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what Cindy Dorn had said about being
able to see Greenleaf ’s house from the top floor. "It’s
close to the hill. You can see his condo from the window."
    "If he was homesick, why didn’t he just go
home? I mean, it’s just a mile or two away."
    "Maybe he didn’t want to leave a mess."
    "Fags," McCain said listlessly. "They’re
a different breed."
    "How’d you guys know he was homosexual?"
    "How’d you think?"
    "He’s got a record?"
    McCain nodded. "Indecent carriage, soliciting.
The usual."
    "When was this?"
    "Six, seven years ago."
    "Nothing more recent?"
    "No. He got probated to some shrink. Judging by
the girl, maybe it helped. She seems like a nice kid." He took a
couple of drags, then stubbed the butt out on a concrete pillar. "I
gotta get back downtown. Tell the girl I’ll be in touch soon as I
know the details. If he’s got other family in the area, steer ’em
to me."
    McCain started to walk away, then turned back. "How’d
you get involved in this, anyway? You a friend of the woman’s?"
    I shook my head. "She called me last week when
Greenleaf went missing."
    "Yeah, she said he’d dropped out of sight for
several days. Wonder where the hell he went?"
    McCain turned away and walked off toward the parking
lot, leaving the unanswered question frying in the July sun.
 
    5
    THE examining intern decided to keep Cindy Dorn in
the hospital overnight. They’d already moved her to a fourth-floor
room by the time I got back to the emergency room. I took an elevator
up to four and followed a series of signs to the west wing. I found
the girl propped up in bed with a bottle of saline plugged into her
right arm. She had some color again and a sharper focus in her eyes,
but she still didn’t look fully there. Part of her was still
standing in that run-down hotel room staring in terror at the raw
remains of Mason Greenleaf ’s life and death.
    "I’m sorry," she said as I came in. "I
freaked out."
    I could tell from the slur in her voice that they’d
given her a tranquilizer of some kind.
    "You’ve got nothing to apologize for." I
sat down on a plastic chair by the hospital bed. Cindy Dorn held out
her hand, and I took it in mine.
    "Is there anybody you want me to call? A friend?
Your ex?"
    The woman smiled weakly. "No. I’ll be all
right. Later tonight, I’ll talk to Mason’s family. Everything’ll
get taken care of. It always does when somebody dies. I remember with
my mother. It was like a piece of machinery I didn’t know I had
switched on and . . . things happened." She turned her face away
toward the tall window at the far side of the room. "I wish I
could shake the feeling that this is a movie. I wish I could go back
to last Wednesday night and say something or do something that would
change it. He ended up so alone."
    I didn’t say anything.
    She closed her eyes and squeezed my hand tight. "I
keep seeing his face—"
    "Don’t think about it, Cindy."
    "How can I not? I loved him." She started
to sob. "I loved him, and if I’d taken better care of him, if
I’d watched over him the way he watched over me, this terrible
thing wou1dn’t have happened."
    Holding her hand, I leaned toward the bed. "What
happened to Mason, it might as well have happened in a different
solar system, on a different star, for all you or anyone else had to
do with it." I felt a blush creep up my neck, enough of a burn
to make me lean back in the chair. "It just wasn’t in your
control."
    "That’s the way you see it? Like we’re on
different stars?"
    "That’s the way I
see it," I said, wishing I hadn’t said anything at all.
    ***
    That was Thursday. On Friday morning, Cindy Dorn was
released from the hospital. I met her at the emergency room, drove
her back to the little yellow birdhouse in Finneytown, and dropped
her at the door. There were already several cars parked in the
driveway—friends come to comfort her and mourn over Mason
Greenleaf.
    "I’m dreading going in there," Cindy
said, as she stared glumly at the