Lost Girls

washes over chest and shoulders. Stay below as long as I can and then summon the strength to come up again, but each time I try to break through the water has risen higher. The only sounds are the crash of rain and, from somewhere above, the peeler's laughter. Swallowing the water out of the air and the last ache of bubbles from my lungs and--

The phone.

I'm up. Eyes open but not taking anything in. Two sounds filling the room: a hoarse gasping and, from the floor below, the ringing of the front desk phone. Back in the honeymoon suite, in my bed alone, the windows closed against the light rain outside. A pain like a splinter of bone caught in my throat, but awake.

Pull the sheets back and slip on the paisley boxers, blazer, and socks that lie together on the floor. Slip over to the door, down the hall. The only light below coming from the gaslight chandelier, which leaves a small orange circle on the faded carpet.

''Could somebody pick up the goddamn phone!'' I shout down, although I'm certain there's nobody there.

Let it ring another three times before I can move. Before I can pull myself down toward the orange light, telling myself there's nothing in front of me. That there's nobody there who I wouldn't have seen or heard by now.

When I reach the bottom I move around the railing and squint the phone into focus, its black rotary dial staring back at me with a startled oval for a mouth. My own mouth hanging open as well, too small to take in the sudden need for air. The phone in its circle of light shrinking as though I'm being lifted away into the empty rooms on the floors above.

Another ring that brings me back. Then my own shattered voice.

''Hel-lo?''

Nothing on the other end, the line violent with static.

''Listen, can I ask you something? Do you know what time it is? No? I'll tell you then. It's fucking late, that's what time it is, and if you--''

''I know you.''

A woman's voice, faint beneath the crackling interference.

''Who is this? You want me to have this traced? Because I won't hesitate--''

''I know what you like.''

''Yeah? Well, then you know I like sleep, and that you're interrupting it right now, so why don't you call up somebody else?''

''You like them young, don't you?''

''I'm going to go now. You hear me? So if you ever want to call here again, I suggest--''

''Don't you? Don't you like--''

Slam the receiver down hard enough to make the bell inside ring. But it doesn't start again. She doesn't call back.

It's only after I've hung up and am standing with both hands clinging to the edge of the front desk that I recognize the voice. The peeler from the hotel bar the other night. The one from my dream with the long hair and skin a powdered white.

chapter 15

It's four days until I venture out again, and when I do it's to visit the home of the presumably late Krystal McConnell, whose parents have consented to be interviewed by yours truly. This came as more than a little surprise. Generally speaking, the victim's family doesn't like to have anything to do with defense counsel for reasons that don't require mention. In this case I suspected the odds would be even more acutely against me, given that Goodwin's file showed the McConnells to be high-ups in the congregation at Immaculate Conception and described in almost every news story as ''community leaders.'' I took this to mean the kind of people who were first to set the match to books they'd wrenched from the hands of school librarians because they contained the word damn or scenes involving adolescent hands rising to adolescent breasts beneath angora sweaters. Further, from what I had gathered from my reading of The Murdoch Phoenix, Mr. McConnell was acting as spokesman for the victims, furnishing the press with tirades about the ''many masks of Satan,'' the hellfire awaiting Tripp in the afterlife, and the despair of living under a government that showed no intention of bringing back the death penalty.

The McConnells live in a massive Tudor rip-off on the street that, judging from the other dozen monstrosities which hunker on both sides of its length, is the address of Murdoch's elite. They're not new constructions; the ridged brickwork and Victorian gables suggest their having been slapped together sometime in the first quarter of the century. Perhaps then they were handsome, even majestic residences for the few that made money on the plundering of the town's surrounding rocks and trees. But that doesn't save them today from the intervening decades of infrequent paint jobs, the insurrection of gardens that have long since become thickets, the replacement of natural wood siding with aluminum. The McConnell place has fared somewhat better than others, its facade composed of a knobbly white stucco, which, as I pull into the driveway, looks freshly clean through the dripping autumn colors of the front-yard maple. McConnell himself, who opens the door before I have the chance to touch the doorbell, looks clean as well in creased navy slacks and gray cable-knit sweater pulled over his pregnant belly.

''Mr. Crane. Come in,'' he says, extending his arm out across the front hallway but failing to meet my eyes. He makes no move to take my coat, so I'm left with no choice but to leave it on.

''May I say first, Mr. McConnell, how sorry I am for your loss. As strange as it may seem coming from me, I can only--''

''Perhaps the living room is a better place for discussion.'' He steps behind me, looking up and down the street before closing the heavy front door.

McConnell's money came from fixing cars. Three service stations now bore his name, dotted along the main north-south highway through the county. McConnell's Auto Stops had managed to corner what was left of the market just by sticking around, moving in whenever one of the remaining big-name franchises went under and could be picked up for a song. And as he leads the way to the back of the house and bids me to take a seat in an overstuffed recliner next to a fire too large for its hearth, one can see the former mechanic in his bearish shoulders, the loose shiftings of his ass. He gives the impression of being a man who, having ascended to the pinnacle of employer from the trench of employee, didn't take with him any special sympathies for those who now toil in the grease below him.

''I don't want to take up any more of your time than necessary,'' I begin, pulling a notepad from my case and smoothing it over my knee. ''My questions, I assure you, are of a general nature only.''

''Yeah? Well, I got some questions too.''

He's standing with his back to me, looking out over the backyard carpeted with fallen leaves. His voice isn't angry--not yet angry--but there's a tightness in it, an effort to control its tone so that he can make the points he's listed in his head. How could I have thought that his voice over the phone suggested something else, like shyness?

''What sort of questions?''

''How about 'Why are you trying to keep the man who killed my little girl out of jail?' ''

He turns now and looks at me directly for the first time. If it weren't for his standing silhouetted so hugely against the window and the heat of the blaze next to me made worse by the thick insulation of my overcoat, I could handle this better. As it is I'm suddenly woozy, an ominous tingling at the tip of my nose. My stomach barks.

''With all due respect, Mr. McConnell, my client's guilt hasn't yet been determined.''

''Oh yes it has. By me it has. By my wife and family it sure has. By God Almighty, that man's guilt has been determined all right.''

Something, either a long-distance drop of spit from McConnell's mouth or perspiration falling from my brow, lands on the bridge of my nose and trickles down to where it is no longer felt. My eyes stray to the side, to the snapping yellow of the fire that blasts a nugget of wood against the wire screen every couple of seconds. On the