I took the calendar with me when I left the condo and walked back to my car. There was still snow in some shadowed areas, and ugly mounds of it compacted by salt and sand and pollution squatted where the plows had tossed it in the winter. But there was also bird song and the ground was spongy, and somewhere doubtless a goat-footed balloon man was whistling far and wee. I drove back to my office with the windows down.
He had her dressed in a Southern Belle costume today, like Scarlett O'Hara. He himself was wearing some sort of riverboat gambler getup with a black string tie and ruffled-front shirt. There was some salad and some French bread and a bottle of champagne on the table. He poured her some wine and handed it to her.
"I don't drink anymore, Luis."
"Not even a little champagne?"
"I'm an alcoholic, Luis. I can't drink."
"You drank when we were together before."
"I was relapsing," she said, "in more ways than one."
"What does that mean?"
"It just means I can't drink," she said.
"I could force you," he said.
"I know."
"But I won't."
"Thank you," she said, and hated saying it as soon as it was out.
"There will be more for me," he said.
He drank. She stood silently in her ridiculous dress, thinking that she could use a drink now and how it would help her courage and knowing she was lying to herself as she did it. I won't go back, she said to herself. I won't be that thing again. The monitors were playing the scenes of her captivity and their early romance. This time it played against a background of music by stringed instruments that sounded like the stuff you hear in elevators. What a jerk, she thought.
"Luis, my husband is a cop," she said. "Sooner or later he'll find me. "
Lisa sat. "This man will show up one day and kill you," she said.
Luis smiled like an indulgent parent. Frank will come. She wasn't hungry, but she knew she should eat. I'm trying, Frank. I'm trying to stay ready. She took some bread and a slice of cheese. She broke off a small segment of each and ate them, looking quietly at him while she chewed and swallowed. The bread seemed like Styrofoam. The cheese seemed like wax. It was difficult to swallow. Her mouth was dry and her throat was tight. Gotta eat, she thought. And broke off another piece. She took some grapes. He poured some wine from the decanter into her glass. She ignored it. The semblance of another time. The sham of intimacy was hideous. She could feel tears form behind her eyes. I want to be home with my husband, she thought. I want to be in my house. She forced herself not to cry. She would not cry! She forced a grape into her mouth and chewed it and swallowed it, squeezing it down her narrowed throat, fighting the need to wash it down with the wine.
"That is good, Angel. It is lovely to see you eat like this. It is a good beginning."
I want to kill you, she thought.
Chapter 8
Merrimack State was a small cluster of mismatched buildings on the west fringe of Proctor, where the crime rate wasn't keeping up. It looked more like an elementary school with some outbuildings than a college. The administration building appeared once to have been a two-family house. The building had been painted white, but not recently, and the parking area out front was dirt covered. I parked in a spot marked Visitors and went in. I asked at the counter in the Registrar's Office, and got shunted around for maybe half an hour until I ended up talking to the Dean of Students.
"I know this is trying, Mister Spenser, but obviously the right to privacy is something we must respect in regard to our students."
"How about the right to get found, if they're lost?" I said.
The dean smiled politely.
"May I see your credentials, please."
I thought about showing him my gun, rejected the idea, and let him see my license.
"And you're employed by Ms. St. Claire's husband?"
"Yes."
"I'm afraid I'll need his authorization."
"Of course you do. After all, I'm asking if she's enrolled here, and if so what courses she's taking. Hot stuff like that has got to be handled discreetly."
"You may be as scornful as you wish, Mister Spenser, but it's not a question of what you're asking. There's a larger issue here."
"I think it's called self-importance."
"I beg your pardon?"
The dean's name was Fogarty. He was a small man with a trimmed beard and receding hair. He wore a business suit. He'd probably started life as a high school principal somewhere and moved up, or down, depending on your perspective. The state college system was not a hotbed of erudition.
"There is no issue here. I'm not asking you to reveal anything which is in any way of a private nature. You just like to think that whatever goes on here is weighty with high seriousness."
"Are you afraid to have me call Ms. St. Claire's husband?"
"Ms. St. Claire's husband is suffering from gunshot wounds. It will not help him to talk with a pompous asshole."
"I'm sorry. But there's no need to be offensive."
"You think I'm offensive? I'll give you offensive. Ms. Lisa St. Claire's