Part 7 (2/2)
She looked at me quite frankly. ”And what followed you home?”
I felt my answer like a subtle weight added to my soul. ”Nothing followed me.”
She faced the fire again, making no further comment, but in some sense I felt that she was still watching me. Judging me. My first and only impulse was to get away.
”Well, it doesn't look like there's much more I can do around here. So I'll just say good night, Miss March.”
I left her and made the rounds, told Hap and Billy I was leaving, offered my sympathies to Carl Hendricks, then walked to my car and got in. As I pulled away, I glanced back at the scene, struck by the glowing mound of embers and boiling gray smoke, the shadowy figures huddled among stripped and icy trees, silhouettes against the snow. If h.e.l.l were a wintry landscape, I thought, it would look like Maine. Then I caught sight of Dora again, standing alone, my brother now striding toward her, eager and responsive, as if he alone had heard her silent call.
Chapter Eight.
During the days following the Hendricks fire, as I pa.s.sed the Sentinel on my way to and from work, I sometimes took note of Dora as she sat at the little metal desk my brother had a.s.signed to her, but I had no occasion to speak with her again. She was usually bent over her desk, hard at work by all appearances, intent upon whatever paper lay before her. She never looked up, never noticed me, certainly never saw my eyes latch on to her as I pa.s.sed, linger briefly, drawn to her perhaps, but coolly, like an animal drinking at an icy stream.
A week after the fire Hap called me into his office.
”Your brother thinks there's something fishy about that blaze at the Hendricks place. Has he mentioned anything to you about it?”
”No.”
”I happened to be in the probate office yesterday afternoon, and William came up and started talking about it. I got the feeling he had a funny feeling about it.”
”Funny feeling?”
”Like he thought maybe something was amiss, you know?”
”Did he say that?”
”Not in so many words, but I think you should go out there anyway, poke around a little, see if anything looks fishy.”
”What am I looking for, Hap? The place burned to the ground.”
”Just show the flag, that's all I'm saying, Cal. Cover us. Anything comes up, we can say we've been looking into it.”
It was the sort of political task I disliked but could not avoid, and as I drove out to the Hendricks house an hour later, I found myself mildly annoyed that it was Billy's chance remark that made my trip necessary. I could not imagine where his notion that there was something ”fishy” about the fire had come from. After all, I'd gotten there quite some time before he'd arrived, helped the other volunteers douse the shed behind the house. At no point during that time had I seen anything to make me doubt that the fire had begun and spread exactly as Carl Hendricks had described it.
I was still wondering where my brother's sinister idea had come from when I pulled my car into the slushy driveway of what had only recently been Carl Hendricks's home.
Then I knew.
She was standing with her back to the road, facing the charred rubble of the house. She turned when she heard the car, and I saw that her shoes were soiled and wet, as was the bottom of her coat. She held what appeared to be a charred piece of paper.
”Good morning,” I called as I got out of the car.
She nodded as I approached, drew off her gla.s.ses with one hand, sank the paper into the pocket of her coat with the other.
”I didn't expect to find you out here.”
I noticed that her fingers were dotted with soot, took a handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to her.
She wiped her hands, then gave the handkerchief back to me. ”Thank you.”
The blackened skeleton of the small house was laced with melting snow. An acrid smell tainted the air.
”I hear my brother has some suspicions. He mentioned them to my boss. Hap Ferguson. The district attorney. I wonder if Billy can seriously believe that in times like these a man would burn down his own house.” I took out a cheroot and lit it, dropped the match into the dirty snow at my feet. ”An uninsured house, by the way.”
Her gaze touched on the soggy blanket that lay half buried in the snow a few yards away. It was the one that had dropped from Hendricks's shoulders the night of the fire. She said nothing.
”How'd you happen to get out here?” I asked her.
”William dropped me off. I told him I'd walk back.”
”Well, I can take you back into town if you want. This 'investigation' won't take long.”
With that I stepped away and headed over to the sodden rubble of Carl Hendricks's house. While Dora waited, I walked among the charred timbers, kicking at them or prying among them with a stick. I even bent down from time to time, plucked something from the ruin, and sniffed it for gasoline or heating oil.
I wasn't sure what I was looking for. Something out of place or stupidly left behind, a kerosene can in the scorched remains of what had once been a bedroom. I'd long ago discovered that a criminal mind was usually a dull one, woolly and unskilled, capable of quite comic idiocies. As a type, our local criminals were guileless, crippled by poor memory and limited concentration. They tripped themselves up more often than the authorities tripped them. If Carl Hendricks had set his house on fire, I had no doubt but that he'd probably left some sign of it.
But I found no indication of arson, nor any attempt to conceal it. The rubble was exactly that, heaps of burnt wood, naked mattress springs amid soggy piles of scorched bedding, a kitchen stove, blackened but otherwise intact, save for the collapsed pipe that lay in broken pieces around it.
I tossed my cigar into the snow and trudged back toward Dora. ”Okay, we can head back to town now,” I said when I reached her.
In the car, Dora sat quite still. But in that stillness I thought I could detect some fierce movement in her mind, a strange, inner darting, like a bird flitting right and left, forever alert and on guard.
About halfway back to the main road, I steered clear of a fallen branch, then made a hard right around the road's final curve. Perhaps a hundred yards ahead, two figures lurched toward us. It wasn't until I drew near that I recognized Carl Hendricks and his daughter.
He'd halted abruptly when he caught sight of the car and placed a restraining hand on the little girl's shoulder. She stopped in her tracks, then waited as her father continued forward, a tattered wool scarf wrapped loosely around his mouth and nose, a knit cap pulled over his ears, his eyes leveled on us as if he were taking aim.
”'Morning, Carl,” I said as I pulled up beside him.
He jerked the scarf below his chin and tucked it there. His lips were blue and trembling, his cheeks shadowed with stubble. ”'Morning.”
”Where you headed?”
”To the shed.” His head slumped forward, ma.s.sive as a stone. ”Me and my girl's living there. It's got a wood stove in it.”
”I could take you to it.”
Hendricks looked past me to where Dora sat, staring straight ahead. ”No,” he said as he looked at me again. ”I guess I'll be on my way.” He nodded once, then stepped back from the car and began to trudge down the road again, motioning Molly to follow along.
I pressed the accelerator. Molly had begun walking again, but she stopped as we drew near. Her eyes were fixed on Dora imploringly, reaching for her like two small hands.
Within an instant, I'd swept by, but in the rearview mirror I could see Carl Hendricks as he trudged down the road, ponderous, hunched. Molly trailed behind him, head down, leaving small gray footprints in the snow.
When I turned back to Dora, I saw, to my surprise, that she was deeply shaken, like a child who'd seen something terrible but knew no way to describe it.
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