Part 17 (1/2)

I looked up, realized that I'd drifted once more into a grim meditation. ”What?” I answered.

The man behind the desk eyed me suspiciously, as if I were the one in flight, leaving b.l.o.o.d.y tracks across the pale blue carpet.

”Our dining room is to the right,” he said. ”Will you be dining with us this evening?”

I was tired and hungry, but the lash struck again: Find her.

”No, I won't,” I replied, took the key from his hand, and went directly to my room.

The room was spare, with nothing but a bed and small bureau, a worn carpet on the floor. I locked the door behind me, then walked to the window and looked down at the street. A dirty snow lined the gutter, blackened by soot and car exhaust, people slogging through it, clutching bags, packages, the collars of their coats, the wind forever howling at their backs. In every face I searched for Dora's.

The Tremont Residence Hall for Women was only a block away. It was an ugly brick building, five stories high, with a s.p.a.cious vestibule furnished with two sofas and a few tables and chairs. Potted plants stood here and there, along with reading lamps at almost every chair. It looked like the student lounges I remembered from my college days.

The man who approached me was short and stocky, with the cauliflower ears of an ex-prizefighter and a body that rolled toward me heavily, like a cannon ball. He introduced himself as Ralph Waters, and although he offered a friendly smile, his gaze remained steely, full of silent warning. Here was the guardian of women against the dark obsession of disordered men.

”Is there something I can do for you?”

I told him my name, where I'd come from, and that I wanted to see the woman who ran Tremont Hall.

”I believe her name is Cameron,” I added.

”Mrs. Posy Cameron,” Waters said respectfully, as if her married status were a royal t.i.tle. ”She'll want to know what this is about.”

”Tell her it's about a young woman who once lived here.”

One eyebrow arched. ”And that would be?”

”Dora March.”

The name registered in his eyes, but Waters said nothing of what it had sparked in his mind. Instead, he pointed to a wooden bench nearby. ”Have a seat,” he said, almost as a policeman would address a felon, my appearance perhaps so changed since my brother's death and Dora's flight that I now gave off a criminal air.

At the bench, I watched as Waters headed toward the back of the building. He knocked at a closed door, then stepped inside.

While I waited, the residents of Tremont House came and went. Most of them were in their twenties. They glanced at me furtively as they pa.s.sed, somewhat fearfully, so that I felt like a wolf among them, grim and predatory, a creature they should, at all cost, avoid.

Posy Cameron appeared a few minutes later. She was in her sixties, I supposed, a small but imposing woman, who dressed with a clear eye to modesty. Even from a distance, she gave off a no-nonsense authority, which, along with the look of command she offered the young women who greeted her as she made her way across the room, reminded me of Maggie Flynn, the sort of woman for whom young women felt, in equal measure, a daughter's trust and fear.

I rose as she came up to me.

”Mr. Chase?” she asked.

”Yes.”

She seemed to glimpse the grave task I'd set myself.

”Perhaps we should speak privately,” she said, then led me into a small, uncluttered office, its walls lined with neatly arranged shelves and cabinets. There was nothing on her desk but a notepad, a telephone, and a few pencils, all carefully lined up along one side. A photograph of President Roosevelt hung in a large wooden frame on the wall behind her, his jaunty grin determinedly at odds with the gloomy state of things.

”Please, sit down,” Mrs. Cameron said. She lowered herself into the plain wooden chair behind her desk. ”This is about Dora March, I understand?”

”Yes, it is.”

”You're not the first person who's made inquiries about Miss Dora March,” Mrs. Cameron told me. ”Another man came by some months ago. He was also from Maine, as I recall. He said he worked for the district attorney.”

”So do I,” I told her, the lie tripping from my mouth as easily as the truth.

”Doing what?”

”Looking for Dora March.”

”Has something happened to Dora?”

”Not just to Dora.”

”Well, the other man only asked questions about Dora,” Mrs. Cameron said. ”He didn't mention anyone else. Any other problem. I take it the information I gave him was not enough.”

”At the time, it was.”

”But now you need more?”

I saw my brother stumble backward, his eyes wide, unbelieving, no doubt astonished, in his last instant, that his love could end this way.

”Since then there's been a murder,” I said.

”A murder?” Mrs. Cameron asked unbelievingly. ”And you think Dora had something to do with it?”

”She was the last person to see the victim alive.” I kept my voice steady, gave no hint of what the words themselves summoned up in me.

”A man was killed,” I said. He returned to me in all his splendor, first as a boy rolling in the gra.s.s, then a young man singing duets with our mother, and finally as I'd seen him in his last hours, emboldened by romantic certainty, a man of diamond purity, a heart swelled with romance. ”He loved her,” I added softly.

”Loved Dora?” Mrs. Cameron asked.

I saw them together on the old wooden bridge that spanned Fox Creek. ”Yes,” I said.

Mrs. Cameron nodded. ”I see.” She studied me like one waiting for the pool to clear, catch a view of its dark bottom. ”What makes you think Dora had something to do with this man's death?”

”She fled the scene,” I answered in what was left of my official voice. ”That's why I'm looking for her.”

Mrs. Cameron continued to watch me warily, perhaps suspecting the very motive I labored to conceal. I took out a notepad, hoping it would give me a purely dispa.s.sionate appearance, suggest that I was just a man doing his job, with only the faintest connection to the one he sought.

”You told Mr. Stout, the other man, that Dora March stayed here only around a month,” I said.

”Yes.”

”Do you know where she came from?”

”No.”