The bike came to a skidding halt so sudden she had to pull back to maintain balance. “The fact that she could become victimized enrages me! I’ve got to find a way to make something good out of it—is there any chance it could be Huang?”
“He seems to have an excellent alibi.”
“So at least you took him seriously enough to investigate him. Good. Let him know what it feels like to be under scrutiny. But if you don’t suspect him, why are you talking to me?”
“I’m after any information I can get about Professor Devane. People she was close to, her activities, anyone she might have angered.”
“Well, we weren’t close. We only spoke a couple of times—before the hearing and after, when she coached me on how to handle myself. She was incredibly kind. So understanding. As if she really knew.”
“About harassment?”
“About what it felt like to be the victim.”
“Did she talk about having been a victim?”
“No, nothing like that. Just empathy—genuine empathy, not someone trying to fake it.”
The blue eyes were unwavering.
“She was an amazing woman. I’ll never forget her.”
Tessa Bowlby’s dorm was one of several six-story boxes propped at the northwest edge of the U’s sprawling acreage. A big wooden sign on posts said STUDENT HOUSING, NO UNAUTHORIZED PARKING. The landscaping was rolling lawn and bearded coco palms. Just down the road was the cream-stucco-and-smoked-glass recreation center where Philip Seacrest and Hope Devane had met, years ago.
I parked in a loading zone at the side of the building, entered the lobby, and walked up to the front desk. A black woman in her twenties sat underlining a book with a thick pink marker. Her lips were the same shade of pink. Behind her was a switchboard. It blinked and beeped and as she turned to take the call she noticed me. Her book was full of fine print and pie graphs. I read the title, upside down. Fundamentals of Economics.
Plugging the board, she faced me. “Can I help you?”
“Tessa Bowlby, please.”
She slid over a sheaf of papers. Typed list of names. The B’s began on the second page and continued onto the third. She checked twice before shaking her head.
“Sorry, no one by that name.”
“Tessa might be a nickname.”
She inspected me and looked again. “No Bowlbys at all. Try another dorm.”
I checked all of them. Same results.
Maybe Tessa had moved off-campus. Students did it all the time. But combined with the fear I’d seen in her eyes, plus her reduced workload, it added up to escape.
I used a pay phone in the last dorm to call Milo, wondering if he had her home address and wanting to tell him about the holes in Cruvic’s training. He was away and the cell phone didn’t answer, either. Maybe he’d found another three-stab murder or something else that would make my train of thought irrelevant.
Driving away from the U, I pulled into the first filling station I found in Westwood Village. The phone booth was a tilting aluminum wreck, but a Westside directory dangled under the phone, coverless and shredded, lots of pages missing. The page with all the Bowlbys was there.
All two of them:
Bowlby, T. J., Venice, no address listed.
Bowlby, Walter E., Mississippi Avenue in West L.A.
L.A.’s a random toss of residential pickup sticks, and with a dozen directories covering the county, the odds of either Bowlby being related to Tessa were low. But I went with what I had, starting with Walter on Mississippi because he was closer.
Very close. Between Santa Monica Boulevard and Olympic, just a mile or so south of the University, in a district of small postwar homes and a few much larger fantasy projects.
Garbage day in the neighborhood. Overflowing cans and corpulent lawn bags shouted out pride of consumption. Squirrels scavenged nervously. At night, their rat cousins would take over. Years ago the people of California had voted to reduce predatory property-tax rates and the politicians had meted out punishment by eliminating rodent control and other services. Like tree trimming. Money seemed to be available for other things, though: Last year after a storm I’d watched a thirteen-man city crew take four entire days to chop down and haul half a fallen pine.