Bartlett House

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Duane Poncy — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 22:39:18 +0000

Bartlett House is being published by The Habit of Rainy Nights Press. We are sorry to remove the free versions from the web, but must do so to meet the demands of our distributors. If you like it, please purchase a copy from Amazon, either in ebook format or paper.

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Order from your favorite local bookstore – isbn 978-0-9746683-4-5

Chapter Eight

Duane Poncy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:36:08 +0000

Lucy Hidalgo brushed some of the rain from the seat of her ’82 Subaru station wagon and climbed in. Where the upholstery was torn, the water had been soaked up like a sponge, and now it bled back through her cotton pants, leaving her feeling cold and clammy. Her driver’s side window was off track, which exposed a two-inch gap. Normally, if it was raining or looked like it would, Lucy covered the gap with a plastic tarp she kept in her car. The tarp was in the back seat, folded neatly, waiting. She considered, momentarily, covering her seat with it, but she was too miserable now to do anything but drive.
     As her old car struggled up West Burnside, Rose Festival crowds filled the streets. Neither they, nor the traffic they engendered, seemed to be effected by the rain. The celebration along the waterfront promenade deepened her grief. What right did they have to be so happy on a night like this?
     Lucy thought about going home, but she didn’t want to be alone. Maybe she should have accepted that glass of wine from Will. Poor Will, alone in his apartment with all those questions going through his mind, the same questions that plagued her. How could Emmy have died like that, like the police–like her friend, Tom Morris, believed? Lucy didn’t believe it for a minute. But what about Will? Was there something about Will that Emmy hadn’t told her?
     And then she thought about Marta. How was her daughter handling this? Lucy had been so concerned about Will, so busy looking for him after that phone call this morning, and then finding him, and now it was late. She hadn’t seen or spoken to Marta since dropping her at Colin’s this morning after they left the police station. That was where Marta wanted to go. “Someone has to tell him and the rest of the group. I can’t do it over the phone,” Marta said. So Lucy took her to Colin’s apartment and waited until he buzzed her into the building.
     She should go to Marta’s. But not yet. She needed some quiet, reflective space. She knew she would go where she always went when things went badly. She was resisting it, but she would go–Mother Church. St Mary’s would be open, unless there had been a change in policy since she had last sought refuge there. She could sit for a moment in the cathedral. It wasn’t that she went on any regular basis. She was a foul weather Catholic, and she freely admitted it. It wasn’t, after all, as if she really believed. But she had come when Marta was living on the streets, and that other time when Elena, sweet baby, Elena…where had that bastard taken her? Lucy felt hot, fresh tears as her griefs, intermingling, compounded.
     Lucy turned the old beater up NW 18th and found a parking spot around the corner on Davis, a small miracle. She did not attempt to compose herself. Let the tears flow, it was raining, anyway. Who would take notice? As she entered the Chapel, the remaining light from the late spring sky infused the stained-glass windows and gave the dark, woody interior an aura of mystique that brought back her childhood in L.A. and her grandmother. Was it Grandmother to whom she returned when she came to these places? Was it that old woman’s faith she was seeking as if she could borrow on it, some kind of barter with God.
     In Lucy’s memories, Grandma Hidalgo had always been old, bent, and tiny. But the whole family knew that she was stronger than anyone–stronger than her son, Henry. Stronger than her husband. She prevailed over these Chicanos, their generations of California. One of the old families, they liked to say. They looked on Mexico as a place foreign and curious. Epifania was part of that curiosity. She had left Mexico, crossed into San Diego, worked in the shipyards there, and met a young sailor named Carl Hidalgo.
     Epifania believed certain things. She believed that the Virgin de Guadeloupe had kept her safe on her journey from Nayarit to San Diego and had even brought her and Carl together. Because of this, Epifania believed that it was her duty, her absolute duty, to dedicate her daughters to the Virgin. She had no daughters. Never mind, there would be granddaughters. She suffered for her son’s lack of faith, and then for their lack of female children, and when her youngest married a white, non-Catholic, girl, Epifania’s faith faltered. Could it be that she had not been in the Virgin’s grace after all?
     All this, Lucy had learned over time. Little pieces of the puzzle came slowly, out of sequence, following questions. “Why doesn’t Frank go to mass, Mama?” Because he is a boy. “But there are boys at mass, Mama.” Not Hidalgo boys. And that was enough truth for a week or two. Eventually, Lucy and her sister came to understand that there was a bargain between Epifania and Mama. The girls would go to mass and Epifania would accept Mama. That was it, that was what accounted for catechism and confirmation dresses, for Saturday night confession and all those candles and those Hail Marys and Our Fathers and the strange, beautiful Latin…domine, domine…lavabo inter innocentes manus meas…
     An icon of the Madonna stood to the left of the altar, the baby Jesus in her arms. The figures, shrouded in a mist of dust motes, reflecting the oblique rays of the setting sun, seemed to be in a distant, unreachable dimension. They were magical now, but if she tried to touch them, they would turn to stone. They always did.
     She walked forward, tenuously, into the light. A slight whiff of incense drifted by her nostrils as Lucy slid into a pew at the back of the church and knelt.
     She let her mind drift around the memory of her friend. Of all the young people she knew, Emmy was the one most vibrant and most vulnerable. She was the one least deserving of a fate like this. Oh, Emmy, why have they done this to you? It’s so god damned ironic for you to go like this. I hope you know you were like a daughter to me.
     “I know, Lucy,” Emmy knelt next to Lucy in the translucent light, a scent of soap mingling with incense, radiant smile…”You were like the mother I never had.”
     The air whispered, and Lucy felt something brush her shoulder.
     “Tell Will I love him,” Emmy said. “Tell him that life is worth living.”
     Lucy felt the light slipping away. “I will, sweetheart,” she choked. “I promise.”
    &nb

Chapter Seven

Duane Poncy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:32:13 +0000

How many times since that night had he passed that same street corner without giving it a thought? Now he stood on it and stared down the street toward her apartment and toward the past as if he might see her walking out of it. At what point had he ceased being afraid, had he known with grateful certainty that Emmy wanted to be with him. That she felt the same pull; something like the current of a river. Will could still feel it pulling. Soon it would leave him empty. Soon, but not yet. The night may be coming, but now it is twilight and how can he believe in the darkness when the last glitter of the sun is still warm on his cheek and love still sings; when he can remember the curve of her thigh and the solid pressure of her slight body?
     Will felt lightheaded as if he were off-balance, about to fall over. The street had steepened and he was a little breathless. He stopped and put one hand out to rest on the rough bark of an old walnut and forced himself, leaning there, to breathe deep. And the smell of it came to him then though it was still out of sight, further up the hill, still ahead of him. Rain has a peculiar way of sharpening the smell and the weather had held the smoke down; its scent still clung to the buildings and trees.
     A couple blocks later he saw the yellow police tape hanging on the iron fencing. It caught at his heart. A group of ten or so people milled around on the walk in front of the house. Will was disconcerted, reluctant to mingle with them. They all had a look of life-long nourishment and privilege. They looked like they fit in the neighborhood and had a personal stake in the condition of this particular property, but hadn’t decided whether the fire would prove a detriment or an advantage.
     Will advanced slowly. He caught scraps of conversation. “…have to come down.” “Pity. It would have been a good place for a bed and breakfast…” “Part of history…”
     He stood in the middle of the drive directly in front of the open iron gates. Only that yellow tape blocked his way with its black DO NOT CROSS letters. He and Emmy had stood right here that night when they had first seen it lit up by the moon, looking somber and graceful. The roof was mostly gone now; charred rafters crossed the sky, the five chimneys, smoke blackened, stood slender and straight, exposed in the ruin. The black stone turret, rising above the gutted third floor, gave the house the appearance of a medieval castle sacked by barbarians.
     Two men and one woman dressed in protective rubber clothing were inspecting the remains.
     Did Emmy know it was burning? Had she suffocated on the smoke or had she been strangled like the police told him? It was a devil’s choice. Will forgot about the neighbors, left the open drive and leaned his head against the cool iron bars of the fence. He felt tears wet his cheek. His shoulders began to shake. Somebody put a hand on his arm.
     “Will?” It was Lucy.
     He drew his breath in deeply and fought to quiet the turmoil in his chest.
     “You haven’t been home all afternoon.”
     “I was at the police station,” Will replied.
     Lucy looked at him with questioning eyes, but didn’t say anything. Will felt grateful that she had tracked him down; he could use a friend right now. Lucy Hidalgo was a small woman, thin and energetic. Her Mestiso features seemed slightly more European than Native American. She had almond skin with black piercing eyes that now were darkly rimmed. Coarse black hair, braided to the middle of her back, revealed silver stands. The silver gave her a look of wisdom that Will wanted to take strength from, except that she looked as miserable and bewildered as he felt.
     She stared past him, down the hill.
     “Isn’t that Doug Bartlett?” she asked.
     A lone figure walked up the street toward them, dressed casually in shirt sleeves and black dress pants, no tie, a slightly ruffled look about him. Doug Bartlett was a fairly tall man, a little over six feet. He was elegantly graying at the temples and the remainder of his hair was nearly black, worn a little long over his ears, but neatly styled. Though he was by no means overweight, Doug looked as if he had never, not once in his life, been hungry. Yet, he had an afflicted quality–hungry, but not for food. He strode up to Will, hand extended. Will took it.
     “I’m so sorry, Will,” Bartlett said. “If there’s anything I can do….”
     “Thank you.” Will replied, wondering what Doug Bartlett could possibly do.
     Doug turned to Lucy, put his hand on her shoulder. “Lucy. Are you okay?”
     Lucy tried to smile, couldn’t. “It’s all been so sudden.”
     “Yes,” said Doug. “I was really fond of Emmy. I’m going to miss her.”
     Doug’s apparent sincerity impressed Will. It was one quality he was disinclined to grant the rich.
     “A lot of people are going to miss Emmy terribly,” said Lucy.
     “I warned her about coming here alone. This house….” Doug halted, a far-off look in his eye. “I’m sorry. This house has been nothing but trouble.”
     Doug turned again to Will. “Emmy is family. I insist on taking care of the expenses. But you’re the one who was closest to her. You might know her wishes.”
     Will cleared his throat, tried to think of something to say.
     “Look,” Doug saved him, “I know this is awkward, Will. You haven’t had time. Just give me a call.”
     Doug turned to go, but Will stopped him.
     “Wait. Maybe there’s something you can do after all.” He nodded toward the rubber-clad inspectors. “Do you suppose they might let me take a look…at the place where she….”
     Will began to choke up and Lucy put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you should do that, Will?”
     No, he wasn’t sure he could handle it. Yes, he was sure he had to. He felt that if he didn’t see it, the room, the exact place where she had last been alive, that he would be robbed of something. That he would always regret not going far enough. That Emmy would feel abandoned if he couldn’t meet her there. She would be there. Will was sure of it. An imprint of her soul, or an echo, something he could hear, or see, or feel.
     “Yes, I need to see it.”
     Doug turned toward the figures sifting through the ashes. “I’ll see if I can arrange something.”
     The female investigator was squatting among the debris examining some artifact of the fire. Doug approached her and she stepped away from the work site and removed her dust mask. An argument appeared to ensue, but she soon motioned Will and Lucy over. With a wave, Doug Bartlett began his trek back down the hill.
     The woman was all business, a bit terse. “Okay, follow me. Don’t touch anything. Stay back away from marked areas. A crime investigation is still officially in progress.”
     “We’ll be angels, we promise,” Lucy said demurely.
     The woman’s demeanor softened.
     “I’m sorry, but I could really get in trouble for this.” She extended her hand. “I’m Sgt. Margolis.”
     Lucy shook her hand. “Lucy Hidalgo. This is Will Adelhardt. We know, we knew, Ms. D’Angelo.”
     “This is not exactly following procedures, but Mr. Bartlett…well, he has a lot of influence.”
     “It appears,” said Lucy.
     “Actually,” Sgt. Margolis continued as they approached the front steps, “we’re just wrapping up the fire investigation. The crime scene crew left about an hour ago.”
     “I don’t understand,” said Will. “Wasn’t the fire part of the crime?”
     “It’s not an assumption we automatically make.” She hesitated, measuring her words. “The fire may have been intentionally set, but it seems to have started several hours after the young woman died. In a different part of the house. We’re trying to determine if the two things are related, but they don’t appear to be. Not on the surface.” She seemed uncomfortable as if she had revealed more than she should.
     The front steps of the house were made of the same gray, volcanic rock as the turret and the short wall that bordered the veranda. Sgt. Margolis opened a Teak door, which seemed to Will to be more than eight-feet tall. It opened into a large entryway floored with imported black slate and paneled in mahogany. The first thing Will saw inside was the massive staircase of dark oak and basalt.
     To the left, French doors led into a hall, decorated with lingering traces of idiosyncratic opulence. Plaster walls were adorned with intricately carved woodwork, faded and graying with age. Will tried to imagine these walls holding flamboyant, late nineteenth century paintings. But all he saw was decay, dead weight, cold, black, immovable stone, garnished with the rotting remains of Victorian excess. Tropical mahogany, sacrificed for a vain moment of grandeur on a Portland, Oregon hillside. In the middle of the room, pillars of basalt supported the mass of the stone turret above.
     “This part of the house,” said Sgt. Margolis, dragging Will back to the present, “is structurally undamaged. The fire started on the second floor, at the rear of the house. It moved up the outside wall and consumed most of the third floor before it was extinguished. The young woman was found on the second floor, in the stone turret.”
     As they ascended the steps to the second story, Will tried to think of “the young woman” as a faceless victim, not Emmy. He was only partially successful.
     The hallway at the top of the stairs ran the length of the house. To the right, it ended in charred wood and blue sky. They turned to the left. The end of the hall opened into a room that appeared to have been built to attach the rest of this floor of the house to the turret, a self-contained tower of stone. Three archways gave access to the tower room, which was about twenty feet in diameter, a spiral staircase rose from the center. More police tape warned them from actually entering the room, but Will could see the grand view of the city through its arched windows.
     “Where…?” Will gestured at the empty room.
     Sgt. Margolis let Will’s unfinished questioned hang for a moment. Then she seemed to make a decision. “The body was found on a mattress. Just there, on the other side of the staircase.”
     The body. Emmy’s body. Will looked at Lucy and saw tears running down her cheeks. She was wiping them away with the heel of her hand. He felt a twinge of guilt for dragging her along. He listened for Emmy, but all he could hear was passing traffic through an open window. Life going on outside, carelessly. He felt stranded in his own left-behind world.
     “I think we’ve seen enough,” he said. “Thank you, Sgt. Margolis.”
     When they were back outside Will apologized to Lucy.
     “I didn’t have to follow you up there, Will,” said Lucy. “Look, can I drive you home?”
     “Thank you, Lucy. I’ll take you up on that.”
      “I parked around the block,” Lucy led the way.
     It was the first time Will had seen the back of the Bartlett property. The stone wall with its rib like iron fence topping it was less formidable in back where the sidewalk sloped upward. The yellow police ribbon was here too. Lucy’s battered Subaru was parked near a rear gate to the property. This gate was not so elaborate, or secure, as the wrought iron ones in front. It had once been held together by a padlocked chain, but the chain had been weakened by rust and broken by trespassers, leaving the gate free, and access to the rear of the Bartlett estate open to anyone who might know about it.
     Lucy’s was one of only three cars parked on the street, which was a dead-end and served no other houses. The West Hills rose almost vertically on the opposite side of the road and here, for the length of two blocks, had so far been unmolested by development. The hill was covered with fir trees, and a dense undergrowth of salal, Oregon grape, ferns, and thorny wild blackberry canes. It was dotted with the white throats of morning glories whose vines clothed the trunks of the trees in layers of heart shaped leaves. Will felt the mass of vegetation and earth brooding over the street.
     The rain started up again as they crossed Burnside, and by the time Lucy parked a couple of blocks from Will’s, water was rolling wildly down the gutters. Will and Lucy sat in the car for a few minutes mutely staring at the rain. The only comment Will had made, in spite of his offer to talk about his visit to the police was that they were right–he was too old to fall in love with Emmy.
     Lucy hadn’t answered him.
     “But she was so,” Will searched to describe what it was about her that had caused him to jump in again. He’d been married twice, should have known better. Not that he regretted either marriage. He regretted what happened to the marriages, but not being in love. He was convinced that he and Emmy had something so unique, that his previous failures had no bearing on their chances for happiness, whatever that meant. He had to admit that he was not very familiar with the practical everyday application of happiness, but he had had some experience with the intensity of isolated encounters. How often had he quoted Buddha, “Life is suffering,” and been cheered to know how much company he had. Right now, in this suffering, he was ashamed. He would just as soon believe that he was alone with this–that others were spared.
     Will’s unfinished sentence had sunk below the surface of awareness. He did not go back to it and Lucy did not appear to care. He didn’t know Lucy well enough to guess at what she was thinking. Lucy was Emmy’s friend. Someone he had gotten to know through Emmy. He did not know Lucy well. All Will really knew about her was that she was about his age, was a freelance journalist and had been involved in the migrant worker movement that Cesar Chavez had been so instrumental in shaping in California. Will didn’t know any more about Lucy’s past other than that she had taught an adult education class in journalism at one of the community colleges and Emmy had been her student, just as Emmy had been his student, he thought. Lucy had become Emmy’s friend; he had become her lover. Had Emmy told Lucy she was pregnant?
     “How did Emmy die?” Lucy asked still staring out the windshield, not making a move to get out of the car, though she had turned it off. “Morris wouldn’t tell me. I guess he didn’t know yet.”
     “Did he question you, too?” At Lucy’s nod, Will said, “She was strangled.”
     “What else did they say?” Lucy began to cry soundlessly.
     “Something about leather, that she was wearing leather.”
     “Leather? I’ve never seen Emmy wear leather.”
     “That’s what they said.”
     “I don’t understand, Will.”
     “Neither do I. The cops had their theories. At least the ones they were willing to tell me. All I could think was Emmy’s dead, Emmy’s murdered. How the cops figure it out just doesn’t matter all that much to me.” Will could hear the edge in his own voice and he put his hand on his chest up high where he was breathing around the tightness.
     “What kind of theories, Will?”
     “That it was an accident. Emmy wasn’t into that kinky stuff and she wasn’t seeing anyone else,” Will jerked the car door open, stood up and shut the door before Lucy could reply.
     She was out of the car almost as fast. “Don’t walk away from me. What do you mean kinky stuff? Like S&M? Like getting strangled to get off?”
     They faced each other on the sidewalk. Lucy’s hair was matting down to her face. Will could feel water running down his forehead and channeled by his nose, run down his cheeks. “Yes, like that. That’s what they said.”
     “I don’t believe it.”
     “Neither do I,” Will sighed. “Why don’t you pump the meter and come up. I think there might be some moldy cheese and stale crackers, if you’re hungry.” He made a thin smile. “Wait out the rain.”

     Will handed Lucy a towel to rub her hair dry. While the towel still covered her face, he asked, “Did Emmy tell you?”
     “Tell me what?” Lucy gave the towel back to Will, not looking at him at first. When she did look at him, he could see that she knew what he was asking.
     “Yes,” She said.
     “Why didn’t you tell me? How could you let me hear that from the cops?”
     “How was I to know they were going to drag you off? I called and called. I came over to your place. I was looking for you all afternoon.” Lucy’s voice was hoarse.
     The tender spot on Will’s forehead started to throb. He touched it.
     “Did they hit you?” Lucy asked.
     “No. I guess I fainted. Hit my head on the table.”
     Neither of them spoke. Outside the rain-sheeted windows, flat dirty white clouds were braced motionless against the bowl of the sky.
     Will went in the kitchen and came out with a tray of crackers and a round of Gouda. A bottle of wine was tucked under his arm. He set the tray down and held up the bottle, “Would you like a glass?”
     “No thanks. Actually, I’m not really hungry.” But she picked up a cracker and sliced off a piece of cheese.
     Will went back to the kitchen to retrieve a wine glass for himself. He gazed out the narrow kitchen window onto the street below. A man in a raincoat stood under the second story overhang in front of the tavern across the street. The man was looking up at Will and, even with the distance of space and the veil of rain, he recognized Sgt. DeChris. To Lucy he said, “Are you sure you won’t have something to drink? Water, tea, coffee. I hate to drink alone.”
     “Water’s fine.”
     “The cops said there was a door,” Will said as he sat back down across from Lucy.
     “What?”
     “A door. A heavy door on the tower. DeChris said that it kept the fire from entering the room, but there was no door.”
     “Sometimes, they say things like that. They were trying to trip you up, to get you to disagree with them. It would indicate that you had been there at Bartlett House,” Lucy said.
     By the time the cheese and crackers were gone and Will was halfway into the bottle of wine, the rain had stopped. Lucy stood up to go. “You need to get some sleep, Will. You’re exhausted. But, I’ll stay and keep you company for a while if you don’t feel like being alone.”
     “I don’t feel like being alone, but I don’t think that is something that you can do anything about. I’ll be fine,” Will said. “You should go home.”
     When Lucy was gone, the questions flooded in. Who killed Emmy? Do the police really think I killed her? He poured another glass of wine. What would Zoe be thinking about him? Did she know? Had her mother called her? Zoe would be worried about him, wouldn’t she? He wanted to hear her tell him that she loved him no matter what, that he was her daddy and nothing, nobody could keep her from loving him. The last time Zoe had said that, she was eleven years old, balancing on the edge of puberty, still running faster than all the boys. Her parents’ divorce and adolescence had hit Zoe at just about the same time and she had never looked at him with anything but reproach since then.
     Will picked up the phone and began to punch the numbers of her Vermont exchange. “Hello.” Her voice was muffled, sleepy. It was midnight in Vermont.
     Will gently laid the receiver in its cradle.

Chapter Six

Duane Poncy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:30:03 +0000

Emmy had met him that night, the night of his lecture. He hadn’t really expected her to come. After his presentation, they left the Historical Society together. It was evening. Will was reluctant to let Emmy walk off without him. “Where did you park?” He asked.
     “I didn’t drive. I live downtown.” Emmy said and pointed toward the west.
     He was going north and east. Still, he could offer to walk her home. Or to buy her a drink. Emmy had come to hear him. Had she also come to see him? Or was he an old fool?
     “I don’t actually feel like going home, yet,” Emmy said. She drew her eyebrows together as if her thoughts gave her pain. “What you were talking about tonight, it makes you believe in evil, the way people are so eager to destroy each other. How do they reconcile it? What made those white folks think it was alright to run the Chinese out of their homes and businesses?”
     “I don’t think they spent very much effort trying to justify it,” Will answered. “Greed and fear are powerful motives.”
     Without thinking about it, they had started walking and were strolling down the center of the park blocks, the same ghostly trees overhead that Will had delighted in during the sun break just a few days previous. March could not be denied tonight. There was a wind. Both Will and Emmy wore winter coats, scarves, and hats. It was cold enough for these precautions, but not bone-chilling. Not like Providence, he thought remembering that a March evening in Rhode Island, whipped by wind off the Atlantic could push your breath back down your throat and freeze your belly. Or did the cold he remembered have a different source altogether; childhood is difficult to sort out sometimes.
     “So, tell me more about Louise Bryant and the Belligerents. What were they about?”
     Will smiled, “Sounds like a rock band.”
     Emmy laughed. Will continued, “They were cultural radicals, mostly. Beats of a different era, but more political–socialists, anarchists, feminists, freethinkers. They were writers and artists experimenting with Free Love and trying to create ‘The New Socialist Man’, as Oscar Wilde called it.”
     “Free Love can’t really work–do you think?”
     “Probably not. But the idea of Free Love meant something different to the radicals of a century ago. It wasn’t just about sexual freedom. The theory was that if society could be arranged so women weren’t economically dependent upon men, they would cease to be socially and emotionally dependent as well. They would then be free to engage with men as equals and to have relationships based purely on love or pleasure.”
     “There would still be loneliness.”
     “Not in the perfect socialist world,” Will teased. “No loneliness allowed.”
     “So Catherine fooled around with Free Love, and had a love child.”
     “And she must have paid a terrible price for it in those times.”
     “Why were they so repressive? It seems like they had no tolerance for anything that was different from the norm. Whatever that is.”
     Will and Emmy reached the end of the park blocks. In front of them was the dark brick front of the exclusive Arlington Club. A few second floor windows were lit, but from his angle of view, Will could not see anyone. He pointed it out to Emmy, “The Arlington Club. Reed’s father was persona non grata there for awhile because he was involved in bringing some of its members to justice over timber and land fraud. Your great-grandmother’s father could have been one of them.
     “I suppose that, and several thousand dollars, might get me in the door,” Emmy said. But she didn’t seem interested in the club and its elitist province. When they had crossed Morrison Street, she brought the conversation back to the lecture. “They were afraid of themselves, weren’t they?”
     “Isn’t that the most terrifying thing for all of us?” Will asked. “Do you want to go in here?” He motioned to the door of Park Place Restaurant and Bar.
     Emmy wrinkled her nose, a motion of distaste, but she said, “Why not? It’s cold and I’m too poor to catch Yuppie fever.”
     Will laughed and gallantly opened the door. “Madam.” He bowed and waved her in.
     Emmy inclined her head meeting his mock chivalry with the appropriate corresponding gesture.
     They passed quickly through the restaurant under the watch of the headwaiter. In the warm bar they peeled off their coats laying them over the back of an empty chair and tossed their hats on the seat. Will removed his scarf, but Emmy left hers hanging loosely around her neck. She picked up the drink menu card and sighed. “Six bucks for well drinks. I work most of an hour for that.”
     A waitress appeared to take their orders. “I’ll have a beer, something dark and bitter,” Will said. “How about a bottle of this?” He pointed to a micro-brew on the card.
     “That’s very good. And you?”
     “Same,” Emmy said. “Dark and bitter. You’re not describing yourself are you?” She commented after the waitress left.
     “Probably.” He wanted to ask her if it made her nervous, but he thought it was presumptive. Why should it matter how he was unless she was interested in him and of course she couldn’t be. “May as well drink dark and bitter. It reminds you that life is mostly uncomfortable.”
     “Mostly?” Emmy lifted an eyebrow. “That depends on a lot of variables. Don’t you think? I mean we have it pretty good here. Most of us. Except, of course for that ever-increasing segment of the population which is trampled under the boot of…Yeah, well mostly it is dark and bitter. But we can’t, I can’t, allow that to be everything. There has to be some hope, some good times.”
     “Maybe it isn’t all despair in the dark,” Will said. He meant it. The dark had some comfortable corners if only through familiarity. More comfortable than what he was feeling right now when he dared to look at her, and he was daring to look most of the time.
     Near the end of their beers, Emmy pulled a slip of folded paper out of her coat pocket, unfolded it and smoothed it out on the table between them. “This is the address to the Bartlett house. I’ve wanted to see it, but I’m…It’s really stupid. I’m afraid to go. I don’t know what I’ll see or not see.” She pushed the paper toward him. “It’s not far from here. Ten blocks maybe.”
     Will took his reading glasses out of his pocket and read the address. It was all of ten blocks. Probably more. “It isn’t far,” he agreed. “Let’s go.”
     “No kidding. You’d really walk up there with me. Tonight?” Emmy appeared genuinely pleased that he wanted to go with her. “You don’t know how much I appreciate this. I really owe you.”
     By the time Will and Emmy reached the street where the Bartlett house stood, they were out of breath, but warmed up by the climb.
     “Sorry, I didn’t think it’d be halfway up the hill,” Emmy said.
     It wasn’t halfway up the hill. It was closer to the base of the West Hills. Yet it was uphill from where they had come. As the elevation increased so did the “rent”. They were among the large old Victorian era homes that had been the showcases of wealth for nineteenth century timber barons, and land speculators, builders of the city, of its bridges and bordellos. Portland had certainly had its share of the latter. The city fathers and mothers were primarily New Englanders who did not leave their Puritan creed behind in Massachusetts or Maine. Bringing it with them, they also brought with them the antithesis–a wantonness which seems always to accompany excessive repression. So, downhill from these mansions, close to the water, in the path of flood and corruption, were taverns and brothels and the working women and men whose labor helped to fill the mahogany halls of the wealthy with rosewood and teak, and hang chandeliers in their dining rooms.
     Between the riverside and the hillside stretched the homes and shops of the in-between people. Most of them also made money in one way or another for the people who lived above them. That was the lay of the city in its early days. But no city ever sleeps, especially new cities, and twentieth century Portland was no exception, it was constantly evolving. The rich were always moving to higher ground. The former homes of Portland’s version of high society were divided into apartments or offices, converted into restaurants, or torn down and replaced by something that always seemed less grand, no matter how immense. A significant number of citizens did not think that this last instance was progress. Consequently there was a fairly strong preservation society roaming about the streets seeking candidates for historical status.
     What Will and Emmy stood in front of that night was the rarest exception to the prevalent fates of these fine homes. The Bartlett house was empty, which was unusual for the area, but more than that it was abandoned. A four foot high stone wall topped with three feet of wrought iron fence ran the length of the block enclosing the house and grounds. A large padlocked gate composed of closely spaced iron bars prevented any but the most slender of trespassers from entering the drive. Because the property was elevated from the street and because the house was three stories high, much of it could be seen from the sidewalk where they stood. The light of streetlamps was enough to reveal that there were no curtains on the windows, a few of which were boarded over. The condition of the grounds underscored the plight of the house. Grass survived in isolated clumps surrounded by weeds. Winter-killed morning glory vines covered shrubs and girdled the trunks of trees as if the coarse hair of some giant had been snagged there. One of these trees was an old enormous oak that stood part way between the house and the gate. There was a scar on this tree that, even in the dim light, was large enough to be recognized as the stump of an amputated branch.
     A deep porch swept across two-thirds of the front of the house and disappeared around one corner. The second story rose straight above the porch, the third was dormered, but it was the circular tower that dominated. It formed the northeastern corner of the house. While only the first floor of the rest of the house was basalt, the tower was built of the stone all the way to its roof. There was no open balcony for a widow’s walk, like so many of the old Portland homes had in their turrets. This tower appeared to be more of a fortress than a lookout.
     The slender moon, suddenly emerging from behind a heavy cloud, illuminated the roof enough to see that here, too, vines had encroached and were curled around the five chimneys that marched across the roofline.
     “The moon was a ghostly galleon…,” Emmy started to quote. She broke off and shivered. “Its cold.”
     Will started to turn away from the house, but Emmy didn’t move.
     “What’s that?” she asked, “Is that a candle in the window?”
     Will had not seen it. When he looked, he saw nothing. “It must have been the reflection of the moon. A cloud has covered it again. See?”
     They were walking slowly back down the hill. Emmy was shivering. Will instinctively put his arm around her to warm her.
     “Thanks,” She said. “For the arm and for coming with me.”
     Will tried not to hold her too tight.
     That was when she told him that she had been looking for a family and instead all she had found was an empty, broken house. “I wonder where he is, the man who owns it now. He’d be my cousin, I guess. Douglas Bartlett. That’s the name on the records.”
     “Familiar name, but I don’t know where I’ve heard it.”
     “Look at these places. They had so much. The Bartletts up in that big house had so much. Do you know that my great-grandmother, Catherine Elizabeth, cleaned houses to make a living. She scrubbed their toilets. Grandma said that in the winter her mother’s hands were so rough and cracked that they bled when she came home from work. Why did she have to clean houses? Weren’t they her family? What did they have to do with all that money that they couldn’t help her?”
     Will didn’t have an answer for Emmy’s anger. They were silent for awhile. “Wealth,” He said finally, “is relative.”
     “It’s just not for the relatives,” Emmy smiled wanly. “It’s like the Tao. Call one thing beautiful and another becomes ugly. You can’t have wealth if there is no poverty.”
     “Right. It’s conditional. Wealth presupposes it’s opposite.” Will was on to a favorite subject and it wouldn’t hurt to divert Emmy’s attention away from that dreary specter on the hill. “Wealth always costs too much. It is bought with human life, from the plantation to the cotton mill, from the coal mine to the steel mill, every robber baron, every Carnegie and Rockefeller, owes his fortune to the men and women whose lives were sacrificed for it.”
     “Have I heard this lecture?” Emmy was grinning. “I turn here.”
     They were already at Fifteenth Avenue. Will’s arm was still around her shoulder. He dropped it. If he walked her home, she’d feel obliged to ask him in. Wasn’t that what he wanted? No. Not yet.
     They stood on the corner a little awkwardly. Will reached over and took one end of her muffler and tossed it over her shoulder. “Keep your neck warm,” He said. It was fatherly and it made him cringe. So he blundered on, pulling the muffler up over her mouth, over her nose. Suddenly, she struck his hand away. There was fear in her eyes. “Don’t.” She cried and she yanked the muffler away from her face.
     Will had stepped back. He was bewildered. “I’m sorry. What did I do?”
     Emmy was calm now. “No, Will. I’m sorry. It’s just that I have this…this thing. I can’t stand anything on my face like that. I feel like I’m suffocating. It’s like I can’t breathe.”
     “Something like claustrophobia.”
     “Could be. It’s really cold. I’ve got to get moving and warm up. Thanks, again, for tonight.”
     “I had a good time.” If he hadn’t been such a coward, he would have kissed her.

     A cloud passed over the sun, bringing Will back to the present.
     He stood, barely conscious of his wet clothes. He had a destination now, the burnt out remains of Bartlett House. But he intended to get there by the same route he and Emmy had taken that first night. He walked up Morrison to 9th Ave., then turned toward the south park blocks. He took note of The Park Place Restaurant as he passed by it. A little further on he came to the Oregon Historical Society. What had he expected to find here? Was it possible that Emmy was really dead?
     “No.” It came from him loud and sudden and he startled himself almost as much as the couple who, standing nearby, had been admiring the mural painted on the society’s wall. They quickly moved away, glancing uneasily over their shoulders.
      He wanted to bend over the hole in his belly and sob. Tears ran wildly down his cheeks. He should have known…he should have known.

Chapter Five

Duane Poncy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:55:57 +0000

Will’s small two-bedroom apartment was located on the third floor of a nineteenth century building in the old section of Portland that lies between the Willamette River on the east and Chinatown on the west, north of the Burnside Bridge and south of the Steel. It was floodplain, or had been before the river was diked and dammed. A small brass plaque declared that originally, his building had contained a carriage house on the street level and professional offices, lawyers, doctors, dentists occupied the upper floors out of the range of high water.
     Most apartments near the river were out of his range, river views being at a premium. But other, taller buildings stood between his and the river, so Will was able to afford this one. It had high ceilings and generous windows, worn wood floors, ancient and temperamental plumbing, and steam heat that was delivered through radiators in each room. He had moved in just before Fall Term, put all the boxes he didn’t feel like dealing with in the spare room, and closed the door. He planned to make it into a home office when the apartment started to feel like home, which hadn’t happened yet.
     His second wife, Barb, had been unfairly reasonable throughout the divorce. Her main concern was that he didn’t become a complete derelict, which she maintained was the natural conclusion to the way his life was turning out. Mainly, she wanted to avoid contact with Will if possible. “I don’t hate you, Will, I just can’t be around you.” She accepted the judge’s decision denying spousal support. She had always earned more than Will anyway. Barb let him have almost anything he wanted from the house, which made none of it seem worth having. He took everything from his office, sweeping books and piles of papers into boxes without sorting through it or attempting to make sense of it. Consequently, it took Will several hours to find the books for Emmy. He started after dinner, at first opening, rifling, sneezing at dust, not getting sidetracked. But then he decided since he was going through the stuff anyway, he might as well organize it. When he finally went to bed, it was after midnight. Flattened boxes leaned against the hallway walls, books were stacked roughly by subject, and there was a garbage bag full of junkmail. He was completely weary and a little happy.
     Stumptown Cafe was a few blocks from Will’s apartment. It was accommodating and too near the soup kitchen to be trendy. So, it got just enough business to stay in business and not enough to ruin it. As long as you could handle the conservative rhetoric the owner, Howard, liked to needle his favorite customers with, it was a good place to find a comfortable level of background noise to make you feel a little less lonely.
     Will had arrived before Emmy and laid claim to a battered wooden booth by the windows, which gave a sweeping view of the southern ramp of the Steel Bridge. He laid the books, along with an old syllabus and reading list on the table, ordered a cup of coffee and stared at his transparency in the window. The window gave a dark and worn image of him. He noted the curling gray hair at his temples. Time for a haircut.
     “Professor.” She slid into the booth across from him. She already had a cup of coffee in her hand. She had come in and ordered without him noticing. I must be half dead, he thought.
     “These them?” Emmy ran her slim hand over the books. She picked them up, one by one, and read off the spines, “Six Months in Moscow, by Louise Bryant, Ten Days that Shook the World, by John Reed.” She looked at Will. “That’s a short one. Let’s see. The Queen of Bohemia. Odd title for a book about a communist. I mean, the reference to monarchy and all that seems out of synch with revolutionary politics. Anyway,” she smiled broadly, “I hope it wasn’t any trouble for you to find them. I really, really appreciate this.”
     “It was no problem, Emmy. Gave me a reason to get my office halfway organized.” He wished he hadn’t laid the books on the table. Too easy for her to just pick them up and walk out after a little polite chitchat.
     “My friend, Lucy, says that John Reed is buried in the Kremlin. Was he killed in the Bolshevik Revolution?”
     “No. He died of typhus a few years later.”
     “Typhus. Is that making a comeback like TB?” she sipped her coffee. “Consumption killed Kafka. How romantic, we could all die like Reed and Kafka.”
     “That’s something to look forward to.”
     Emmy laughed.
     “So what’s this connection with your great-grandmother and these moldy old reds?” Will asked.
     “It was in a letter to her from someone named Edwina. I brought it with me, I thought maybe you’d like to see it.”
     “I’d love to.”
     Emmy reached into her backpack, and pulled out an envelope. Will turned the yellowing paper over in his hand, and examined the ornate calligraphy. “Catherine Elizabeth Bartlett, San Francisco, Calif.” It was from Edwina Phillips, Philadelphia, Penn. Will carefully opened the brittle covering and gently unfolded the delicate piece of history. The letter was dated November 29, 1917. It read:

My dearest Catherine,
     Isn’t it exciting! I still can’t believe it’s all true. Louise and John Reed have gone to cover the events. There’s so much headiness among our friends here. I went to Greenwich Village last week and some of the comrades want to send Louise around the country to rally the masses. Of course, she will go to Portland.
     Catherine, do you remember the days at Louise’s studio on Yamhill St? Those were days to remember. But not more so than these times.
     So, have you had your little revolutionary yet? I’ll bet she will be a handful. Ha Ha! Well, I must go. Don’t forget to write, you naughty girl.
     From the city of brotherly (and sisterly) love,
Your Adoring Friend,
Edwina

     “This is an interesting piece of history, Emmy,” Will was impressed.
“Maybe Catherine Elizabeth Bartlett is in one of those pictures,” Emmy said, indicating the old photos which covered the walls of the coffee shop – a random representation of the evolution of the city from its early days as Stumptown to the Vanport flood following World War II.
     “So, are you one of those genealogy buffs?” Will asked.
     “Those? You mean like someone who buries themselves in social security death indexes, and pores over passenger ship lists? Not yet. I haven’t really gone beyond Catherine Elizabeth. All I know is that the family was wealthy and had something to do with the timber industry. It’s not like I want to join the DAR. I don’t have the discipline to look that far. Wanting to know about Catherine’s life sidetracks me. What she thought about. What was the world like for her? What did she discover, dream of? Who was this Sojourner person she was married to?
     “Sojourner? An unusual name. The only Sojourner I’ve heard of was Sojourner Truth.”
     “Yes, but that was Grandma’s maiden name. Emmaline Sojourner. Grandma didn’t know anything about her father. I don’t know anything about mine, either.” Emmy rose and began examining the pictures on the cafÃ© walls, as if she were going to find something there that would illuminate the answers to her questions.
     “Actually, that’s not true,” Emmy continued. “I have an obituary for my father. At least, I think he was my father. It was in a box of things my mother left for me. Could have just been a friend.”
     Who were those men who abandoned their daughters, Will wondered. What kind of man just walks away from his child?
     He looked at this slip of a young woman who wore her black hair beneath a dark blue beret and dressed in what appeared to be Salvation Army khakis and a ragged wool sweater. It could have been thirty years ago. He could be in graduate school. That’s how timeless the scene appeared. Her young body, so supple and full of life, drew his eyes to it, caused his heart to murmur.
     Emmy came back to the table. She was finished with her coffee and set the empty cup down without sitting down herself.
     She’s leaving, he thought.
     “I’m giving a lecture at the Oregon Historical Society tomorrow night about the social movements in early Portland. I’ll be touching on your topic of interest. If you’d like, I can get you in free.” Will hoped that it didn’t sound as desperate as he thought it did.
     Emmy picked up the books. “Sure. That sounds like fun.” She made a face.
     Will grinned, relieved. “Great. Meet me at the front door at 6:45.”

Chapter Four

Duane Poncy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:55:21 +0000

A splash of cold water brought Will back to consciousness. His head was on the table and a tender spot on his forehead. He could smell antiseptic, was aware of someone leaning close to him. He opened his eyes and sat up, slowly.
     It was a nurse sitting next to him waiting patiently. She wore a protective mask over her face. Her deep brown eyes regarded him impartially as she swabbed his forehead and applied a butterfly bandaid.
     “You better sit for a while,” she said, gathering her tools into a small kit. At the door she stripped off her latex gloves and dropped them in the wastebasket. Then she left him alone.
     He surveyed the interrogation room. A fly buzzed around him in slow motion. The fluorescent lights, excessively bright, hummed like a chainsaw cutting through a dark thicket. He thought he could see the officers behind the two-way glass, watching him twist. Watching him try to escape his mental torture chamber. Like the wheel that tightens the screw, his thoughts about Emmy kept circling back. Why hadn’t they just put him on a medieval rack? Or extracted his fingernails? Anything but this.
     He agonized for what seemed like hours; about Emmy’s unborn baby, his baby; about leather and fire and those last moments of her life. Did she die in torment? Had she been unconscious? Why hadn’t she told him she was pregnant?
     When they finally let him go, he realized he had only been at the station for a couple of hours. It seemed to Will that Detective Morris was not convinced of his guilt. DeChris was another matter. But why would someone want to kill Emmy? The question pressed against Will, occupying the part of his brain that wasn’t too numb to function. A numbness that he couldn’t count on. Not enough, he knew, to protect him if he went back to his apartment where he would be alone. He wasn’t prepared to be that vulnerable just now, so he stood on the street outside of the precinct trying to decide where to go.
     The police station was in the Justice Center, a euphemism for county jail. It was situated near the Multnomah County Courthouse, and the Federal Courthouse. Will tried to estimate the number of courtrooms that surrounded him. And for every courtroom, he thought, there are entire floors of lawyers. Since location is everything, almost every building in a ten-block radius contained at least one law office. If he needed a lawyer, one wouldn’t be hard to find. Not that he could afford it. Maybe that was something his ex-wife, Barbara, would be willing to pay for. Or Sondra, his first wife, might pay for a lawyer in order to keep the father of her child out of prison. On second thought, the way Zoe felt about him, her mother might not part with a dime on his behalf.
     That was probably unfair. Zoe didn’t hate her dad, after all. It was just that the divorce had been so painful for all of them. Will and his daughter couldn’t seem to find solid ground between them. And now thousands of miles separated them.
     Emmy’s child. Why hadn’t she told him? His hands felt empty. Something, the most important thing, had been snatched out of them.
     Will pushed the thought away, concentrating instead on deciding where to go instead of the apartment. If it weren’t for Rose Festival, he would have chosen the riverfront. Not that the crowds would be too heavy in this rain. Will began walking across Third. He angled north up the sidewalk that ran diagonally through one of two park blocks situated between Third and Fourth streets. On either side of him, a long row of new steel park benches had recently replaced the old wood and iron benches. The old benches had been deficient in that they allowed vagrants to stretch out and sleep in full view of the magnificent courts that had so far been unable to reform them. A particularly disturbing sight for the mayor, whose newly renovated corner office, in the newly renovated city building, had an unobstructed view of the parks.
     Rush hour had begun. Cars moved in dense schools. Pedestrians holding tattered, end of the season umbrellas flowed around Will, their faces intense, gray. Within four blocks of the police station, Will was soaked. His shirt clung to his torso and his jeans were tight and heavy. The rain slacked and stopped as he reached the square. Ahead of him, two cops were inviting several young panhandlers to move along. Will didn’t recognize any of them, but he stopped when he came near enough for the cops to notice him. He knew it wasn’t a big deal, the kids would come back in half an hour or so and settle like birds in their roosting place until the cops set them to flight again. It was the same every year during Rose Festival. Mustn’t let the tourists know that the postcard had another viewpoint. It wasn’t a big deal, but they could have been Emmy’s waifs, so he watched the cops with his arms crossed.
“This isn’t your business,” one of the cops said.
     Will didn’t move or respond. The cop shrugged. The kids moved on.
     Pioneer Square in the sunlight, still wet from the rain. He recalled that morning at the end of Spring Term. The demonstration. Emmy, waving him into her life. Since he was already soaked, Will gave no thought to the wet concrete and perched on the wide wall lining the square, the amphitheater to his left, westbound light rail on his right. The sun lingered on the edge of a cloud, threatening to expose his horrible pain. He closed his eyes and whispered, “I was on my way to class, Emmy.”

     It had been a rare day in early March. Rain had fallen all night, but the clouds were nearly empty by morning and only a spattering, a kind of mist, remained and that was gone by nine. What made the day rare was that the clouds were also gone and the sun was brilliant. A little steam was rising off the asphalt of unshadowed streets. Everything that could gleam did. On a day like this, selective amnesia becomes epidemic among Portlanders. Will had caught it. Spring is here. He believed it. He was wearing his raincoat, but he was thinking he wouldn’t have to replace the last umbrella he’d lost. A ridiculous joy came over him.
There was something in the air, a rhythmic chanting. Sounds like a protest, he thought.
     Interesting. He saw them when he turned the corner onto Broadway. Too far away to make out the signs. His step quickened. They were protesting against HUD conversions. Ah yes, Will thought, inflated real estate and profiteering – telltale signs of a successful economy.
     Will was standing on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Morrison, content to watch the protest pass instead of detouring around it, when he saw a familiar face. A former student. She’d taken a couple of classes from him. He remembered when she got fired up it was like a veil dropping away, and her soul, fierce and beautiful, radiated. That was how she looked now, impassioned and powerful. He kept his eyes on her as the column advanced. She looked in his direction, grinned and waved. He was tempted to look around him to see if she was waving at someone else, instead he waved back, accepting her remembering him as a kind of gift. The moment was over, a mounted policeman blocked her from view, the line of protestors ended and Will crossed Morrison, falling in behind the last of the marchers as they crossed Sixth.
     His usual path was to cut through Pioneer Square if it wasn’t hosting one of the frequent events that made an obstacle course out of the block. But that day, the protest was the event and he didn’t mind getting somewhat lost in the midst of it as the protestors fanned out over the bricks of what promoters like to call “Portland’s Living Room”.
     Will didn’t want to be delayed too long so he pushed his way through the throng and up the broad stairs designed to serve as amphitheater seating. At the top, Will paused and looked back. Protestors filled the center of the square and flowed up the sides. Someone was tapping on a microphone. Light reflected from the terra cotta tiled surfaces and gold paint of the Corinthian columns placed artfully along the perimeter of the square. One was arranged as if fallen, broken into perfectly smooth, round segments, so that the total effect was one of manufactured ruin. It was all out of context amid the towers and the traffic. A couple thousand years had been placed in a blender and out came the corporate banners, the food carts, the umbrella man and counterfeit remains of ancient Greece. He turned away and continued toward the university.
     Will strode along the park blocks, under trees still bare, black limbs against blue sky patterned the grass in geometric shadow. His raincoat felt almost too warm as he entered the university campus. Will was a part time, adjunct professor of political history and had been for twelve years. But this was only one of his campuses. Will actually did teach full time. It was just that he spread it out over three colleges. Oh yes, he thought as he reached his small, closet-sized office, times have never been better. Look at me, I have three jobs and the judge felt so sorry for me that he said I didn’t have to pay spousal support.
     “Will, do you have a minute?” Henry Schuyler, History Chair. Will’s boss.
“Only a minute. I’m on my way to lecture.”
     “Missed you at the department meeting, yesterday.”
     “Give me fulltime and I’ll be here everyday.”
     Henry threw him a withering look. “In any event, we discussed the need for a higher profile. History just isn’t sexy like science and mathematics.”
     “Mathematics is sexy?” Will asked.
     Schuyler ignored him; “You need to do your part. It would help your career, and give the department a boost as well. I know you’re working on a new manuscript, Will. It wouldn’t take much extra to pump out an article now and then for a respectable publication.”
     Respectable. What was that about? Will felt a small fury building inside. By the time he got to his classroom, it was fully formed and already starting to recede, but not enough to go by without comment. He flipped open his briefcase, pulled out his lecture notes and fanned them out on the podium. The students were quiet, expectant. He looked down at his notes, pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped his forehead. A line of protestors marched between his eyes and the first page of his notes.
     “What does respectable mean? Does anyone have a thought on that they’d like to share,” Will looked up at his students, most of them sophomores. It was a hard question. There were no takers. He plunged on, “Isn’t “˜respectable’ culturally, contextually anchored?” He saw it in their faces. They were confused. It was dead week. They didn’t expect Professor Adelhardt to bring new material into his lecture today. Maybe an anecdote from some forgotten soldier to bring the civil war down to a personal perspective. But this sounded like the beginning of a lecture on semiotics – was that the word? It stretched the limits of their newly acquired vocabulary. Respectability – what did it have to do with history? “What would you choose if someone asked you to name a respectable magazine or newspaper? Or journal? Are there some mediums so fundamentally corrupted, or tainted by association with readership or commercialism that they are unrespectable? Is there a media source that isn’t?
     “But that’s not really the problem. The problem,” Will took off his jacket, felt the sun hit his shirtsleeve. “The problem,” he began again, turning toward the wall of windows on his right, “Is that you’re all absent. You’re thinking about finals. You’d rather know what will be on the exam than what respectable means.” It wasn’t a complaint. He started to walk over to the window. “I don’t know why you’re in here,” he said, “when you could be out there.”
     Will walked back to the podium and began gathering up the lecture notes. “Go on. Get out of here.”
     “Aren’t you going to”¦?” The question, coming from the back of the room was immediately drowned by other students ready for a break, some of them happy to have the extra study time.
     “Pick one of these up on your way out.” Will tossed the handouts he had prepared for this last spring lecture on a desk near the door. Then he left ahead of them, more eager than his students to get out of the building and into the sun.
     He headed back over to his office to retrieve messages. After that, he thought, I’ll take a walk along the waterfront or hike up to the Japanese Garden. A day like today held so much potentiality. It was too much for the coffee shop to contain. It was too sudden and too brilliant to cling to petty frustrations or to think about mundane interdepartmental tugs of war over miserable funds.
     Will was even whistling under his breath as he approached his office. The phone rang through the door as he arrived. He was able to catch it before it went into voicemail. “Adelhardt.”
     “Hi. This is Emmy D’Angelo.”
     “Emmy. Hello. Good to hear from you. I saw you this morning.” That was astute. Former students made him uneasy, especially former female students. What did they want from him? “What can I do for you?” That was stiff. He winced.
     She was all business. “I’m hoping you can point me toward some resource materials on Louise Bryant and John Reed. I remember you have some interest in radical politics.”
     “So you’re researching the local reds? I thought you were done with academia?”
     “This is for myself. My great-grandmother knew Louise Bryant. I want to know about her life, so I thought I should get to know something about the local reds as you say,” Emmy replied.
     He sat on the edge of his desk, remembering her intense face in the front row of his class. Or the times when she joined the informal discussion group that met at noon on Wednesdays. “I’ve got some books I’d be glad to loan you. I’ll dig them out of the debris in my apartment. I can give them to you later today.”
     “Today’s not good. How about tomorrow?”
     “It’ll have to be after two, I teach at the community college on Thursdays. How about four o’clock at the Stumptown CafÃ©? I’ll buy you a cappuccino.” Will winced. Did I really say cappuccino?
     “That’ll work for me. And thanks, Professor.”
     “No problem, Emmy.” Is that a date? It was good to feel foolish, even if she was under thirty. Still he had to rein it in. She called him Professor. It is not a date. It’s a cup of coffee and a book loan. I’m a library with a gray beard.

The arrival of a train and the sudden rush of passengers to and fro disturbed Will’s reverie of that day. Laughter and bits of conversation swirled around him. Will kept his eyes closed. He knew that if he opened them it would be June again, and he would have come back from Eugene and there would be a message on his machine. And he didn’t want to have heard that message. Not yet.
“The doors are closing. The doors are closing.” And the train moved on, leaving the sidewalk nearly empty and Will, still sitting on the damp wall, fell back into the past.

Chapter Three

Duane Poncy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:53:23 +0000

“Who’s calling?” A man’s voice. In Emmy’s apartment. At eleven o’clock in the morning. Maybe he had dialed the wrong number.
     “To whom am I speaking?”
     “Sergeant Bliss, Portland Police Department. I think you’d better tell me who you are.”
     “I must have the wrong number. I was calling Emmy D’Angelo.”
     “You have the right number. Please identify yourself.”
     Will felt weak. His voice shook, “Will Adelhardt. I’m Emmy’s boyfriend.” He always stumbled over that. At his age boy was ridiculous.
     “Well, Mr. Adelhardt, just give me your address so we can send someone over to talk to you. I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news.”
     Panic. “What do you mean?”
     “Mr. Adelhardt, your address?”
     “I’m sorry, Sergeant Bliss is it? What do you mean, bad news?”
     “Mr. Adelhardt, Emmy D’Angelo is dead.”
     Ice on the crown of his head running down his skull in frigid rivers of nerves.
     “Please give us your address, sir.”
     A rushing in his ears. Address?
     “Sir?”
     Will responded reflexively. Before the sergeant could ask him another question, Will put his index finger on the button of the phone.
     He sank to the couch and sat staring at the phone, rocking a little. It was so cold for June. The light was still blinking on his answering machine. The second message. His thoughts rolled over each other. Did I erase the first message? What will I do? Maybe Emmy’s here, in the bedroom, sleeping. Mistaken identity. Will almost got up to look, but he couldn’t face the possibility of an empty bedroom. He leaned forward with his hands dangling off his knees, tired and aching. The little red light continued to blink.
     Will pressed the play button. “Will, it’s Lucy. Please call me right away.” Lucy. Emmy’s friend. Minutes passed while he analyzed the tone of her voice. Was it urgent? Anguished? Too much. He was reading too much into her voice. She was fine. It was nothing. Lucy would know that Emmy was safe.
     The phone rang only once. As soon as she picked up, Will said, “Hi, Lucy. The weirdest thing happened. I called Emmy’s and some guy said he was a cop and tried to tell me Emmy was dead.”
     “Oh God, Will, I wanted to talk to you before you heard it from someone else.”
     The little hope he had reached for disappeared.
     Lucy’s voice was hoarse. “There was a fire at Bartlett House last night. Emmy was there.”
     “A fire? Lucy, what was Emmy doing there?”
     “I don’t know. No one seems to know. I’ve talked to Marta and Colin. The police wouldn’t give me any details, even Morris. Let me come over, Will. You must be a wreck. You shouldn’t be alone,” Lucy said.
     “No, Lucy, you don’t need to”¦What am I going to do?”
There were three sharp raps on the door.
     “Somebody’s here. Probably the police. I’ll call you back, Lucy.” Will hung up.
“Police, Mr. Adelhardt, open the door please.”
     “It’s open.”
     The knob turned, the door opened gently. The muzzle of a gun preceded the cautious face of a policeman peeking around the door jamb. Will closed his eyes, an image of Emmy’s body, charred, rose in his imagination. He opened his eyes. There were four of them. Two uniforms and two plainclothes. The police were looking around the room, at the travel bag on the floor where he’d dropped it, his briefcase on the table. Emmy’s beret on his coffee table. Will leaned over and picked it up. He stroked the black velvet.
     “I’m Detective Morris. Are you Will Adelhardt?” All business, leaning forward with his hand extended to Will.
     Morris. Wasn’t that Lucy’s police source? Will shook the detective’s hand without answering.
     “You planning on taking a trip, Professor?” The other plainclothes asked.
     When Will still did not speak, Detective Morris said, “We need to ask you some questions about where you were last night.”
     Will was stupefied. Emmy died in a burning house in Portland and they want to know about Eugene? He stared at them. “What?”
     “Probably be best if you come with us. Let’s see your identification, then we’ll go on down to the station and get this all sorted out.”
     Just like that, they could sort it out and then maybe he and Emmy could go out to dinner at that great Italian place in Irvington. Who the fuck did they think they were, miracle workers? They could sort this out? It wouldn’t ever be sorted out. You couldn’t sort this kind of thing out. And then it occurred to him. They thought he killed Emmy.
     There was a station a couple of blocks from Will’s apartment, but they didn’t take him there. Instead, they invited him to sit in the back of the unmarked car. There was no protective barrier between the seats. They didn’t seem to be worried about him jumping them, but Detective Morris, on the passenger’s side, turned sideways and watched him while they drove to the central precinct. It was a short ride. They could have walked it in less than fifteen minutes.
     It was a small, windowless, naked room with a table and two chairs. The walls were an indefinite color of green. Fluorescent lights trembled overhead. Will was momentarily diverted by the mundanity. It was as if he had walked into a stereotype. The only thing missing was a bare incandescent light hanging by a wire, but, he thought, if you have malfunctioning fluorescents, bare bulbs are superfluous.
     Morris introduced himself again, “I’m Detective Tom Morris and this is Detective Louis DeChris. Let’s be informal; you can call us Tom and Lou. What shall we call you, Professor?”
     He didn’t answer. He tried to get himself interested in the men, in his surroundings. It seemed like there was something in his head that wouldn’t move. It made him want to sleep and clouded his vision. He tried to distinguish these men, one from the other. It should have been easy. Tom was tall, thin, sandy-haired. His skin was yellow and his hands were bony. Lou was not as tall, not as thin, was black- haired, had a deeper yellow tone to his skin. It must be the lights Will thought, looking at his own skin, which had taken on a yellowish patina as well.
     Morris gave up on the niceties. “State your full name, age, and occupation, for our records.”
     “William David Adelhardt. 51. Professor of History.”
     “DOB?” asked De Chris.
     SOB, thought Will. I hate acronyms. “Ten fourteen, forty-nine.”
     Morris, “You’re what, about twenty years older than Emmy D’Angelo? That must have made you feel a little out of it. Old guy like you. What did you have to do to keep her interested?”
     “I don’t know what you mean.”
     “You like leather, Professor?” DeChris, again.
     “Leather?”
     “Let’s start at the beginning. That way we can clear this up and you can go home. Where were you last night?” Detective Morris sat with hands folded. Quiet, patient, earnest.
     “I was asleep in a motel in Eugene.”
     “Were you alone?”
     “Yes.”
     “Now Eugene is about 110 miles away, isn’t it? Freeway all the way, too. Wouldn’t take more than two hours to get to Portland and two to get back,” Morris appeared to be thinking out loud.
     DeChris went back to his theme, “So you’re kind of into that kinky stuff. You and that girl had a little S&M going on.”
     “No. It wasn’t like that,” Why is this cop saying this about Emmy?
     “How was it then? Did she hurt you?” Morris’ voice was soft as if he understood everything. “Why were you in Eugene?”
     “I was doing research. What does that have to do with Emmy? I think you’d better tell me what happened to her.”
     “We’d better tell you? Listen you smartass fuckhead”¦”
     Morris gave DeChris a sharp look, “Shut up, Lou. The man wants to know what we know.” He focused back on Will. “You probably loved her. You wouldn’t be the first man to kill the woman he loves. Detective DeChris here, he thinks you had some sex game that got out of hand. I think it was the love that got out of hand. What do you think, Will? What was it?”
     “You’re saying that it wasn’t the fire that killed Emmy,” Will said. A part of him was relieved. He’d been imagining smoke and flames and unendurable pain.
     “Did we say that? I don’t remember saying that,” DeChris said.
     The interview went on. Back and forth. Little by little, Will got an idea of what the firemen had found. Emmy had been dressed for bondage in leather, which was so far out of what Will knew about Emmy that he couldn’t get a picture of it in his head.
     “I guess you didn’t factor in that stone isn’t the best fuel for a fire,” DeChris said. “That turret’s stone walls and heavy old door kept the fire away from her. And if it hadn’t, all that leather she was wearing would have protected her body to some extent. Probably still would have been able to identify her and establish a reliable cause of death.”
     “How did she die?” He didn’t want to know, but he didn’t want to be shut out. He had more right to the intimate details than these strangers. Emmy meant nothing to them. Another body. He owed her this much, could give her nothing else besides this pathetic courage to bear the knowledge of her murder.
     Both policemen ignored his question. They had cause of death, but weren’t going to reveal it to him just yet. They held that information to the last and when they did give it to him, they gave him something else that shattered what was left of his heart.
     “Like I said before, I think the relationship was getting out of control. How could you be a father, at your age? Maybe you’ve been married before. Maybe you have other kids. You were thinking about them when you were playing the game. It was easier to squeeze the breath out of her than to break her heart. Or maybe you knew it was some other guy’s baby.”
     Will lost the blood in his face, his head went light, the room careened wildly around him.

Chapter Two

Duane Poncy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:52:38 +0000

Rain came in sudden downpours between Eugene and Portland, transforming Interstate-5 into a shallow wash. Heavy sixteen-wheelers funneled road-water at Will’s windshield. The world was water. Everything was distorted. In the fields wavy sheep bleated soundlessly and grazed under a soggy sky beneath low hills crowned with dark green water firs. After a few minutes, the downpour stopped, drops beaded on Will Adelhardt’s windshield, the pavement turned dry and blobs of whooshing color regained their edges, became cars with passengers and drivers.
     Will leaned back and let his hands slide down to the bottom of the steering wheel. It was Wednesday, not really a heavy traffic day and, during the frequent sun-breaks, the drive was pleasant. Lines of trees, living windbreakers, separated fields. By early June, the Willamette Valley’s generous soil was already lush with crops grown into a broad quilt of banded greens. Barns, farmhouses, and clumps of trees formed islands in the fields and crowned the mounded hillocks.
     Lebanon. Sweet Home. The first time he had seen those signs he had thought it was a queer mixture of the exotic and the familiar like baba ghanoush and apple pie. Thinking back to those early days and why he chose the University of Oregon, instead of some California college, and why he hadn’t even applied to the ivy leagues even though his grades and S.A.T. scores were high enough, he felt the chasm of his choices and might-have-beens opening. He stopped at the edge. The pit was really not giving him the thrill it used to.
     That would be Emmy’s fault.
     The U of O and Eugene had been Vietnam’s fault, had been his anger and frustration at burying friends on the poor side of Providence. A scholarship to Yale would have been, for him, a further trip than the 3,000 miles cross country; the Ivy League was a different dimension. And it wasn’t burying school buddies, he’d tried to tell his dad, it wasn’t how they died, but why. That the why was all tangled up with arms manufacturers and fear of losing markets and cheap labor, and misguided patriotism. And Eugene wasn’t Berkeley, wasn’t California and Beach Boys. Eugene was working class and flannel. It wasn’t all brown and hard-edged. It was moss and ferns, fecundity, primal. Primal compared to Providence.
     This visit to Eugene – the reason for it – brought back a rush of memories from those years of marrow-deep purpose. Those long nights of Ripple and hashish, filled with intense discussions about the military-industrial complex, racism, women’s rights; planning The Revolution; marching down rain-soaked streets to chants of “the people united, shall never be defeated.” And for all that, Eugene remained a small university town, full of idealism and small town neighborliness; its veins not yet hardened by heroin tracks like San Francisco or Boston.
     This is what had attracted him, and what had shaped his youthful mind in those years of turmoil. Years he had returned to document.
     Since then, his whole life had changed, at least on the surface. His hair now was short and gray, deep lines arced from his nose into his cropped beard, his belly was rounded. Until recently, he had tended to feel his fifty years in the joints of his body rather than note it in his face. Since meeting Emmy, he had begun to see it, but not feel it. If he caught sight of himself next to her in a window they passed, he would think how much like a father and daughter they appeared to be, but he felt like a lover when he looked at her.
     The smell of rotten eggs drew his attention to the Albany pulp mill hulking along the west side of the freeway. Miles of pipes, conduits, tanks and towering exhaust stacks. Will shivered, the plant always made him feel like he’d entered a science fiction diorama of the future gone terribly wrong. But his life was paper. His two books, dozens of articles, and the reams of syllabi, streams of student papers – he should be worshipping. The pulp mill was the robe and surplice of his religion.
     Albany and the mill disappeared behind him. Sun poured through holes in the clouds and triple rainbows arched over the valley. He should have brought Emmy with him. She could have taken a couple of days off from the bookstore. Old Orville was a pushover. Will was impatient to get back to her. How long had it been since he’d felt like this?
     Traffic was thicker, boxing him in. Will could see Salem in the distance coming up fast. Only an hour’s drive to Portland now.
     Was their relationship fair to Emmy? At twenty-eight she was at an age of decision. Most of his decisions were behind him. She should find a young man, start a family. But Emmy had an answer for that. “What makes you think that’s every woman’s dream? And how can I start a family? I barely know what one is.” There had been a tone in her voice as if the question were more than rhetorical, as if it demanded an answer. He didn’t have one. He had taken her hand in his and kissed the pink tips of her fingers, stared into her wide-set hazel eyes. Those eyes took up too much of her face; overwhelmed her pointed chin and narrow nose. They were hungry. They consumed her face. They consumed him.
     The clouds were leaning in close again, darkening the landscape, which had flattened out north of Salem. Will and his fellow travelers were rushing toward a curtain of rain at 65 miles per hour. Then they were enveloped in the indistinct world. Will slowed, his companions hurtled past. He flinched as a suburban monster vehicle flung water over his window, leaving him momentarily road-blind. He cursed at the driver’s rudeness, but he did not curse the rain. Lying in bed just three days ago, tangled in the sheets, listening to the rain running through the gutter pipes, trying to guess what time it was by the amount of light squeezing through the clouds, Will and Emmy had surrendered the possibility of summer to the endless river of rain.
     Emmy said, “The sun is an illusion. It doesn’t really exist.”
     Summer might not be waiting for spring to loosen her hold, but Emmy is waiting for me, Will thought. She’s perched on one of Orville’s tall wooden stools. She’s hunched over a book and I can see her shoulder blades making narrow ridges in the back of her sweater, her black hair curling around the base of her skull. I could live to be eighty. I could give her thirty years of my life. If she wants to leave in the middle after ten or fifteen years, it won’t be the first time for me.
     The rain ceased again and, on his right, a half-mile ahead, Will could see the spires of the Mormon Tabernacle rising like brittle white needles above green-black Douglas Firs and the freeway began to curve. After nearly two hours of straight road, these were warm-up curves. The real ones, the Terwilliger curves, lay beyond the caution sign, deceptively wide, sweeping; they were killers that had been partially subdued by the detour, which siphoned off truck traffic.
     Portland slammed into view, its skyscrapers bunched together on the river bottomland, boxed in by the West Hills, which formed a green, house-studded backdrop. The Willamette lay serene and wide. He passed by the Ross Island Bridge and held to the left, slipping out of the freeway stream, he came to a stop on Naito Parkway. Will laughed out loud. It wasn’t more than a year since his last divorce and here he was hopelessly in love and thinking about starting it all over again.
     Then he realized his mistake. He shouldn’t have taken Naito, it was Rose Festival and the carnies were setting up on Waterfront Park. A navy ship, ghostly, menacingly gray, loomed between the Morrison and Hawthorne bridges. The spans of the first bridge were closing; the span of the second was fully raised. Traffic entered the Hawthorne by a right turn, the Morrison by a left, so there was no movement in either lane. It was fully fifteen minutes before he was sliding into his parking spot in the apartment lot.
     Will dropped his travel bag on the floor and set his briefcase on the dining table. He noticed the blinking red light of the telephone answering machine. Two messages. The first was Emmy. “Hi, Will. I miss you. Hope your trip to Eugene was great. Doug says he’s got good news for me. Call me as soon as you get back, I’ll know by then. Did I leave my beret at your place? (pause) Will, we’ve really got to talk. Bye.”
     Something in Emmy’s voice made him uneasy. Will stopped the tape, he could listen to the other message later. He dialed Emmy’s number. After two rings, he remembered that she was at work and started to hang up. Then someone lifted the receiver.
     “Emmy?”

Chapter One

Duane Poncy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:53:14 +0000

He has gathered up the discarded things, their leavings, rave posters, and take-out bags, and the ragged blankets of the lost children. He has carried them here from the far reaches of the house and piled them in the center of this room.
     Outside, cool liquid air has descended and touched the earth and all that is on it, in this place, with its soft, wet soul. The transparent cloud condenses on the remaining windowpanes and glitters in the reach of the streetlights, seeps into the moss, which has grown to cover the window ledge beneath the roof where the eave has sunk and the gutter is rotted away.
     The neighborhood is deeply quiet. Below, on the flat by the river, city towers blink as cleaning crews move from office to office. The nightlife, half-hearted at midweek even during peak hours, is completely stilled. It is the insomniac and suicide hour.
     He is not a smoker, but he always keeps the lighter with him. It is an old-fashioned lighter, a refillable one, a sort of family heirloom. He is anxious, eager for the flames. It has been a long time. He strikes the lighter and yellow flame hums. He holds the flame to a frayed blanket edge. The threads shrink away, curl, disappear.
     “Come, come,” he coaxes. “Come little flame.” And the flame catches and runs along a tear in the blanket, grabs hold of a crumpled poster and leaps up.
     He backs away, slowly, pauses in the doorway to watch the flames rise and dance. And raises his arms into the air, runs his fingers through the smoke, runs ahead of the flame, pied piper of dragons, he runs into the night.

     Ed Holliday smelled the smoke before he saw the glow from the third story window of the old Bartlett house. His first thought was good riddance; maybe the street kids would stay away from the neighborhood without the old place to crash in. His second thought was, what if one of those poor kids was in there sleeping? He was dialing 911 on his cell phone and almost ran the stop sign on King. He had to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting the VW hippie van crossing in front of him. It surprised him. The van was the only vehicle he had encountered since leaving the freeway.
     “Emergency.”
     “I want to report a fire.”
     “Where are you located, sir?”
     “Between King and Twenty-fourth. It’s the old Bartlett place.”
     “Is that Southwest King?”
     “Yes. Look there could be somebody in there.”
     “Yes, sir. We’ve notified the fire department.” The operator instructed him to go home and not impede the emergency vehicles. Ed was home already, pulling into his drive, and he could hear the blast of the fire engine horns as they crossed the first intersection. The station was only five blocks away. Too close to bother with sirens, especially at this hour. But the police had made no such concession to the neighborhood. Ed heard the police siren begin from some far street and build toward him. He stood beside his car and watched the fire trucks arrive. Flames had eaten through the roof of the house and, vitalized with this abundant source of oxygen, flowed along the roofline.
     The iron gates were locked. Though the lock had never proven sufficient against homeless kids, it held back the fire trucks for a few precious seconds. Two firemen broke the lock with a crowbar and the first truck pulled into the drive and up to the house, over decades of fallen branches and ankle-deep leaves.
     Ed flinched at the sound of shattering glass. He thought about running to help, until he realized that it was just windows bursting from the heat, instead of some kid trying to fight his way out. And the windows kept breaking and the glass kept falling, glinting in the red swirling lights like frozen rain.
     A police cruiser arrived and parked diagonally in the street. Its blue lights swiped the neighborhood houses. The police officer got out and aimed her brilliant flashlight at Ed’s face.
     “Are you the man who reported the fire?” She asked.
     “Yes,” Ed motioned toward his house. “I live here.”
     “Out kind of late aren’t you?” She lowered the flashlight and approached him.
     “I just got back from Boston on the redeye.” Why is it, Ed thought, that an encounter with the police always makes me feel like I’m lying? “I prefer flying at night.”
     She retrieved a notebook and pen from a jacket pocket.
     “What’s your name?”
     “Edward Holliday.”
     “Could you spell that, please?” She looked up from her notebook and smiled as if to take the edge off her routine questions.
     He spelled it for her.
     “I’m Officer Trudeaux. Let’s talk about the fire.” She turned so that she was standing beside him, watching the fire with him. “It’s quite a sight isn’t it?” Almost conspiratorially or as if she were admiring the work of an artist.
     Ed nodded. The stone walls of the house were holding, but the roof seemed to be gone and flames were licking through the windows at the stone, reaching out greedy tongues to the tangle of morning glory vines that had spread over the original ivy and climbed up the walls. And the fire breathed, roaring and sucking.
     “Did you see anything in the area? Anyone that shouldn’t be here? A car?”
     “Only the hippie van.”
     “Tell me about it.” She was poised to write again. “Color, license plate. Did you see the driver? Where did you see the van?”
      “It was a Volkswagon van. An early sixties model. A real throwback, all painted up with designs. It looked like someone’s doodle pad.” Ed shook his head. “It was bad enough the first time around, but this whole retro-hippie thing is a bit much now, don’t you think?”
     Officer Trudeaux nodded. “So where did you say you saw the van?”
     “Back there at fifteenth. It was coming from the left. I was calling 911 and I almost ran the stop sign there. I would have hit it. I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
     “About the driver?”
     “I didn’t see him.”
     “Him? It was a man?”
     Ed thought for a moment. What had made him say one way or the other? “Well, I don’t really know. Guess that’s just a manner of speaking, you know. It could have been a woman.”
     With the roar of the fire and the constant drone of the fire engines, neither Officer Trudeaux nor Ed Holliday heard the man approaching. He just seemed to materialize beside them.
     “Jesus. It’s the Bartlett place.”
     They both jumped. Trudeaux’s hand moved reflexively toward her side arm.
     “Sir, step into the street, please.”
     The new arrival did as he was told. He faced them solemnly, his hands away from his body, waiting for the officer to speak.
     “Are you a neighbor? What’s your business here?”
     “I couldn’t sleep. I was just taking a walk,” the man said. He wasn’t a great deal taller than Officer Trudeaux, but he was broad-shouldered, which made him seem much larger than the policewoman.
     “What’s your name and where do you live?” She asked.
     “I’m Malcolm Crage. I’m the developer. Urban Visions? Maybe you’ve heard of it?” The tone was brittle.
     If you lived in Portland, you had to be comatose not to have heard of Urban Visions, Ed thought. So this was Malcolm Crage, or Connie Crage, as everybody, including the media, called him.
     Ed turned his attention back to the fire. The firefighters now had control of it. It was dying as he watched, more smoke than flame. He noticed, for the first time, the floodlights that had been set up to shine on the building. They illuminated the stone tower, which appeared to have sustained little damage. Even it’s peaked roof seemed mostly intact. A firefighter was opening a window, which had survived the blaze. He was shouting something into the night.
     Someone on the ground yelled back to him, “Use your radio.”
And less than a minute later, a fireman was hurrying toward Ed’s driveway.
     “Officer,” The fireman stopped in the middle of the street, removing his helmet, “we’ve got a body.”