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understood nothing but a show of force; however, I knew I could not overpower him. Maybe if I softened my stance, I’d get further. ‘Sir, even if I accept what you are saying as fact, that still does not explain where Ruth’s sister has gone. If Irene is not dead, then she is a missing person.’
    ‘Possibly. But until Monday when she is due to report to work, we have no reason to believe that there is a problem at all. It’s a holiday weekend. She could be simply out and about enjoying the festivities.’
    ‘Sir, Ruth is very concerned about her sister.’
    ‘I’ll leave word with the guards at the gate. They’ll let Miss Nance know if her sister is seen entering or leaving.’
    The remnants of my patience were as ragged as a hobo’s shoes. Before I said anything I’d regret, I needed to get out of here. ‘So that’s it?’ I asked.
    ‘Until Monday morning, yes it is.’
    I took a few steps towards the door, then stopped and turned around. ‘Where is Ruth? Did you leave her at the athletic field?’
    ‘No, of course not. She has had a shock, one of her own imagining, but a shock nonetheless. We wouldn’t just leave her there.’
    ‘Is she back at the dorm?’
    ‘No, Miss Clark. We took her to the hospital.’
    ‘Hospital? What did you do to her?’
    ‘She was hysterical, Miss Clark. The doctor administered a sedative to calm her down. We wanted to keep an eye on her for a couple of days.’
    ‘I’ll bet you did,’ I said, walking away as quickly as I could. I was frightened but I could not give a name to my fear. It was more a primitive, visceral response to unanswered questions lurking in some impenetrable fog of the unknown than it was a reaction to a real, tactile threat. I followed the boardwalks to the hospital.
    A military guard stood beside Ruth’s room. When I approached, he stepped sideways in front of it and came to attention. ‘Sorry, miss, doctor’s orders. No one to disturb the patient while she’s sleeping. Doc gave her some medicine and said she’d probably sleep until the next morning. Meanwhile, no visitors.’
    I wanted to force my way past him but that was another battle I couldn’t win, so I left and walked back to the athletic field at the high school. I needed to find something to confirm that what I saw was true. There had to be some small scrap of evidence that Irene had been there or some subtle indication of what happened to her body.
    I walked up to the spot where Irene had lain lifeless such a short time ago, close enough to peer at the flattened grass. A lot of it looked trampled. Someone – a lot of them – had been out here. It must have been the people charged with taking her body away, but who and where was her body now?
    I circled the bleachers making a progressively wider arc with each orbit. I spotted discarded cigarette butts, broken pencils and small scraps of paper. Then I saw an odd shape nestled in the blades of grass. I squatted down beside it. It looked like a woman’s lapel pin with a broken clasp. I picked it up and turned it over in my palm: a little, pale blue, ceramic fawn with white spots and pink Lucite ears.
    It looked familiar. Was this the pin Irene been wearing when she came by the house on Christmas night? I closed my eyes and tried to remember. There had been of a spot of color on Irene’s lapel – was it this? Maybe. I just wasn’t sure.
    I slipped it into a pocket, planning to show it to Ruth. I completed a few more circuits of the field and, finding nothing else, returned home.
    I had seen Irene’s body. I hadn’t imagined the scarf cinched too tight around her neck. Irene was dead; there was no possibility that she simply got up and walked away. What happened to Irene on that football field? And what happened to Ruth while I was at the police station?
    I lay awake in bed in my little bungalow that night, thinking I’d never get to sleep. To push my thoughts of the current ugly predicament out of my mind, I forced myself to