ALTHOUGH FRIGHTENED, BITTER, AND struggling against despair, Rachel Dalton remained a lovely woman, with lustrous1 chestnut2 hair and blue eyes mysterious in their depths.
She was also, in Hazard’s experience, uncommonly3 considerate. Having agreed by phone to an interview, she had prepared coffee by the time he arrived. She served it in the living room with a plate of miniature muffins and butter cookies.
In the line of duty, homicide detectives were rarely offered refreshments4, never with damask napkins. Especially not from the wives of missing men for whom the police had done embarrassingly little.
Maxwell Dalton, as it turned out, had vanished three months earlier. Rachel had reported him missing when he had been four hours late from an afternoon class at the university.
The police, of course, had not been interested in an adult who was missing only four hours, nor had they been intrigued5 when he’d not shown up in a day, two days, or three.
“Apparently,” Rachel told Hazard, “we’re living in a time when a shocking number of husbands—and wives—go off on drug binges or just suddenly decide to spend a week in Puerto Vallarta with some [460] tart6 they met at Starbucks ten minutes ago, or walk out on their lives altogether without warning. When I tried to explain Maxwell, they couldn’t believe in him—a husband so reliable. They were sure he would turn up in time, with bloodshot eyes, a sheepish look, and a venereal disease.”
Eventually, when Maxwell Dalton had been gone long enough for even contemporary authorities to consider the length of his absence unusual, the police had allowed the official filing of a missing-persons report. This had led to little or no activity in search of the man, which had frustrated7 Rachel, for she had wrongly assumed that a missing-persons case triggered an investigation8 only a degree less vigorous than a homicide.
“Not when it’s an adult,” Hazard said, “and not when there are no indications of violence. If they had found his abandoned car ...”
His car had not been found, however, nor his discarded wallet stripped of cash, nor any item that might have indicated foul9 play. He had vanished with no more trace than any ship that had sailed into but not out of the Bermuda Triangle.
Hazard said, “I’m sure you’ve been asked already, but did your husband have any enemies?”
“He’s a good man,” Rachel said, as he expected she would. Then she added what he had not expected, “And like all good people in a dark world, of course he has enemies.”
“Who?”
“A gang of thugs at that sewer10 they call a university. Oh, I shouldn’t be so harsh. Many good people work there. Unfortunately, the English Department is in the hands of scoundrels and lunatics.”
“You think someone in the department might ...”
“Not likely,” Rachel admitted. “They’re all talk, those people, and meaningless talk at that.” She offered more coffee, and when he declined, she said, “What was the name of the man whose death you’re investigating?”
[461] He had told her only enough to get through her door; and he did not intend to elaborate now. He hadn’t even mentioned that already he had chased down and shot Reynerd’s killer11. “Rolf Reynerd. He was shot in West Hollywood yesterday.”
“Do you think his case might be related to my husband’s? I mean, by more than the fact that he took Max’s class in literature?”
“It’s possible,” he said. “But unlikely. I wouldn’t ...”
Oddly enough, a sad smile rendered her more lovely. “I won’t, Detective,” she said, responding to what he had been hesitant to say. “I won’t get my hopes up. But damn if I’ll let them fade, either.”
As Hazard rose to leave, the doorbell rang. The caller proved to be an older black woman with white hair and the most elegant hands he had ever seen, slender and long-fingered and as supple12 as those of a young girl. The piano teacher, come to give a lesson to the Daltons’ ten-year-old daughter.
Drawn13 by the music of her teacher’s voice, Emily, the girl, came downstairs in time to be introduced to Hazard before he left. She had her mother’s loveliness but not yet as much steel in her spine14 as her mother did, for her lower lip trembled and her eyes clouded when she said, “You’re going to find my father, aren’t you?”
“We’re going to try hard,” Hazard assured her, speaking for the department, hoping that what he said would not prove to be a lie.
After he crossed the threshold and stepped onto the front porch, he turned to Rachel Dalton, in the doorway15. “The next name on my list is a colleague of your husband’s, from the English Department. Maybe you know him. Vladimir Laputa.”
As sadness did not diminish Rachel’s loveliness, neither did anger. “Among all those hyenas16, he’s the worst. Max despised ... despises him. Six weeks ago, Mr. Laputa paid me a visit, to express his sympathy and concern that there’d been no news of Max. I swear ... the weasel was feeling me out to see if I’d grown lonely in my bed.”
“Good Lord,” Hazard said.
[462] “Ruthlessness, Detective Yancy, is no less a quality of the average university academic than of the average member of a street gang. It’s just expressed differently. The day of the genteel scholar in his ivory tower, interested only in art and truth, is long gone.”
“Recently I’ve begun to suspect as much,” he told her, though he would never reveal that, for want of a better candidate, her husband had risen to the top of his list of suspects in the matter of the threat to Channing Manheim.
He found it difficult to believe that a woman like Rachel and a girl like Emily could love a man who was not exactly—and all—that he appeared to be.
Nevertheless, Maxwell Dalton’s disappearance17 might, in fact, mean that he had started a new life, a demented one that included making threats against celebrities18 either with the intent to do harm or in the naive19 hope that intimidation20 could serve extortion.
Even setting aside bells out of dreams and men into mirrors, Hazard Yancy had seen stranger things in his career than a once-honest professor, a man of reason, gone bad, made mad by envy, by greed.
The Daltons lived in a good neighborhood, but Laputa lived in a better one, less than fifteen minutes from their door.
The early winter twilight21 had crept in behind the storm while Hazard had been having coffee with Rachel Dalton. Dusk drained all light from the day as he drove to Professor Laputa’s place, until the low clouds were no longer gray and backlit, but sour yellow and underlit by the rising radiance of the city.
He parked across the street from the home of the reputed worst of all academic hyenas, switched off the headlights and windshield wipers, but left the engine running to keep the heater in action. Local kids wouldn’t be building snow forts; but with the coming of night, the air had grown wintry by southern-California standards.
He’d been unable to reach the professor by phone. Now, although the Laputa house was dark, he tried again.
[463] As he let the number ring, Hazard noticed a pedestrian turn the corner at the end of the block, on thé far side of the street, coming in the direction of the Laputa residence.
Something was wrong about the guy. He had neither an umbrella nor a raincoat. The downpour had diminished to a steady, businesslike drenching22, but it was not weather in which anyone went for a stroll. And that was another thing: The guy didn’t hurry.
Attitude, however, was what really cranked up the Hazard Yancy suspicion machine. If the guy had been a sponge, he’d have been so saturated23 with attitude that he couldn’t have made room for one drop of rain.
He swaggered under the streetlamps, not like genuine tough guys sometimes swaggered, but as movie stars swaggered when they thought they were getting the tough-guy thing just right. His gray pants, black turtleneck, and black leather coat were soaked, but he seemed to defy the rain.
Theatrical24. In this weather no other pedestrians25 were in sight, and at the moment no traffic moved on this quiet residential26 street, yet the guy appeared to be performing without an audience, for his own amusement.
Tired of listening to Laputa’s phone ring, Hazard pressed END on his cell keypad.
The pedestrian appeared to be talking to himself, although from across the street Hazard could not be certain of this.
When he rolled down his window and cocked his head to listen, he was defeated by the drumming of the rain. He caught a few snatches of the voice and thought the guy might be singing, though he couldn’t recognize either tune27 or lyrics28.
To Hazard’s surprise, the swaggering man left the sidewalk and followed the driveway at the Laputa house. He must have been carrying a remote control, because the segmented garage door rolled up to admit him, and then at once closed.
[464] Hazard put up the car window. He watched the house.
After two minutes, a single soft light appeared toward the back of the residence, in what might have been the kitchen. Perhaps half a minute later, another light came on upstairs.
Whether or not the lover of rain was Vladimir Laputa, he knew his way around the professor’s house.
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lustrous
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| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
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chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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uncommonly
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| adv. 稀罕(极，非常) | |
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refreshments
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| n.点心,便餐;(会议后的)简单茶点招 待 | |
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intrigued
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| adj.好奇的，被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式)；激起…的兴趣或好奇心；“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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tart
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| adj.酸的；尖酸的，刻薄的；n.果馅饼；淫妇 | |
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frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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sewer
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| n.排水沟，下水道 | |
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killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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supple
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| adj.柔软的，易弯的，逢迎的，顺从的，灵活的；vt.使柔软，使柔顺，使顺从；vi.变柔软，变柔顺 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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hyenas
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| n.鬣狗( hyena的名词复数 ) | |
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disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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celebrities
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| n.（尤指娱乐界的）名人( celebrity的名词复数 )；名流；名声；名誉 | |
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naive
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| adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的 | |
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intimidation
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| n.恐吓，威胁 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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drenching
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| n.湿透v.使湿透( drench的现在分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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pedestrians
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| n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 ) | |
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residential
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| adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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lyrics
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| n.歌词 | |
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