Places In The Dark Part 8

"Could you stop the car," she said. "Let me out please."

We'd turned another bend in the road. Neither Hendricks nor Molly was visible behind us. I pulled over, then watched silently as Dora left the car and walked a few paces up the road. She'd dropped her hands deep into her pockets, and I could see her fingers twitching inside them, quick and frantic, like someone grasping for a line.

After a time, those same desperate motions diminished, then finally stopped. She took a long breath, turned, and walked back to the car, stamping snow from her shoes before she got in.

"Thank you," she said.

"Carsick?" I asked, though I suspected that it was nothing of the kind.

Dora nodded briskly but said nothing.

I dropped her off at the Sentinel a few minutes later, then returned to my office. Hap Ferguson was standing in the corridor, munching a sugar cookie from the bag of them his wife made each week.

"Find anything over at Carl's place?"

"Nothing," I told him.

"Wonder why'd William got the idea that ..."

"I think maybe someone else at the paper had some suspicions."

"Who?"

I gave the only answer possible. "The woman who came with him to the fire."

There was nothing more to say. It seemed to me that the matter had ended, that there'd be no more talk either of the fire or of my brother's unfounded suspicions. And yet, I noticed that as I turned to leave, Hap drew a pen and notepad from his pocket and wrote down Dora's name.

I met Billy for lunch at the Bluebird Cafe that same afternoon, but I told him nothing about Dora, the way Hendricks had stared at her, nor the agitation that had followed. I had no wish to talk about her, nor any woman like her, the type it was impossible to get a fix on. I preferred my woman on the waterfront, the one I called Jane or Celia or any name that occurred to me at the moment, who smoked my cheroots and drank my whiskey and led me to her bed with a clear understanding of what I was to give and get. She was broad in the hips and thick in the ankles, and she took me into the safe harbor of her arms without expecting me to lose my senses over her, or ever promise more than a single night's attention.

And so it was my brother who brought Dora up that afternoon. In fact, he seemed more or less unable to think of anything else.

"Dora said you met Carl Hendricks on the way back from his house this morning."

I nodded, forked a bite of meat loaf into my mouth. "We ran into him."

"What do you think, Cal? Could he have done it?"

"I haven't seen any evidence of any crime at all, Billy," I said sternly. "In my profession, I need that. As a matter of fact, I think you're supposed to require a little of it in yours too."

He looked at me as if I'd slapped his face. "What's the matter, Cal?"

I decided to be blunt. "Well, for one thing, because of you, of what you said to Hap, I got sent on a wild-goose chase this morning. Had to go out to Hendricks's place, poke around like I had the foggiest notion of what I was looking for. And for all that, I didn't find a d.a.m.n thing to suggest that Carl Hendricks torched his house." I shoved my plate aside. "Let me ask you something, Billy. Was it Dora March who put the idea in your head that there was something odd about the Hendricks fire?"

He was clearly stricken by my question. Instead of answering it, however, he said, "Dora senses things, Cal."

"Senses things?"

"Yes," Billy said. "I think she ... experienced something that made her--"

"Wait," I interrupted. "Just wait a second. First, what do you actually know about her? Details, I mean. Like, where she was living before she came to Port Alma?"

"New York City," Billy replied. "At a residence hall there. For women. As a matter of fact, I even know the address, Eighty-fifth and Broadway."

"What was she doing in New York?"

"Like I said, living there."

He added nothing else, and so I suspected that he'd already pretty much exhausted his information.

But rather than release him, I closed in. "Does she talk about her past?"

"Not much."

"So as far as you know, she just popped up here in Port Alma?"

"Yes."

"Why here, I wonder. I mean, it's a long way from New York. And very different."

"Cal, what are you getting at?"

"I'm trying to make a point."

"What point?"

"Just that you don't know much about her."

"What would I need to know?"

"A lot before you start giving her ... powers."

Billy grinned and leaned back in his seat. "That's the difference between you and me, Cal."

I laughed. "You don't want to know about her. That's the real difference between you and me, Billy. You don't want to know about her. You might find out she's pretty ordinary. Probably just some shopgirl from Macy's who climbed onto a northbound bus one afternoon, ended up here because her money ran out."

My brother's expression turned grave. "Something happened to her, Cal."

I wasn't buying it. "She was born. She lived. More than likely, that's all that ever 'happened' to her."

"No." Billy said it firmly. "Something happened to Dora."

"Something tragic, no doubt."

"Yes."

I'd had enough. "Why do you want to believe that something 'tragic' happened to Dora? Is it because it would make her different from other women? Why can't you just face the fact that n.o.body's really that different from anybody else? We're just people. Plain. Ordinary. Nothing great about us. Nothing splendid. We come out of the dirt and we go back to it."

"I know you believe that," Billy said. "Dad does too. But I don't." For the first time in his life, my brother regarded me with pity. "I don't want to live like you, Cal. Spend my life like you." He searched for the right words, then said them: "Like someone waiting for a change in the weather."

He'd never drawn the line more clearly, never delineated more precisely what distinguished us as brothers and as men. For me, the prospects of life, and certainly of love, would remain innately limited. Human life was lost in folly. No human was truly worthy of devotion, and so I would not offer it. What one could not wors.h.i.+p, it seemed fitting to despise. These were my true beliefs, and I didn't in the least feel compelled to deny them. And so I said, "You were born to be disillusioned, Billy. Born to have some woman kick your heart out. Because you want something impossible."

He stared at me steadily. "What do you want from a woman, Cal?"

"What I always get. A little pleasure, then a good night's sleep."

"So it's only s.e.x, then? You've never in your life wanted more than that?"

He was alluding to the Sat.u.r.day nights I spent on the waterfront in Royston, of course. I'd never kept that aspect of my life from him. But neither had I ever expected him to bring it up in this way, as an accusation.

"Don't you want more from a woman than that?" he demanded. "Something ... beautiful? Something that lasts forever?"

I felt under attack, and struck back.

"Dad did, didn't he?" I asked hotly. "Dad wanted a lot more from our mother. Something perfect. That would last forever. Someone to share his life with, his soul with. What good did it do him? Or her, for that matter. She'll die alone. And so will he." I felt the air harden around me, the walls of the Bluebird Cafe squeeze in. I reached into my pocket, flung a few coins on the table. "Let's get out of here."

The sun glittered on the snow as we made our way down Main Street. We walked all the way to the front door of the Sentinel without exchanging a single word. Then, as he was about to go inside, my brother took my arm and turned me toward him. "What I said at the cafe, I didn't mean it, Cal. That you're just a ... wh.o.r.emonger."

"But, I am, Billy," I said without apology. "That's exactly what I am. That's my dirty little secret." I stared at him emphatically, driving home an earlier point. "Everybody has one. Something weak about them. Something grimy." I gave the nail a final bang. "Even this new woman of yours. Dora. This woman who 'senses' things."

Billy stared at me silently. I knew I'd reached that place where the next word mattered so much, it would be best not to say it.

I glanced down at his worn overcoat and found a joke to save us. "Well, one thing's for sure, she couldn't be after your money."

He seemed relieved that I'd found a way past our harsh words, that for all our differences, we were still brothers. He grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. "I'll give you that, Cal. Dora couldn't be after my money."

He turned and headed into the building. I watched him hang his coat on the peg by the door, then stride deliberately toward his desk, rolling his sleeves up as he walked. Henry Mason was scribbling cla.s.sifieds at the front counter. Wally Blankens.h.i.+p was setting type, his body swathed in a stained leather ap.r.o.n, his face half hidden beneath a green eyeshade. But it was Dora March I found myself watching. She was sitting at her metal desk in a far corner, her back to the row of wooden filing cabinets where back issues of the Sentinel were kept. A newspaper was spread before her on the desk. She was peering at it intently, a single finger moving back and forth along the gold band of her gla.s.ses. As I watched, she read a moment longer, then closed the paper and looked up. Her lips remained tightly sealed, but somehow in that silence, I thought I heard a scream.

Chapter Nine.

That was why I did it. The look on Dora's face, along with my brother's certainty that "something" had happened to her. I didn't doubt that she might have suffered some loss in her past. Most people had. And for those who hadn't, it was only a matter of time. No life went forward without bereavement. No human being had ever, in the end, outrun regret. What I feared was that this wound had scooped something from the core of Dora March, dug a pit within her, and that my brother now walked perilously along its ever-crumbling rim.

It happened three hours later, when Jack Stout came into my office. He was wearing baggy pants, as always, black except for the places where cigarette ash left small dusty stains. He plopped down in the chair opposite my desk, unfastened his jacket, and let his belly flop over a cracked leather belt. "Headin' for New York, Mr. Chase," he said. "To pick up Charlie Younger." He thumped a cigarette from a crumpled pack and offered it to me.

"No, thanks."

Jack plucked the cigarette from the pack, lit it with a match raked across the side of his boot. "They got him in a place called--" He stopped, yanked a piece of paper from his pocket, and squinted. "Tombs."

"That's the city jail."

"It's on an island, Mr. Ferguson told me."

"Rikers Island. It's in the middle of a river. The one that runs along the east side of Manhattan."

Jack crammed the address back into his s.h.i.+rt pocket. "It's just me, you know. n.o.body else going with me."

"You don't need anybody else."

Jack grinned, his bottom teeth rising like a jagged yellow wall. "Figure Charlie'll go peaceful, do you?"

"He'll be wearing everything but a muzzle," I said. "Feet and hands, both shackled. A chain running under his crotch. You won't need help, believe me. Not to bring Charlie Younger home."

"Well, he sure scared the s.h.i.+t out of Lou Powers."

"The gun wasn't loaded. Charlie was desperate, that's all. He never had a problem before that. He won't give you any trouble."

Jack Stout grinned again. "Famous last words, Mr. Chase."

"When are you leaving?"

"'Bout an hour. Just gonna grab a clam roll at the Bluebird, then head out." He crossed one leg over the other. A huge brown boot wagged in the air, the heel worn flat. "Hoping I won't hit too much weather." He stroked his chin. "Think I need a shave? Mr. Ferguson says I need to look professional."

I didn't see how Jack Stout could ever look professional. Shave, haircut, even dressed in a neat blue ready-made suit, none of it would have mattered much. Jack bore the mark of what he was, one of six brothers from a family of scavengers and poachers, the type who lived in shacks at the end of winding mountain roads. As a group, the Stouts had always preferred, as if by nature, things that were unhinged and collapsible, could be broken into pieces and dragged through the piney woods or hauled up rocky trails. Jack was the only one who'd made a life within the law, usually as a laborer, but sometimes running errands for Hap and Sheriff Pritchart, fetching prisoners back to Port Alma from the places they'd fled to, and from which they surrendered, penniless and hungry. Charlie Younger was just the latest in a growing line of such men, driven by harsh times to harsh acts, then tracked down in flophouses from Portland to Baltimore, and brought back to face consequences no less harsh. I pitied them briefly, prosecuted them energetically, and sent them, dazed, to jail.

"You look fine," I told him.

Jack pinched off the lighted end of his cigarette, blew a speck of ash from what remained, and dropped the rest into his pocket to smoke another time. It was the sort of small economy the poor practiced in those days, and I couldn't help admiring it, not so much for the savings as for the sheer frankness of the gesture, a raw admission of want, offered with neither apology nor resentment.

Jack slapped his knees and rose. "Well, can I bring you anything from the big city? Besides Charlie, I mean?"

At that instant, I saw Dora's face as she'd looked up from her desk a few hours before. An idea came to me. It was one of those impulses we either act upon casually or casually deny, then live forever in the wake of a fatal choice.

"As a matter of fact, you could do something for me, Jack."

"What's that?"

"There's a place in New York. A residence hall for women. I'd like for you to drop by, check something out." I took a piece of paper and wrote the address and name, 85th and Broadway, Dora March. "Find out what you can about this woman," I said as I handed him the paper.

Jack glanced at the note. "Dora March."

"She works at the Sentinel. It's always good to have a little extra information." I smiled. "I'll pay you for this, of course."

Jack's bulb burned dully, but not without illuminating a small patch of ground. "Looking out for your kid brother, are you?"

"You could call it that."

"You bet, Mr. Chase," Jack said. He stuck the note in his s.h.i.+rt pocket. "I'll be back in four or five days."

"We can settle up then."

"You bet," he repeated as he left my office.

A few minutes later I saw Jack trudging through the slush toward the Bluebird Cafe, his red jacket open, his belly pressing against his plaid s.h.i.+rt. He'd pulled on his cap, and the earflaps dangled haphazardly, like furry black legs. He was by no means a crack investigator, of course, so I expected to learn relatively little about Dora, perhaps no more than a few scant details of her life in New York. Certainly, as I watched Jack Stout amble down Main Street that morning, I had no expectation that the information he'd bring back to Port Alma would be of any great importance. Nor did I want it to have any such gravity. It was only the surface of Dora's life I sought to probe, not the black depths I later found.