At first he’d felt relief. Recalling the sleepy countryside surrounding Chaz Braden’s estate, he couldn’t imagine there being much of a police force there. Any attention to her murder would probably focus on local acquaintances of hers. It might even be directed at Chaz again, and this time subject his alibi for the day she disappeared to the rigors of small-town scrutiny. After all, weren’t rural murders more apt to get solved than urban ones, what with everybody being into everybody else’s business? It was their equivalent to live theater. Rather than draw the curtains and remain uninvolved, people noticed things, stored them up, and kept them at the ready for later tellings. As long as the case was out of the NYPD’s hands, no one would be stirring up old memories in his former classmates, and he might be home free. So why say anything to Janet and worry her for nothing?

Because he felt as if he was betraying her by staying silent.

He rolled over and picked up the original, well-creased New York Herald article from his nightstand and studied it again. The name of the local coroner, Dr. Mark Roper, seemed vaguely familiar. Now why, he wondered, did it resonate?

Then he remembered.

Kelly had sometimes talked about a Dr. Roper. He was the man who encouraged her to go to medical school and whom she often visited, confiding her problems to him whenever she went up to Hampton Junction. He even counseled her to escape her marriage to Chaz.

Could this Mark Roper be the same man? Hell, if he was, he must be in his early seventies. And that would mean trouble if Kelly had told him everything. The guy could be making a beeline to find him right now, which would take about a day. Shit, he might already have contacted the Buffalo authorities and a cruiser could be on the way to pick him up.

Earl lay still. Feeling his heart start to race, he fought the compulsion to get up and peek through the bedroom window to make sure that a squad car wasn’t pulling up to the front door.

But had she referred to that doctor as Mark? It didn’t sound right. Yet a second physician called Roper in so small a place was unlikely.

He got out of bed and went to his study to check the directory of licensed physicians for New York State. He skimmed through all the Ropers, finding only one whose office address was Hampton Junction. Except it couldn’t be Kelly’s Dr. Roper. This man’s license number indicated he’d been in practice only seven years.

The original Dr. Roper’s son? he wondered. That could also be problematic if the father were alive and capable of discussing what he remembered about Kelly. The name Earl Garnet might still come up.

He undressed and returned to bed, hoping he could escape into sleep, but thoughts of Kelly persisted. He found himself drifting back to 1974.

It had been the time of Watergate, Nixon’s ignominious slide toward the disgrace of his resignation, when the anatomy of the president’s self-destruction, like the Vietnam War, was documented in wall-to-wall television coverage. His downfall seemed suited to the little screen, running daily as it did with the incremental revelations of a soap opera, something Earl and his classmates could tune in to after skipping weeks of episodes without feeling behind in the story. As medical students in their most clinical year yet, they had little time to pay it more attention. But they never missed M*A*S*H.

At the movies, portraits of evil topped the big box office hits. Robert De Niro emblazoned himself on everyone’s memory in Godfather, Part II; but for making them cringe, nobody topped Roman Polanski when he sliced open Jack Nicholson’s nose in Chinatown.

As for music, they couldn’t get through a day on the wards without hearing the radio blast Paul Anka’s “Having my Baby” or Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were.” In the OR surgeons cut and sewed to newcomer Elton John’s big hit, “Bennie and the Jets.”

But to Earl’s gang, only one troubadour counted.

Thousands of tiny flames, each a point of light held aloft, filled the darkness.

Bob Dylan stepped forward on the stage.

Robbie Robertson stood to the right of him, lean as a silhouette hunched over a guitar, The Band at his back.

You say you love me,

And you’re thinkin’ of me,

But you know you could be wrong.

He snarled the last word, loud and long.

The crowd roared the words with him.

“You sing that like you mean it,” Jack MacGregor called to Kelly. Shadows played over his thin face, resculpting its hollows.

“You better believe I do,” she yelled back. Her eyes danced in the flicker of the tiny fires.

Earl had rarely seen her look so radiant.

… you go your way

and I go mine.

It was at that moment she slipped her hand into his and simply held it, the darkness preventing anyone from seeing.

Melanie Collins leaned toward him from his other side. “Some study group,” she said, then laughed.

“And we’ll be payin’ dearly for it, children,” Tommy Leannis added from his end of the row, the musical lilt of his Irish sounding false. His constant fear of failure emanated off him like a bad smell and made him a fifth wheel. Yet he insisted on tagging along whenever they knocked off the books for a night, as if he was just as afraid to be alone with all the material they still had to learn.

“It’s all right, Tommy,” Kelly hollered back at him, never letting go of Earl’s hand. “If an old woman like me can get through, what have you got to worry about? Top five, all of us,” she predicted, sounding confident in the din.

… Then time will tell just who fell,

And who’s been left behind…

Earl’s senses had contracted solely to the feel of her fingers entwined in his. He kept his eyes on the stage, uncertain how to respond. He already knew he loved her, and before that night had wondered if she felt just as strongly about him. But he’d never dared to speak his feelings, frightened that the crystal clarity of such words would shred the fragile, amorphous limbo in which they remained close friends, able to speak intimately of everything else, without ever trespassing on her marriage. Yet this sudden overture – her fingers played over his like flames – invited him to risk that step, and the possibility exhilarated him. Feeling her start to withdraw, he immediately tightened his grip, and she gently squeezed back. He stole a look sideways and saw her staring straight ahead, apparently enraptured by the music. Then she smiled, slowly, as though savoring something delicious, and her hand clung hard to his.

After the concert all of them trooped toward the subway, arms linked and voices raised in loud renditions of what they’d just heard.

Jack, Melanie, and Tommy scooted across the intersection at Forty-second Street ahead of them. “I don’t want to go home,” Kelly whispered, as she and Earl waited at the red light.

“Where then?” said Earl, trembling inside, all the time wondering, What about your husband? But he was too intoxicated by her to put the brakes on.

“Offer to stay behind until I get a taxi,” she whispered before they rushed to join their friends.

He nodded.

“Guys, I’m going to take a taxi tonight,” she announced when they reached them. “It’s too late for a woman alone.”

“You three go ahead. I’ll make sure she gets one,” Earl said, certain they’d see through him. “No cabbie in his right mind would stop for a gang of rowdies like you.”

“Well, I’m insulted,” Jack quipped.

“Come, children. ‘Tis back downtown where we belong,” said Tommy, linking arms again with Melanie. Then all three of them disappeared down the entrance to the Forty-second Street station, their voices echoing back above ground until the noise of traffic swallowed up their off-key singing.