Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(28)
The curtains were all drawn in the front of Denton’s house. At the first-floor entryway, DeMarco pressed the doorbell three times. With the two-note chirp echoing throughout the house, he crossed briskly to the corner, then hurried along the side of the house until he could see the rear entrance. A door thudded inside. Footsteps scurried. A rush of muted voices. A minute or two later, the back door opened and the waifish girl DeMarco had seen in Campbell Hall outside the poet’s office exited the house at a canter. She crossed the rear yard and hurried through a narrow opening in the privet hedge.
DeMarco returned to the front door and again thumbed down the doorbell.
Finally the door swung open. A barefoot and rumpled-looking Denton, wearing a blue-and-green-striped bathrobe and holding a mug of coffee in one hand, a thick literature anthology in the other, blinked at him.
“Morning,” DeMarco said and smiled through the screen door. “I’m Sergeant Ryan DeMarco with the state police. And you are Robert Denton?”
“That’s right,” Denton said. He stood very still. DeMarco thought that except for the poet’s deer-in-headlights look, except for the bare feet, bare legs, and bathrobe, he might be posing for a yearbook photo.
“I was wondering if you would have a few minutes to talk with me about your colleague, Professor Huston?”
Denton remained motionless for two more blinks. Then suddenly he became animated. “Oh sure, absolutely. Come on upstairs.” He turned from the door and spoke quickly as he mounted the stairs. “Just let me jump into some clothes real quick. I’ve been working on today’s lesson plans. I’ll meet you in the living room, top of the stairs.”
DeMarco pulled the door shut behind him. He said, “I haven’t gotten around yet to taking my screens down either.”
At the top of the stairs, Denton paused long enough to look back down. “Screens?” he said. Then, “Ah, the storm doors. Right. I hadn’t even noticed.”
“Those lost BTUs add up fast.”
“One of these weekends,” the poet said. “Come on up. I’ll just be a second.”
The stairs opened directly onto the living room, a room that would have been full of sunlight had the horizontal blinds across the wide picture window been open. DeMarco stood at the top of the stairs and let his eyes adjust. A brown leather sofa. A bookcase full of books. Indentations in the beige carpet where another piece of furniture had long stood against the side wall, where now, in the corner, was nothing but an acoustic guitar on a metal stand. A piano? DeMarco thought. The mantel over the fireplace was empty, the grate full of old ashes. All around the room were other indentations in the carpet, bare nails stuck in the walls. Entertainment hutch, DeMarco thought. Recliner. Coffee table. Matching end tables. Pictures there and there and there. The only sign of inhabitance was last Sunday’s newspaper spread out on the floor in front of the sofa.
Wearing beltless blue jeans and a loose, blue-striped white Oxford shirt, cuffs unbuttoned, tail hanging out, Denton returned from his bedroom. “Please, sit down, Officer. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
DeMarco smiled. “Looks like you’ve been cleaned out here.”
“Ex-wife,” said Denton. “Estranged wife actually. But at least she left me a place to sit, right?” He motioned toward the sofa. “Please, have a seat. I’ll grab a chair for myself.”
He retrieved a low barstool from beside the kitchen counter, positioned it just inside the living room, sat with his bare feet on the top rung. Then he noticed how awkwardly DeMarco was sitting, his feet spread wide to avoid the newspaper.
Denton hopped down off the barstool. “Christ, I’m sorry,” he said and scooped up the newspapers, tossed them into an empty corner. “I live like a fucking bachelor, you know? Can’t seem to bring myself to get this place organized.”
“You and your wife trying to work things out?” DeMarco asked.
“Who the fuck knows? I mean, she wants us to date, you know? So we date. But all she ever wants to do is to haul out all the old baggage. Sorta makes me wonder why we even try.”
DeMarco nodded, said nothing.
Denton grinned. “I do miss the piano though. And she doesn’t even play! She just took it to piss me off.”
DeMarco smiled and said nothing. He already knew that Denton was uncomfortable with silences.
“Anyway, about Tom,” Denton said. “I mean what a fucking shock. The whole university is reeling over it. You guys have any idea where he is? Why he’d do such a thing?”
DeMarco said, “I stopped by your office the other day but you weren’t in yet. I talked to a student who was there waiting for you. Thin. Pretty. Strawberry-blond hair?”
“Heather Ramsey,” Denton said. He waited but couldn’t tolerate the pause for long. “Good student. Very bright.” He shuffled his bare feet on the barstool’s rung. “So uh…I guess you wanted to ask me some things about Tom?”
“I’m just hoping to figure him out,” DeMarco said. “Get a feeling for who he is.”
“He’s my fucking hero,” said Denton. “I mean not now, not after what he did, but… He was my sanctuary, I’ll tell you that. I don’t know how I’m going to survive without him around anymore.”
“Your sanctuary.”
“Yeah, it’s like… I guess you have to know what academia is really like. Inside the ivy tower, you know? It’s filled with pettiness like you wouldn’t believe. Fucking careerists who care more about office space than ideas. Anal, dysthymic…completely dysfunctional outside of the classroom, you know?”