Milo smiled. “Divergence?”
Seacrest ignored him.
“So they asked you to diverge with them.”
“No. They—I happened upon them. One afternoon when I was supposed to be lecturing. I felt a touch of something coming on, canceled class, came home.”
“And found the two of them?”
“Yes, Mr. Sturgis.”
“Where?”
“In our bed.” Seacrest smiled. “The marital bed.”
“Must have been a big shock.”
“To say the least.”
“What’d you do?”
Seacrest waited a long time to answer. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“That’s right, Mr. Sturgis. Nothing.”
“You didn’t get angry?”
“You didn’t ask me how I felt, you asked what I did. And the answer is nothing. I turned around and walked out.”
“How’d you feel?”
Another delay. “I really can’t say. It wasn’t anger. Anger would have been futile.”
“Why?”
“Hope didn’t take well to anger.”
“What do you mean?”
“She had no tolerance for it. Had I displayed anger, things would have gotten . . . confrontational.”
“Married people fight, Professor. Seems to me you had a damned good reason.”
“How understanding of you, Mr. Sturgis. However, Hope and I never fought. It didn’t suit either of us.”
“So what did you mean by confrontational?”
“A war. Of silence. Interminable, frigid, seemingly infinite stretches of silence. Psychological exile. Even when Hope claimed to forgive, she never forgot. I knew her emotional repertoire the way a conductor knows a score. So when I saw the two of them, I maintained my dignity and simply walked away.”
“And then what?”
“And then . . .” Seacrest pulled at his beard again, “someone closed the door and I assume they . . . finished. I’m sure you find my reaction contemptible. Cowardly. Wimpish. No doubt you think you would have reacted differently. No doubt you’ll be going home tonight to a dutiful wife and dutiful children—probably somewhere in the Valley. A charmingly conventional 818 lifestyle.”
Milo sat back and pressed a thick finger over his lips.
Looking suddenly tired, Seacrest covered his eyes with both hands, pulled down at the lids, let the hands trail down his cheeks and fall in his lap.
“It was go along, Mr. Sturgis, or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Or lose her. Now I’ve lost her anyway.”
He slumped. Began to weep.
Milo waited a long time before saying, “Can I get you something to drink, Professor?”
Headshake. Seacrest looked up. Then at the Polaroids. “May we end this? Have you heard enough about the sick divergent world of intellectuals?”
“Just a few more questions, please.”
Seacrest sighed.
Milo said, “When you found your wife and Locking you didn’t figure you’d already lost her?”
“Of course not. It wasn’t as if it were the . . .”
“The first time?”
Seacrest’s mouth shut tight.
“Professor?”
“This is exactly what I was afraid of—Hope’s reputation filthied. I refuse to be part of that.”
“Part of what?”
“Dredging up her past.”
“What if her past led to her murder?”
“Do you know that?”
“Now that Locking’s dead, what do you think?”
No answer.
“How many other men did she play games with, Professor Seacrest?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you do know there were others.”
“I don’t know for a fact, but she had owned the . . . apparatus for some time.”
“By “apparatus’ you mean the hood and the bindings and those rubber and leather garments in her size that we found at Locking’s house.”
Seacrest gave a dispirited nod.
“Anything else other than those items?”
“I’m not aware of any.”
“No whips?”
Seacrest snorted. “She wasn’t interested in pain. Only . . .”
“Only what?”
“Restraint.”
“Self-control?”
Seacrest didn’t answer.
Milo wrote something down. “So she’d had the apparatus for some time. How long?”
“Five or six years.”
“Three years before she met Locking.”
“Your arithmetic is excellent.”
“Where did she keep the apparatus?”
“In her room.”
“Where in her room, Professor?”
“In a box in her closet. I came across it by accident, never told her.”
“What else was in there?”
“Pictures.”
“Of her?”
“Of . . . us. Pictures we’d taken. She’d told me she’d thrown them out. Apparently she liked to review them.”
“Who moved the photos and the apparatus to Locking’s house?”
“Casey.”