Places In The Dark Part 18

"Calvin Chase?"

"Yes."

"This is Dr. Goodwin. I'm calling from Portland General Hospital. You're William Chase's brother, is that right?"

"What's happened?"

"Your brother was in a car accident," Dr. Goodwin told me. "He's--"

"Dead?" I blurted out.

"No," Dr. Goodwin said. "But he's hurt quite badly."

"Is he conscious?"

"Yes, but he's sleeping now."

"When he wakes up, tell him I'm on my way."

"One thing," Dr. Goodwin said quickly. "He repeated a name several times. Perhaps his wife?"

"My brother isn't married."

"Dora," Dr. Goodwin said. "That was the name."

"Tell him I'll bring Dora with me."

I arrived at her house ten minutes later, knocked at the door, then heard the creak of the wooden floor as she moved toward it. The door opened, and she stood before me, her hair free and falling to her shoulders, her body hidden beneath a long white sleeping gown. "Cal," she said.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, but--"

"What's wrong?"

"Billy's been in an accident," I told her. "It's pretty serious, the doctor said."

"Where is he?"

"In Portland. At the hospital there. He asked for you."

"Come in. I'll get dressed."

She headed for the bedroom, opened the door, and stepped inside. In that brief instant, I saw a single candle burning on the narrow table opposite the bed. A small porcelain figure rested just to the right of the candle, a little girl, naked on a gray stone, her legs drawn up to her chest, her back obscured by a curtain of long, blond hair.

Seconds later, Dora emerged, now in her dark green dress. "I'm ready," she said.

I stepped to the door and opened it.

"Is your father coming?" she asked as she went through it.

"No, I haven't told him yet," I said.

She looked up at me quizzically.

"I want to see how Billy is doing first," I explained.

I can no longer say whether that was actually true, or whether, deep within the darkened chamber a different thought held sway, that I merely wanted to be alone with Dora in the night, feel that nothing stood between us but the electric air.

We drove through Port Alma, then up the coastal road, a nightbound sea at our right. Against that utter blackness, Dora's face was pale and still, an ivory cameo. I tried not to look at her, tried to suppress the tumult that rose in me each time she came into view. I even worked to maintain my silence, since each time I heard her voice, I felt myself fall deeper into the pit. I had never known anything like this before, and I didn't like it in the least. I wanted only to regain my footing once again, leave all thought of Dora March behind, return to my books and my brandy and my wh.o.r.e, let my brother win her if he could, then smile happily as I tossed the rice on their wedding day.

And yet, when I spoke, I felt a sinister purpose in what I said.

"I warned him about that old wreck. Especially about the brakes. But he just wouldn't listen." My eyes slid over to Dora. "You know how he is? Like a little boy."

Although my words had been aimed at my brother's carelessness, the way he'd endangered himself simply by letting things go, I recognized that I'd shot them like arrows meant to unhorse a rival knight, send him sprawling into the mud before his lady's eyes.

When Dora said nothing, I struck again.

"He's careless. He's always thought of himself as invulnerable. But he was always getting hurt when he was a boy. Mother was forever bandaging a finger or putting his arm in a sling. I think he sort of liked that, being mothered."

Dora's silent gaze remained fixed on the road ahead, so I retreated into another pose, that of the kind and faithful brother. "But he always pulled through," I added. "And he'll pull through this time too."

"Yes, he will," she said determinedly, as if by will alone she could make it so.

An hour later Dr. Goodwin escorted us into Billy's room.

He lay in a narrow metal bed, his head swathed in bandages, blood soaking through the gauze, his eyes black and swollen, a body suddenly small, frail, broken, utterly physical in the sense of being composed exclusively of flesh, capable of being sc.r.a.ped, torn, battered. I saw his soul as well, like his body, no less naked and exposed, doomed to a thousand shocks and terrors. And yet, for all that, I didn't rush over to him, take his hand, let him know that I was at his side.

It was Dora who did all that.

"William," she said softly, then swept over to his bed and clasped his hand.

He stirred slightly, and I could see a subtle movement beneath his closed lids, as if he were searching for her, like a child in a darkened room.

"It's Dora," she said quietly, not as a call for him to awaken, but only to let him know that she was there.

His fingers curled around Dora's fingers. She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead.

We stayed for hours in his room, left it only when Dr. Goodwin returned, two nurses just behind him. "I need to do an examination," the doctor told us. "There's a waiting room down the hall."

It was a plain area with wooden chairs and a checkered floor. Ashtrays here and there. A single large window faced the hospital's asphalt parking lot, the black tar slicked with rain.

"He can stay with me when he leaves the hospital," I said. "In the room upstairs."

"He's lucky to have you, Cal."

I shook my head. "No. He's lucky to have you."

I instantly realized that inadvertently I'd revealed a glimpse of my true feelings for her, touched her, almost physically.

She seemed to feel a dark heat rising from me. "I'll do what I can for him" was all she said.

"I'm sure you will," I said, then detailed how much I, too, was willing to sacrifice for my brother, all of it geared to demonstrate the depth of my devotion to him.

"Over the years, I've gotten used to taking care of Billy," I said, then echoed one of my father's biblical references, "I am my brother's keeper."

It was a role I'd played so long, and cherished so devotedly, a sentiment I'd expressed with such convincing sincerity that even months later, as the lights of Carmel, California, glittered distantly in the dark hills, I could still almost believe that it had been true.

Lorenzo Clay was not hard to find, since, as it turned out, he was one of the richest men in Carmel. He lived in a large house on a rocky beach, its grounds bordered by a high white wall topped with red slate and protected by a towering wrought iron gate.

The entrance door opened and a swarthy man in a dark, carefully tailored suit walked to the gate. "Yes?"

"My name is Calvin Chase," I said. "I'm here to see Lorenzo Clay."

"Is Mr. Clay expecting you?" He spoke with a slight accent.

"No."

"Well, then, I'm afraid that you'll have to--"

"I'm investigating a murder."

The man's face tensed. "A murder?"

"In Maine, two months ago."

"What would that have to do with Mr. Clay?"

I handed him the book. "The person who last saw the victim alive had this book. As you can see, it once belonged to Mr. Clay."

He looked at the book, even flipping through the pages while he considered what he should do. Finally, he glanced up and said, "Just a moment."

He went back into the house, carefully closing the door behind him. While I waited, I gazed out over the wide grounds of Lorenzo Clay's estate, heard Dora's voice repeating once again the thing she'd claimed most to need: Peace. I saw my hand take hers, draw her to her feet, our eyes, in that instant, fixed in a terrible collusion, all hope of future peace cast to the wind.

The door opened and the man returned to the gate. "Mr. Clay would be happy to see you," he informed me.

He unlocked the gate with a large bra.s.s key and led me down the walkway, up a short flight of stairs and into the house. It had a s.p.a.cious foyer, a marble floor partially covered by a wide Oriental carpet. If Dora had actually lived here, I could not imagine the adjustment she had made, the route that had taken her from such wealth and luxury to her spartan cottage in the wood.

"Mr. Clay is in his study," the man told me as we swung left and headed down a long corridor. At the end of it, he opened a door, stepped to the right, and gestured me inside.

"Mr. Calvin Chase," he said formally, then backed away, leaving me alone with Lorenzo Clay.

He sat behind a ma.s.sive oak desk strewn with books and papers, the brocade back of his chair rising several inches above the top of his head. I couldn't tell how tall he was, only that he was quite obese, with a thick neck and arms. He was completely bald, and had practically no eyebrows, so that he looked as if he'd been dipped in acid, all his features melted into a doughy ma.s.s. His eyes were hazel and perfectly round, small coins pressed into the dough.

"I hope you'll excuse the disorder. I wasn't expecting any visitors today." He nodded toward a chair. "Please, have a seat."

I did as he asked, glancing about the room as I lowered myself into one of the two chairs that faced Clay's desk. There were no cases filled with curios, no sculpture. Only a few small oil paintings hung on the walls, all other s.p.a.ce taken up by towering bookshelves. For a moment, I imagined Dora drawing books from their shelves, touching them in the way she'd touched mine, as if they were small and alive, tiny, purring things.

"Would you like something to drink?" Clay asked.

"No. Thank you."

He held the book I'd brought from Maine in his hands. "You're correct in what you told Frederick," he said. "This book certainly once belonged to me. You've come a long way to return it."

"That's not why I came."

He seemed to hear the stark tone in my voice, dead and without inflection.

"So I was told," he said quietly. He placed the volume on his desk, then slid it toward me. "Frederick mentioned that it has something to do with a murder."

"Yes."

"When did this murder take place?"

"Last November. The twenty-seventh to be exact."

"And you've come all the way from Maine?"

I nodded, caught my own profile reflected in the window gla.s.s to my left, a gaunt figure, gnawed to the bone.

"That's a very long way," Clay said. "The victim must have been someone quite important."

"The victim was my brother."

For the first time, Clay's tiny round eyes appeared capable of something other than suspicion. "I'm sorry," he said. He lifted the book. "And this book is connected in some way to your brother's murder?"

"The woman who owned it, she was--" I stopped, saw her in my mind, the two of us alone in her small, bare house, her eyes aglow in the firelight. "My brother was in love with her." I felt my hands cup her face, draw it toward mine, so close that as I spoke, my breath had moved her hair: I won't let anything stop me.

"She went by the name of Dora March." I recalled her tiny signature in the ledger books, proof positive both of her larceny and of how little it had mattered to me, how easily I'd dismissed it, love, more than anything, a process of erasure. A terrible heaviness fell upon me, the awesome weight of what I'd done.

"It was all a lie," I said.

"A lie?"

"Her name. Everything."

"How do you know?"

"She had a magazine." The garish pages fluttered in my mind, a wild child huddled in a corner, her thin brown legs drawn up to her chest, blond hair falling to the floor. "It had an article in it. About a young girl. The girl's name was Dora March."

"She took her name from a magazine article?" Clay asked, clearly intrigued.

"Yes, she did."

"Do you have a picture of this woman?"

"No."

"What did she look like?"