The Lonely Dead

'If he doesn't call soon I'm going to kill him myself.'

'Cool,' I said. 'I'll help.'

It was nine o'clock by the time we were getting close. I called again. Still no response. Either she wasn't answering the phone for reasons of her own, or she wasn't home. First didn't make much sense. Second worried me.

Nina parked right outside a house that showed a single light, over the door. We got out and looked at the house.

'Nobody home, Ward.'

'Maybe.'

I walked up the steps and rang on the bell. It jangled inside. No lights came on. Nobody came to the door.

'I don't like this,' I said. 'Old people don't get out much. They're always home.'

'Maybe we should talk to the neighbours.'

I looked down at myself, then at her. Her blouse had a decent-sized splash of blood on it. The arm of my jacket was hanging on by a string and looked dark and blotched under the streetlight. 'Yeah, right.'

'I see your point,' she said. 'So what do we do now?'

I got out an ATM card which still didn't work, but which I'd never had the heart to throw away.

'Oh great,' she said.

She turned and watched the nearby windows while I worked the card into the frame of Mrs Campbell's door.

Five minutes later we'd confirmed she wasn't home. I had been half convinced we'd find her with an axe in her head. All the rooms were empty, however, and tidy.

'So she's out,' Nina said. 'Maybe she's just got more of a social life than you.'

We sat and waited until half past nine. Then Nina sat some more, while I paced around. Finally this took me out into the hallway, where I saw something I hadn't seen in a while. A telephone table. One of those pieces of furniture designed to hold a phone, and someone using it, back in the days when being able to speak to people from afar was still something of a big deal. Next to the phone itself was a small notebook covered in a floral fabric.

A personal telephone book.

I picked it up and riffled through to the letter 'D'. No names I recognized. Then, realizing I would probably have done the same, I looked under the letter 'M' instead.

There it was.

I picked up the phone and dialled. It was late. Mrs Campbell had told me Muriel had kids, but I hadn't gathered what age. Probably I was going to get an earful even assuming she answered the phone.

'Dupree household.'

'Is that Muriel?'

'Who is this?'

'My name's Ward Hopkins. We met a few…'

'I remember who you are. How did you get my number?'

'I'm in Mrs Campbell's house. It's in her book.'

'What the hell are you doing there?'

'I need to speak to her urgently. I came to see her. She wasn't home. I got worried and thought I should check inside.'

'Why would you be worried? Do you know something I don't?'

'Muriel, could you just tell me: do you know where she is?'

There was a pause, and then she said, 'Wait there.'

The sound of the phone became muffled. I heard her voice talking, but couldn't make out any of the words. Then it became clear again. 'She says she'll talk to you,' Muriel said, making it clear she thought this was a mistake. 'You'd better come over.'

— «» — «» — «»—

It was a twenty-minute drive across town. Muriel Dupree didn't look at all welcoming when she opened her door, but she did eventually step aside. She looked at Nina suspiciously.

'Who's she?'

'A friend,' I said.

'She know she's got blood on her shirt?'

'Yes,' Nina said. 'It's been a long day. Ward has it on him too.'

'He's a man. What do you expect?'

Mrs Dupree's house was tidy and airy and one of the nicest decorated I'd seen in a while. Plain and simple, the house of someone who both lived and valued an orderly life. She led us down a hallway into the back, where a wide kitchen gave onto a sitting area. Mrs Campbell was in a chair right next to the electric fire. She looked more frail than I remembered.

'If you don't mind me asking,' I said, 'what are you doing here?'

'Any reason she shouldn't be?'

I glanced at Muriel and realized Mrs Campbell meant a great deal to her. Also that, beneath the screw-you exterior, there was something else. Concern, certainly. Fear, perhaps.

I sat on the end of the couch. 'Mrs Campbell,' I said. 'There's something I have to ask you…'

'I know,' she said. 'So why don't you go ahead?'

'… but why are you here?'

'Funny things been happening,' Muriel said. 'Joan had been hearing strange sounds outside her house in the night. Where she lives, that's not unknown. But then some man came to the door and asks her a lot of questions.'

'When was this?'

'The day after you came,' Mrs Campbell said. 'It's okay, Muriel. I'll talk to him.'

'What did this man look like?'

'Your height. A little broader across the shoulders.'

I looked at Nina. 'John. I hope so, at least. He's a detective. He'd have been able to find out an old employee list.'

'He knew I'd worked there, that's for sure. I didn't know the answers to his questions, though. He went away. He was polite. But he didn't seem like a man who would treat everyone that way.'

'What did he ask you about?'

'Same thing you're about to. But I know the answers now.'

'When we spoke before, you told me about a family who had taken Paul in. The one in which the woman had a dog that died in strange circumstances.'

'I remember.'

'Was their name Jones?'

Nina's head jerked around to stare at me.

'No,' Mrs Campbell said. 'It was Wallace. Jones was the other family. The one who let him go when they had a baby girl.'

I felt dizzy. 'How come you remember this now?'

'She had me find out,' Muriel said, quietly. 'After you'd gone, she called me up. First I thought she was going to be angry with me for putting you in touch with her. But she wasn't.'

'I asked Muriel to do a little detective work on my behalf,' the old woman said. 'Track down a couple of my old colleagues, people who had been there back then. Found one in Florida, of course, baking herself to alligator hide. Other one in Maine. Moved back to be close to family, then the kids died ahead of her. That's life, I guess. With three sets of memories, we could put it together.' She bit her lip. 'So tell me. What has happened?'

'Paul has killed both of them,' I said. 'Jessica Jones was found dead in a motel four days ago, down in Los Angeles. Katelyn Wallace yesterday morning.'

'Where?'

'Up north. East of Seattle. He murdered them and left erased hard disks in their bodies. This seems to be something about undoing the past, wiping a life clean, maybe even some kind of purification thing.'

'Oh my God,' the old woman said. Her hands were shaking. Muriel reached across and gently put her hand on top of them.

'Jessica and Katelyn were children in his foster families?' Nina said. 'He killed them just because of that?'

'They were families that tried to take him in for good, actually tried to give him a home. Something about him made it impossible. He evidently needs someone to blame. He's wiping his disk clean. He's… Mrs Campbell, do you have any idea where Katelyn Wallace's parents live now?'

'They're dead,' Muriel said. 'Natural causes, five years ago. Well, kind of natural. Nature, anyhow. They were on a sail boat that sank out in the Bay. Nobody seemed to think there was anything weird about it.'

'What about the Joneses?' I asked.

'Don't know anything about them.'

'LAPD had local cops looking for them down in Monterey,' Nina said. 'I told you. They had an address but there was nobody home. The neighbours said they hadn't seen them in six weeks. The assumption was they were on vacation.'

'Maybe they are,' I said, but I was thinking of two people, of about the right age, whose bodies I had seen on a desolate, isolated plain five hundred miles north of where I was sitting. Whom John had photographed, and might possibly have been able to trace — if he'd subsequently made progress in an investigation he'd chosen to keep secret from Nina and me. I wasn't sure enough to say anything. It was equally possible that John really had been in Florida, had talked to the old woman's other friend, and traced the background that way.