The last message on his voice mail was at eight o'clock in the evening, only about five minutes ago. He expected it to be Maggie again, reporting in at the end of her day. But it wasn't.
"Hello, Jon," said a soft, nervous voice. "It's Andrea. I didn't really expect you to be there, but I guess I kind of wanted to hear your voice. That sounds silly, I suppose. And maybe it sounds a little silly to say I miss you. But the truth is, I do. Looks like you made quite an impression on me, huh? Anyway, the thing is, I'm still at work over at the school. I've got a pile of tests to grade, so I was working in the lab, but I was thinking a lot about us. And about Friday night. I know your time's not your own, but I hope we can see each other again soon. I'd really like that. Okay, fine, I've made a fool of myself, so what else is new? Well, give me a call sometime. Bye, Jon."
At the next intersection, Stride turned the truck around and headed back up the hill toward the high school.
He pulled into the lot, with the panorama of Duluth spread out on his left, and found a parking spot close to the building. Hurrying across the concrete, which had accumulated a couple more inches of snow since the plows had gone through, he jammed his hands in his coat pockets and blinked as the snow fell over his eyelids.
The school door was locked. Stride rapped his knuckles on the window, but no one was nearby to hear him. He swore. He pushed his face against the cold glass, peering inside. Nothing.
Stride took out his cell phone again, but he saw that his battery had gone completely dead. He swore again and trudged through the snowy grass around the side of the school. He was near the rear door when he saw Andrea emerge from a classroom door at the far end of the hallway. She was dressed in gray sweats that emphasized her long legs, athletic shoes, and a loose-fitting blue V-neck sweater. She didn't notice Stride, but instead made a beeline for a pop machine in the corridor. She fed in a bill, then retrieved a can of Diet Coke, popped it open, and took a long swig.
Stride banged on the door.
She stopped, turned around, and saw him. Her face lit up in a broad smile. She began jogging down the hall toward him, spilling her Coke and laughing as a geyser of brown liquid spurted onto the floor. She put the can on the floor, wiped her hands on her sweats, and hurried to the door. She opened it, grabbed Stride's hand, and pulled him inside. As the door crashed shut, blocking out the wind, she reached her sticky fingers around his neck and pulled him into a deep kiss. He was too surprised to respond at first, but then wrapped his arms tightly around her, and their lips explored each other.
"I'm glad you came," she said. "I don't have too much more to do. Why don't you come in and talk with me, and then we can go have a late dinner?"
"That sounds perfect," Stride said.
Her arm went around his waist as they retraced her steps to the chemistry laboratory.
"It won't take me more than another half hour. These are multiple choice tests. I don't have to think, just grade."
"How are they doing?" Stride asked.
"Oh, I've seen better," Andrea said. "The attention span gets less and less each year. It's hard to keep it exciting for them."
"Well, science was never my strong suit either."
"Really? I would have thought a detective would enjoy all the forensic details, solving scientific mysteries, that kind of thing." Andrea scanned a test as she talked, wielding a red pen to mark errors.
"I let the lab technicians do the scientific analysis," Stride said. "I worry about figuring out the art of the possible."
"What do you mean?" Andrea asked.
"Most human acts leave some kind of trail. You have to get from place to place. You have to eat, buy gas, go to the bathroom, sleep. You leave behind skin, hair, fingerprints, fluids. All of those things can be tracked, assuming you can sift through the things that everyone else leaves behind and find the person you want."
Andrea smiled. "Like it or not, Jon, that sounds a lot like the scientific process. You couldn't have slept through all of your classes."
"I wouldn't have slept through yours," he said.
She blushed and looked down at her exams again. They were silent for a while. The only sound was the scritch-scritch of Andrea's marker on the page and the rustle of paper as she shuffled the tests. Stride let his eyes wander around the classroom, then found himself staring at Andrea, her head down, her narrow fingers nervously pushing her blonde hair back behind her ears. He could see smile lines at the edges of her mouth, like crescent moons. The sleeves of her sweater were pushed up, and he saw her bare, tapered forearms, slim but strong.
She felt his stare and looked up. They held each other with their eyes, but they didn't say anything.
He wondered what she saw when she looked at him. He knew, because Cindy had always told him so, that women found him attractive, although he never really understood it. He didn't have smooth, perfect features, but the look of a seaman who had squinted into too many storms. Like his father. Each time the barber cut his hair, he saw more gray littering the floor. He ached when he moved, and he felt the twinge of his bullet wound more intensely now than when he had been shot eight years ago. He was getting older, no doubt about that. But something about Andrea's honest stare peeled away the years from his mind.
She leaned back in her chair, covering her mouth with both hands, still staring at him.
"I'm a little embarrassed," she told him quietly.
Stride was puzzled. "Why?"
Andrea laughed and looked at him with a tiny smile. "I hope you don't think I go around picking up men in casinos and sleeping with them."
"Oh," Stride said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let that happen. You were drunk. It wasn't fair."
"We were both drunk," Andrea said. "And we both wanted it. You don't have anything to feel guilty about. But the next day, I was scared. I thought I'd made a terrible mistake."
"You didn't," Stride said.
"Do you want to hear something terrible?" she said. "I resented it a little when you told me your wife died."
Stride looked at her strangely. "I don't understand."
"Cindy died, and there wasn't anything you could do about it. It wasn't about you. At least you can still feel good about yourself. That's what my husband took from me."
Stride shook his head. "That isn't your fault. It's his. He sounds like a selfish son of a bitch."
"I know. But I still miss him. You must think I'm a fool."
"Join the club," Stride said. "Look, how about we go to dinner right now? I'm hungry as hell, and Briar Patch makes a one-inch steak that melts in your mouth. And the beer is ice cold."
Andrea nodded. "I'd like that. I think I've had enough for the day. Let me lock these in the department office, and then we can head out."
They walked out together into the empty hallway of the school. He heard distant sounds, like the thump of a basketball, but he didn't see anything or anyone around them. The lights seemed dim and shadowy, and the night outside yawned in at them through the windows like a giant black creature.
They climbed the stairs to the second floor of the school and found themselves in another dark, empty hallway. Andrea unlocked the door opposite the stairs and flicked on the light switch inside. The office was crowded with metal desks and filing cabinets and bookshelves lined with science textbooks. She chose the desk closest to the window, opened the bottom drawer, and dropped the stack of tests inside. He saw a photograph of a man on the wall beside her desk, and he assumed it was her ex-husband.
"All set," she said.
They turned off the lights, and Andrea locked the door behind them.
As they headed for the stairs, Stride saw a crack of light glowing from one of the offices at the far end of the hallway.
Andrea saw him hesitate. "What's up?"
"Probably nothing." But he suddenly felt a wave of anxiety. It came that way after a few years, a sixth sense that something wasn't right.