All this Gwyneth told me as we stood on opposite sides of the nameless girl’s bed in the yellow-brick house, while outside snow and cold wind slanted through the city, a quiet reminder to its people that the shapen world had the power to erase their mightiest works, though few of them would see it as such. She surprised me when, part of the way through her story, she reached down to take one of the child’s hands in hers. Other than her beloved father, when he lived, this was the one person whose touch she did not fear.
Walter worked at the hospital where the girl was given care. He had called Gwyneth to say that the doctors on the advisory panel were certain the judge, who shared their bias against extraordinary care for the comatose, would deny any appeals regardless of their merit and would do so with such timing that the child would be either severely damaged by dehydration or dead before an advocacy group could find a sympathetic judge in a higher court to issue a stay.
“How did you know Walter?” I asked.
“My father once spent a few days in the hospital for a bleeding ulcer. Walter’s wife was his day nurse. She was very kind to him. I stayed in touch with her after he was released. When she died so young, two years after Daddy, I convinced my guardian to use some of my inheritance to set up a trust for the education of her and Walter’s children.”
“And Walter hoped you’d take on the expense of this girl?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t really know what he wanted when he called me. He just said he didn’t think she was vegetative.”
“He’s not a doctor.”
“No. A physician assistant. But he also said there was something special about this girl, he couldn’t define exactly what, but he felt it. He asked me to see her. He sneaked me into her room past midnight when there were few enough people around so I wouldn’t go nuts.”
“You don’t go nuts.”
“I have my moments,” she assured me.
Indicating the child’s limp hand, which Gwyneth held, I said, “Did you touch her that night, too?”
“Yes. I don’t know why I had the courage, but I did.”
“And you think she’s special?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She bent to kiss the girl’s hand. “I’m not sure what I believe about her. But I’m certain I should protect her until she wakes and tells us her name.”
“You’re so certain she’ll revive.”
“I am certain, yes. I’m certain even in spite of this …” Gently she pulled the flaxen hair back from the left side of the girl’s face, revealing an indentation where temple curved to brow, the mark of some beast whose signature was made not with a pen but with an object stone-hard and blunt.
“How did she get here?”
“I’ll tell you over dinner. I don’t want to inconvenience Walter and his family any longer. Wait for me on the front porch while I have a word with Janet and Cora.”
I went down to the foyer. Someone had turned off the television. Alone, I stood in the warm silence, in the wide archway to the living room, still nervous about being here but nevertheless taking a moment to enjoy the domestic charm.
To the left of the archway, on a console, a candle burned in a clear-glass container with a vented lid designed to keep the candle and its flame contained if it should be accidentally knocked to the floor. The luminary served a shrine, brightening a porcelain of the Holy Mother.
When I stepped into the living room for a closer look at the two framed photographs that flanked the sacred statuette, I saw a woman of whom the camera had captured not only her beauty but also the suggestion of kindness and intelligence. Reflections of the honoring flame unfurled in the chased-silver frames into which the silversmith had worked a pattern of roses.
I stood on the front porch, at the head of the steps, watching the ghost parade of snow shapes sculpted by the wind, ever changing as they capered through lamplight and shadow. The bare black limbs of the maples knocked and rattled an idiot rhythm, and creaked like the stair treads in an ill-carpentered house.
After a minute, Gwyneth came out onto the porch, closed the door, and joined me. “You were okay in there. It wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“It was bad, worse than I expected, but not in the way I thought it would be bad.”
“Come on. I’m waiting for a couple of calls, but meanwhile we’ll grab dinner.”
In the Rover, as she started the engine, I said, “Walter’s wife, she was kind to your father.”
“From what I know of her, she was kind to everyone.”
I said, “She didn’t just die, she was murdered, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Was her name Claire?”
“You know the case, then.”
“There were three of them. They dumped her in the pond in the Commons. They threw her away like she was trash.”
As heat poured from the vents and the chill relented, we sat together in silence. Not looking. Not touching. But close.
Then she said, “Ryan Telford has a reputation, respectability, much education, a prestigious position, but under all that, he’s just like those three. He’ll do anything. In the end, for all of their kind, it’s about the same thing—power. Having power over others, to tell you what to do, to take what you have, to use you any way they wish, to demean you and break you and make you obey, and finally to rob you of your faith in truth, make you despair that there’s no hope and never was. Since last night, he’s known I’m a threat to him. That can’t be permitted. He’s on a tear. He isn’t going to stop.”
“Can he find out about this house?”
“I don’t think he can. Or the place I’m staying tonight. But with his connections, I can’t be certain about anything. I shouldn’t have asked you to protect the girl. With your limitations, it’s too much to ask.”
“You did all right for her with your limitations. If it were to come to that, I’d manage somehow. But it won’t come to that. Do you have proof of Telford’s larceny?”
“The proof took time, but I got it. The proof is the easy part. Who to trust with it is a puzzle with half the pieces missing.”
“The police,” I said.
“The police, the district attorney’s office, the courts—you’ll find good people in all those places, Addison. But there’s also deep corruption there, as well. It’s not the city it once was. Everyone talks about justice, but there can be no justice where there is no truth, and these are times when truth is seldom recognized and often despised. It’s a hoglot, money is the mud, a lot of it dirty money or tax money wildly misspent, and more people are wallowing in it than you might think. If I put the proof in the wrong hands, it’ll be fiddled with until it proves nothing, and suddenly I’ll have a lot more enemies than one.”
As she drove away from the curb, snow came down like ashes from a burnt-out sky invisible. In spite of its brightness, the city all around us seemed obscure, its millions of rooms offering no certain safe haven.