Unidentified Woman #15 by David Housewright Page A

name. “Ms. Bosland.” She was surprisingly young and pretty and I thought, as I shook her hand, that if I were still in school I might have tried to date her. I told her what I wanted.
    “Mr. McKenzie.” She spoke my name slowly like she was trying to memorize it. “We are not in the habit of revealing personal information about our students to strangers.”
    “Let me speak to the principal.”
    “I am the principal.”
    Wow, school has changed, my inner voice told me.
    “Finally, someone I can talk to,” I said aloud. I shook her hand a second time and repeated my request, this time making it sound like I wanted dinner and a movie with drinks at my place afterward. She still refused.
    “What about prospective employers who only want to know if she graduated?” I asked.
    “You can’t even tell me her full name, so I doubt she sent you a r é sum é or filled out a job application. But I’ll bite—are you a prospective employer? What company?”
    “I just want to look up El’s picture in the yearbook.” Even as I said it, I knew I sounded creepy.
    Both women folded their arms in unison, their movements so similar that I wondered if they were family, if the principal was the secretary’s great-granddaughter. It was apparent that neither of them was going to budge unless I told them a story, and the only one that came to mind was the truth. I couldn’t tell them that, so I excused myself. Their cold stares followed me out the door and across the parking lot to my Jeep Cherokee.
    I thought about calling Bobby Dunston. Perhaps he could contact the principal from his office and ask her to cooperate with me. It sounded a lot like admitting defeat, though, and I wasn’t ready for that.
    I had purchased the Cherokee when cars were cars and not floating personal computers. It had none of the gadgets—including a seat warmer—of my late, lamented Audi, which I had every intention of replacing in June or when the snow melted, whichever came first. So I dug the smartphone out of my pocket, pleased that I had bars. Experience had taught me that coverage Up North was iffy at best. I piggybacked the high school’s Wi-Fi connection and googled the Deer River, Minnesota, public library, figuring that it would probably have yearbooks. There wasn’t one.
    “Well, dammit.”
    *   *   *
    Night had fallen, along with the temperature. The snow under my boots crunched like gravel as I walked across the parking lot toward the entrance of the small roadhouse just off Minnesota Highway 6, north of town.
    O’Malley’s was an oasis of light in a world of sorrowful blackness. Except for the distant stars shimmering above, there was nothing else to comfort a traveler as far as the eye could see. Along with light, there was warmth. I felt it radiate from the building as I approached; heard it in laughter and Golden Oldies as I opened the door.
    The mornin’ sun is shinin’ like a red rubber ball, the Cyrkle sang from the jukebox.
    Hang a left and there was the restaurant, filled to capacity, a trio of smiling waitresses scurrying from kitchen to tables and booths, taking and filling orders. To the right was a bar, also full of customers, a regulation-size pool table making it more crammed than it needed to be, a young man circling the table and twirling his cue like a samurai sword and someone shouting “just shoot the frickin’ ball” in a way that made others laugh.
    It was only 6:00 P.M. on a Thursday by my watch, yet the place was rocking like Saturday night in downtown Minneapolis. I thought that was probably because Deer River was two hundred miles from downtown Minneapolis and there was nowhere else to go and nothing else to do on a cold winter’s night. It was a condescending attitude to take, I admit, but you should hear sometimes what small-town folk have to say about us city slickers.
    The only empty stool was at the far end of the stick beneath the head of a twelve-point buck that had seen better days. I