Part 19 (2/2)

'Who was the other woman?'

Katie shrugged. 'Don't know. It may not even be true.'

'I can't believe no one told the police.'

'People aren't going to call the cops about hunches and suspicions. That's all you've got, you know. I haven't found anything to link Gary to Glory Fischer. You saw him with a girl who may have been Glory, but maybe not.'

'I heard him coming back to his room late, too.'

'Are you sure? My room was a couple doors down, and I didn't hear anything.'

'It was him,' Amy insisted. 'I heard his door open and close.'

'It doesn't prove anything.'

'I know.'

'Did you talk to your old coach about any of this? Hilary Bradley?'

'Not yet. I don't know if I have anything to tell her.'

Katie stood up and tugged her damp s.h.i.+rt away from her chest. She stubbed out her cigarette on the ground. 'Well, don't make an a.s.s of yourself.'

'Yeah.'

'You coming back to the room?'

Amy shook her head. 'I'll do a couple more miles.'

'Jeez, you're extreme. I'll see you later tonight.' 'OK.'

Amy watched Katie head across East Circle Drive toward the dorms. She got up and stretched her legs, which had begun to tighten in the cold morning air, and then she followed the path back into the arboretum. The asphalt was slick, and she walked rather than risk twisting an ankle. Fifty yards later, she came to a T-junction where the path ended at a soft trail made of bark, moss, and dead leaves. The trees grew over her head, and the trail was dim and narrow, as if she were disappearing into a train tunnel. Where the trail curved, she couldn't see round the next bend.

She took a few tentative steps, but she stopped with a strange sense of discomfort. The down on the back of her neck stood up, as if the little hairs were iron filings drawn by a magnet. She felt eyes following her from somewhere in the forest.

'h.e.l.lo?' she called.

Amy turned round slowly. She was alone, but the trees were big and wide enough here to hide someone. Those were crazy-making thoughts; she was letting herself get paranoid. She inhaled, smelling nothing but mold and the dewish sweat of her body. She didn't hear anything. '

She waited. Everything was still. There's n.o.body There's n.o.body, she told herself.

Amy shook off her fears and jogged. She got into a rhythm as she ran, enough to crowd out other thoughts. Running was pure escape for her, in which she was conscious of nothing but the noise of her breathing and the vibrations as her feet hit the ground. She made two loops round the east section of the arboretum, following the border of the escarpment. It added almost two miles to her route, and when she finished the circle for the second time, she slowed to a walk as she cooled down. Her face was flushed. Her blond curls were frizzed.

She wasn't far from the trail that led back to the perimeter road when she felt it again. Eyes. Like a voyeur watching her.

She was sure she wasn't alone.

'Who's there?'

Behind her, a male voice growled the way a bear would, and Amy spun with a choked scream. Twenty yards away, a student she knew from one of her psychology cla.s.ses giggled as she fended off animal kisses from a bearded, long-haired boy. They broke apart as they saw Amy and heard her squeal. They were innocent. They were n.o.body. Amy wanted to laugh in relief, but she was breathing too hard.

'You OK, Amy?' the girl called.

'Oh, yeah, fine. You startled me.'

'Sorry.'

Amy smiled at them, the couple out for a kissy stroll. She wished she had a boyfriend of her own for that kind of hike. It made her think she should find someone to ask out on a date, but there never seemed to be time with cla.s.ses, work, and dance. She knew that was a crock, though. She just didn't want all the ha.s.sles of a relations.h.i.+p.

She left the two of them alone. At the junction, she turned back toward the campus road. It was time to get back to her dorm room. She needed a shower, and she had a cla.s.s in less than an hour.

Kinesics. Learning to read body language.

Amy was almost at the bench where she'd sat with Katie when she heard a car engine on the shoulder of the road. She emerged from the trees in time to see a Honda Civic hatchback make a fast U-turn off the gra.s.s and head toward the Bay Settlement entrance to the campus.

She only caught a glimpse of the side of the driver's face, but she recognized him. It was Gary Jensen. He'd been in the woods with her.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Mark Bradley painted on the bone-white rocks jutting out into Lake Michigan. He'd been standing in front of his canvas for an hour, and his fingers were numb and raw. It was late morning on Thursday under a cold, weak sun. The wind off the lake drowned out every sound except the screech of gulls, which flocked near the beach and dove into the water for fish. When he looked at the sky between brushstrokes, he saw the rusting white tower of the Cana Island lighthouse poking above the tops of the dormant trees.

He didn't mind that Cana was the most over-photographed, over- painted landmark in Door County. What he created never looked much like the original subject. His work was dark, with swirls of primary colors and blurry images of angels against black skies. He wasn't a religious man, unlike Hilary, and he didn't know why his brain told him to paint angels. Even so, he didn't question it.

His family and friends had never understood his art. He was an athlete, and that meant his interests should have ground to a halt at the last page of the daily sports section. One of the qualities that drew him to Hilary was that she didn't put him in a box or maintain a preconceived notion of who he was. She'd never believed he could be one thing and not another.

Mark turned his head, and his neck stabbed with pain. His left shoulder was tender where the seat belt had locked against his torso in the accident. The doctor at the island's medical clinic had suggested that he and Hilary take a day off to recover, but with no serious injuries, they'd both declined. Mark had replaced the tires on his Explorer and taken the two of them across the pa.s.sage on a mid- morning ferry. Their friend Terri Duecker had offered to lend them a car.

Hilary drove to school in Terri's Taurus. Mark drove to Cana.

He realized he was hungry. He'd packed a lunch in his backpack. He covered up his canvas and carried his materials up the beach to the open lawn surrounding the lighthouse. It was immediately much quieter and warmer in the sun. He sat on a red picnic bench on the far side of the lawn, where he took out a turkey sandwich and a bag of grapes. He put up his canvas near the bench and studied his latest painting as he ate.

His sandwich was almost gone when a shadow fell across the brown gra.s.s from the trail that led to the causeway. He turned and saw a teenage girl watching him.

It was Tresa Fischer.

Mark tensed. 'Tresa, you shouldn't be here.'

'I know.'

The girl came closer anyway. The bench faced the lighthouse tower, and she sat down on the same side, inches away from him. She rubbed the red paint on the bench nervously with the pads of her fingers. She wore a loose-fitting purple sweats.h.i.+rt over her skinny frame, and her wrists looked like matchsticks jutting out of the cuffs. Her s.h.i.+ny red hair covered most of her face in profile.

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