“I’ll finish the fall semester, take that sabbatical I’ve been putting off, and head your way.”
“What would you do there?” asked Clare. “Around Princeton?”
“Maybe they need a lit teacher. Some nontenure-track guy to teach freshman comp.”
Clare said nothing, but her silence showed her skepticism.
“Seriously,” said Dale, “what am I going to do here in Missoula without you? I’d be like Marley’s ghost hanging around someplace that’s dead to me.”
“Isn’t it the ghost who’s supposed to be dead?” said Clare. “Not the place?”
“Whatever,” said Dale. “Actually, I’ve always thought that it was the ghost who was vital and the place that died. That’s why ghosts can be seen—they’re more real than the thin, faded version of the place. You know, like Lincoln’s ghost in the White House.”
“Interesting,” said Clare. They were cleaning out the stables at the ranch, and now she paused to rest on a pitchfork. “You’re serious? About coming east?”
“Absolutely,” said Dale. He realized even as he said it that he had not been serious, not up to that moment, but that now the plan meant more to him than anything else in the world. At the same instant, he felt the relationship between them swing as if on the hinge of his intentions; up to that moment he had been the locus, his hometown, his university, his classes that she was auditing, his family here in Missoula to be dealt with—but now he would be the guest, she the focus of action and attention. As if acknowledging this further, Dale said, “What I’ll really do is write my serious novel and learn how to be a good house husband while you’re at the library studying The Song of Roland or whatever the hell it is. When you come home in the wee hours, I’ll have a hot meal waiting and give you a back rub when we go to bed.”
Clare had looked up at him then, almost startled, with something like alarm visible in her eyes in the instant before she looked back toward the horses. Perhaps, Dale thought, it had been the use of the word husband. Whatever the reason, her glance had given him the first solid foreboding of their final breakup just three months in the future.
As if denying the possibility of that, he had stepped forward then, pushed her pitchfork away, and hugged her tightly, feeling her soft breasts through the denim workshirt. If there was a second or two of awkwardness on her part, it fled as soon as she returned the hug and raised her face for a kiss. One of the horses—Mab’s roan, probably—showed jealousy by kicking the stall gate.
Someone was knocking on the door.
Dale struggled awake, registered that he was lying on the daybed in Mr. McBride’s study still fully clothed and that his head still hurt like a sonofabitch, and then the pounding resumed. He looked at his watch. 9:15A.M. —they had promised to have people here for the search at first light. “Goddamnit to hell,” muttered Dale.
Groaning, rubbing his whiskered cheeks, he went out to let Deputy Taylor in.
“Where are they?” asked Dale as the heavyset deputy stepped into the kitchen, swinging his arms to get warm and eyeing the empty coffeemaker. Taylor had obviously also just been awakened.
“You’re supposed to come with me,” said the deputy, nodding toward his idling car outside.
“What are you talking about? Deputy Presser said he’d bring some people at first light for the search and. . .”
“I got a radio call. You’re supposed to come with me right now.”
“To the sheriff’s office?” asked Dale. “Have they found Michelle?” Dale’s skin went cold then with the absolute certainty that they had found her body.
Deputy Taylor shook his head, although Dale couldn’t guess which part of the question he was answering. Hopefully both parts. “You gotta come now,” the deputy said, pulling Dale’s peacoat from the hook.
“Do I have time to grab a quick shower and change my clothes?”
“I don’t think so,” said the chubby deputy, holding out the peacoat.
“Am I under arrest? Do I have to ride in the back of your car?”
The question seemed to surprise the deputy. For a few seconds he could only blink. Then he said, “Uh-uh,” but without conviction.
“In that case,” said Dale, “I’m going to go brush my teeth. That’s non-negotiable.”
Dale rode up front, in silence. The clouds were low and leaden this Christmas morning, and it was beginning to snow with that slow steadiness that often meant a real accumulation. Dale was surprised when Taylor turned into Elm Haven rather than taking the road to Oak Hill, but he knew where they were headed as soon as the car turned north on Broad Avenue.
The old Staffney house and barn looked in bad shape in the dim light, paint missing, the barn leaning, all the windows dark. The only vehicle in the driveway was another Sheriff’s Department car. Deputy Presser came out from around the back of the house as Taylor led Dale down the driveway.
“Michelle?” said Dale. The cold hand closed around his heart again. If she had driven here, injured, it was possible she could have died here in the house that she and that Diane woman had been renovating. But the deputies said yesterday that the house was empty. And her truck’s not here.
Deputy Presser shook his head and led them up onto the back porch. He used a key to let them in the back door.
“Don’t you need a warrant for this?” asked Dale, following Presser into the cold kitchen. The place smelled of mildew and rat droppings.
“The Staffneys don’t own it any more,” said Presser, sliding his hands back in his jacket pockets. It was colder in the kitchen than outside. “The bank over in Princeville has had the paper on this place since Dr. Staffney’s wife died in the home a few years ago.”
“But Michelle said. . .” began Dale and stopped. He realized that the kitchen was not just empty, it was abandoned. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling, exposing the bare ribs of lathing, and cabinet doors had long since been ripped off. Dust and droppings and chunks of plaster lay everywhere on the counters. Sections of the tile floor had been torn up and other sections destroyed by a leak from the ceiling. The ancient stove had been pulled out of place, with parts of it missing. There was no refrigerator. Pipes and gas valves and plumbing had been disconnected. The sink itself was filled with broken glass and mold, as if someone had broken bottles in there and left it many years before.
“I don’t understand,” said Dale. “Michelle said that she and her friend had been working on the place, bringing it up to snuff so that she could sell it.”
“Yes,” said Deputy Presser. “That’s what you told us last night.” He gestured for Deputy Taylor to hand him the long flashlight, flicked it on, and nodded for Dale to follow him down the hall into the other rooms.
Dale stopped in shock at the end of the stale-smelling, plaster-cluttered hallway. What had been a downstairs bathroom to the right showed a toilet ripped out of the floor, broken ceramic in the shattered sink, and an empty spot where an old claw-footed bathtub might once have crouched. The dining room and living room were worse.
The broad wooden boards in both rooms had been torn out, leaving only the upright edges of obviously rotted two-by-fours with a black drop to the unlighted basement visible between them. Even if the three men could have tiptoed successfully across the old support beams, there was nowhere to go; the once-grand staircase to the second floor was completely gone. Someone had long since torn out and scavenged all of the stairs, banisters, newel posts, and fixtures. Above the huge hole to the basement where the stairway once rose, the ceiling had collapsed. Dale could see all the way through the hole to the broken second-floor ceilings and even through the water-damaged roof to the low clouds. It looked to Dale like photos from London during the Blitz, some buzz-bombed tenement in Soho. Snow blew down the ruined shaft and disappeared into the basement, white flecks being absorbed by absolute black.