Flesh And Blood

Because she was still getting paid for it?

Working the Fashion Mart runway since eighteen. Maybe she really had done some modeling, or perhaps it was just a cover for selling her body in another way.

Weekends by herself. One in Malibu, other times unspecified. Keeping it vague to cover her trail as she met up with clients?

The night owl and the morning lark. If she wanted privacy, Salander was a perfect roommate. Still, the guy was perceptive. If Lauren had been working at her old profession, wouldn’t he have caught on?

Maybe he had and chose not to tell me. My gut told me he’d been forthcoming, but you never knew…

I thought of what he’d told me about Lauren’s income. Investments. From her working days. Enough to coast for a few years.

I do great with tips.

Good clothes but otherwise living frugally. Before Salander had moved in, she’d had virtually no furniture. That and the old car said she knew how to make do.

Budgeting but spending on luscious things in her closet.

Dressing for the job?

I wondered about the lunch with her mother, Lauren returning dazed and upset, complaining about Jane trying to control her. But that had been two or three months ago – no reason it would lead her to vanish now.

Vanish. Despite my reassurances to Salander, I was thinking worst-case scenario.

Seven days, no luggage, no car, no explanation.

Maybe Lauren would waltz in any minute. Straight-A student returned from a research trip – some professor asking her to attend an out-of-town meeting or convention, deliver a paper… She’d flown somewhere – that could explain no car. But it didn’t solve the problem of wardrobe, and why hadn’t she let anyone know?

Unless Salander wasn’t as familiar with her wardrobe as he claimed and she had packed something. Tossed casual clothes into a bag.

Research… A project at my alma mater, a psych major, so probably a psych job. At the very department from which I’d obtained my union card.

I headed west on Wilshire, caught snail traffic at Crescent Heights – an orange-vested Caltrans crew, stupidest agency in the state, taking petty-fascist satisfaction in blocking off two lanes. I sat, idling along with the Seville, rolled a foot or two, sat some more, finally got past La Cienega. Unmindful of the noise and the dirt. New focus: yearning to feel useful.

CHAPTER 6

I REACHED THE city-sized campus of the U just after four-thirty. More people were leaving than arriving, and the first two parking lots I tried were being retrofitted for something. University officials gripe about budget constraints, but the jackhammers are always working overtime. It’s a boom time for L.A., might endure till the next time the earth shrugs.

It was nearly five P.M. when I hurried up the stairs to the psych building, hoping someone would be around. The cement-and-stucco waffle had been repainted: from off-white to a golden beige with chartreuse overtones. Uncommonly bright for a place devoted to the joys of artificial intelligence and compelling brain-lesioned rats to race through ever more Machiavellian mazes. Maybe boom times hadn’t loosened up grant money and the new hue was an attempt to connote warmth and availability. If so, eight stories of Skinner-box architecture said forget it.

By the time I entered the main office, half the lights were out and only one secretary remained, locking up. But the right secretary – a plump, ginger-haired young woman named Mary Lou Whiteacre, whose five-year-old son I’d treated last year.

Brandon Whiteacre was a nice little boy, soft and artistic, with his mother’s coloring and scared-bunny eyes. A freeway pileup had shattered his grandmother’s hip and sent him to the hospital for observation. Brandon had escaped with nothing broken other than his confidence, and soon he began wetting his bed and waking up screaming. Mary Lou got my name from the alumni referral list, but the department wasn’t picking up the tab. She was reeling from the crash and still chafing under the financial hardships imposed by a three-year-old divorce. Her HMO offered the usual cruelty. I treated Brandon for free.

My footsteps made her look up, and though she smiled she seemed momentarily frightened, as if I’d come to revoke her son’s recovery.

“Dr. Delaware.”

“Hi, Mary Lou. How’s everything?”

The red hair was a flyaway frizz that she patted down. “Brandon’s doing great – I probably should have called you to tell you.” She approached the counter. “Thanks so much for your help, Dr. Delaware.”

“My pleasure. How’s your mom?”

She frowned. “Her hip’s taking a long time to heal, and the other driver’s being a butt – denying responsibility. We finally got ourselves a lawyer, but everything just drags out. So what brings you here?”

“I’m trying to locate a student who was involved in research.”

“A grad student?”

“Undergrad. I assume you have a record of ongoing projects.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s generally not public information, but I’m sure you’ve got a good reason…”

“This girl’s gone missing for a week, Mary Lou. The police can’t do much, and her mother’s frantic.”

“Oh, no – but it’s midquarter break. Students take off.”

“She didn’t tell her mother or her roommate, though she did say she’d continue to come here even during the break, to do research. So maybe the job took her out of town. A conference, or some kind of fieldwork.”

“She didn’t tell her mom anything?”

“Not a word.”

She crossed the room to a wall of file cabinets. Same golden beige. The outcome of someone’s experiment on color perception? Out came a two-inch-thick computer printout that she laid on a desk and flipped through. “What’s her name?”

“Lauren Teague.”

She searched, shook her head. “No one by that name registered with personnel on any federal or state grants – let’s see about private foundations.” Another flip. She looked up, with the same worried expression I’d seen on her first visit to my office. Psychology’s code of ethics forbids bartering with a patient. I’d traded something with her, wondered if I’d stepped over the line.

“Nothing.”

“Maybe there’s a misunderstanding,” I said. “Thanks.”

She crossed her mouth with an index finger. “Wait a second – when it’s part-time work, sometimes the professors hire out through one of those employee management firms. It avoids having to pay benefits.”

Another cabinet, another printout. “Nope, no Lauren Teague. Doesn’t look as if she’s working here, Dr. Delaware. You’re sure the study was in psychology? Some of the other departments have behavioral science grants – sociology, biology?”

“I assumed psychology, but you could be right,” I said.

“Let me call over to the administration building, see what the central employee files turn up.” Glance at the wall clock. “Maybe I can catch someone.”

“I really appreciate this, Mary Lou.”

“Don’t even think about it,” she said, as she dialed. “I’m a mom.”

No job listing anywhere on campus. Mary Lou looked embarrassed – an honest person confronting a lie.

“But,” she said, “they do have her enrolled. Junior psych major, transferred from Santa Monica College. Tell you what – I’ll pull our copy of her transcript. I can’t give you her grades, but I will tell you which professors she took classes from. Maybe they know something.”