“From?”
“Mrs. Garstein. Message on the machine.”
“She didn't have any news?”
“No, there's nothing new.”
“Who else? Owen, I'll bet.”
“Yeah. I talked to him.”
“What did he want this time?”
“Oh, you know, he's worried about us. He wanted to come over.”
“You didn't tell him he could?”
“No. I said we didn't want company tonight.”
Owen. Calling up, hanging around, fussing … part of the plan to torment her? And I let him into my bed, she thought, I let him into my body.…
“Mom? You okay?”
“Yes. Does it seem cold in here to you?”
“Not really. Where did you and Dix go?”
Cecca hesitated. “The police station.”
“Why? What's going on? If it's something real bad, I have a right to know what it is.”
Yes, you do, Cecca thought. She couldn't keep it from her, couldn't protect her that way. It was time Amy knew exactly what they were up against. “All right, baby,” she said. “Let me make myself a drink and then we'll talk.”
While she was in the kitchen, Amy shut off the CD player. The new silence beat against her eardrums, creating the same kind of pressure as the rock music. She sat on the couch with her drink, rested her free hand on Amy's arm.
And as she told her, looking into her daughter's wan face, she was aware of a small, mean emotion that seemed to have crawled out of the core of her. A mixture of relief and gratitude that made her hate herself because of what it revealed about Francesca Bellini.
She was relieved, grateful, that it was Ted and Bobby and Kevin Harrell who had been killed and burned, Eileen who lay shattered in the Lakeport hospital—them and not Amy, not her.
FIFTEEN
The first day of the fall semester was an ordeal.
In the past he had always enjoyed it—all the activity on campus, the new faces, the fresh challenge of trying to cram familiar historical material into young minds that might, in a scant few cases, find it as exciting as he did. The prospect of facing this one had almost led him to call in sick that morning. But the need to occupy his time and his mind had been greater than his reluctance, and so he'd driven up to the university just as if this were another normal fall opening. He didn't regret the decision as the day unfolded. But getting through each segment was still a trial.
Department faculty meeting first thing, at nine o'clock. Not much point to it, except that it allowed everybody to “get their game faces on,” as Elliot liked to put it. It also allowed Elliot to deliver, for the benefit of new faculty members—an associate professor of medieval studies this year—and any administration spies, his “department chair's motivational speech.” It was the same every semester; Dix could have recited parts of it verbatim: “History is holistic, involving humanity in all of its dimensions, interests, and activities, from the economic and political to the psychological and cultural. Therefore we're not only teaching our students history but encouraging them to reflect upon and analyze the interrelationship of ideas and material circumstances and of individual and group behavior as revealed in a wide range of human institutions and activities.” And so on, mining the same vein of bullshit.
The meeting ended at nine-forty. Elliot caught up with him in the hall outside the lounge. “We've got time before your ten o'clock,” he said. “Let's have a quick chat in my office.”
Elliot's office was as cluttered as his living room at home. Two shelves in his bookcase were devoted to extra copies of his own books, particularly the Fremont Older biography, in case any of his students or an enterprising faculty member wanted to purchase one for purposes of edification and/or brown-nosing. Once they were inside he shut the door, leaned a hip against a corner of his desk, and ran a hand through his shaggy hair.
“I wasn't sure you'd be here today,” he said.
“Why wouldn't I be here?”
“What happened to the Harrell family at Blue Lake. Close friends of yours, weren't they?”
“Yes. How did you know that?”
“I knew Ted Harrell. He mentioned you a couple of times. Hell of a thing, a freak accident like that. He seemed like a decent guy.”
“He was,” Dix said. “I didn't know you knew him.”
“Not socially. He was my dentist.”
Dix nodded. He couldn't think of anything to say.
Elliot said, “I was watching you in the lounge. You holding up all right?”
“More or less. Do I look that bad?”
“Not bad, just off balance. Anybody would be under the circumstances. First your wife, then one of your best friends and his family … Christ, you've had a summer.”
“If you're worried about my ability to teach, you needn't be. Teaching, hard work, is still what I need right now.”
“Oh, hell, that isn't it. It's you I'm concerned about.”
“I'm coping, Elliot, really.”
Elliot fished a package of Pall Malls from his shirt pocket, set fire to one, and blew smoke toward the open window beside the desk. “How about those calls? Any more since we talked?”
“Calls? Oh … no.”
“Changing your number took care of it, then.”
“I guess it must have.”
“The asshole hasn't harassed you in any other way?”
Dix felt edgy, uncomfortable. He had no desire to talk about this, any of this—to Elliot or to anyone except Cecca and St. John. He said, “No. None.”
“Well, at least that's one cross you don't have to keep bearing.” Elliot blew more smoke, coughed, scowled at the cigarette. “I hate these things,” he said, and crushed it out in his overflowing ashtray. “You think the patch works?”
“Patch? Oh, the nicotine patch.”
“You know anybody who's quit with it?”
“Not personally. But it's supposed to be effective.”
“Only trouble is, you need to see a doctor to get it.”
“Is that a problem?”
“With me it is. I hate doctors, too.” Elliot glanced at his watch. “Listen, Dix, I just wanted you to know you've got a friend if you need one. Sympathetic ear, somebody to get drunk with if you think that might help … whatever I can do.”
“I appreciate that, Elliot.”
“Don't just appreciate it. Take me up on the offer. Balboa may not be much of a university, but we take care of our own.”
He had three classes that day; Tuesdays and Thursdays were the heaviest in his schedule. His ten o'clock was 453, The Age of Jackson. He got through that one quickly. Orientation lecture—what the students could expect to learn in the class, what was required of them, which textbooks they would need—and then an early dismissal. The new young faces that stared back at him were just that, faces; he didn't even try, as he usually did on the first day, to identify the few among them who were the most alert, the history majors and probable honor students, and to learn their names first.
An hour in his office afterward, trying to concentrate on his syllabus. The same old questions kept intruding: Who? Why? It wasn't Sid Garstein; Sid and Helen had spent all of Saturday with their daughter and her family in San Francisco. It apparently wasn't George Flores or Jerry Whittington; George had been with a client in Santa Rosa and Jerry had taken Margaret Allen on a wine-tasting tour of the Napa Valley. Only Owen Gregory and Tom Birnam had no one to vouch for their whereabouts. Owen claimed he'd spent Saturday alone working in his darkroom and watching tapes of old movies. Tom had spent the morning at Better Lands and then claimed to have driven down to the Black Point marina and taken his sailboat out on San Pablo Bay—alone. He hadn't gotten home until eight-thirty, late for dinner. A problem with one of the boat's sails was his explanation.