“Right behind Hawk,” Susan said. “In truth they’re driving me crazy.”
“Good,” I said.
“I know. I’m very safe.”
We were quiet. It didn’t feel like quiet. It felt like we were saying things to each other.
After a moment, Susan said, “Progress today?”
“Yeah, some,” I said. “I found someone who knew Alderson. He was associated with a college out here. I’m going there tomorrow.”
“What college?”
“Coyle State,” I said.
“Nope,” Susan said. “Never heard of it.”
“Now you have,” I said. “You can always learn things talk ing to me.”
“Yes,” Susan said. “It’s one of the reasons I do it.”
I looked up at the ceiling. It was a standard sprayed-on ceiling. The room was generic hotel chain, generic furniture, generic rug. Nice view of the lake if I stood up. I’d been in a lot of rooms like this, mostly minus the view. They worked fi ne. They housed you, kept you warm, let you bathe and sleep and eat. They didn’t do much for the soul, but their mission had nothing to do with the soul.
“Any other reasons?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Do you know when you’re coming home?”
“No. It’ll depend a little on what I find out at the college tomorrow.”
“Have you been thinking about us?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Have you been thinking about marriage?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“We are the kind of people who marry,” I said.
“Yes.”
“On the other hand there’s nothing broken.”
“So why fi x it?” Susan said.
“Maybe,” I said.
Again the interactive quiet stretching nearly seven hundred miles across the dark fields of the republic. The fi elds were now probably darker and fewer than the ones Fitzgerald imagined, but I liked the phrase.
“And have you been thinking about why you’re so committed to this case?” Susan said.
“Most of the drive out here,” I said. “When I wasn’t thinking about marriage.”
“Any conclusions?”
“More a bunch of images,” I said. “Doherty talking about his wife. The look on his face when he listened to the tape. The way his wife seemed to feel he didn’t matter.”
“And are there any images of us that pop up?”
“We were separated,” I said. “I had to kill some people in a way I don’t feel so good about.”
“And if I hadn’t done what I did, you wouldn’t have had to kill the people you killed.”
“True.”
“Isn’t that a little hard to forgive?” Susan said.
“I’ve never thought so,” I said.
“Until this case?” Susan said.
“Doherty has to matter to someone,” I said.
“He matters to Epstein,” Susan said.
I didn’t say anything.
“I did a number of things that caused us both a lot of pain.”
“It did,” I said. “But we got past that.”
“I have never liked talking about it,” Susan said. “But I did what I had to do at the time.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Would it help if we talked about it now?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Again the rich silence across the phone connection.
“I love you,” she said. “You know that. I have always loved you. Even when I couldn’t stand to be with you, and was with someone else, I loved you.”
“It didn’t always feel quite that way,” I said.
“No, I’m sure it didn’t,” she said. “But it was true. You have to know it was true. That it is true.”
“I know,” I said.
“Don’t forget it,” she said.
After we hung up I stood in the window and looked at the dark lake stretching north to the horizon and beyond it to Canada. There was a moon, and I could see some sort of isolated bell buoy marking something a half mile from shore.
“I won’t forget it,” I said.
46.
Coyle state college was a scatter of yellow brick buildings across from a shopping center in Parma. The vice president for administration was a guy with a bad comb-over.
“Gerald Lamont,” he said when we shook hands. “Call me Jerry.”
Jerry was wearing a plaid sport coat, with a maroon shirt and tie. It went perfect with the comb-over.
“I’m interested in a member of your faculty from ten years ago, Perry Alderson.”
“Sure,” he said.
He picked up the phone and dialed an extension.
“Sally? Could you look up a former faculty member here, from ten years ago, Perry . . .”
He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
“Alderson,” I said.
“Perry Alderson, yeah, soon as you can. Thanks, Sal.”
He hung up.
“What’d this guy Perry do?”
“Just a name that came up in a case back in Boston,” I said.
“Red Sox Nation,” Jerry said.
“That’s right,” I said.
“It was great for you guys in 2004,” Jerry said. “I think the whole country was rooting for you.”
“It was great,” I said.
Jerry’s phone rang.
“Hi, Sal. You’re sure? How about a few years either side?
No? Okay.”
He hung up and looked at me and shook his head.
“No Perry Alderson,” he said.
“Teaching assistant?”
“We have never had a sufficient graduate program for teaching assistants.”
“The college have a program,” I said, “for counseling street people at the Church of the Redeemer, on Euclid?”
“I don’t think so,” Jerry said.
I didn’t have the sense that Jerry was on top of things here at Coyle.
“Did they ten years ago?” I said.
“Ten years ago I was working for the Ohio Department of Education,” Jerry said. “Lemme call my assistant dean. She was here then, I think.”
He picked up the phone and dialed.
“Hi. Lois? Could you come down to my office? Yes. Please. Now. Okay, thanks.”
“You don’t have this kind of information on computers?” I said.
“I’m not a computer guy,” he said.
Assistant Dean Lois came into the office. She was a great improvement on Jerry. Jerry introduced us, and explained me.
“I’m interested in a guy named Perry Alderson. Said he was a professor here about ten years ago. Psychology.”
Lois shook her head.
“I’ve been here for twenty years,” she said. “First four as a student. I was a psych major. After graduation I stayed on as an administrator. I don’t remember a Perry Alderson.”
If she was a freshman twenty years ago she’d be in her late thirties now. A fine age for a woman. I took my picture of Perry Alderson out and put it on the desk.
“Either of you recognize him?” I said.
They both looked. Jerry shook his head.
Lois said, “My God, that’s Bradley Turner.”
“Bradley Turner,” I said.
“Yes,” Lois said. “I used to date him. Though I guess I wasn’t alone in that.”
“Active ladies’ man?” I said.
“Very,” she said.
“Tell me about him,” I said.
“This place used to be a junior college,” Lois said. “Two years to an associate’s degree. Then when we joined the state collegesystem, we moved to a full four-year curriculum and added a small graduate program offering a master’s degree in social work and psychology.”
“The master’s was terminal?” I said.
“Yes. We did not, still don’t, offer a Ph.D. We don’t have the resources.”
“We’re headed in the right direction,” Jerry said. Both Lois and I nodded. I had already fi gured out what Lois had long known about Jerry.
“Was Bradley in the graduate program?”
“Yes. He was older. Said he had been deeply engaged in the peace movement for many years, but now had decided that there was a better way. He was working toward a master’s in pysch and deprivation counseling.”
“Deprivation counseling,” I said.
“It’s a program to which we lay original claim,” Jerry said.