But what right do I have to involve him in this?
Not since a boy had Huston felt so utterly alone. Yes, in his interviews, he had frequently spoken of the solitude of the writer’s life, but his solitude had never been more than temporary, the manufactured solitude of a few hours each morning. There had always been Claire to fill the empty spaces. To shine her brightness in all his dark corners. Ever since February of his junior year in college. The Sweetheart Dance. Their first kiss. With that kiss, she had swept away his loneliness, poured light into his soul.
Now he was a twelve-year-old boy again. The one who left the house every afternoon to escape his parents’ screaming. Their arguments that never ended. Every day after school he had hiked the woods alone and slept in fields and wished his parents would get a divorce if they hated each other so much. But they had stayed together despite the shouting matches. Three or four nights a week, the mattress on its metal frame thudded in their bedroom. The closest Huston ever came to understanding their relationship was the time he had complained to his father. “Why can’t she ever talk in a normal tone of voice?” he had asked. “Why does she have to sound so angry all the time? Pretty soon you start screaming too. That’s all I ever hear around here.” His father, who at the time had been changing the oil in the Pontiac, crawled out from under the car, wiped his hands on a blue rag, and shrugged. “Your mother’s a passionate woman. I have to take the good with the bad.”
There was a lot more of the good when Tommy Jr. came along. Something mellowed then in Huston’s mother and father. Tommy was his grandmother’s jewel, and then Alyssa, her grandfather’s princess. Then one day Huston’s parents were gone.
But always there had been Claire. His light giver. The keeper of his soul.
Now that too was gone. Now he had only Annabel to rely upon. Only Annabel, his ignorance, and his rage.
He tossed the ravaged apple core aside. Climbed stiffly to his feet. Bent over and hefted the grocery bags. A few more miles, he told himself. You don’t deserve to rest.
Deception
Twenty-Five
DeMarco had one other stop to make on campus. The registrar was a brittle-haired blond with a round face, bright green eyes, and an easy smile. But somewhere underneath the tight, flowered dress and eye-catching cleavage beat a schoolmarm’s heart.
“All I’m asking,” DeMarco said, trying not to sound as exasperated as his five minutes with her had made him, “is for his class and home address.”
“And as I’ve told you,” she answered, “we consider that personal information. It can only be supplied with the student’s permission. Or with a warrant.”
“Then please call him and ask his permission.”
She smiled. “I’m afraid you will have to do that yourself.”
“Then tell me his telephone number.”
“I’m sorry but I can’t do that.”
“You understand that this is a police matter?”
She grinned so hard that her nose wrinkled. “I noticed that right away,” she said.
“So the university has no desire to cooperate with the police?”
“We always cooperate with the police.”
“By refusing to provide information?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s against our policy.”
“You’re giving me a headache,” DeMarco said.
She gave him another nose-crinkling grin.
“Will you tell me this much?” he asked. “Does he have any classes today?”
She thought about the request for a few moments, turned it over in her mind, flipped it inside and out, and finally typed Nathan Briessen into the search engine box.
“He does not,” she answered.
“How about tomorrow?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s against university policy to provide that information.”
“You know I can get a warrant easily enough.”
“I’m sure you can get lots of things if you really want to.”
The thought popped into his head that maybe she was flirting with him. Was it possible? He considered again the overdone hairdo, the overly tight dress, the overabundant cleavage. But he dismissed the possibility. He knew this kind of woman. She laid out all the necessary bait but only so as to lure the victim close enough that she could slap him silly.
DeMarco chose to stay out of reach. From his jacket pocket he took the small notebook on which he had written Heather Ramsey’s address and telephone number. He punched the numbers into his cell phone. She answered in the middle of the fourth ring. Her voice was small and glutinous with tears.
“It’s Sergeant DeMarco again,” he told her. “I’m trying to locate Nathan Briessen. Do you know him, by any chance?”
“The grad assistant?” she said.
The registrar’s nose uncrinkled. Her grin turned out to be not permanent after all.
“Would you happen to know where he lives?”
“Somewhere downtown,” Heather Ramsey told him. “Over a bakery, I think. I don’t know the exact address.”
“How about you?” DeMarco asked. “You doing okay?”