She parks and steps out of her car. The Davenport Hotel rises dark and empty before her, burning at its base from the glow of construction lights. On these lower floors, behind braces of scaffolding, the restored terracotta gleams like new teeth.
She could climb the scaffolding to an open window. That's probably what Clark did. Instead, she peers through the automatic double doors. A janitor is working inside, wearing headphones and running an electric mop across the marble floor, no doubt cleaning up from one of the parties or wedding receptions they have here on the weekends in the restored ballroom. The hotel is four or five months from reopening and already people are straining to get in, to glimpse the history and the promise, to see for themselves if it's really coming back.
Caroline pounds on the glass, but the janitor can't hear her. She waits until he swings the sweeper her way and then she waves her arm. The janitor looks up, then shakes his head: No.
Caroline presses her badge against the glass and finally the janitor comes over. He reads her badge through the glass, then searches the ring on his belt for the proper key. He opens the door without saying a word. She explains that they picked someone up at the hotel two days earlier, and she just needs to have a look around.
The janitor shrugs and goes back to his mop. Caroline walks past the elevators and peeks into the lobby – she is not above longing, herself. She looks up at the paneled skylights, at the ornate railing on the second-floor walkway overlooking the marble-floored square, a fountain at its center. She closes her eyes and tries to hear the water trickling, the crowds, bellhops and porters, tropical birds, the cars motoring up to the door, Lindbergh and Earhart and Fairbanks sitting in chairs in the lobby. And Thomas Wolfe, downing his Scotch, grabbing his hat, preparing to leave Spokane "through land more barren all the time."
She opens her eyes on the dark, empty lobby – maybe a person can only spend so much time in empty buildings composing elegies. Caroline walks back and presses the button for the elevator. She is relieved when she hears the car coming down. The stairs might've killed her. Forty-eight hours without sleep.
The elevator is framed in gold-leaf pillars, oak leaves and clusters, but inside it is pure freight, the walls and railings papered and taped, a carpenter's sawhorse left in the center of the car. She rides up leaning on the saw-horse, the elevator motor and cables mumbling about morning and sleep, until the doors open onto the top floor of old rooms and Caroline emerges into a dusty hallway where the remodeling is still mostly theoretical. The first sunlight streams in from the east bank of windows onto a floor in which the lath-and-plaster walls have been removed and what remains is the bones of these rooms, framed in new honey-colored two-by-fours and a few old, gray beams and headers. She feels the breeze from the open window and walks toward it.
He is sitting on the ledge, his back to her, sky beginning to turn in front of him. She sticks her head out and feels the cool air, gasps a little. Spring comes with a hangover in Spokane – late, regretful, sometimes staggering back to bed. She slides her bag out onto the ledge and then begins to climb out the window, bracing herself on the window frame. She feels his ice-cold hand on her arm, helping her out on the wide guttered ledge. She sits next to him, shivers against the cold.
"You found me," he says.
"I found you."
They are facing north. Before them is downtown Spokane and the river channel, beyond that the gently sloping hills blanketed with homes and a simple, honest grid of streets. The whole thing is flatter than she would think. When you're on those streets the hills seem imposing, but from here it is a graceful and good incline, like a man propped on a pillow in bed, reading a book.
She looks past Clark, to the east, where the sky is clear and the sun streaks down the long river valley all the way from Idaho, framed by long straight rail lines and a bolt of freeway. Then she looks west, to where the dark sky is trying to hold on to threats.
"It's beautiful," she says. "I hope I didn't interrupt anything."
"I was just trying to get up the nerve," he says.
"What were you waiting for?"
"Sunrise," he says.
They both turn and look at the sun, still cradled in the foothills to the east.
"You wait long enough you might freeze to death instead."
"I probably don't have the nerve for that, either."
Caroline reaches in her bag, takes out the legal pads, and sets them down in front of Clark. Then she gives him the prom photo.
"Did you tell Dana?" he asks.
"No," she says. "I didn't tell her about Eli and I didn't tell her about you."
Clark stares out to the north again, leans back against the brick, and closes his eyes. "Do you know the worst part? Eli never told her it was my fault, that it was all my idea. He let me off the hook."
A jet tears across the clean sky above them, east to west, high and noiseless, its stream carving the blue until it hits dark clouds and disappears. Caroline picks up the yellow legal pads. "So is that it?"
"Hmm?" He turns to face her.
"The confession. Is that all of it?"
"Yeah. I guess it is."
"What now?"
"I don't know," he says. "What do you normally do?"
"What do we do?" She shrugs. "If someone turns himself in to the police and admits that he intended to commit murder? Committed acts furthering that crime? Entered into a conspiracy? We usually say you have the right to remain silent. That anything you say can be used against you. That you have the right to an attorney, but if you can't afford one we'll give you an overworked one who just got out of law school and will go into private practice the week your case goes to trial."
He smiles a little bit. "Am I under arrest?"
"I haven't decided," she says. "My sergeant thinks you fucked this up so much, there's probably nothing to charge you with. He thinks we should try to have you committed."
"And what do you think?"
"What do I think?" Above her, the jet's slipstream is already dissolving in the violet sky. She sets the legal pads down, presses her thumb against her lips, then reaches over and touches his forehead. It is ice cold. She doesn't even remember if this is how it's done. But she makes a small cross of absolution on his cold forehead. Clark closes his eyes. "I think this world is enough," Caroline says.
And then she leans back and rests, stares out across her city, just beginning to stir, the houses coming to light among the timbers and the first cars gliding along the hillsides – the entire valley bathed in sun – dark ridges of pine and fir holding it in timeless embrace. Clark leans against her and morning settles over them.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Anne Walter, Dan Butterworth, Jim Lynch, Cal Morgan, Lina Perl, Wayne Brookes, and Judith Regan for various acts of criticism, enthusiasm, and patience, and to Tony and Suzanne Bamonte, whose book, Spokane's Legendary Davenport Hotel, was a valuable resource.
About the author
Jess Walter is the writer of the highly acclaimed novel Over Tumbled Graves which was a New York Times notable book for 2001. He is also the co-author on Christopher Darden's number one bestseller In Contempt and wrote the non-fiction book Every Knee Shall Bow. Walter lives in Spokane with his family.
