“Who did your brother go to stay with?”

At that she looked a little embarrassed—she didn’t know. “I was surprised when he said he was going to stay with friends, because he doesn’t have any. He did get a call Wednesday afternoon about two hours after he got out of the hospital, and it was a little after that that he announced he was going away for a few days. But he left when I was doing my volunteer stint at the hospital, so I don’t have any idea who might have come by for him.”

Ms. Chigwell also had no idea who had called her brother. It had been a man, because she had picked up an extension at the same time Curtis had. Hearing a man say her brother’s name, she’d immediately hung up. It was a pity, really, that her sense of moral rectitude had been too great for her to eavesdrop on her brother, but you can’t have everything in an imperfect world.

It was close to eleven when I finally left. Looking back, I could see her gaunt frame silhouetted in the doorway. She lifted a hand in a formal gesture and shut the door.

29

Night Crawlers

I hadn’t realized how tired I was until I got into my car. The pain in my shoulders returned in a wave that swept me back limply in the front seat. Little tears of hurt and self-pity pricked my eyelids. Quitters never win and winners never quit, I quoted my old basketball coach grimly. Play through the pain, not against it.

I rolled the car window down, my sore arm moving slowly to the commands of my brain. I sat for a while, watching the Chigwell house and the surrounding street, dozing a bit, finally deciding the indomitable old lady wasn’t under surveillance before putting the car into gear and heading for home.

The Eisenhower is never really clear of traffic—trucks thunder into the city throughout the night, some people are getting off late-night shifts, others heading for the action that begins only after dark. I joined the sweep of anonymous vehicles at Hillside. The steady stream of lights, red from the cars, orange on the sides of the trucks, the rows of street-lamps stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see, made me feel isolated and alone. A little speck in the great universe of lights, an atom of dust who could merge with the mud of Dead Stick Pond without leaving a trace behind.

My fragmented mood stayed with me as I drove slowly along Belmont to my apartment on Racine. I was hoping with the bottom half of my mind that Mr. Contreras and Peppy would be up to greet me—the top half sternly said I didn’t want the old man breathing down my neck all the time.

That secret yearning may have saved my life. I had paused outside Mr. Contreras’s ground-floor apartment, putting down the diaries to tie my shoes, seeing if my presence might rouse the dog so that I’d have a little companionship before going to bed.