“To be honest with you, I don’t know how I’m doing.”
“You call me, okay? If you need anything. If you just want to talk.”
“Thank you,” she said.
DeMarco pocketed his cell phone and smiled at the registrar.
“Thank you for your time,” he told her.
“Who was that?” she demanded.
“Have a lovely day.”
Twenty-Six
DeMarco knew of only two bakeries in town. The first, Basic Kneads, was housed in a small one-story cottage. The other, Schneider’s Bakery, occupied the first floor of a large three-story brick building on Main Street. An open doorway to the side of the bakery gave way to a landing and a locked door. Outside the locked door were four call buttons. Stuck beneath the button for apartment 3B was a black label with white printing that read Briessen.
DeMarco held the button down for five seconds.
A male voice came through the speaker. “Yes?”
“Sergeant Ryan DeMarco of the Pennsylvania State Police, Mr. Briessen. I’d like to speak with you for a few minutes please.”
The reply sounded heavy with resignation. “Come on up.”
The student stood waiting in his open doorway at the top of the third-floor landing. He said, “It’s pronounced Bryson, by the way. Not Breeson.”
“Sorry,” DeMarco said.
“Happens all the time. Come on in.”
The young man was older than DeMarco had expected, maybe thirty, give or take a couple of years. He was taller than DeMarco, six-one or so, a black man of medium build, clean-shaven, fit, his hair cropped close to the scalp. He wore loose, faded jeans, white cotton socks, and a faded blue T-shirt with the word SeaWolves emblazoned in orange across the chest.
“Don’t see many of those,” DeMarco said with a nod toward the shirt. “You a fan?”
Briessen closed the door behind DeMarco and followed him into the living room. “Second baseman for three seasons. Never got called up, so I sold insurance for a while. Now I’m back in school. Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”
DeMarco sat in a canvas sling chair wedged into a corner beside the front window. Briessen pulled the leather swivel chair away from his desk, turned it to face DeMarco, sat down, and said, “I was sort of wondering when you guys would get around to me.”
DeMarco smiled. He liked this young man. “The wheels of justice turn slowly.”
“Not that slowly, I guess. It’s only been four days. Seems more like four months though.”
DeMarco nodded. “You from Erie originally?”
“Chicago. When the Tigers signed me, they sent me to Erie.”
“What brought you here?”
“Thomas Huston.”
“You knew him before you came here?”
“Only by his work. I came here to study with him.”
“How long have you been here?”
“This is my third semester, my last for coursework.”
“And you had a class with him this semester?”
“Independent study. Plus he’s my thesis director and advisor. I also took classes with him each of my first two semesters.”
“So you’ve gotten to know him fairly well.”
“That’s what makes this all so unbelievable. I just can’t seem to…get my head around it.”
“You never thought he was capable of something like that?”
“It’s inconceivable. His family was everything to him. Everything.”
“So if not him…who else might have done it?”
“Christ, I can’t even… I mean…”
DeMarco waited. The young man was fighting back tears. He lived here in an apartment with two chairs, a hundred books on plastic bookshelves, a kitchenette, and a bedroom. The heat and the aromas from the bakery made the air thick and too sweet. A constant drone of traffic noise came through and sometimes rattled the windows. By the look of his graceful hands and long fingers, he was a privileged boy from Lincoln Park or Streeterville, but he had failed as a baseball player and had gotten bored with selling insurance. He lived alone and dreamed of being a writer, and now his hero was finished, whisked away from him by unfathomable tragedy.
DeMarco said, “What about Conescu?”
Briessen looked up at him. “He’s a first-class weasel but…a murderer? Honestly, I don’t think he’s got the balls for it.”
“How about Denton?”
“Dr. Denton?”
“I sensed a lot of professional jealousy there.”
“Well, yeah, but…who wouldn’t be jealous of Tom? He was…perfection.”
And now DeMarco understood. Softly he said, “Did he know how you felt about him?”
A tiny movement flitted at the corner of Briessen’s eye, a twitch, a wince. Then he shrugged. “It was never expressed, never talked about. But I’m sure he knew.”
DeMarco waited for the rest of it.
“The thing about Tom is, right from the start, he treated me like an equal. I mean I might never publish a single word. But he respected my…intent, you know? He respected the dream. More than anything else, that’s what made him so special to me.”
DeMarco allowed half a minute to pass in silence. “You have any idea where he might be, Nathan?”