Part 27 (1/2)

I heard Dora's voice sound in my mind, There's something you don't know, then whispered her true name at last, Irene.

Chapter Twenty-five.

In the newspaper photograph, her long, stringy hair obscured her face. And yet, looking closely, I could see Dora as if in pentimento below the starved and savage visage of Judith Irene Dement. The caption below the picture had given the stark facts: Teenager charged in Dayton family murders.

”Irene was thirteen,” Tom Shay said as he drew the picture from my hand. ”Not much more than a kid herself.” He returned the photo to the grim sc.r.a.pbook he'd maintained through the years. ”They really didn't know what to do with her. Too young for prison, but they couldn't just let her go.” He closed the sc.r.a.pbook. ”So they gave her to the nuns.”

”The nuns?”

”The Sisters of Charity,” Shay replied. ”They have a home for girls over near Lobo City. They said they'd take Irene in, keep her with them until she'd served her sentence. Fifteen years, that's what the jury gave her. Three people dead.” He glanced over to where Catherine sat in the far corner of the cabin, staring blankly out the window. ”And another half dead. And all Irene got was fifteen years. In a convent, can you believe it? Not even a prison.”

In all the time since Dora's arrival in Port Alma, there'd been but one real clue. I think I know your secret. She'd looked at me with unmistakable dread until I'd added only, You're a Catholic. It was the sole thing I'd gotten right about her, the one truth I'd gathered from the cloud that surrounded and concealed her.

Shay returned the sc.r.a.pbook to the drawer of his desk, locked it. ”It's good for you though, I guess.”

”What do you mean?”

”As far as finding her is concerned. Because if anybody knows where Irene Dement is, it would be the Sisters.”

He accompanied me to my car a few minutes later, Catherine following idly behind us, watching vacantly as I sat behind the wheel, saying nothing, standing motionless and forever damaged as I pulled away.

It was only fifty miles back along the winding mountain road that had taken me to Catherine Shay, then into the desert once again, through Lobo City, past the little thrift shop the nuns maintained on its dusty main street, then along a narrow gravel road, and into a circular drive, the high oak doors of the Sisters of Charity Home for Girls looming before me.

They opened at my first knock. A tiny woman peered at me, dressed in full habit. ”I'm Sister Colleen,” she said. ”May I help you?”

”My name's Calvin Chase. I'm looking for Irene Dement.”

Sister Colleen seemed surprised that given my bedraggled state I hadn't asked for work or food. ”May I tell Mother Superior why you're looking for Irene, Mr. Chase?”

I managed an official pose. ”It's a legal matter.”

Sister Colleen's eyes darkened. ”I see.” She stepped back from the door. ”Follow me, please.”

I trailed behind her, first into a simple vestibule, then along an unadorned corridor, and finally through a thick doorway and down an arched colonnade. A sandy garden had been planted at the end of it, ablaze in flowering cacti and desert roses.

”Wait here, please,” Sister Colleen told me, indicating a stone bench, then disappeared down one of the walkways.

I sat alone, letting my gaze drift along the colonnade, following the strangely restful rise and fall of the arches, gentle as lapping waves, remembering what Dora had once said she wanted most in life, Peace, trying to imagine how, given a life on the run, her murderous past, she'd ever expected to attain it. Or perhaps she'd never wanted anything of the kind, the sentiment entirely false, merely part of an elaborate disguise.

After a moment, I heard footsteps, turned, and saw a figure moving down one of the archways, an elderly woman dressed in full habit, a rosary hanging from the belt at her waist.

”Mr. Chase,” she said when she reached me.

I nodded.

”I'm Mother Pauline.” She sat down beside me, folded her hands together, and lowered them into her lap. ”I understand that you've come about Irene Dement.”

”When I knew her, her name was Dora March.”

The false name did not seem to surprise her.

”She never mentioned the Daytons, of course,” I added.

Mother Pauline's fingers touched the rosary. ”People do evil things, Mr. Chase.”

I saw my brother in his b.l.o.o.d.y ruin. ”Yes, they do.”

”They also have evil things done to them,” Mother Pauline said. ”I'm speaking of Irene now. Of what was done to her.”

I heard my dead brother's voice. Something happened to her, Cal. Something happened to Dora.

”She didn't go to the Dayton ranch that night because she wanted to, Mr. Chase,” Mother Pauline said. ”She'd been abandoned. Years before. By her father. Left in the desert with nothing to eat but a few sc.r.a.ps. When that was gone, she started foraging. Like an animal. Eating anything she could find. She was only eight years old.”

She appeared to me as a little girl, peering out at the desert waste, clothed in a tattered dress, left to live like the wild child whose name she'd later taken.

”So you can imagine how she felt when she saw a man coming out of the desert,” Mother Pauline added. ”How relieved she must have been. Someone to help her, take care of her, maybe even love her.”

Dora's warning sounded in my mind, Be careful, Cal. Of needing love too much.

”Adrian Cash,” Mother Pauline said.

In one of the photographs from Tom Shay's sc.r.a.p-book, he'd appeared tall, thin, and lanky, insanity like a fire leaping in his eyes.

”Cash had been living in the mountains,” Mother Pauline went on. ”He told Irene that a voice had told him where she was, that it was up to him to take care of her. They lived together for five years, and at first, he didn't hurt her.” She drew in a taut breath. ”Then the voice spoke again. Evidently, it told him that children had to be chastised. After that, he did terrible things to Irene. To purify her, he said.”

The bedroom door opened on a chair stacked with pillows, a bed with bare springs.

”Terrible things,” Mother Pauline murmured again.

Her red robe dropped away, revealing a crisscross of white scars.

”She was thirteen when Cash decided he'd had enough of the desert,” Mother Pauline continued. ”So they simply walked out of it. It took them two days. They weren't looking for the Dayton ranch. It was just the first place they came upon.”

The lights of the Dayton ranch flickered in my mind, Cash slowing down as he approached it, pus.h.i.+ng Irene ahead of him, Tell them you're hungry. Ask for food.

”You already know what happened once they got there,” Mother Pauline said.

I saw Catherine Shay pressed upon the wooden floor, a man and a teenage girl peering down at her, Irene Dement with dead green eyes, following Adrian Cash's commands, Hold her down, Pull up her blouse.

”But do you know what Irene said to Catherine Shay?” Mother Pauline asked.