Lost Girls

next to the desk. Two men in leather hockey jackets smoke outside the courthouse doors across the way, waiting to be tried or questioned or ordered to relinquish their drivers' licenses. When finished, they flick their butts like fly fishermen, send two orange flares arcing under a sky now flattened by cloud.

''So, was your earlier research here fruitful, Mr. Crane?'' Pittle asks, taking an X-Acto blade to a cardboard box on the floor containing what appears to be the new installment of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

''Call me Barth. And it was very fruitful, yes. But I have a question this time around.''

''Oh?''

''Of a more historical nature, I suppose.''

''I see.''

He stops lifting the volumes out of their box and looks up at me in that unflinching, scientific way of his.

''The other day I bumped into a Mrs. Arthurs, out there on Lake St. Christopher. Nice lady, though given to quite fantastic stories. The one she told me involved a certain Lady in the Lake, attempted child abductions, and her fall through the ice to her death. I'm summarizing here to save you from the macabre details. What I'm wondering is if any of this rings a bell with you.''

''Of course it does,'' he says now, stands, his eyes never straying from mine. ''Everyone who lives around here knows that one.''

''So it's a lie?''

''Wouldn't say that. More like Murdoch's Loch Ness Monster, but without the benefits to the tourist trade. In fact, there's a number of people up here who blame the Lady's bad vibes for the lake's lack of investment. The thinking is that nobody wants to put money into a place known to inhabit a spirit intent on possessing other people's children. And there's a certain logic to that, I guess.''

''And what do you think?''

Pittle slides a hand into a pocket of his corduroys, combs the other through the front tuft of his hair.

''I think Helen Arthurs is a valued relic and entertaining in her way,'' he says, taking his time, ''but quite likely deep in the late stages of senility. I think the woman behind the Lady in the Lake was real but has been dead for a long time and these days is just something high school kids use to scare themselves with at Halloween. It's become a tradition for guys to take their girls up there to tell them their version of the tale, smoke a couple joints, drink booze stolen from their fathers' liquor cabinets and try to get laid.''

I step away from the window to lean my back against a standing bookshelf holding the whole of the Reference section: a copy of the Toronto phone book, a taped-together Oxford English Dictionary, a color atlas of the world, and the Guinness Book of World Records. All of it shaking slightly from a brand-new tic that pulls my shoulder blades together with a sudden violence every few minutes.

''So you don't believe there's anything to it?''

''Believe? That's different. You've been up there yourself, haven't you?''

''To investigate the circumstances--''

''Then you know what it's like. What do you believe?''

I answer with a sequence of cleared throat and unhinged mouth.

''Okay. Tough question.'' Pittle finally laughs. ''And not fair. I don't think I could answer it myself.''

He pulls both his hands from pocket and head to scratch his beard with a sudden vigor, takes a moment to smooth the longer whiskers away from his lips. ''So what was your question?''

''I guess you've already answered it, more or less.''

Pittle returns to lifting the box's contents onto the floor. In his miniature arms each book appears to be the size of the stone tablets Moses carried down the mountain.

''You mind if I ask a question of my own?'' he asks with his back turned.

''Go ahead.''

''I'm having trouble seeing what Mrs. Arthurs's story has got to do with your client.''

The shoulder blades pull together and the Guinness Book thumps over onto its side on the shelf.

''Tripp? It's got nothing to do with him. How could it? I was just wondering how nuts the old lady actually was.''

''Which old lady?''

''Mrs. Arthurs.''

''So you were wondering if she--Mrs. Arthurs--could be of assistance to the defense's case?''

''No. Of course not. No, no.'' I work up four mechanical shots of laughter. ''It's of cultural interest only.''

''I see.''

Pittle's head remains set to the work before him, the muscles in his shoulders pushing tight cords against the inside of his cable-knit sweater. Outside the window a clutter of sparrows emerge from the remaining leaves of a giant maple, startled by some invisible threat. I push my back away from the bookshelf to stand before Pittle's desk.

''Listen, Doug,'' I say, keeping my throat as loose as possible in order to deliver a just-a-guy voice. ''I don't want you to think that I--''

''I don't.''

Pittle stands now and turns to me, his teeth sugar cubes buried in facial hair. ''Lawyers, reporters. Librarians too,'' he says. ''Questions are our business.''

For a time both of us stand there with eyes cast at different corners of the room. Through some crack in a door frame or windowpane comes the faint smell of woodsmoke.

''Well, thanks, Doug,'' I say finally. ''But I suppose I should be getting back to the real world now.''

''Sure. Anytime.''

But before I move I do an odd thing. Raise my hand to wave at him as though he were standing at some distance away. A stupid, inexplicable gesture, but Pittle doesn't acknowledge it. It takes a conscious effort to bring my arm down again. To prevent any further strangeness I keep both hands busy by sending them to my throat where they straighten my tie all the way down the hall and out into the broad world of lights.

Seeing as I'm in the neighborhood I decide to drop in on Tripp on my way back, justify my per diem with a social call on the guy who's paying the bills. Short and sweet, a hang-in-there-big-fella pep talk--this is what I have in mind. But then the interview room door opens and it's clear that even this modest plan was overly ambitious. My client's face an enlarging moon, bloodless, puffjowled.

''You look well, Thom,'' I lie as he lands in the chair across the table from me, his hands absently hooked to the opposite edges.

''I wouldn't know. They don't let me look in any mirrors.''

''That's cruel and unusual punishment for anyone to endure. Want me to smuggle one in for you?''

''I've gotten used to it, actually,'' he says, moving his head around on his neck in a slow orbit of mechanical crunches and squeaks. ''A little while longer and I'll have forgotten who I am altogether.''

''Well, you just give me the word if you need anything else, okay?''

''Anything. Right.''

I've been in here thirty seconds and it feels too long. Like sitting next to the drunk who's decided to talk to you and you alone on a poorly ventilated subway car. And there's something that comes off Tripp's skin--moist, feverish, a wet sheepdog sweat--that shrinks the space around him.

''Just thought I'd check in on you. See how things were going,'' I say, tensing my knees for a quick lift up and out of here. ''But if there's nothing else, I might as well get back and--''

''Have you been up there?''

Awake. My client sounds awake.

''Where's that, Thom?''

''The lake. Where else?''

''Well, yes. I have been up there. As a matter of fact.''

''They always wanted to know about it.''

''The girls--''

''How it was so deep that it never got warm, not really, even at the end of summer. About throwing a penny