Flesh And Blood

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-com 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 of circulation 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.

CHAPTER 7

THE STORY WAS easy to find.

Shawna Yeager.

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