“Very interesting,” DeMarco said.
He went online then to access the English Department’s telephone number, punched it in, and spoke with the secretary. When he asked if Denton was expected in that day, she pulled his schedule. “Monday, Wednesday, Friday, he teaches from two to two fifty, then from three to three fifty. Office hours on Monday and Friday but none today.”
“How about his home address? You have that?”
There was a pause, then a timid response. “I know you’re the police but…I’m not sure I’m allowed to give that out.”
“No problem,” DeMarco told her. “Wouldn’t want to get you in dutch.”
Next, he telephoned the county courthouse, asked Cheryl in the Recorder of Deeds office to search the database for Robert Denton. Two minutes later, he wrote the address on his notepad: 619 Locust Drive, Greenwood Valley.
Greenwood Valley was an eighties subdivision of sprawling ranch and mock-Tudor homes. DeMarco calculated that Denton would need ten minutes to get from his home to campus, maybe more if he ran any errands on the way or stopped for a cappuccino. In any case, he probably wouldn’t leave the house before one in the afternoon. It was now only 10:47.
“Plenty of time for me to ruin his day,” DeMarco said.
Twenty
Robert Denton’s house in Greenwood Valley was a vinyl and brick split-level on a quarter-acre lot of grass that probably hadn’t seen a mower blade since mid-August. The mulch beds were overrun with creepers gone wild, the flower beds full of leaves. DeMarco arrived in an unmarked silver Impala from the motor pool, parked half a block from the poet’s house, then approached by foot.
The curtains were all drawn in the front of Denton’s house. At the first-floor entryway, DeMarco pressed the doorbell three times. With the two-note chirp echoing throughout the house, he crossed briskly to the corner, then hurried along the side of the house until he could see the rear entrance. A door thudded inside. Footsteps scurried. A rush of muted voices. A minute or two later, the back door opened and the waifish girl DeMarco had seen in Campbell Hall outside the poet’s office exited the house at a canter. She crossed the rear yard and hurried through a narrow opening in the privet hedge.
DeMarco returned to the front door and again thumbed down the doorbell.
Finally the door swung open. A barefoot and rumpled-looking Denton, wearing a blue-and-green-striped bathrobe and holding a mug of coffee in one hand, a thick literature anthology in the other, blinked at him.
“Morning,” DeMarco said and smiled through the screen door. “I’m Sergeant Ryan DeMarco with the state police. And you are Robert Denton?”
“That’s right,” Denton said. He stood very still. DeMarco thought that except for the poet’s deer-in-headlights look, except for the bare feet, bare legs, and bathrobe, he might be posing for a yearbook photo.
“I was wondering if you would have a few minutes to talk with me about your colleague, Professor Huston?”
Denton remained motionless for two more blinks. Then suddenly he became animated. “Oh sure, absolutely. Come on upstairs.” He turned from the door and spoke quickly as he mounted the stairs. “Just let me jump into some clothes real quick. I’ve been working on today’s lesson plans. I’ll meet you in the living room, top of the stairs.”
DeMarco pulled the door shut behind him. He said, “I haven’t gotten around yet to taking my screens down either.”
At the top of the stairs, Denton paused long enough to look back down. “Screens?” he said. Then, “Ah, the storm doors. Right. I hadn’t even noticed.”
“Those lost BTUs add up fast.”
“One of these weekends,” the poet said. “Come on up. I’ll just be a second.”
The stairs opened directly onto the living room, a room that would have been full of sunlight had the horizontal blinds across the wide picture window been open. DeMarco stood at the top of the stairs and let his eyes adjust. A brown leather sofa. A bookcase full of books. Indentations in the beige carpet where another piece of furniture had long stood against the side wall, where now, in the corner, was nothing but an acoustic guitar on a metal stand. A piano? DeMarco thought. The mantel over the fireplace was empty, the grate full of old ashes. All around the room were other indentations in the carpet, bare nails stuck in the walls. Entertainment hutch, DeMarco thought. Recliner. Coffee table. Matching end tables. Pictures there and there and there. The only sign of inhabitance was last Sunday’s newspaper spread out on the floor in front of the sofa.
Wearing beltless blue jeans and a loose, blue-striped white Oxford shirt, cuffs unbuttoned, tail hanging out, Denton returned from his bedroom. “Please, sit down, Officer. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
DeMarco smiled. “Looks like you’ve been cleaned out here.”