As she rummaged I said, "Just to be thorough, where's Mark now?"
She looked up. "Him? Oh, no. He joined the Army right out of school, got stationed in Germany, married a German girl. He was out of the country when Shawna disappeared. Wrote me the sweetest condolence card when he found out— I've got that, too. Right here."
A hearts-and-flowers Hallmark landed in my palm. Soppy verse, and a block-printed notation:
Dear Mrs. Yeager,
Please accept our sincerest condolense about Shawna. We know she's up with the angels.
Astrid and Mark Ortega, and Kaylie
Stapled to the facing page was a studio shot of a skinny, blond, young man, crew-cut and mustachioed, a chubby brunette woman, and a grinning, pie-faced baby.
"Nice boy," said Agnes. "But Shawna was too much for him. She needed someone to stimulate her brain. Lord knows I couldn't do it, never finished high school— Here we go, these are her report cards."
She handed me a rubber-banded stack. Twelve grades' worth of nearly straight A's. Achievement tests consistently above the ninety-fifth percentile. Teachers' comments: "Shawna's a very bright little girl, but she does tend to visit with her neighbors." "A joy, wish they were all like her." "Has a firm grip of the material and loves to learn." "Strong-willed, but she always ends up doing the work."
At the bottom of the stack was a transcript from the U.
Four courses during the quarter she'd never finished. A quartet of in-completes.
"It arrived after she was gone," said Agnes. "When I opened the envelope, I just lost it. That word. 'Incomplete.' When you're in that state, everything's got a double meaning. You're looking for something to be angry about. I nearly ripped this into shreds. Now I'm glad I didn't. Though I did give away the clothes Shawna left behind. Waited until a few months ago, but I was able to do it."
I stared at the transcript, placed it back on the bottom.
"Smart," said Agnes. "See what I mean?"
"Yes, I do, Mrs. Yeager. Is there anything else?"
"Well, you might tell me what you're planning to do."
"I'm going to review Shawna's file. I know that sounds vague and bureaucratic, but I'm just starting out. If I think of something, may I call you?"
"You'd better." She grabbed my hand in both of hers. "I have a feeling about you. You're a serious person. However it comes out, you're going to give it your best. Thank you very, very much."
"Thank you," I said. "I hope to justify your confidence."
"I'm not asking for my daughter back," she said. "All I want to do is bury her. Know where she is, so I can visit on Christmas and anniversaries. That doesn't seem like too much to ask for, does it?"
"No, ma'am. Thanks for your time." I opened the car door.
"Can I have that back?" she said.
Pointing to the stack of report cards.
"Oh, sure. Sorry."
"Anything you need a copy of, I can get you.*
I gave her hand a squeeze and left.
39
FIVE P.M. The psych building was nearly empty.
I spotted Gene Dalby from down the hall. Standing at his office door, keys in hand, his gawky frame limned by institutional fluorescence.
"Coming or going?" I said.
"Alex—hey, there. Going, as a matter of fact."
"Could you spare a few moments?"
"Look at this," he said. "I don't see the guy for years and now he's becoming a fixture."
I didn't speak. The look on my face murdered his smile.
"Something wrong, Alex?"
"Let's go inside, Gene."
"I really am in a hurry," he said. "Things to see, people to do."
"This is worth making time for."
"Whoa, sounds ominous."
I didn't answer.
"Fine, fine," he said, unlocking the door. His ring was full of keys, and the tremor in his hand made it peal like a wind chime.
He sat at his desk. I stayed on my feet.
"Let me lay it out for you," I said. "On the one hand, I'd never have known about Shawna if you hadn't mentioned her. So that's a point in your favor—why would you open a can of worms? On the other hand, you lied to me. Pretended not to know her. 'Some kind of campus beauty queen' was the way you put it. 'Shane something, or Shana ... I don't recall her exact name.' But she was in your class. I just had a look at her transcript. Psych 10, Dalby, Monday Wednesday Friday three P.M. You taught Intro in addition to Social. The heavy teaching load you told me about."
He ran his hand through his hair, raising spikes. "Oh, come on, you can't be serious. Do you know how many kids are in a—"
"Twenty-eight," I said. "I checked with the registrar. Your section was a last-minute add-on, for students who hadn't gotten into the four scheduled sections. Twenty-eight kids, Gene. You'd remember each student. Especially a student that looked like Shawna—"
His giraffe neck corded. "This is horseshit, I don't have to sit and listen to—"
"No, you don't. But you might want to, because it's not going to go away."
His hands clawed the desk. He removed his glasses, repeated "Horse-shit."
I said, "But you're not kicking me out."
Silence.
"So you lied, Gene, and I have to wonder why. Then, when I start adding up some things I've learned about Shawna, it gets really interesting. Such as the fact that she had a definite attraction to older men. Older, wealthy men—she was very clear about wanting the finer things in life. Ferraris. With your dot-corn income, you'd fit that bill. She also prized intelligence—what she called intellectuality. Once again, who better than you, Gene, to satisfy that criterion? Back in grad school you were tops in the class. Had a talent for thinking profound things out loud."
"Alex—"
"Also," I said, "I've seen pictures of her father. He died when she was four, so she really didn't remember him. Probably idealized him. Did she ever show you his picture, Gene?"
He glared at me. Flushed. A pair of huge fists rolled along the desktop. Ripping off his glasses, he flung them at the wall. They thudded against his books and landed on the rug.
"Ineffectual," he said. "Can't do anything right."
"Bob Yeager," I said. "Six-four plus, red-blond hair, jug ears, a basketball star in high school—weren't you a starting forward all the way through college?"
He buried his face in his hands. Muttered, "My glory days—"
"The resemblance is damn striking, Gene. He could have been your brother."
He sat up. "I know damn well what he could've been. Yes, she showed me a goddamn picture. The first goddamn time she came in here during goddamn office hours. To talk about an exam. Allegedly. And she's wearing this little black dress, sits down and it rides up. ... I stick to the topic, she's a bright kid. . . . Then she whips out this picture of her old man. Thought it was funny. I told her I wasn't a Freudian— Alex, I didn't do anything. Never seduced her, it's not what you think, the whole thing was just a terrible— Oh, shit. You're not going to believe me, are you?"
"Whether I do or not isn't the issue, Gene. The police know."
"Oh, no—"
"Oh, yes."
"But what could they know?"
I said nothing.
"Let me explain, first, Alex. Please. Okay?"
"No promises," I said.
"You yourself said if I hadn't told you about her—"
"But you did, Gene. On some level you wanted me to chase it."
"Oh," he said. His eyes narrowed, and one fist inched closer to me. "Now I'm on the couch. This is bullshit."
I reached for the doorknob.
"Wait! You can't bop in here like this and expect me just to capitulate—"
"I don't expect a thing," I said. "And frankly, right now, your peace of mind isn't paramount to me. I just spent some time with a woman who's been living a nightmare for over a year. Knowing but not knowing. Just like you told me the first time: 'the ultimate parent's nightmare.' And guess what? She has something in common with you, Gene. You both despise the word closure. You think it's pop-psych crapolsky, but she has a much greater understanding of the term's inadequacy—"
"Alex, please—"
"She doesn't expect a miracle, Gene. But she would like to say good-bye, visit her daughter's grave from time to time, maybe leave some flowers."
He bowed his head again, covered his eyes with his hands. "Oh, Jesus— Yeah, I wanted you to chase it. I guess—I don't know what the hell came over me. I wasn't planning to say a goddamn thing, and then you started telling me about that other girl—whom I really didn't know, that's the truth, Alex. And synapses just started clicking—memories, it's been sitting here, all this time"—touching his belly—"but still, what the hell was I thinking? 'Cause I remember you from grad school. The bulldog, they called you behind your back—jokes about your being a goddamn obsessive-compulsive. You never let go of anything. What the fuck was I thinking."
Tearing at his hair. When he stopped I said, "Maybe you weren't thinking. Guilt's a great motivator. Maybe you were just feeling." Knowing he had something else in common with Agnes Yeager. The great void. Holes that couldn't be filled.
"Shit," he said. "The police already know?"
I nodded. A lie, but he didn't deserve better. And those big hands could do damage in close quarters.
"I didn't— Okay, look, just give me a chance to explain. This is what happened: An accident, a goddamn stupid accident, okay?"
I stood there.
"Fuck. You can be a sphinx."
"I'm listening, Gene."
"Right." His Adam's apple took a joyride. His armpits had grown sodden, and pink scalp shined where he'd raised furrows in his hair. "Yeah, I was—we were having a thing. And don't preach to me about that. She came on to me— Sure I could've resisted but I didn't. Didn't want to. Why would I resist? Marge and I never— Forget excuses, you don't want to hear them. The truth is she was the hottest thing I've ever come across. I've been married twenty-three years, and I've been basically faithful. But this girl—Shawna—she was something else. Gave off a heat— She was the girl every guy wants in high school but can't get unless he's a ... No need to get into that. We had a thing, it was mutual, she was madly in love with me—said she was. I knew that was horseshit, this was a fling—once she figured out I wasn't going to leave Marge she'd end it. But in the meantime . . . she could do things with her . . . Also, she was smart as hell, not just a body. We could talk— Even at her age, she had things to say Number one in my class, so there was no conflict of interest, no trading grades for—"
He choked on his own saliva, endured a paroxysm of coughing, filled his mug with cold coffee and swallowed.
"We're talking a month, five weeks tops, Alex."
"Right from the beginning of the quarter."
"Soon after, yeah. The second time she came in. Little white dress. Like a tennis outfit— She had this fresh clean smell—this perfume of youth. It happened, I can't change that. But after that I was discreet. Meeting her only off-campus— We used to drive up in the hills above Bel Air. Find a spot." He smiled. "Parking, she'd make a production of taking off— Oh, man, Alex, it was just what you wanted high school to be like. Then it got complicated. She was also— That's the thing about her, she was also narcissistic. Seriously narcissistic, really into her looks, her brains, the whole bit. One time she told me she could have the president if she wanted."
"Not much of a challenge there."
"But she meant it globally, Alex. Any president. Of anything. This omnipotence she had going—eighteen years old, all that sexual confidence." The color left his face. "Even now, thinking about her— I can't change what happened— Try to muster some empathy, you're a shrink, not a judge."
"Narcissistic," I prompted. "How did that complicate things?"
"It led her to a bad place. The wrong people, stupid decisions. She read some ad in the Cub—not one of those experiments I told you about. I guess I mentioned those to throw you off. Wanting you to chase it but not wanting it— I'm fucked up. All that therapy, all those years on both sides of the couch and it doesn't mean a—"
"What kind of ad?"
"For photographer's models. Some sleazeball outfit in Hollywood, I don't even remember the name, claiming to be freelancing for Duke and Playboy and Penthouse. She never checked it out with me, probably wouldn't have listened if I'd advised against it. She and her roommate went for it—auditioned, ended up posing. It was supposed to be bikini shots, ended up being nudie shots. Then the sleazes asked her and the roommate to do some lesbian stuff—simulation—and the roommate didn't want to and left. But Shawna stayed. Damn her—so fucking in love with herself. They brought in another model, and she—the two of them did it. Then they must've realized Shawna could be motivated easily, so they brought a guy in, and she ended up— They got snaps of her sucking off some donkey dong, okay? And she brings them to me on our next— the next time we saw each other—like she's proud of them. Brought a whole packet—bikini, nudies, soft-core, then, at the bottom, her little mouth doing the Hoover. Saving the best for last. Like I was supposed to appreciate it. Get turned on by it."
He slammed a fist on the desk. Papers jumped.
"I lost it, man. Just blew, yelled at her, called her all kinds of names. Instead of crying, she yells back, gets aggressive. Tells me the photographer worked for all the top mags, promised her a gig with Playboy or Penthouse or Duke, this was going to be her ticket to fame and fortune. Can you believe that, Alex? Smart girl and she falls for a shit-for-brains story like that. The narcissism—I wish I could get across how much this girl loved herself, Alex. Half the time when we were together I felt I was nothing more than a vibrator."
He stopped talking. Stared at the wall. Got a glazed look in his eyes.
"What happened, Gene?"
"It was quick. I got pissed, she got pissed back, we had a screaming fight, she jumped out of the car— We were over by Lake Hollywood. Up in the Hollywood Hills, a spot I remembered from when Marge and I were dating. She got out, started running up the road, I went after her, and she tripped and fell and hit her head on a rock and just lay there. Silent, all of a sudden the whole goddamn city got really silent, a big soap bubble of silence and I was trapped inside, like a cartoon. I got down beside her. No pulse, no respiration. I tried CPR, nothing. Then I got a look at her head and knew I was wasting my time. She got hit here. Brain tissue was leaking out."