“Thank you,” I managed. I moved away from the dorm and paced in a circle underneath the spreading branches of an oak. The leaves rustled in the near darkness above me.
Briggs’s voice still sounded like honeyed-over gravel. “I’d like to meet with you, Mr. Glass,” he said, no hesitation in his voice now. “I have some information I’d like to share.”
I stopped pacing. “Information?”
I could almost hear him nod. “Information about Fritz Davenport. About the investigation into his disappearance. I don’t know where he is or anything like that, but—”
“Yes,” I said. Something shot through me, bright and red and pulsating. My nerves lit up like a dashboard’s warning lights. “Yes. Let’s meet. Where would you—?”
“I’d rather not meet out at the school, if you can get away.”
I looked up at the tree, its branches dark against the deepening sky above, and willed myself to be still despite the hope and expectation and fear rising in me. “How about tomorrow night? Around eight?”
“There’s a diner on Route Eleven just south of Staunton, the Fir Tree.”
“I know it.”
“All right. I’ll see you there tomorrow night at eight, Mr. Glass.” Briggs hung up.
I pocketed my cell and leaned back against the oak for support, trying to calm my heart. I was still there when the first bell rang for lights-out and the students in the commons stood, someone switching off the TV. I waited a few beats and then stepped inside as the boys came out of the commons. The solemn, set faces around me brought me back to where I was, and why. Lester Briggs could wait until tomorrow. For now, as the boys trudged back to their rooms like wounded veterans of an unwanted war, I wondered how I could possibly provide them any comfort.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Monday’s classes were not disastrous, which was about the best thing I could say about them. I had been worried about how the class would go as I was starting a unit on Beowulf, which is among many other things a violent work in which death seems to lurk just outside the brightly lit mead halls. I had been concerned that the topic might be disturbing, given Terence’s death, but in the end it didn’t matter. My students were listless, and many obviously hadn’t slept very well. Stephen Watterson, to his credit, dutifully responded to my lame attempts to start a discussion on the monster Grendel and medieval Christianity, but our words sank to the floor like so many dying balloons. I think I was more relieved than the students when the bell rang and they filed out. I endured the rest of the day impatiently, hurried through dinner, and then drove off campus to meet Lester Briggs.
The Fir Tree was a piece of 1950s Americana, down to the mint-green vinyl booths and chrome-banded countertops. I’d been only once before—my parents had taken me there one weekend when I was a student—but I remembered the pecan pie was to die for. Now, I could barely manage a cup of coffee as I sat in a booth, waiting for Lester Briggs to arrive. Gray Smith once again agreed to cover my dorm duty that night, although I’d had to promise to cover him for the rest of the week while he caught up on his lab grades.
I had rearranged the salt and pepper shakers several times and managed to shred a paper napkin into confetti by the time Briggs walked in. He wore jeans and a plaid button-down shirt instead of a khaki uniform, and he looked a bit heavier and had less hair, but he carried himself with the same quiet authority I remembered from a decade earlier. We shook hands, his grip firm and dry, and he sat down across from me, turning his head to order coffee from the lone, bored waitress in the corner before returning his attention to me.
“Thanks for meeting me, Mr. Glass,” he said.
“Of course.” I raised my coffee cup and then put it back down on the table with a flat clack. “I have to say I was surprised to get your call.”
He nodded. “I can imagine,” he said politely. “It was out of the blue. Just to be clear, again, please understand that I don’t have anything to tell you about where your friend might be.”
I frowned. “You told me that earlier, but then why did you call? Are there any new leads or—” I paused as the waitress brought Briggs his coffee, smiled limply at me, and returned to her corner by the cash register.
Briggs shifted his weight comfortably, as if settling in. “There aren’t any new leads,” he said. “As far as I know. I retired earlier this fall.”
“I heard. Sheriff Townsend told me you’d moved to Florida.”
What might have been the beginning of a smile softened the corner of Briggs’s mouth. “He did? When did he tell you that?”
“I met him last month to ask him about Fritz, see if there was anything he could tell me. He told me the Davenports . . .” I paused, as if at a speed bump, and then pushed forward. “He said they had him declared legally dead. I saw a notice on a bulletin board about your retirement, and the sheriff said he thought you’d moved down to Florida. Then when I met Deputy Smalls, he told me he was going fishing with you this weekend.”
Now Briggs did smile, a full, beaming smile. He had a rather plain, stolid face, but the smile transformed it, like a lamp that shone briefly but to great effect. “We did,” he said. “Yesterday. Caught some good trout, too.”
“Why would the sheriff tell me you lived in Florida?” I asked.
The smile went out across Briggs’s face. “Because that’s where he’d like me to be,” he said. “Somewhere other than here.” He looked down at his cup and pursed his lips, and then looked back up at me. I was aware that he was sizing me up, weighing what he could tell me. “Do you mind telling me, Mr. Glass, why you’re suddenly interested in Fritz Davenport?”
My face grew warm, lit by a slow-rising anger that masked a core of guilt. “He was my friend,” I said tersely, and then corrected myself. “He is my friend.”
“But you haven’t been looking for him. Why now?”
“What do you know about what I’ve been doing?” I said sharply. Beneath the anger in my voice, I could detect my own fear. Briggs was asking me questions I didn’t want to ask myself.