EVELYN TURNER

She had been watching for them, and she answered the detectives’ knock right away. Curiosity, mostly, but she wanted to help find Iris if she could. If Iris wanted to be found. Or maybe she wanted to help Iris hide, if she had run away from her awful husband. Of course, Evelyn wasn’t ready to talk about that with the cops. They might blame Iris instead of the real culprit in Number Two.

The detectives were polite, even when they questioned her repeatedly about why she made the 911 call. They implied, gently but with conviction, that she had some kind of beef with Dr. Blum. What had other people had been telling them? Maybe she did have a problem with Dr. Blum, but there were strong reasons for it. Once they let up on those questions Evelyn said she had another theory, that Dr. Blum’s overbearing approach to Iris for decades had caused an episode of transient global amnesia. The cops exchanged sidelong glances when she said that.

“It’s real,” Evelyn insisted. “Google it. People lose all memory of the past and it can be triggered by stress. The memories come back though, eventually.”

Looking at their faces, she let it drop. Clearly the officers weren’t interested in her professional opinion. So, maybe her business had a couple of bad years, but she wasn’t the only resident of Azalea Court with troubles. Rumor had it that the two women in Number Four had something unpleasant in their past. It was hard to believe that the Simon women were really in the Witness Protection Program like people gossiped, but stranger things had happened. And it was her duty to let the detectives know about all possibilities, wasn’t it? Maybe somehow Iris found out about the Witness Protection thing and the Number Four women had to shut her up. Okay, so that was a pretty unlikely scenario, but it was the cops’ job to check it out, right?

Sometimes she felt unwelcome on the Court. A few neighbors had been unkind this past year as her home care agency circled the drain. The loss of her dream was a blow. It wasn’t totally lost, really, just dwindled into dormancy. Maybe it was her own fault. She wasn’t much of a businesswoman. Donnie said it was great that she wanted to provide personalized care with continuity and high-quality nursing, but it wasn’t practical. It was impossible to find the right staff and to pay them enough, with insurance reimbursements coming so many months after the service was given.

She answered their questions until the detectives finally seemed satisfied that she had no ulterior motive, just had Iris’s well-being at heart. They thanked her for the leaflets and even asked for some extra copies. The woman—McPhee—held Evelyn’s eyes for a long moment right before they left.

“Remember,” McPhee said. “Finding Mrs. Blum is our job. Sometimes that job can be dangerous. Any information you receive, or anything you think of that might help find her, must be communicated to us right away.”

“Of course,” Evelyn said, wondering what the detective thought she would do with that information, if not share it with the detectives. Wondering if her vague thoughts of helping Iris stay hidden were somehow visible to the cop. She was still shaking her head about that when the detectives left. She stood in the doorway and watched them walk to Number Four, then she wandered into the kitchen to refill her coffee cup.

The newspaper photo stared at her from the fridge, its red outline a bullseye on her fears. The brick facade of Old Main looked so solid, but it couldn’t protect anyone, inside or out. The ancient copper beeches in front of the building leered at her across the decades, a tree chorus singing, We saw what happened. Actually, the massive tree trunks had shielded what happened. Blocked any possible rescue.

It had been spring of 1985. She was twenty-five years old, a nursing student. She wasn’t enthusiastic about psychiatric nursing, but it was her last clinical rotation, her last weeks of being a student. She was anxious on her first day at the state hospital—it was imposing, even frightening—and she already knew she wanted to specialize in community health, so this was just something to get through. How bad could it be? Her neighbor Dr. Blum was the head shrink over there and the rotation was only six weeks. She’d been living with Donnie for almost a year and could walk there. Perfect, right?

Two weeks into the rotation, a medical student asked her to help him with a procedure on a patient. She was delighted with the assignment, relieved to avoid the stench of the locked ward, a witch’s brew of mildew and urine and bleach. The med student was about her age, and she listened intently as he explained the procedure on their walk to the treatment room in another building. It was a sunny day, warm enough to leave her jacket behind as they walked across the grass past a huge copper beech tree to a small brick building. She had wondered where the patient was.

She should have suspected, should have known, there was no patient. By the time they were inside and she understood what was happening, the med student had locked the door of the old Coach House, had his hand over her mouth, and a knee pushing under her clean white student nurse uniform. All these years later, she never forgot the horsey smell of the dirt floor. His blue eyes. Garlic on his breath and then garlic spit on her arm, where he bit her, branded her, when he was finished.

Donnie tried to be supportive when it happened, and he didn’t get angry that she wouldn’t let him touch her for months. But he thought she should be over it by now. Why should one unwanted sexual encounter be so huge, he kept asking. She had never been able to explain it to him. Her rapist didn’t hurt her that much physically and thankfully hadn’t given her any disease or pregnancy. The bite on her arm got infected, but it healed with antibiotics. She rubbed the scar absently.

It wasn’t a matter of shame, not really. She knew it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t invited or provoked his attack in any way. She reported it to her instructor and the hospital administration but refused to file a police report, despite the clamor of friends insisting she do so. That afternoon reinforced her decision to avoid medical institutions of any kind. To take care of people in the haven of their homes, although she had since learned that some homes weren’t much of a refuge.

She shook herself out of her memories. The hospital memorial dedication was in two days. Even though she knew that reliving old pain wasn’t healthy, she couldn’t stop her brain from going back. She needed to get out of the house and do something useful. She would look for Iris on her own. She knew Iris, and Iris trusted her. If anyone could find the woman, she would be that person.