Places in the Dark

by Thomas H. Cook

  “I felt that she might have come from a very different sort of place,” Mrs. Cameron continued. “With more space. That she wanted…”

  Her answer: Peace.

  “A more tranquil setting,” Mrs. Cameron said. “In any event, that New York wasn’t the place for her.”

  “Did she ever mention her family?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if she ever got a job of any kind?”

  Mrs. Cameron shook her head. “She paid the rent on time, that’s all I know.”

  “You have no idea where that money came from?”

  “No.”

  “And after she left, you never heard from her again?”

  “Not a word.”

  I had only one other place to go. “She left a book behind. I think she must have had it for a long time. There was a label inside. It said that the book came from the library of a man named Lorenzo Clay. Did you ever hear her mention that name?”

  “No.”

  “Carmel, California, did she ever mention living there?”

  Mrs. Cameron shook her head. “What was the book?”

  “Just a book of poetry,” I answered.

  Mrs. Cameron looked surprised. “Poetry. I wouldn’t have expected Dora to care much for poetry.” She saw something in my eyes, something deeper even than the weariness and grief, perhaps some glimmer of the passion I had known. I could see that she was bringing it together in her mind, connecting the flying strands of my own story, thought she now knew why I was tracking Dora March. “Of course, you no doubt knew her much better than I did.”

  I felt Dora’s lips on mine, pressed hard, then drawing away swiftly, like someone alarmed by her own deep need.

  “Dora is a suspect, I take it?” Mrs. Cameron asked.

  “She’s the only suspect.”

  “Because she ‘fled the scene,’ as you put it?”

  I saw her rushing through the rain, the brown suitcase hanging heavily from her hand, her coat flying as she raced through the wood, then out onto the road, toward the white pillar that marked the Portland bus stop.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “But are you sure she was really fleeing? Maybe she was—”

  “Someone saw her.”

  Henry Mason’s sedan drew up beside her, the door opened. I heard Henry’s wheezy voice: Where are you going, Dora? For a moment, I felt myself poised behind the wheel of Henry’s car, my question quite different from the one he’d asked: What are you running from, Dora?

  “Of course, a woman can run away from many things,” Mrs. Cameron said. “The women here at Tremont House are often running away from something. Poverty. Bad families.” She looked at me pointedly. “Even love.”

  Even love, I thought, then felt Dora pull herself out of my embrace, stride toward the door, open it, and step out into the darkness. Where would a woman go, I wondered, if she were fleeing that?

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was a long drive to California, plagued by fierce weather and badly tended roads, a tale of breakdowns and delays, my car rattling ever more loudly with each passing mile, its once-bright sheen finally buried under layers of dust and grime.

  As the days wore on, I began to break the monotony by picking up hitchhikers along the way. They were ragged and bereft, carrying scarcely little more than the stories of themselves, chronicles of loss and dispossession, the love or hatred they had left behind. They spoke of fires, floods, drought, of closed factories and confiscated farms. Wives and children appeared briefly in their stories, then fell away in rancor, betrayal, early death. While they talked, they slapped dust from their hats, scraped mud from their shoes, cleaned their nails with pocketknives. They carried matches to light their fires, tin skillets to heat their suppers, and ice picks to fight off men yet more desperate than themselves. They never asked for money, or for pity, or to spin their tales for longer than I cared to listen. When the ride was over, they got out of the car, nodded, wished me luck. “Hope I didn’t bore you,” they would often say.

  They never did. For each had, in his way, told a different story. And yet, in time a single theme emerged, that people were equally undone by things both great and small, from our grandest passions to our most petty needs, events as vast as war and as small as a misplaced note. In my own version, as I came to realize, the great thing was Dora in her dark allure, the small one nothing more than a tiny broken gear.

  At first no one noticed. There was a slight smudge on the “n” and “m” as the paper ran off the press. A small gear had cracked in the mechanism that turns the inking cylinder, thus slowing its turn just enough to smear the ink sufficiently for the human eye to catch it. After looking over the damage, Billy decided that the old press was falling apart in various ways, and should simply be retired. But Henry Mason informed him that there wasn’t enough money to buy a new press, that replacing the broken gear was my brother’s only option.

  Billy left for Portland on the morning of August 3, spent most of the day tracking down exactly the right gear. He’d finally found it late in the afternoon, then headed back toward Port Alma. About halfway home, caught in a driving rain, the car had begun to skid, then spin, turning in full, slicing circles until it had finally careened into a ditch half filled with muddy water.

  Billy was found slumped over the wheel, bleeding and unconscious, and taken to the nearest hospital.

  I answered the phone at just after nine that evening.

  “Calvin Chase?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Dr. Goodwin. I’m calling from Portland General Hospital. You’re William Chase’s brother, is that right?”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Your brother was in a car accident,” Dr. Goodwin told me. “He’s—”

  “Dead?” I blurted out.

  “No,” Dr. Goodwin said. “But he’s hurt quite badly.”

  “Is he conscious?”

  “Yes, but he’s sleeping now.”

  “When he wakes up, tell him I’m on my way.”

  “One thing,” Dr. Goodwin said quickly. “He repeated a name several times. Perhaps his wife?”

  “My brother isn’t married.”

  “Dora,” Dr. Goodwin said. “That was the name.”

  “Tell him I’ll bring Dora with me.”

  I arrived at her house ten minutes later, knocked at the door, then heard the creak of the wooden floor as she moved toward it. The door opened, and she stood before me, her hair free and falling to her shoulders, her body hidden beneath a long white sleeping gown. “Cal,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, but—”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Billy’s been in an accident,” I told her. “It’s pretty serious, the doctor said.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In Portland. At the hospital there. He asked for you.”

  “Come in. I’ll get dressed.”

  She headed for the bedroom, opened the door, and stepped inside. In that brief instant, I saw a single candle burning on the narrow table opposite the bed. A small porcelain figure rested just to the right of the candle, a little girl, naked on a gray stone, her legs drawn up to her chest, her back obscured by a curtain of long, blond hair.

  Seconds later, Dora emerged, now in her dark green dress. “I’m ready,” she said.

  I stepped to the door and opened it.

  “Is your father coming?” she asked as she went through it.

  “No, I haven’t told him yet,” I said.

  She looked up at me quizzically.

  “I want to see how Billy is doing first,” I explained.

  I can no longer say whether that was actually true, or whether, deep within the darkened chamber a different thought held sway, that I merely wanted to be alone with Dora in the night, feel that nothing stood between us but the electric air.

  We drove through Port Alma, then up the coastal road, a nightbound sea at our right. Against that utter blackness, Dora’s face was pale a
nd still, an ivory cameo. I tried not to look at her, tried to suppress the tumult that rose in me each time she came into view. I even worked to maintain my silence, since each time I heard her voice, I felt myself fall deeper into the pit. I had never known anything like this before, and I didn’t like it in the least. I wanted only to regain my footing once again, leave all thought of Dora March behind, return to my books and my brandy and my whore, let my brother win her if he could, then smile happily as I tossed the rice on their wedding day.

  And yet, when I spoke, I felt a sinister purpose in what I said.

  “I warned him about that old wreck. Especially about the brakes. But he just wouldn’t listen.” My eyes slid over to Dora. “You know how he is? Like a little boy.”

  Although my words had been aimed at my brother’s carelessness, the way he’d endangered himself simply by letting things go, I recognized that I’d shot them like arrows meant to unhorse a rival knight, send him sprawling into the mud before his lady’s eyes.

  When Dora said nothing, I struck again.

  “He’s careless. He’s always thought of himself as invulnerable. But he was always getting hurt when he was a boy. Mother was forever bandaging a finger or putting his arm in a sling. I think he sort of liked that, being mothered.”

  Dora’s silent gaze remained fixed on the road ahead, so I retreated into another pose, that of the kind and faithful brother. “But he always pulled through,” I added. “And he’ll pull through this time too.”

  “Yes, he will,” she said determinedly, as if by will alone she could make it so.

  An hour later Dr. Goodwin escorted us into Billy’s room.

  He lay in a narrow metal bed, his head swathed in bandages, blood soaking through the gauze, his eyes black and swollen, a body suddenly small, frail, broken, utterly physical in the sense of being composed exclusively of flesh, capable of being scraped, torn, battered. I saw his soul as well, like his body, no less naked and exposed, doomed to a thousand shocks and terrors. And yet, for all that, I didn’t rush over to him, take his hand, let him know that I was at his side.

  It was Dora who did all that.

  “William,” she said softly, then swept over to his bed and clasped his hand.

  He stirred slightly, and I could see a subtle movement beneath his closed lids, as if he were searching for her, like a child in a darkened room.

  “It’s Dora,” she said quietly, not as a call for him to awaken, but only to let him know that she was there.

  His fingers curled around Dora’s fingers. She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead.

  We stayed for hours in his room, left it only when Dr. Goodwin returned, two nurses just behind him. “I need to do an examination,” the doctor told us. “There’s a waiting room down the hall.”

  It was a plain area with wooden chairs and a checkered floor. Ashtrays here and there. A single large window faced the hospital’s asphalt parking lot, the black tar slicked with rain.

  “He can stay with me when he leaves the hospital,” I said. “In the room upstairs.”

  “He’s lucky to have you, Cal.”

  I shook my head. “No. He’s lucky to have you.”

  I instantly realized that inadvertently I’d revealed a glimpse of my true feelings for her, touched her, almost physically.

  She seemed to feel a dark heat rising from me. “I’ll do what I can for him” was all she said.

  “I’m sure you will,” I said, then detailed how much I, too, was willing to sacrifice for my brother, all of it geared to demonstrate the depth of my devotion to him.

  “Over the years, I’ve gotten used to taking care of Billy,” I said, then echoed one of my father’s biblical references, “I am my brother’s keeper.”

  It was a role I’d played so long, and cherished so devotedly, a sentiment I’d expressed with such convincing sincerity that even months later, as the lights of Carmel, California, glittered distantly in the dark hills, I could still almost believe that it had been true.

  Lorenzo Clay was not hard to find, since, as it turned out, he was one of the richest men in Carmel. He lived in a large house on a rocky beach, its grounds bordered by a high white wall topped with red slate and protected by a towering wrought iron gate.

  The entrance door opened and a swarthy man in a dark, carefully tailored suit walked to the gate. “Yes?”

  “My name is Calvin Chase,” I said. “I’m here to see Lorenzo Clay.”

  “Is Mr. Clay expecting you?” He spoke with a slight accent.

  “No.”

  “Well, then, I’m afraid that you’ll have to—”

  “I’m investigating a murder.”

  The man’s face tensed. “A murder?”

  “In Maine, two months ago.”

  “What would that have to do with Mr. Clay?”

  I handed him the book. “The person who last saw the victim alive had this book. As you can see, it once belonged to Mr. Clay.”

  He looked at the book, even flipping through the pages while he considered what he should do. Finally, he glanced up and said, “Just a moment.”

  He went back into the house, carefully closing the door behind him. While I waited, I gazed out over the wide grounds of Lorenzo Clay’s estate, heard Dora’s voice repeating once again the thing she’d claimed most to need: Peace. I saw my hand take hers, draw her to her feet, our eyes, in that instant, fixed in a terrible collusion, all hope of future peace cast to the wind.

  The door opened and the man returned to the gate. “Mr. Clay would be happy to see you,” he informed me.

  He unlocked the gate with a large brass key and led me down the walkway, up a short flight of stairs and into the house. It had a spacious foyer, a marble floor partially covered by a wide Oriental carpet. If Dora had actually lived here, I could not imagine the adjustment she had made, the route that had taken her from such wealth and luxury to her spartan cottage in the wood.

  “Mr. Clay is in his study,” the man told me as we swung left and headed down a long corridor. At the end of it, he opened a door, stepped to the right, and gestured me inside.

  “Mr. Calvin Chase,” he said formally, then backed away, leaving me alone with Lorenzo Clay.

  He sat behind a massive oak desk strewn with books and papers, the brocade back of his chair rising several inches above the top of his head. I couldn’t tell how tall he was, only that he was quite obese, with a thick neck and arms. He was completely bald, and had practically no eyebrows, so that he looked as if he’d been dipped in acid, all his features melted into a doughy mass. His eyes were hazel and perfectly round, small coins pressed into the dough.

  “I hope you’ll excuse the disorder. I wasn’t expecting any visitors today.” He nodded toward a chair. “Please, have a seat.”

  I did as he asked, glancing about the room as I lowered myself into one of the two chairs that faced Clay’s desk. There were no cases filled with curios, no sculpture. Only a few small oil paintings hung on the walls, all other space taken up by towering bookshelves. For a moment, I imagined Dora drawing books from their shelves, touching them in the way she’d touched mine, as if they were small and alive, tiny, purring things.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Clay asked.

  “No. Thank you.”

  He held the book I’d brought from Maine in his hands. “You’re correct in what you told Frederick,” he said. “This book certainly once belonged to me. You’ve come a long way to return it.”

  “That’s not why I came.”

  He seemed to hear the stark tone in my voice, dead and without inflection.

  “So I was told,” he said quietly. He placed the volume on his desk, then slid it toward me. “Frederick mentioned that it has something to do with a murder.”

  “Yes.”

  “When did this murder take place?”

  “Last November. The twenty-seventh to be exact.”

  “And you’ve come all the way from Maine?”

  I nodded,
caught my own profile reflected in the window glass to my left, a gaunt figure, gnawed to the bone.

  “That’s a very long way,” Clay said. “The victim must have been someone quite important.”

  “The victim was my brother.”

  For the first time, Clay’s tiny round eyes appeared capable of something other than suspicion. “I’m sorry,” he said. He lifted the book. “And this book is connected in some way to your brother’s murder?”

  “The woman who owned it, she was—” I stopped, saw her in my mind, the two of us alone in her small, bare house, her eyes aglow in the firelight. “My brother was in love with her.” I felt my hands cup her face, draw it toward mine, so close that as I spoke, my breath had moved her hair: I won’t let anything stop me.

  “She went by the name of Dora March.” I recalled her tiny signature in the ledger books, proof positive both of her larceny and of how little it had mattered to me, how easily I’d dismissed it, love, more than anything, a process of erasure. A terrible heaviness fell upon me, the awesome weight of what I’d done.

  “It was all a lie,” I said.

  “A lie?”

  “Her name. Everything.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She had a magazine.” The garish pages fluttered in my mind, a wild child huddled in a corner, her thin brown legs drawn up to her chest, blond hair falling to the floor. “It had an article in it. About a young girl. The girl’s name was Dora March.”

  “She took her name from a magazine article?” Clay asked, clearly intrigued.

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Do you have a picture of this woman?”

  “No.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “She was in her late twenties, I think,” I said. “It was hard to tell exactly how old she was.”

  “Why?”

  I saw her face me mutely, sound my black depths, realize in a fearful instant how far I’d go to have her.

  “She seemed older than she looked,” I told Lorenzo Clay. “More experienced.”

  “In what?”

  The word came from me before I could stop it. “Pain.”

  Once again Clay’s eyes softened. “I see.”