by Rex Burns
“You haven’t seen her since?”
“No.”
“Why did Dorcas leave school that time?”
The girl’s startled eyes looked up from the coffee cup and her voice was even fainter. “When?”
“Winter quarter of her junior year. The time she ran away and went to Lake Tahoe.” I sighed. “You know about it, Shelley. Steven knows about it, too.”
“He said so?”
“I just want to find out what happened. Look, people—runaways—tend to act in patterns, and what happened then might be a clue to where she is now.”
“It was after Jerry … committed suicide. Jerry Hawley?”
I nodded as if I was familiar with the name.
“She had to get away. She liked him, I guess. I mean, we all went around together—Jerry, Dori, Steve, and Dwayne. And me. And then that happened. It really freaked us all out, you know? Dori took it real hard; she said she just wanted to be by herself and think things out.” Shelley shrugged. “So she went off.”
“Did she tell anyone she was going? Dwayne? You?”
“Maybe she told Dwayne, I don’t know. She and Dwayne and Jerry, they were close. But she didn’t tell me. I remember people came and asked if I knew where she was—somebody from the dean’s office—but there wasn’t anything I could tell them.”
“Do you know if anything’s happened lately that might have caused her to run away again?”
“No.”
“Do you know if she has a current boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Do you know where Dwayne might have gone?”
“No.”
“You realize her parents are very worried about her?”
“Yes. I guess so.”
I stifled a sigh and wrote on a scrap of napkin. “Okay, Shelley. I have the feeling you know more than you’re telling me. But I don’t know why you want to keep it a secret. All I want to do is find out if Dorcas is all right; I won’t and can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do.” I glanced up. “You are keeping something back, aren’t you?”
Her head quivered no. “Why should I?”
“I don’t know, yet. If I have to find out, I will, of course. And, eventually, I will find Dorcas. I just can’t understand why you don’t want to help your friend, especially when you know how worried her mother and father are.” I waited, but the girl only stared at her untouched coffee. “Okay, Shelley, come on— I’ll take you back to work.”
On the silent ride back to the graphics firm, she folded and refolded the scrap of napkin that held my name and number.
It wasn’t terror, it wasn’t love. If she didn’t, in the depths of her heart, know differently, she would call it hypnotism. But it never had been that, either. She remembered when they had messed around with that in junior high. She remembered telling Dwayne she couldn’t keep her arm from lifting when he commanded it, and she had told herself, too; and the arm really had lifted of its own will—light, effortless, floating away from her side like Dwayne’s voice told it to. But even when her body lay like a board between two chairs, one under her neck, the other under her heels, revealing a strength that she could never obtain without hypnotism, she knew what was happening. She wasn’t out; she wasn’t unaware. She just knew that her flesh was strong enough to do what his soft voice told her and that if he told her to do things she did not want to do, her watching self could take over and resist.
So this wasn’t hypnotism, because there was no watching self. Brainwashing, maybe. But maybe not. She didn’t know anything about that, but in the movies it took all sorts of physical gimmicks—flashing lights, isolation cells, sleep deprivation and instruction—and there was none of that. So it probably wasn’t brainwashing. Maybe it was exactly what he called it: the Bond. And the absolution brought by the knowledge of Power.
Curiosity, too. She had been curious about his journey, his discoveries. For a long time they had been talking about the fringes of things—the edge of consciousness, that which lay just beyond sensible knowledge, that rim of awareness of the spiritual realm. The doors through and the glimpses of the Other Side. He had been into it far more than she. In fact, at first she had avoided him. But he was always there on the edge of vision: reminding her, demanding that she remember the Bond, and everything that had made up the Bond. Then he offered a reprieve from guilt through the worship of power. The guilt and her own weakness, the curiosity, were equally persistent.
She could say it was the PCP or LSD or whatever designer drug she finally accepted. But that was later, after she had already found herself drawn back again to an older and more sexually mature and even frightening Dwayne. Before, in junior high school, when they had touched and explored each other it was with the excitement of daring the forbidden. In high school, it became not just the innocent pleasure of discovery, but the grown-up awareness of fulfillment. They weren’t playing the kid games but doing the real thing, and you could feel the difference between you and those who hadn’t yet crossed into that knowledge. It was in your walk, it was something in your eyes, it was in the unworded understanding between those who had and those who hadn’t, and it was a secret that even the other members of the Four never guessed. And even in college, somehow, the fear gradually faded and the excitement was brought back and it was made all the more fulfilling by rituals. After a while, Dwayne talked a lot about the conjuration of lust but she didn’t really understand what it meant and finally she asked him to show her, and she’d asked without drinking or dropping so it wasn’t any of those outside forces that drove her to it. That was it: she wasn’t driven to it, she had embraced it willingly, and, with a tiny chill deep in her chest, she admitted that the decision was hers alone—she willingly joined the all-encompassing evil force that ruled this insane and death-plagued earth. Earth is the anteroom of hell, Dwayne said; the spirits who rule it are not—could not be—the benevolent gods of familiar religions. No god with any sense of righteousness or love could allow things like the Holocaust, or a crippled and suffering child, or cancer, or the feebleminded like—he reminded her—David. All those pains were manifestations of a vast realm of evil. Satan rules. The Beast rules. And she herself had discovered his power in her, his mark in her own psyche.
But not without rebellion. Even if the Beast ruled, she had still felt shock and loss and a sense of emptiness when that frightened and struggling figure suddenly disappeared into blackness beyond the cliff. It had been a game. He told them it would be a game and no one even thought about David getting hurt. When he shoved him, Dori’s eyes saw but her mind couldn’t believe. Later, when belief came and brought with it the stifled moans and shuddering, the uncontrollable tears from all of them, Dwayne was there to tell them what to say: An accident. We’re all in this together. A bond of death. An accident. Say it was an accident or we all go to prison for murder.
And a bond of shame which she didn’t face until the next morning when she woke in the bed that had once been so safe. When the warm sunlight, patterned on her bedroom wall through the softly curtained windows, suddenly congealed into a stifling iciness as she remembered: oh, my God in heaven, what did I do?
Then she ran.
For all the good it did, because the guilt kept pace and the degradation of the streets only reinforced her sense of worthlessness. The people at the shelter in Los Angeles where she finally washed up gave her a look at what was waiting for her. They told her what they could do—which wasn’t much—and what they couldn’t do, and left her to make up her own mind. But she didn’t deserve any better than the streets—she knew that. The streets were her punishment and what she deserved. But she didn’t even have the courage for that. She was afraid. And that was why she went home, still bearing the guilt, still knowing what she merited and the cowardice that denied it. And she took it with her to college because there was no other direction or place that would make any difference. Kimberly and Stacey seemed to have stifled any feelings about it; they avoided Dwayne and Dori, and,
in effect, the Four were no longer together. There was too much in each other’s eyes. Margot, who didn’t understand, was angry. Was still angry when Dori went away to Occidental where Dwayne, too, had decided to go. Dwayne, who later told her about the absolution of power. About the willful rejection of guilt. About the assertion of self against all that would destroy it.
CHAPTER 9
THE DEAN’S OFFICE OF Occidental College didn’t want to talk to me about Jerry Hawley, and I wasn’t surprised. If I’d driven up there and asked in person, I might have learned a little more. But then I might not. The woman to whom my inquiry had finally been shunted sounded pretty tough over the telephone. She said that the very unfortunate matter was closed as far as the college was concerned and that any further information would have to be obtained from other sources. You, Mr. Steele, could direct your inquiries to relatives of the victim—and she couldn’t divulge that address—or to the appropriate police agency. I hope that helped you. Good-bye.
No, thinking back over the terse conversation, I was decidedly glad I hadn’t wasted time and gas. However, as public agencies, police departments were another thing. This taxpayer spent the tag end of the working day on the phone with various clerks and officers. Finally I ended up with the homicide office of the Pasadena PD. They had been called in as the nearest agency equipped to investigate suicides and other unnatural deaths on campus.
“Yeah, Mr. Steele. It was a suicide, no question. The boy hung himself with the belt of his bathrobe. Tied one end to the bathroom doorknob, noose in the other end, slung it over the top of the door. Stepped off a chair.” The world-weary voice added, “Wasn’t one of these sex thrills—you know, accidental hanging while masturbating. Kid just did it.” He asked, “You really think this’s got something to do with that girl you’re looking for?”
“It’s a long shot,” I admitted. “I’m just trying to fill in a background for her. Maybe one thing will lead to another.”
“Yeah. Way these things usually work. But I don’t know—suicide, anymore, it just seems like the thing to do. She a high school girl?”
“No. She was in the same college class as Hawley.”
“I see. Not as likely to be a suicide, then, statistics-wise.” He added, “But God knows it happens. Well, that’s about all we got on it. Like I say, trace of chemicals in his system—some kind of designer drug, the pathologist guessed. Not enough to cause hallucinations just prior to the time of death, though. Looks like he was popping something a few days before, but that’s it. No alcohol, no previous brain damage. Hell, who knows what makes a kid do it?”
“And you have no record on a Shirley or a Dorcas Wilcox or a Dwayne Vengley?”
“Nope. Names aren’t in our computer.” And, the voice implied, he’d done enough for public relations.
I thanked the officer and hung up, aware that though the information was nice to know, it didn’t seem to lead anywhere.
Which was also where my attempted interviews with the last two names given by Mrs. Vengley had led, too. The girl, Melodie, had moved to Portland a year ago. The man, Tim Gifford, had moved maybe six weeks ago. The post office records had a forwarding address for him: a box number in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Rubbing my burning eyes, I totaled up the expenses and dialed Henry’s number. Margaret answered and with the carefully controlled enunciation of a self-conscious drinker told me that Henry was still at the office and wouldn’t be back until around eleven. “Have you found out anything, Jack?”
“Not yet. These things take time.”
“I know. It’s just … I was hoping maybe you could find out something by now.”
“It’s only been forty-eight hours, Margaret.” But she was right: forty-eight hours with nothing to show for it. I was unhappy, too. “Let’s not give up too soon.” To buck up my courage as well as hers.
“Yes, of course. Do you want Henry to phone you when he gets home?”
That would probably be a good idea, but the woman sounded as if she might have trouble remembering that I had called, let alone what I’d told her. “If he can. If not, I’ll get back to him.”
Henry still hadn’t called by the time I returned from my run along the beach. I checked my watch and drove up the Strand into Coronado. Jenny and the admiral had asked if I could drop by for an evening drink, and I left home early enough to follow the thought that had crossed my mind as my heels thudded on the hard, wet sand and the spray from the incoming surf salted my lips. Exercise always seems to help thought—increased blood flow, maybe, or just getting away from the issue to let the half- or even un-conscious wrestle with it while the surface of my mind focused on the running. Or maybe it’s the reward for earning my bread by the sweat of my brow. Whatever, an answer to one question had suggested itself. With a little luck that answer might lead to others.
The early-evening traffic was light on Orange Avenue. Since the bridge had been built, Glorietta Boulevard siphoned off most of the cars headed for the Strand. And Fourth Street—leading to North Island—had been widened to accommodate the other major traffic flow. Turning off Orange, I found parking next to the municipal tennis courts beside the town library. An elderly couple in white tennis togs played a vigorous game marked by the twang of rackets and the squeak of rubber soles. Out of those sounds came the name Patty Denard—one of the girls I dated in high school. It had been one of those relationships that were strictly friendship and never developed into any kind of romance. I couldn’t remember why. She was attractive in a pert, athletic way, and we’d played on these same courts in the long twilight of cooling summer evenings. Had a good time together, too. But neither of us had wanted more. Our minds were on what we would be doing after graduation, and tennis was the only game we were interested in. Still, I wondered where she was now, and hoped that she and so many other freshly remembered names were happy.
Across D Avenue loomed the dark bulk of the high school. I stood a few moments to study a shadowy front that had been remodeled in contemporary drab. At least the WPA facade of a few decades ago had offered an attempt at stateliness. The stiff figures in a dated bas-relief had carried a sense of the past. Now, that sense was my own memory of images and faces—and not a little comedy, some of which still held the bite of mortification. Thomas Wolfe was right, and maybe it was best that way. With a sigh, I turned away from the ugliness of the building and went under shaggy palm trees into the reading room of the library.
The newspaper file was limited, but the San Diego Union and Los Angeles Times back issues were on microfilm. I searched through the columns until I found the article buried among items of local and regional news in the Times: “College Student Commits Suicide.” Under the small headline, the story said that Gerald Hawley, twenty, a student at Occidental College, had been found dead the night before, an apparent suicide. Police sources said the young man died of strangulation after hanging himself in his room on campus. The fully clothed body was found by a neighbor who came in to ask Hawley to turn down the volume on a stereo set. Hawley’s friends were at a loss to explain the death. “He didn’t seem depressed or worried,” said Dwayne Vengley, twenty-one, an acquaintance. Other sources stated that Hawley had been looking forward to skiing during the upcoming winter vacation. Hawley’s parents lived on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles.
I made a photocopy of the article and drove the half dozen blocks across town to the admiral’s. My eyes were on the road and its sequence of stop signs. But my mind was on that name that kept cropping up: Dwayne Vengley.
Neither Jenny nor the admiral recognized the name. The David Gates affair had taken place five years ago, and even their original knowledge of it had been limited only to its effect on Dorcas. Jenny described her role as more of a hand-holder than a confessor. “I didn’t want to ask too many questions, Jack. It was such a traumatic time, and there really didn’t seem much point in making Dori go over it again and again.”
The four of us sat in the large, quiet living room: myself, the
admiral and Jenny, and Megan Wells—introduced by Jenny as “one of our favorite young people.” A tall woman somewhere in her thirties, the widow of a naval aviator, she had a natural beauty that called for only the slightest touches of makeup. I wasn’t surprised when Jenny said that Megan had been a model before she married.
“It was a very brief career,” she smiled. “I found I had neither the talent to pose nor the patience to learn.”
But if she lacked patience, she did have the other attributes. It was a thought I kept to myself because it was painfully evident to both of us that Jenny was playing matchmaker. I should have guessed it would happen sooner or later, but was surprised it came so soon. A lot of women—and even some men—insist that single people should be mated as quickly as possible. The idea had infected a number of acquaintances in Washington who, after a suitable period following Eleanor’s death, had begun introducing me to their eligible friends. But I was certain both my daughters were more secure without a mother than they would have been with just any new one, and I wasn’t looking for companionship. I didn’t feel either incomplete or lonely as a widower. The memory of Eleanor still filled any emotional yearnings, and my marriage to my job was as yet unbroken. Of course, all of the Washington matchmaking efforts came to a screeching halt when the congressman surfaced.
Apparently Megan felt the same unease, murmuring as we had been introduced, “I didn’t know Jenny had invited anyone else.”
“I only stopped by for a few minutes,” I apologized. We shared a sense of relief as the admiral assured me that I certainly had time for one drink.
“And this young man who committed suicide—you think that’s what made Dorcas drop out of college?” The admiral fidgeted with an unlit cigar.
“That’s just a guess.”
“But you sense a pattern in Dori’s behavior,” said Megan.
I nodded, watching the woman frown at her glass.