The Unquiet

“Except what? Tell me, Je

The girl had looked uncomfortable. “Except I could only see them if I didn’t look directly at them. I know it makes no sense, Mom, but they were both there and not there.” She took the drawing from her mother. “I think they’re kind of cool.”

“They were here, Je

Je

Rebecca’s hand went to her mouth. She felt ill. Je

“Don’t worry, Mom. It was probably just some weird mind thing. If it helps, I didn’t feel scared or anything. They don’t mean us any harm.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do. I kind of heard them, in my head, while I was sleeping or waking or whatever it was I was doing. They weren’t interested in us.”

Then, for the first time, Je

Rebecca tried to stop her voice from trembling when she spoke. “Honey, who are they?”

The question distracted Je

She held the drawing up before her, both admiring it and yet slightly concerned at what she had created.

“They’re the Hollow Men.”

Chapter VII

I had strawberries and coffee for breakfast. There was a Delgados CD, Universal Audio, in the stereo, and I let it play while I ate. Walter fooled around in the garden, relieved himself in the bushes, then came back inside and fell asleep in his basket.

When I was done eating, I spread the list of Daniel Clay’s former associates on the kitchen table, and added “Eldritch” to the bottom. Then I worked out a rough order in which to approach them all, starting with those who were local yet farthest from town. I began to make calls to arrange appointments, but the first three were washouts. The people in question had either moved, or were dead or, in the case of a third man, a former professor of Clay’s who had retired to Bar Harbor, were suffering from such severe Alzheimer’s that, according to his daughter-in-law, he no longer even recognized his own children.

I had better luck, of a sort, with the fourth name, an accountant named Edward Haver. He had died a decade earlier, but his wife, Ce-line, said that she wouldn’t mind talking about Clay, even over the phone, particularly when I explained that I had been hired by Clay’s daughter. She told me that she had always liked “Dan,” and had never found him to be anything other than good company. She and her husband had attended his wife’s funeral, back when Rebecca was only four or five. His wife had died of cancer. Then, twenty years later, her own husband had succumbed to a form of the same illness, and Daniel Clay had attended that funeral. For a time, she admitted, she thought that there might have been a chance that they would get together, for they had similar tastes, and she liked Rebecca, but it seemed that Clay had become used to living without a partner.

“And then he vanished,” she concluded.

I was about to press her about the circumstances of his disappearance, but in the end I didn’t have to.

“I know what people said about him, but that wasn’t Dan, not the Dan that I knew,” she said. “He cared about the children he counseled, maybe too much. You could see it in his face when he spoke about them.”

“He talked about his cases with you?”

“He never mentioned names, but sometimes he’d tell me about what a child had been through: beatings, neglect, and, well, you know, other things too. It was clear that it troubled him. He couldn’t bear to see a child hurt. I think that brought him into conflict with people sometimes.”

“What kind of people?”

“Other professionals, doctors who didn’t always see things the way that he did. There was one man named-oh, what was it again? I’ve seen his name somewhere recently-Christian! That’s it: Dr. Robert Christian, over at the Midlake Center. He and Dan were always disagreeing about things in papers that they wrote, or at conferences. I guess it was a small field that they worked in, so they were forever encountering each other and arguing over how best to deal with the children who came to them.”

“You seem to have a good memory for events that were sometime in the past, Mrs. Haver.” I tried not to make it sound like I was doubting her, or that I was suspicious in any way, although I felt a little of both.

“I liked Dan a lot, and we shared parts of our life over the years.” I could almost see her smiling sadly. “He rarely got angry, but I can still remember the look that used to come over his face when the subject of Robert Christian was raised. They were competing, in a way. Dan and Dr. Christian were both involved in evaluating allegations of child abuse, but each had a very different approach. I think Dan was a little less cautious than Dr. Christian, that’s all. He was inclined to believe the child from the start, on the grounds that his priority was the protection of children from harm. I admired that about him. He had a crusading impulse, and you don’t see that kind of devotion much anymore. Dr. Christian didn’t see his calling in the same way. Dan said Robert Christian was too skeptical, that he confused objectivity with distrust. Then there was some trouble. Dan gave an evaluation that turned out to be wrong, and a man died, but I guess you probably know about all that already. Afterward, I think, Dan was offered fewer evaluations, or maybe they stopped altogether.”

“Do you remember the name of the man who died?”

“I think it was a German name. Muller, perhaps? Yes, I’m almost sure that was the name. I would imagine that the boy involved must be in his late teens by now. I can’t imagine what his life has been like, knowing that his allegations led to his father’s death.”

I wrote down the name “Muller,” and drew a line co

“Then, of course, the rumors started,” she said.

“The rumors of abuse?”

“That’s right.”

“Did he discuss them with you?”

“No, we weren’t really seeing much of each other by that time. After the death of Mr. Muller, Daniel became less sociable. Don’t get me wrong: he was never what you might call a party animal, but he would attend di

“You didn’t believe them?”

“I saw how committed he was to his work. I could never believe the things some people said about Dan. It sounds like a cliché, but his problem was that he cared too much. He wanted to protect them all, but he couldn’t, in the end.”

I thanked her, and she told me to call her anytime. Before she hung up, she gave me some names of people to whom I might talk, but they were all on Rebecca’s list. Still, she was helpful, which was more than could be said for the next two people I called. One was a lawyer named Elwin Stark, who had acted for Clay as well as being his friend. I knew Stark to see around town. He was tall and unctuous, and favored the kind of dark-striped suits beloved of old-style mobsters and upmarket antiques dealers. It was true to say that he wasn’t the pro bono kind when it came to legal matters, and he seemed to apply the same principle to telephone conversations for which he wasn’t being paid. It was Stark who had dealt with the paperwork surrounding the declaration of Clay’s death.

“He’s gone,” Stark told me, after his secretary had left me hanging in the ether for a good fifteen minutes, then advised me that Stark wouldn’t have time to see me in person but might, just might, have two minutes free during which he could squeeze in a brief talk on the phone. “There’s nothing more to be said about it.”