Chapter 10

  

Driving home to Landry through the dark Nevada night along a highway with few houses, under a sky full of stars, my thoughts alternated between my conversation with Bridget Thomas and the puzzle that was the whereabouts of Jamie Congers.

The offer Bridget made to me was not as onerous as she might have thought. The more I thought about the Mountain West committee on sexual assault policy, the better I liked the idea. Serving on a university committee dedicated to dealing with a major campus issue would give me exposure and experience. Besides, I was privately annoyed with Mountain West for taking so long to formulate a firm policy that protected the students, female and male. Maybe I could hurry things up. Other colleges and universities across the country were way ahead of us.

Charlie met me at the door, jumping and running back and forth. He was hungry and I was late with his dinner. I should have asked Joe to come over and feed him while I was with the calculating Dean of the College of Economics.

I gave Charlie his food and telephoned Joe.

“Did Dean Thomas eat you alive?”

“Actually, instead of me she had steak, rare. Almost bloody.”

“Hardass, is she?”

“It turned out better than I thought. I suspect she’s still not completely on my side for the dean’s job, but she needs me to help her on the committee to figure out our sexual assault policy.”

“You’ll be good at that. You have a good mind for legal problems.” Joe had a sixth sense about when I could use a boost to my ego. Another one of the reasons I dated the guy. That, and besides The New York Times he read every morning, the man kept books of poetry on the bedside table in his apartment. “Helps me sleep when I have to sleep alone,” he’d said without a trace of sarcasm. I loved the idea he led an interior intellectual life. I also loved the idea that when he wasn’t with me, he slept alone. Or so I hoped.

“How was your day, Detective Morgan?”

“Long. I spent half of it tracking down the students in Jamie Congers’ classes who had been absent the first time I inquired. Then I went through the files my team had come up with on the man with the boots, and finally spent an hour observing two of my detectives testify in court against a local embezzler.”

“Oh, I want to hear about the embezzler.” Joe’s job as chief of detectives in Landry was every bit as interesting as mine.

“You will. I’ll tell you all about him.”

“You’re amazing. Most cops never tell their dates anything about their work. Isn’t it against some rule or other?”

“Not really. The press covers most trials so what I might say to you is hardly confidential. And even if some of it were, I don’t mind telling you, because I trust you to keep your mouth shut when I ask.”

My, how that warmed me up.

Joe continued, “I also don’t mind telling you because you really want to hear about my work. Usually the women in a cop’s life don’t want to hear about police work—or the cop thinks they don’t want to hear. Most of what we do all day is either too grisly or too boring to interest women.”

“Well, I do want to hear. Any other news on Jamie Congers?”

“Not really. Essentially confirmation that she was nice, very pretty, a good student, and she didn’t have a boyfriend anyone knows about.”

“Hmm. I kept hoping for a boyfriend.”

“You’re a romantic, Red. Nice girls don’t let their grandfathers and roommates worry this much.”

“Speaking of romantic…”

“I’d love to. But I have another hour and a half to put in on a case report and I’m beat. How about I come over tomorrow night and make filet of sole Meuniere followed by awe-inspiring sex for dessert?”

“You do know the way to a woman’s heart.”

  

Joe and I discovered our attraction for one another soon after he was appointed case detective on the police investigation of the death of Henry Brooks. Our friendship transformed to romance and was great for a while, but complicated. We broke up when Joe thought he was losing his detective’s objectivity trying to solve Henry’s death.

Well, that’s not quite all the truth. We broke up because he thought I was in love with someone else, but after a month or so of miserable separation, we got back together. Since then, we had been sort of dating and sort of circling each other. Some days I thought Joe would cave into his feelings for me and ask if he could move out of his small apartment into my much larger house. Other days, I wasn’t all that sure.

At least Joe was not a cynic. When I needed him, Joe was the kindest and most considerate man I knew. Last summer, when I thought my father might be dying, Joe took an unofficial leave so he could accompany me back to the nursing home in Ohio. Thaddeus Solaris had suffered from Alzheimer’s for several years, a disease that had started soon after my mother drove her car into a tree and died. I was sure Dad blamed himself for her death, although he had tried everything possible to get my mother help for her drinking.

Joe accompanied me every day I visited Dad in the nursing home in spite of the fact that my father clearly did not remember me and was unwilling to even acknowledge Joe’s existence. Joe held my hand as we watched the man who had raised me and been my mentor, my rock all through childhood. My beloved father had ignored us and sat facing a window, staring at nothing.

We were heading to the airport to return to Nevada when the call came on my cell phone. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Solaris. Your father died about twenty minutes ago.”

At the hastily organized funeral held in the church where I had been baptized, Joe’s arm circled my shoulders as we listened to eulogies from old friends and colleagues. Thaddeus Solaris had been a great scholar, a more than devoted husband, a husband who had sacrificed much of his life and his peace of mind to a wife he loved beyond all reason. He had been my teacher, my unwavering fan. He had forgotten me, but I would never forget him.

After my father’s death, Joe Morgan took over as my champion. Despite the fact that he could be brusque and distant and occasionally disappear into a fog of moodiness, even take off for days of what he called his “alone time,” I was sure I could count on him to share my concerns, my holidays, my frustrations, my triumphs, and my occasional bouts of grief.

I also knew he’d never give up searching for Jamie Congers.

  

Jamie

  

After dinner, the man said, “That tasted good.” It was the first time Jamie had heard him say anything positive. For a moment he was like the man she’d met on campus—the polite one. He watched while she cleared the table and washed the dishes. His elbows were pressed hard against the table, the powerful muscles of his arms visible under the thin fabric of his work shirt. She heard him breathing heavily.

She slowed her washing. Is this when he grabs me?

He rose from the table. She tensed and braced herself against the sink.

“Come with me,” he said and cupped her elbow in his hand.

Oh, God.

He led her to an interior door, unlocked. Beyond the door was a dark room. He switched on a table lamp revealing a parlor with a sofa against the wall and two upholstered armchairs facing it. A fireplace surrounded by river stones dominated one end of the room. Shelves lined the wall opposite the sofa. A few books, old and without jackets. Three undecorated silver bowls all in need of polishing.

“Beautiful bowls,” Jamie said.

“Baptismal bowls for infants,” he replied.

Centered between the shelves was another large framed document. He led her to stand in front of it. “Read this out loud.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

She read slowly.

“Timothy 2:11. Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness.”

He sat on the sofa, indicating she should sit in the chair opposite him. He leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. He stared at her.

She tried to stare back, to look him straight in the eyes, but after a few moments, he averted his gaze.

“I take it you read the Bible,” she said.

“I live it. As did my father before me.” He looked up again, directly at her. “And his father before him.”

“I know the Bible,” she said. “My mother’s father was a minister and a biblical scholar. I spent several summers at his house and he taught me the Old and New Testaments.”

“My grandfather was a preacher too. He preached in a tent we set up every spring in that meadow.” He pointed to the view outside the window. “People came from as far away as Sacramento just to hear him.”

“I used to memorize passages from the Bible.”

The man opened his mouth, then cleared his throat. “Do you believe? Do you believe the verse you have just read?”

She hesitated. “I believe what the Bible teaches, but most of what I remember was what St. Paul wrote.”

His breathing grew heavier. His brow looked damp. “Then perhaps you prefer Corinthians 14: ‘Let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.’” His breathing became heavier and beads of sweat appeared on his face.

Where was this going?

“I prefer Corinthians 13,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

“You would. Women always like verses about faith and love more than about obedience.”

“Did you create the documents in the frames? They look hand-lettered.”

“My grandmother did.” He leaned back into the sofa. “They were intended to remind the female reader about the importance of obedience and respect for her husband.”

Jamie inhaled deeply. This didn’t sound like a prelude to a physical attack. It was the first conversation they’d had that was longer than a one-sentence instruction. Maybe if she kept it going, she could learn more about why he had kidnapped her.

“And did the women in your family agree and obey?”

Again he was silent, this time for several minutes. She sat still as a stone.

“All but one. But never mind that.” He rose from the couch, reminding her of his height and strength as well as his demands of her. “This parlor and the kitchen are the rooms you must keep clean at all times. They must be thoroughly scrubbed, dusted, and swept every day.”

Jamie stood. “Which woman didn’t obey?” She put as much force into her question as she dared.

“My father’s second wife. She was like you.”

“How was she like me?”

“She was young and beautiful, and she was black. Now, upstairs with you. That’s all for tonight.”

“What happened to your father’s second wife?”

“Silence. Upstairs. NOW.”