Part 8 (1/2)

”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.”