The Soul Hunter (32 page)

I packed up my stuff, shouldering my resolve as I slung my book bag onto my back and trudged through the cold to the
other end of campus. I spent the rest of the morning with my office door closed, prepping for class and returning work-related phone calls and e-mails for the first time in almost a week. Lunch was quick—a cheeseburger from Jack’s (milkmaid thighs be damned)—followed by a few student appointments.

My class was lively that afternoon, the debate sharp and stimulating. I felt grounded by the time I left, like I’d stepped back into reality from the other side of that stupid magnifying mirror. It was good to be behind my eyes again, inside my own skin, if even for a few hours.

I stopped by Helene’s office after class.

“It’s over there,” she said, pointing.

She’d brought the cobbler in an insulated Tupperware thing that zips around a rectangular lidded pan. Leave it to Helene to have the good gear.

I picked up the cobbler. “It’s still warm.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

I unzipped the cover and tipped the lid. The smell was intoxicating. Rich and buttery.

She looked up at me over her glasses. “It won’t work unless you stuff your lousy attitude into that big leather bag of yours. You know that, don’t you? Without that, it’s just dough and fruit.”

I sighed. “The man brings out the worst in me. He truly does. Every time I look at him, I’m just overcome with hostility.”

“Well, try and contain yourself this one time. It’s in your own best interest.”

“I will. Believe me. I’m going over there right now.” I turned to leave. “And Helene?”

“What?”

“Thanks.”

“Go.”

I made a quick trip to the grocery store across the street for a half-gallon of Blue Bell Country Vanilla ice cream, the pièce de
résistance. Then gathered it all up and made the trek across the campus to the clinic.

I took a breath and knocked on John’s office door.

I knew by now what to expect. There was the startled scoot of the chair, the scrambling and shuffling of papers, and the plodding walk across the room. He opened the door a crack.

I pasted a reasonably genuine smile on my face. “Hi,” I said, as sweetly as I could manage.

John studied me dully, his face flushed and sweaty.

“Hello, Dr. Foster.”

“Hi,” I said again.

I’d decided that leaving out the nomenclature entirely would avoid the Dr. Mulvaney situation.

“I was wondering if you had a minute. I know you’re busy.” (I pictured Harold cheering me on.) “But I’d like to talk to you for a second. If you can break away from your work.” I held up the cobbler. “I brought snacks.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “What snacks?”

“Cobbler,” I said triumphantly. “With Blue Bell ice cream.”

“Just a minute.” He closed the door in my face.

I put my ear to the door and listened while he shuffled around again. John acts as though his research is top-secret, Nobel-caliber stuff. I think he really believes he’s doing something important in the universe with his little rat-maze experiments.

He cracked the door again. “Okay.” He held out his hand for the cobbler. I think he actually meant to take the dish and leave me in the hallway empty-handed, if you can believe that.

I clutched the cobbler and took a little step backward. “I thought we could sit down for a minute. If you’re free.”

“I’m busy.”

“I know. I’m really sorry. It’ll just take a minute.”

He looked at the Tupperware longingly.

“Helene made it. It’s, uh…” I searched my memory “some sort of blueberry situation, I believe.”

He looked back inside his office, then back at me. He was weakening. I could feel it.

I then heard myself jabbering like a set of wind-up teeth. “Boy, I need a break like you wouldn’t believe. Don’t you? Man, oh man. I worked like a mad woman today. Academic life is really hard, don’t you think? People don’t understand the workload, I tell ya. They think we just sit around all the time and teach a class here and there when we get around to it. But it’s tough. Overworked and underpaid. Yep, that’s us.” I smiled again. I tried to make this one seem more sincere.

He hesitated, then stepped back and opened the door all the way.

I followed him over to his desk and started to put the cobbler down. John walked past me and left the office, the door standing open behind him. I stood there, mute, and watched him go. The man had the social savvy of a dead lizard. On his good days.

I pushed some papers out of the way and set the cobbler and ice cream down while I waited for him to come back.

It was freezing in his office, as usual. I walked over to Ozzie and Harriet and looked inside. The rats were curled up together in a ball. They looked up at me and sniffed, their little pink noses twitching. I shuddered, remembering my last encounter with a rat.

“Sorry, you guys,” I said out loud. “It was nothing personal.”

I walked the rows, past mice and rats until I got to a cage with a rabbit in it.

I leaned in over the top. “Hi, sweetie. How ya doing? Do you know my friend Melissa?”

The rabbit hopped over to me and stood on its back legs. It was a beautiful velvety gray, lop-eared and soft. I checked the tag on the aquarium.

“Hi, Eeyore,” I cooed. “What’s he got you doing? Nothing hard, I hope. Are you learning the maze?” I reached in and scratched its ears.

“They’re not pets.” John’s voice came from the doorway.

I pulled my hand back quickly and turned around. “Sorry, John. It’s just that someone gave me a—” I stopped myself as I saw the “John” register. Strike one.

“You’ll screw up my research if you treat them like pets,” he said in his thick monotone. “They don’t need any affection.”

“Aw, c’mon. Everyone needs affection. Don’t you think?”

“That’s a myth,” he said. “A myth that propagates sentimentality. Animals need attachment only in the earliest stages of life. When they are unable to meet their own physical needs.”

“What about Ozzie and Harriet over there?” I pointed. “They look pretty affectionate to me.”

“They’re a mating pair. Otherwise, they’d be in separate pens.”

“Great names, by the way. Ozzie and Harriet. I used to love that show.”

“I didn’t name them. Someone else did.”

“Oh.” I resisted the urge to call him a heartless twit and instead said, a little too brightly, “How’s the research coming, anyway?”

John stood there with his hands in his pockets and launched into a monologue about rodent brain activity and repetitious behaviors. I tried to look interested, but truly, it was impossible. As I tuned him out and watched his lips move, the droning of his words clunking along without me, I felt a little sorry for the rodents. They had to listen to it all day. They probably lived for the maze. At least when they were running for the cheese, there was something to look forward to.

Still talking, he eventually made his way over to the desk and removed something from his pocket. It was a large spoon, which I assumed he’d just retrieved from the kitchen. He opened up the cobbler, pried the lid off the ice cream, and then started eating,
alternating bites, straight out of the containers, his face stuffed full, his mouth still chewing as he took each new bite.

“S’good,” he said, through a mouthful of goo.

I took a step toward the door. Committee or no committee, I couldn’t watch this massacre without losing my stomach entirely. Already I was doomed to spending the remainder of my life without blueberry cobbler. I felt myself starting to gag.

“Well, I should be going,” I choked out.

“I tht ywntd ttlk abt smthg,” he mumbled.

“It can wait,” I said, still backing up. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Okay, Joh…uh, I mean…yeah, okay. See you tomorrow. Thanks a lot.”

I fled the office, pulling the door shut behind me and leaning against it to collect myself. I took a few breaths, trying to settle my stomach.

Marci was gone for the day by now. When my head had stopped spinning, I walked over to her desk and wrote John a chirpy “thanks for the great visit, hope you enjoyed the cobbler” note, then stuck it in his box and left, grateful for the cold air that hit my face as I stepped out of the building into the night.

My truck was parked across the campus near my office. As I started my walk up the tree-lined center avenue, hands in my pockets, my cell phone rang. I checked the number. It was David.

“I’m so glad you called,” I said breathlessly.

“Hello, Dylan.”

“You only call me Dylan when you’re mad.”

“Hurt, would be more accurate. I’m not great at mad.”

“I’d rather you get mad and speak up than keep up the radio silence. If you’d talk to me, at least then I’d know how to respond.”

“I don’t like having to point out the obvious, Dylan.”

“What’s obvious? Point it out.”

“Who’s the guy?”

“What guy?”

“The one at your house at ten at night. Remember him?”

“Martinez? Nobody. He’s a cop. He was dropping something by my house. You completely misinterpreted the situation.”

There was a long silence. “I don’t want to talk about this,” he said.

“We have to eventually.”

“Actually, we don’t. That’s the beauty of being an adult. It’s one of life’s big bonuses. We can just walk away from the whole thing and never talk about it at all. Ever.”

“I don’t want to do that.”

“I do.”

“Then why did you call if you don’t want to talk about it?”

“Just passing along some news. I talked to Linda Fortenberry again today.”

“And?”

“The baby was probably the boyfriend’s. Blood types match, anyway. DNA will take a while.”

“That makes sense, I guess. Thanks for telling me.”

“Sure.”

Another long pause.

“Talk to you later,” he said.

“Come on, David. Don’t do this. Can’t we just—?”

“I need some time. I’ll call you.” He hung up.

I threw my phone in my purse. The night was crisp. Dallas’s polluted air seemed less noxious than usual, and the stars were as bright as city stars can be, high above the copper-roofed dome of Dallas Hall. Live oak trees hugged in the view like a picture frame and the thin, remaining layer of snow crunched under my feet. I felt for a minute like I was walking inside one of those snow globes, when all the white is settled on the bottom. Everything is still and serene, right up until the moment someone picks it up and shakes it, unleashing the storm.

I stepped into the parking lot and kicked a remnant of ice off my boot.

I started my truck and flipped on the dome light, then fished in my bag for my notebook and paged through until I found the address I wanted. Now was as good a time as any. I had nothing better to do.

I pulled off the campus and eased my truck onto Daniel Avenue and into the traffic. Arlington was about twenty-five minutes from here. If the conversation was quick, as I expected it to be, I could make it there and back and be home to play with Melissa by nine.

I
pulled onto Patrick Finnigan’s street and pulled over a few blocks away from his house.

I cut the headlights and made myself think about Drew Sturdivant, picturing her driving down this street on a dark night, on her way to see the boy that was no man and not much of a boyfriend either. I tried to put myself in her place for a few minutes. I wanted to see Finn through her eyes, not through any preconceived notions I had. I was hoping the view would clear for me, that my perspective would widen enough to see what I was looking for.

Obvious answers are so distracting sometimes.

I found myself wishing, once again, that I’d bought that gun Detective McKnight had recommended. Who knows if I’d have the guts to use it? Still, I felt naked and unprepared. If Drew’s boyfriend was what I thought he was, I’d have felt better packing a .38.

My phone rang, startling me and quickening my heartbeat. I said hello without looking at the number, hoping for David, but of course it wasn’t him. It was my little friend Christine Zocci. Christine has the best Jesus radar of anyone I know. She practically sings with the angels. She always seems to know when I need to hear a friendly voice.

“Hey, Punkin,” I said brightly.

“My mommy said I could call you if I wanted to.”

“I’m glad she did, sweetie. What are you guys doing up there? About to have supper?”

“They’re having macaroni.”

“They are? What are you having?”

“I don’t like macaroni.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I used to like it, but I don’t anymore.”

“Oh. Well, things change, don’t they?”

“Did you use your lunchbox today?” she asked.

“I didn’t use it today, but I used it Friday. Everybody was jealous.”

“Why didn’t you use it today?”

“I didn’t take my lunch today. Did you?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “I had carrots, apples, and Fritos. I like Fritos.”

“I like Fritos, too.”

“And Cheetos,” she said.

“Puffy or hard?”

“Hard,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “The puffy ones are yucky.”

“Hey, guess what?” I asked.