Flesh and Blood (7 page)

I had no more success at Stephen Hall's unadorned slab of chartreuse wood, but Gene Dalby's door was open and Gene was sitting at his desk, wearing a rumpled white shirt and khakis, bare feet propped, gray laptop resting on a skinny stalk of thigh. He typed, hummed tonelessly, wiggled his toes. A pair of huarache sandals sat near the legs of his chair. Coffee bubbled in an old white machine. A single window to his left framed rooftops and the northern edge of the campus botanical gardens. From a boom box on the ledge came supernatural guitar licks and a bruised voice. Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Crossfire."

I said, "Uh, hi, Professor Dalby. Could we talk about my grades?"

Gene's head turned. Same bony pencil face and jug ears and rebellious ginger hair. His temples had silvered. Black-framed half-lens reading glasses rode the center of a swooping, askew hook of a nose. He grinned, placed the specs on the desk, did the same with the laptop. "No way. You flunk."

Jumping up to his full, ostrich-necked six-four, all loose limbs and oversized hands and bobbing head, he clasped my shoulders and shook his head in wonderment, as if my arrival heralded the second coming of something. Gene is one of the most outgoing people I know, a paragon of unadorned friendliness, hyperactive maestro of the thunderous greeting. His good cheer is nearly constant, and he avoids complexity. Unusual traits in a psychologist. So many of us were introspective, overly imaginative kids who got into the field trying to figure out why our mothers were depressed no matter what we did. In grad school a lot of people found him too good to be true and distrusted him. He and I always got along, though it rarely went beyond off-color jokes and casual lunches.

"So," he said. "Alex. How long has it been?"

"Awhile."

"Light-years, man. Here, sit— Coffee?"

I took a side chair, accepted a mug of something strong and bitter and vaguely coffeelike. He kicked the sandals under the desk. The office was tiny, and his size didn't help. He hunched like a pet confined by a cruel owner.

"Working during the break?" I said.

"Best time, less distraction. Besides, back when I was in practice I used to see fifty, sixty patients a week. That was real work. This academic racket is legalized theft. Nine months a year, make your own hours." He laughed. "These guys love to complain, but it's a paid vacation."

"When did you make the switch?" I said.

"Three years ago. Sold the practice to my associates and presented the department with an offer they couldn't refuse: They take me on part-time, no job security, no benefits, and I carry a heavy teaching load, in exchange for a clinical full professorship and no assignment to committees."

"No publishing treadmill."

"Exactly, but the funny thing is even though I didn't plan to, I'm doing research anyway. First time in years. Asking questions that really interest me rather than churning out garbage in tribute to the tenure gods. And I love the teaching, man. The kids are great. Despite what the idiot pundits say, students are getting smarter."

"What kind of research are you doing?" I said.

"Political attitudes in little kids. We go out to grade schools, try to gauge their perceptions of candidates. You'd be surprised how much little kids know about the scumbags who run for office. I feel like I'm home—social psych was always my first love. I went into clinical because I also liked clinical and I thought it would be nice to help people and allthat. But, mainly, because I needed to make a buck. Married with kids— unlike you, I never went through the swinging bachelor stage."

"You've got the wrong guy there, Gene."

"I don't think so, man. I distinctly recall you being a departmental love object. Even the girls who didn't shave their legs looked at you thatway."

"I must have missed it," I said.

He grinned. "Listen to him, that coyness—all part of the charm. Anyway . . . you look great, Alex."

"You too."

"I look like I always did—Ichabod Crane on methamphetamine. But yeah, I'm doing what I can to stay in shape, got into long-distance hiking. Jan and I did the John Muir Trail last summer, Alaska before that." He turned the volume down on Stevie Ray.

I named the song.

He said, "S.R.V. He was the man. Sad, huh? Struggles his whole life with dope and booze, plays bars for chump change, finally gets sober, makes it big, and the damn plane goes down. Talk about an object lesson."

"Live life to the fullest," I said.

"Live life and don't worry. Be happy—like that other song. Been telling that to patients for years, now I'm following my own advice. Not that it took courage or some big-time follow-your-bliss thing to motivate me. I got lucky—bought in at ground level with a start-up software company, turned a penny stock into dollars. Ten years of bad stock tips from my brother-in-law, finally one pays off. We're not talking private jet here, but now if I don't like the taste of something I don't have to eat it. The kids are in college and Jan's law practice is doing fine. Life is shockingly good, thanks to dot-corn madness. The company's going to shit, but I've already sold."

"Congratulations."

"Yeah," he said. "Even traded the Honda for a Jag— Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful." He shifted in his chair, cracked his knuckles. "So what brings you here? Doing some teaching yourself?"

"No, I'm trying to locate a student named Lauren Teague."

"Locate as in . . . ?"

I told him about the seven-day absence, implied without spelling it out that Lauren had once been a patient, emphasized Jane Abbot's anxiety."Poor lady," he said. "So you were here and just dropped in?"

"No, I thought you might be able to help me. Lauren told her roommate she had a research job here, but that doesn't seem to be true. She was in four classes last quarter, one of them your Intro Social section. I'm checking with all the profs, see if anyone remembers her."

"Lauren Teague," he said. "I sure don't. Had five hundred plus kids in that class. What others did she take?"

I named the courses.

"Let's see," he said. "Herb Ronninger is out in the Indian Ocean somewhere studying violent preschoolers—his class pulls over six hundred, so even if he were here I doubt he could help you. De Maartens and Hall are young-buck new-hires, and Learning and Perception tend to be a bit smaller. Let me call them for you."

"I already tried their offices. Do you have home numbers?"

"Sure." He found and copied the listings, handed them to me.

"Thanks."

"Lauren Teague," he said, putting his glasses back on. He opened a bottom desk drawer, rifled papers for a while, pulled out a list of names and grades. "Yeah, she was enrolled all right. . . . Did well, too. Very well—eighteenth out of 516. . . . Good, solid A's on all her exams. . . . B plus on her paper." More scrounging produced another list: "'Iconography in the Fashion Industry.' Oh, her."

"You remember her."

"The model," he said. "I thought of her that way because she looked like one—all the basics: tall, blond, gorgeous. And when I read the paper, I figured she'd been writing from experience. She also stood out because she was quite a bit older than the average junior—pushing thirty, right?"

"She's twenty-five."

"Oh," he said. "Well, she seemed older. Maybe because she dressed maturely—pantsuits, dresses, expensive-looking stuff. I remember thinking, this girl has money. Kind of aloof, too. She used to sit in the back by herself, take notes constantly. Never saw her with any other students. . . . So why'd I give her a B plus on the paper? . . . If the students want them, I hand them back, don't know if she picked hers up ... but I do keep a comment card. . . ." Bending low, he began tossing papers out of drawers, created a high pile on the desk. "Okay, here goes." He flourished a stack of rubber-banded blue index cards. "My notes say, 'High on anger, low on data.' If I remember, it was a bit of a screed, Alex."

"Anger at the fashion industry?" I said.

"From what I recall. Probably the usual feminist stuff—woman as meat, subservient roles coerced by unrealistic conceptions of femininity. I get at least two dozen every quarter. All valid points, but sometimes they substitute passion for facts. I really can't remember this particular paper, but if I had to guess, that would be it. So she left without telling Mom. Is that an aberration?"

"According to Mom."

He scratched his chin. "Yeah, as a parent that would worry me." Placing his feet on the floor and his hands on his knees, he looked at me over the rims of the half-glasses. "It's funny—actually it's anything but funny—your coming around about a missing student. When you first told me, it gave me a start. Because something like this happened last year. Another girl—some kind of campus beauty queen. Shane something, or Shana . . . Shanna—I don't recall her exact name. Left her dorm room one night and never came back. Big stir on campus for a few days, then nothing. It affected me more than it might've because Jan and I had just sent our Lisa off to Oberlin. She was fine in the separation-anxiety department, but we weren't doing so well. I'd just started to settle down—had stopped phoning the poor kid twelve times a day—and this Shanna thing happens."

"She was never found?"

He shook his head. "Talk about the ultimate parent's nightmare. There's no word I despise more than closure—pop-psych crapolsky. But not knowing's got to be worse. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the Teague girl—it just reminded me."

"Gene, in terms of the research job, is there something I might've missed? I checked federal, state, and private grants, including part-time positions."

He thought awhile. "What about something off-campus? Paid subject positions. You see ads in the Daily Cub. 'Feeling low or moody? You may be clinically depressed and qualify for our cool little clinical trials.' Pharmaceutical outcome studies, obviously the FDA or whoever's in charge doesn't see a problem using paid participants. The Cub's out ofcirculation till next quarter, but maybe you can find something. Still, what would that tell you about where she is?"

"Probably nothing," I said. "Unless Lauren signed up for a study because she had a specific problem—as in depression. Depressed people drop out."

"Her mother wouldn't know if she was that low?"

"Hard to say. Thanks for the tip, Gene—I'll look into it."

I got up, placed the coffee on a table, and headed for the door.

"You're really extending yourself on this, Alex."

"Don't ask."

He stared at me but said nothing.

No longer a clinician, but he knew enough not to press it.

7

THE STORY WAS easy to find.

Shawna Teaser.

Beautiful face, heart-shaped, unlined, crowned by a tower of pale ringlets. Almond eyes, shockingly dark. Pixie chin, perfect teeth, beauty undiminished by grainy black-and-white miniaturization, the cold, metal frame of the microfiche machine, the stale air of the research library microfilm vault.

I stared at lovely glowing shoulders exposed by a strapless gown, sparkly things dotting the bodice. The gown Shawna Yeager had worn at her coronation as Miss Olive Festival. Silly little rhinestone crown pinned to the luxuriant curls, happiest-girl-in-the-world grin.

The contest had taken place two years ago in her hometown, an aggie community east of Fallbrook named Santo Leon. Shawna Yeager held a scepter in one hand, a giant plastic olive in the other.

The Daily Cub article said she'd graduated fifth in her class at Santo Leon High. A single paragraph summed up her precollege history: smalltown beauty queen/honor student travels to the city to attend the U. Shawna had surprised her friends by not pledging a sorority, choosing instead to live in one of the high-rise dorms. Turning into a "study grind."

She'd majored in psychobiology, talked about premed, used her beauty contest winnings and income from a summer teacher's aide job to pay her bills. She'd been enrolled for only a month and a half when she left the dorm on a late October night, informing her roommate that she was heading to the library to study. At midnight the roommate, a girl named Mindy Jacobus, fell asleep. At eight A.M. Mindy woke, found Shawna's bed empty, worried a bit, went to class. When Shawna still hadn't returned by two P.M., Mindy contacted the campus police.

The unicops engaged in a comprehensive search of the U's vast terrain, notified LAPD's West L.A. and Pacific Divisions, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica Police, and West Hollywood sheriffs of the girl's disappearance.

No leads. The campus paper carried the story for a week. No sightings of Shawna, not even a false report. Her mother, Agnes Yeager, a widowed waitress, was driven to L.A. from Santo Leon by a representative of the chancellor's office and provided living quarters in a graduate student dorm for the duration of the search.

A Cub follow-up—still no news—said the search had lasted three weeks.

After that, nothing.

I returned to the microfilm librarian, filled out cards, obtained spools from the Timesand the Daily News for the corresponding dates. Shawna's disappearance merited two days of page 20 media attention, then a senator's drunken son crashed his Porsche on the 1-5, killing himself and two passengers, and that story took over.

I returned to the Cub spool, wrote down the reporter's name—Adam Green—and studied Shawna Yeager's beauty contest photo some more, searched for a resemblance to Lauren.

She and Lauren did share a sculpted, blond loveliness but nothing striking. Both A students. Psychology major, psycho biology major.

Both were self-supporting too, one banking on pageant money, the other, "investments." Had each been on the lookout for extra income? Consulted the campus classifieds and gotten involved in one of the research studies Gene Dalby had described?

I searched for more parallels, found none. All in all, nothing dramatic. And plenty of differences:

At nineteen Shawna had been considerably younger than Lauren when she disappeared. Small-town olive queen, big-city call girl. Divorced mother, widowed mother. And Shawna had vanished during the second month of the quarter, Lauren during the break. I scrolled to the Cub's want ads, worked backward until I came upon a boldface entry in the middle of the JOBS!! section, posted two weeks before Shawna vanished.