Flesh And Blood

“How’d you learn this?” I said.

“I saw a picture – what I’m pretty sure was a picture of Shawna. And the way her roommate reacted when I brought it up told me I was probably right.”

“Mindy Jacobus.”

“Yeah, Mindy. I bugged her a lot, ’cause she was the last person to see Shawna alive. She never wanted to cooperate, said she and Shawna were close, she didn’t want to bad-mouth Shawna. Maybe she was being sincere, but I also think she was a little jealous.”

“Why’d you figure that?”

“You’ve seen pictures of Shawna?”

I nodded.

“Mindy was cute, but she was no Shawna. I’m not saying there was overt animosity between them. But something about the way she talked about her – I couldn’t put my finger on it, I just felt it. Whatever the reason, Mindy really didn’t want to talk about Shawna. I kept bugging her – showing up at her dorm room, catching her in between classes, playing Ace Newshound.” He smiled wistfully. “I must’ve been a real pain in the ass – today, she’d probably have me arrested as a stalker. But I was like… driven. Things bothered me. Like why didn’t Shawna have a boyfriend? Mindy had a boyfriend. Any good-looking girl can have a boyfriend at the snap of a finger, right? Mindy’s answer was that Shawna was a super-grind, end of story. Went to class, came back to the dorm and studied, went to the library and studied some more. But I checked out the grinds in all the libraries, and no one remembered seeing Shawna, and neither did the librarians. I also managed to get hold of Shawna’s library records – big no-no, don’t ask me how. Shawna hadn’t checked any books out the entire quarter.”

“Your article said she was headed for the library the night she disappeared,” I said.

“That was the official story. Mindy’s story. And the unicops believed it. But I’m not sure Mindy believed it. I think she was covering for Shawna. Because she got all shifty when I bugged her about it. And finally I got her to admit that the reason Shawna didn’t have a boyfriend was because she liked older guys. Mindy had tried to fix her up with a buddy of her boyfriend, and Shawna had turned her down flat. Said she preferred older guys – ‘grown-ups’ was the term she used.”

“You’re thinking she was having an affair with an older man,” I said.

“It crossed my mind,” he said. “But I was never able to take it any further. Mindy got all pissed off at me and got her boyfriend – he was this refrigerator-sized behemoth named Steve – to warn me off. I wasn’t about to risk life or limb, so I backed off. I did suggest to the unicops that they check out whether Shawna had ever been seen with an older guy – maybe even a faculty member – but they brushed me off.”

“Why a faculty member?”

“Campus life is isolated. What other older men do students come in contact with? But no one cared – not even my editor. She pulled me off, said they needed to run more political stories.”

He shrugged. “Being on the receiving end of all that apathy and hostility was an eye-opener. So now I write jingles, which is whoring but good-paying whoring. Douche and toothpaste don’t slam the door in your face.”

“The photo you saw,” I said. “Tell me about it.”

“It was the first time I went to the dorm to talk to Mindy – maybe two days after Shawna was reported missing. I don’t know if you’ve seen the dorms, but the rooms are tiny – cells, really. Two people in an area barely big enough for one and not enough closet space, so you tend to keep your stuff out in the open. Shawna must have been a neat freak, ’cause she’d stored her junk in shelves above her bed. I was surprised the police hadn’t confiscated it – doesn’t that show you how seriously they were taking the case? Anyway, I stuck my hand up to pull down her stuff – I really had nerve – got hold of some books and saw this magazine in the middle of the stack. Recent copy of Duke. Which was kind of weird in a girl’s room, right? I grabbed the stuff when Mindy had her back to me, then she turned and started screaming at me and knocked everything out of my hand. That’s when the photos fell out of the Duke. Black-and-whites, clearly nudies. Mindy scooped them up too fast for me to get a good look at them, stuffed them back in the Duke, shoved all of it under her own pillow, continued screaming at me. It all happened really fast, but I did see a killer bod and big blond hair, and that would fit Shawna. Mindy starts shoving at me, yelling at me to get out, and I’m saying, What’s with the skin shots? and she says it’s none of my fucking business. Then she says it belonged to Steve and I’m out in the hall and the door slams.”

He took another bite of sandwich. “It was almost as if she decided to give me some answer so I’d drop it. And maybe it was Steve’s, but then what was it doing on Shawna’s shelves? In the middle of Shawna’s books.”

“Did you tell anyone about this?”

“The unicops and Riley, just like with the older-man theory. Same reaction: Thanks, we’ll look into it. Maybe they did. Though my guess is if the pictures were of Shawna, Mindy might’ve gotten rid of them. To save Shawna embarrassment.”

“Any idea where Mindy is now?”

“She was older than Shawna, would be a senior by now. Don’t imagine it would be that hard to find her.”

“You never tried.”

“I was out of it – did those few stories, then moved on. But like I said, Shawna stayed with me. Though I never thought I’d be talking about her again. Is our deal still on?”

“Sure,” I said.

“You think any of what I told you might mean something?”

“I’m not dismissing it, Adam.”

Older man, younger woman. Dugger’s ad. Nude pictures. Sexual hang-ups.

I’d thought Dugger a prude, but prudes can have secret lives. Maybe Dugger’s donation to the kids at the church had been a guilt offering.

Adam Green was staring at me.

I said, “So maybe the older man in Shawna’s life was a photographer. Someone who claimed to be working for Duke.”

“Why not? I mean, I can’t see a sleazeball like that actually working for Duke, ’cause whatever else Duke is, it’s bona fide, right? They’d have to be careful – couldn’t assign some psycho to take pictures of young girls, right? But this is Hollywood – there’ve got to be armies of low lifes roaming around with cameras and bogus stories. Everyone says Shawna was smart, but she had gotten big-time strokes for her looks and she was still a country girl. How much of a stretch is it from posing in bathing suits and wearing a plastic crown to taking off the suit? And if Shawna did have a thing for older men, couldn’t she have been vulnerable to some guy coming across mature and sophisticated?”

“Makes sense,” I said.

“You’re not bullshitting me?”

“No. You’ve put together a logical scenario.”

He grinned. “I do that once in a while. Maybe I will write a screenplay.”

CHAPTER 17

WONDERING IF MINDY Jacobus was also a psych major, I called Mary Lou at the department and asked her to look up Shawna’s roommate.

“That girl,” she said. “Lauren. I read about it – I’m so sorry, Dr. Delaware. That poor mother. What does this Mindy have to do with it?”

“Maybe nothing,” I said. “But you know how it is.”

“Sure – hold on.”

Several minutes later. “She’s not one of ours, so I called Letters and Science. She’s an econ major – or was. She didn’t reenroll this year. You don’t think she could also be…”

“No,” I said, feeling my heart jump. “Was any reason given for her dropping out?”

“I didn’t ask. If you can stay on, I’ll call over there again.”

“Sure.”