Clara Hastings's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Marcus called four times before noon. Clara let the phone buzz on the boarding house table and watched her landlady's shadow pass the door twice. On the fifth call she picked up. Marcus was breathing hard. He said he was going to the station to make them search the tunnels today. Clara told him to meet her at the shuttered diner off the old highway instead, the one with the striped awning and the boarded windows. She said she had something to show him. She said if he walked into the station shouting, they would both lose the list. She got there first. The front door was chained, but the side door gave when she leaned on it. Inside smelled like old grease and rain. She sat in a booth with cracked red vinyl and set her satchel on the table. She took out her notepad and the folded photocopy Marsh had slipped her that morning. Her hands were not steady. She pressed them flat until they were. Marcus came in fast. His jaw was set the way it had been at the station. He did not sit. "They think she wandered," he said. "She didn't wander." "I know." "Then why are we in a dead diner." "Because every time you call me, someone hears. Because the officer helping us is one bad day from being pulled off this. Because your grandmother's name is on a piece of paper three people are trying to keep alive." He stared at her. She turned the photocopy around. It was a rough portrait, drawn from a witness description Marsh had pulled from an old vagrancy file — a bald man with a long, dirty beard and a plaid shirt. Marsh had matched the description to a groundskeeper who had keys to the chapel basement two months ago. "This is who ran the blood drive," Clara said. "Marsh is pulling his address tonight. Quietly. If you go to the front desk this afternoon, that address disappears into a file cabinet and we never see it." Marcus sat down. He looked at the portrait for a long time. He touched the edge of the paper. "Six months ago a key went missing from her drawer," he said. "Spare key. Nobody could tell me who took it." "Then help me find him before he uses it again." He was quiet. Then he nodded once. He gave her his grandmother's Tuesday card game address, her medication log, the name of the neighbor who watched her mail. He said he would stop calling. He said he would wait. Clara walked back to the boarding house with the portrait in her satchel and a list of new leads in her notepad. Her landlady was on the porch, teacup in hand, watching the road. She smiled at Clara the way a person smiles at a window they mean to close.