Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(30)
“I need to be in class in twelve minutes. It’s an eight-minute walk from here.”
“Professor Denton’s class?”
She nodded. “So I really don’t have any time right now…”
“I’ll walk with you,” DeMarco said. He let her cross ahead of him and go out the door, then he turned back to the kitchen. The other girl had already moved away from the sink. On her way to the front window, DeMarco thought. The sound of his voice brought her up short.
He said, “Could you tell me how frequently Miss Ramsey doesn’t return to her apartment at night?”
The girl was small and reed thin, her eyes huge. “Uh…” she said.
“Is it every night or just now and then?”
“I don’t really…keep track, you know?”
“Could you tell me what the university policy is concerning professors sleeping with their students?”
Her eyes widened even farther. “I guess I don’t…really know anything…about that?”
“Thanks very much,” DeMarco said.
Outside, he cut across the grass to catch up with Heather Ramsey. She took long, adamant strides and walked as if leaning into a wind. Her hands were empty, fingers opening and closing as she walked. As he came up beside her, she offered a tight smile and said, “I saw you in Campbell Hall, right? You went into Professor Huston’s office?”
DeMarco said, “And I saw you sneaking out of Professor Denton’s house this morning, right?”
She cut him a quick look, then jerked her gaze forward again. Her gait stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s not what your roommate said.”
She shook her head and blew out an angry breath. “I hate this place.”
“Are you the reason his wife left him? Or was it the girl before you?”
Her pale face reddened.
“Has he told you that he’s still sleeping with his wife?”
When she looked at him this time, there were tears in her eyes.
He said, “You need to talk to me, Heather.”
Her pace slowed. She cast a glance about at the other students hurrying to their classes. None was more interested in getting to class than in trying to ascertain with a glance why she was being escorted by a state trooper. In a voice barely louder than a whisper, she asked, “What does any of this have to do with Professor Huston?”
“That’s what I need to figure out. And that’s why you need to talk to me.”
“I’m going to be late for class.”
“You don’t use books in this class?” he asked. “You’re not even carrying a pencil, Heather.”
Her pace slowed even more. Finally she came to a halt. “Everybody’s watching.”
“Just smile,” he told her. “See? Big smile for everybody to see.”
She tried one out but to DeMarco it looked more like a grimace. “Good,” he told her. “So what’s that place over there? With the picnic tables under the awning?”
“Student union,” she said. “The patio.”
“Can we get a cup of coffee there?”
She blew out another breath. “Whatever.”
? ? ?
Loud music blared from inside the union, an indecipherable clash of bass thumps and slurred hip-hop lyrics. DeMarco emerged onto the patio carrying two paper cups of coffee, set the hazelnut latte in front of her, kept the black dark roast Columbian for himself as he took a seat beside her at the scarred picnic table. She sat with her legs beneath the tabletop and faced the Union’s smoked-glass wall. He straddled the bench and faced her.
“That music in there gives me a headache,” he said.
She nodded.
He sipped his coffee.
She said, “How do you know he’s still sleeping with his wife?”
“He told me they were dating.”
“Really?” she asked. Then, “But just dating, right?”
He looked out across the campus. The lawns and sidewalks were mostly empty now, students in their classes, in their dorms, maybe two or three in the library. He said, “After I saw you this morning, before I came here, I made some inquiries about your poetry professor. This last one was his third marriage, did you know that? He’s got four kids to the first two wives.”
“He told me all that.”
“Did he tell you he’s still sleeping with the last one?”
“You’re just saying that. You don’t know.”
“I do know that the dean has spoken to him twice, unofficially, because of complaints from the parents of previous students. Officially the university can’t do anything because the girls, like you, were all at least eighteen. He’s been at the university now for, what, nine years? My guess is he averages one or two coeds a year.”
Her tears left small black circles on the weathered tabletop. “He says I’m special.”
DeMarco laid his hand atop hers. “You are,” he told her. “But not to him.”
Twenty-Two
Thomas Huston awoke shivering. An hour or so after midnight, he had curled into a tight ball in a small room on the second floor of the university president’s new mansion. The ten-thousand-square-foot building had been under construction since March and the ribbon-cutting ceremony was not scheduled until May of next year. All four stories had been framed in, but there were no windows installed anywhere, no wiring or plumbing except beneath the concrete of the basement and garage floors.