of course, for this very reason the site also couldn’t confirm for her that Buchanan had passed away six and a half decades earlier.

Consequently, the jubilation she had experienced in the carrel at the library all but evaporated. David was not the sort who was ever going to whisper, “I told you so,” but Laurel was feeling silly and small. She still believed that Bobbie Crocker was Pamela’s brother, but she understood when she verbalized that notion that she sounded as delusional as a good many of her clients. She knew there was more she could do with Bobbie’s Social Security number, and she would, but they had already missed their movie and so she agreed to David’s entreaties that they shut down his computer and leave.

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