Part 11 (2/2)

”Sometimes.”

She appeared to take my answer as confirmation of my solitary habits, the improvisations I had built to hold my life together. I sensed that she'd built a similar structure, erected walls and fences to keep in what she needed, keep out what she could not endure.

”I prefer the night,” I said.

”Why?”

The question seemed innocent enough, and yet I felt that I was suddenly under interrogation, like a suspect in a detective novel, squirming in his chair, the naked bulb s.h.i.+ning cruelly overhead. ”I've never really thought about it,” I answered. ”I suppose I like the solitude.”

”Do you draw at night?”

”Draw?”

”Billy says you draw.”

I laughed. ”I haven't drawn anything in years. He means when I was a kid.”

”Did you keep them?”

”Yes, I did. I hung them in my study.”

”I'd like to see them sometime.”

”I wouldn't bother. They're not any good. I'm not the artist type. And even if I were, I'm not--”

”Not what?”

To my surprise, the answer pained me. ”Gifted at anything.”

She smiled quietly. ”Neither am I,” she said.

We walked on down the hill in silence, said goodbye at the bottom of it. I headed for my car while Dora remained in place, standing by the old iron gate, waiting for my brother to join her there. It was perhaps the last time I felt that she was no more than she seemed to be, of few words, with an edginess that was clearly more intense than most, but still well within the range of other women I'd known, no less likely to get over whatever it was Billy felt so certain had happened to her.

I gave her no further thought as I drove back into town. Once there, I went directly to my office, hoping to catch up on my work.

But when I arrived, I found Jack Stout coming down the corridor that led to my office. He'd just delivered Charlie Younger to Sheriff Pritchart.

”'Afternoon, Mr. Chase.”

I could tell by the congratulatory sparkle in Jack's eyes that he'd brought news from New York.

”I had some luck on that job you gave me. About that woman. Dora March.” He said her name with a curious emphasis.

I ushered him into my office, offered him a cigar, which he took but didn't smoke, slipping it into his s.h.i.+rt pocket instead.

”What did you find out?”

”Well, she lived at that residence hall, all right,” Jack said. ”Tremont Residence Hall for Women, it's called.” He took a sc.r.a.p of paper from his pocket, soiled, sticky. ”An old woman runs the place. 'Bout sixty, I'd say. Name of Mrs. Posy Cameron.” He looked up from the paper. ”That's who I talked to.”

”Did she remember Dora?”

”Well, sort of.”

”Sort of?”

”Remembered that she'd lived there.” He glanced at the note again. ”But not much about her.”

I remained silent, waiting. I knew there was more.

”She gave me something though,” Jack said. ”Something the woman left in her room. Mrs. Cameron kept it in storage, thinking Miss March might send a forwarding address. But she never did.” Again he reached into the pocket of his jacket, drew out a magazine, rolled up and held curled by a rubber band. ”So she gave it to me,” he said as he handed it across the desk. ”Told me to give it to Miss March, but I figured I'd give it to you first.”

I stripped off the rubber band and let the magazine unroll in my hand. It was called Astonis.h.i.+ng True Stories, and seemed to be a religious publication of sorts, with lead lines that suggested tales of miraculous cures, unexpected rescues, answered prayers, the reappearance of the dead.

”I was flipping through it on the way home, and I found a story you might be interested in.” Jack's tone darkened somewhat, as if it were not a magazine at all but some creature he'd stumbled upon in the deep wood, neither snake nor scorpion, but small and deadly anyway, something he'd never seen before. ”Page thirty-one.”

I began leafing through the pages, strange pictures flas.h.i.+ng here and there, a boy with three arms, a dog riding a goat, a boa coiled around a dugout canoe.

”The story's about a little girl,” Jack said. ”Left out in the open.”

I found the story and began to read it, following the first sightings, a little girl running naked in the wilderness, her skin brown and leathery, the soles of her feet thick as shoe soles, but graced, as the magazine's only color ill.u.s.tration made clear, with a wild mane of long, blond hair.

”It's the second page that has the punch,” Jack said.

I turned the page, found what he meant. ”Dora March,” I said.

Jack grinned. ”That's what they named her. Them doctors.”

I nodded, then read on, followed the story as far as the magazine presented it, the fact that it was English doctors who'd finally claimed her, brought her to London from the Spanish Pyrenees, where she'd first been sighted, named her Dora, from d'oro, Spanish for ”of gold,” meaning the color of her hair, and Marzo, also Spanish, for the month she'd first been sighted, and which the English had later Anglicized to ”March.” In a final rendering, ”Dora March” squatted naked in the corner of a bare room, scrubbed clean, her legs drawn up against her chest, her waist-length hair gleaming in the hard white light.

”Looks like her, don't it?” Jack asked.

”Looks like who?”

”That woman at the Sentinel. You think it could be her, Mr. Chase?”

”You didn't get to the end of the article, did you, Jack?”

”No, sir.”

”This little girl was found in Europe. In 1889.”

Jack peered at me wonderingly.

”She died twenty years ago.”

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