Places in the Dark (12 page)

“There’s nothing like loneliness, Cal,” my father said, “to bring you to your knees.”

I knew then what he’d been getting at all along. “Do you think Billy’s that lonely, Dad?”

“Not anymore.” His eyes fell toward the queen I’d placed so perilously near his last remaining knight. “Not anymore,” he repeated softly. “Who is she, Cal?”

I
told him her name and the few things I knew about her, but left out the fact that only a couple of days earlier I’d sent Jack Stout on a mission to find out more about Dora March. Even so, my father appeared quite satisfied by what he’d learned from me. He seemed eager to meet Dora, perhaps even half convinced that my mother had been right all along, that for such a one as Billy, there could be but one true love.

The next day I thought only infrequently of either my brother or Dora. There was plenty of work to do, sorting through the cases Hap had assigned me, deciding what prosecutions should be brought, how they might best be conducted.

Night was closing in by the time I pushed aside my paperwork and left for home. Hap had long since departed, but others were afoot on the streets of Port Alma, mostly closing up their shops, heading home.

A sea fog had moved in an hour or so before, and the moon was little more than a smudged light behind a bank of clouds. The metal sign at Madison’s General Store creaked in the breeze that swept in from the bay, and far away, a dog briefly sounded a lonely, hollow wail, then fell silent. Beyond that, nothing save the crunch of my boots on the hard-packed snow.

I headed past the grocery and the hotel, nodding to the neighbors I glimpsed through their lighted windows, then moved on along the edge of the town’s small park, its wooden benches piled with snow. Through the haze, I could scarcely see the old wharves that rose on the other side of the park. Only the great revolving light at the top of MacAndrews Island made any dent in the fog, its white beam circling in from the sea, flashing briefly on the great gray stones of the jetty, finally running along the slender cement lip of the seawall.

That was when I saw her, a woman standing at the far edge of the park, poised at the verge of the wall. She was facing the ocean, and in my brief glimpse of her before the light swept on again, she seemed to be waiting for something or someone to reach out from its vast depths.

I stopped and waited as the light made its slow circle. When it returned, I saw her once again. Then darkness swallowed her as the light moved on. I waited, watched, but when the light made its third circle, crawling along the seawall, she was gone. The place where she’d stood was empty, the park and the jetty both deserted, with nothing moving anywhere, nor any sound, save for the distant surge of the sea.

I started homeward again, tugging my collar up against the rising wind. I’d made it nearly to my car when I saw the woman emerge briskly from the shrouded alleyway that led from Main Street to the wharves. She swung swiftly to the right, like a creature on the run. She didn’t see me, and in the fog I’m not sure I would ever have guessed who she was. For she seemed very nearly carved out of that same roiling density, her long coat blending with it perfectly, so that nothing impeded my sense of her having been formed out of the smoky cloud that surrounded her, save for the flicking tongue of my brother’s dark red scarf.

T
he telephone rang just as I stepped into my office the next morning.

It was Billy.

“There’s something you need to know,” he said.

I was quite certain that this “something” I needed to know had to do with Dora March. But I was wrong.

“It’s about Carl Hendricks,” my brother told me. “Did you know he was married before?”

I tugged off my overcoat and slung it over the nearest chair. “That’s not a crime, is it?”

“He had another daughter too. She was killed. It happened around twenty years ago. She fell off the seawall right here in town.”

An image from the night before flashed through my mind, Dora, in the dense fog, poised at the edge of the seawall, facing the impenetrable water that swept out toward MacAndrews Island.

“I’d like to talk to you about this, Cal,” Billy said. “Are you free?”

I could hear the urgency in his voice. “Yeah, all right. Just give me a few minutes to get settled in.”

The clock had not yet struck nine when Billy arrived. He was carrying the battered leather briefcase my father had given him the day he’d turned the management of the paper over to him. Once he’d taken his seat in front of my desk, he opened it and took out a crumbly, yellowed copy of the
Sentinel.

“Hendricks was only twenty-seven years old when it happened,” he said as he slid the paper over to me. “The child was three.”

While he waited, I read the article. It was clear that the
Sentinel
had given the incident quite prominent coverage at the time. My father had selected a bold typeface for the headline. From all appearances, he’d also done a workmanlike job of running down the details of the story. I learned that Hendricks’s first wife had died of tuberculosis in Royston Hospital in December 1916. According to the article, Hendricks had then moved to Port Alma, where he’d lived on Pine Road with his younger sister. On the day in question, March 4, 1917, Hendricks had come into town for supplies. He’d planned to go directly to Madison’s, he’d later told authorities, but the child, whose name was Sophie, had gotten “cranky,” and so he’d taken her along the wharf, then back to one of the benches that faced the seawall and the bay. Once there, he’d put her down and let her crawl about. At that point, a stranger had come up to ask directions. They’d talked briefly, then the stranger had departed. It was only then that Hendricks had noticed his little girl was missing.

“I talked to Dad last night,” Billy said when I looked up from the paper. “He remembered quite a lot. He said that Hendricks continued to live with his sister after his
daughter died. In the very same house that burned down.”

“What happened to the sister?”

“As far as Dad could remember, she moved out west somewhere. After that, no one knows. She just disappeared.”

“Into the mist,” I said, long used to the disappearance of such witnesses, how they vanished into the ether, taking all hope of truth and justice with them. I handed the paper back to my brother. “What are you getting at?” I asked a little impatiently, thinking of the casework piled on my desk.

“Well, as it turns out, Hendricks’s second wife—Molly’s mother—died about three months ago.”

“So Carl’s not a lucky guy. So what?”

“It was three months from the time of his first wife’s death until his first daughter was killed.”

The nature of Billy’s suspicions, how dark and terrible they were, suddenly became clear, but I still felt no need to entertain them myself.

“Killed? You mean murdered? Is that what you’re getting at?” I laughed. “Does the word ‘coincidence’ mean anything to you?”

Billy stood his ground. “Do you want to hear more, or not?”

“Go ahead,” I said without enthusiasm.

“I checked the weather on the day the little girl disappeared. It was clear but very windy, so the ocean was probably whipping up quite a bit. In any case, there wouldn’t have been many people out near the water.”

“Except for that stranger.”

“Who was never found.”

That didn’t surprise me. “Did anybody actually see Hendricks near the wall?”

“No.”

“And no one saw the kid either?”

“No one saw anything.”

“Well, there must have been some sort of official investigation.”

“Not much of one,” Billy replied. “I found the police report. Carl Hendricks was the only witness. The police took him at his word.”

“Which leaves you where?”

“Wondering about that little girl.”

“I gather you don’t accept Hendricks’s account of what happened to her?”

“I have reason to doubt it.”

I was beginning to get exasperated. “Other than coincidence, exactly what reason do you have?”

“Sophie Hendricks had withered legs,” my brother said. He waited for me to speak, then added, “The lip on the seawall is twenty-eight inches high. She couldn’t have climbed it.”

“And you’re telling me that nobody raised that point when the child died?”

“Hendricks had just moved to Port Alma a few weeks before. It was winter. Sophie had probably never been seen by any local people. Except all bundled up. If that’s true, then no one would have noticed her legs until spring.”

“I’m presuming the body was swept out to sea?” “Never recovered. Yes.”

“Then, how did you find out about the little girl’s legs being withered?”

He seemed almost reluctant to tell me. “Dora,” he said finally. “Dora found a picture. At the house. Among all that rubble.”

He reached inside his briefcase again. This time he
came out with a photograph. It was badly scorched, but the central image was clear, a small child with curly hair, propped up in a chair, clothed only in a white diaper, perfect from the waist up but with legs disproportionately small and undeveloped, the feet curled. Dangling at the end of Sophie Hendricks’s tiny legs, they looked like small, rounded flippers.

“Her name is on the back,” Billy said.

I turned the picture over, read what was written there:
Sophie, 2 years, 3 months
, then set it on my desk. “So, your idea is that Hendricks threw his daughter into the ocean?”

“I don’t know, Cal. I don’t think anyone will ever know. But I’m worried about the other daughter. The one he has with him now. Molly.”

“There’s no evidence that Carl’s ever hurt his daughter,” I said firmly. “And certainly none that he tried to burn her alive in that fire.”

For a moment there was silence, then Billy said, “The blanket. The one he said he used to beat back the fire. It wasn’t singed or scorched. It didn’t even smell of smoke.”

In my mind I saw Dora standing in the snow, the charred remains of Carl Hendricks’s house before her, the blanket a soggy mass at her feet.

“Look, Billy, I’m not going to say that Hendricks couldn’t have thrown his first kid into the sea. Losing his wife, left with a crippled child. Maybe he snapped. It could happen. And I’m not going to say that he didn’t try to burn up the second one. But there’s absolutely no evidence of either crime. Nothing to hang a charge on. Not even arson. Much less murder, in the case of the first child. Or attempted murder, in the second.”

“You don’t have to charge him, Cal.”

“What do you want me to do, then?”

“Protect Molly.”

“For Christ’s sake, how?”

“You could go out there. Talk to Hendricks. He’s living in that little shed behind the house. Just by dropping by, you’d let him know that you were keeping an eye on him. That would give us time to find out more.”

“Us?”

“Dora and me,” my brother said without hesitation. “It was Dora who first had doubts.”

I suspected that those doubts had been based on nothing more than the look she’d glimpsed in Molly Hendricks’s light blue eyes. “You know, Billy, it’s not really my job to be poking into Carl Hendricks’s affairs without any proof at all that he’s actually done anything wrong.”

“But it would be worth it if we were right,” Billy shot back. “It wouldn’t even be out of your way, Cal. It’s Saturday. Hendricks’s place is right on your way.”

“On my way?”

“Well, you’ll be going to Royston tonight, won’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m going to Royston.”

“So why not just drop by Hendricks’s place? You know, on your way to Royston.”

I could find no reason not to. And I knew that Billy wouldn’t leave until I’d agreed to do what he asked. “Okay,” I said.

Billy left immediately, and for the rest of the afternoon I worked to set my office in order before the weekend. There’d been more to do than I’d expected, however, so that it was well past seven before I finally managed to get away.

I drove down the deserted main street of Port Alma,
then along the road I took to Royston each Saturday evening, a flask of whiskey in my jacket pocket and the vague image of a woman in my mind. On the way, I crossed the rickety wooden bridge that stretched over Fox Creek, then swept by the Hooverville that lay beyond it. I could feel the urgency building in me, desire like a whip at my back. I was eager to get to Royston. But I’d told my brother that I’d drop in on Hendricks, and so I did.

In the darkness I could make out only that no light burned in the small shed in which Hendricks and his daughter had taken up residence. I saw no sign of Hendricks, no sign of Molly, and so I quickly pulled back onto Pine Road and headed once again toward Royston and the woman who waited for me there.

She lived with four other women in a house where the smell of the sea wafted through the carefully swept hallways and tidy, surprisingly well-appointed bedrooms. The surrounding area was a worn and wholly disreputable part of town, moon-swept but otherwise unlighted, a labyrinth of narrow lanes and alleyways, patrolled by skinny dogs and scruffy cats. At night I could hear the laughter at the seaman’s bar next door, along with the inevitable fistfights that poured out onto the old brick streets. Beyond the windows a steady stream of trawlers swept across a swath of black water, their decks heaped with mounds of gray netting.