The woman asked me if I knew a student by the name of Madeline O’Brien. And when I said yes, of course, I could tell she already knew the answer. And then she insisted on the two of them coming inside the house and talking to me about her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Grendel came out and sniffed both of the cops’ shoes. The detective patted him on the head before she sat down and started asking questions.

“When did you last see Madeline?” The woman in the suit told me her name was Alicia Bowman, a detective with the Gatewood police. She wore her strawberry blond hair pulled back off her face, and her eyes were a pale blue, a far cry from the grizzled, world-weary detectives I saw on TV.

Why would she ask unless something was really wrong?

Why would she need to ask a student’s professor when he had last seen her?

“What is it?” I asked. The caffeine and the fear shot the words out of my mouth faster than I could think them. “Is she hurt? She’s in my advanced fiction-writing class. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Bowman waited a beat. “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

I looked around, seeking help. I looked at the uniformed cop, who sat impassively in the chair. I glanced at Grendel, who just beat his tail up and down.

Bowman said, her voice as flat as the coffee table, “Madeline O’Brien is currently missing. She didn’t go to any of her classes yesterday. She didn’t go to her shift at the grocery store last night, which I understand is how she’s paying for school. Her mother can’t get ahold of her. No word to her friends. We’re trying to determine if anyone knows her whereabouts.”

The room spun. The caffeine, the adrenaline. The news. Was that why Lance was calling?

“Is it possible she just went away?” I asked. “Young people, college students, they can take off on a whim. I had a student once who stopped coming to class, and a year later he came back, and when I asked him where he’d been, he said surfing in California. Living in a tent.”

“That does happen,” Bowman said. “It’s possible Madeline left on a whim. She had a rather nomadic life growing up. But given her dedication to her studies and the abruptness of her departure, we’re treating it as a disappearance.”

“Damn,” I said. “I just saw her. . . .”

“When?” Bowman asked.

“Wednesday night. At Dubliners. The whole class went.”

“Undergraduates?” Bowman asked.

“It’s a class of seniors. They all had ID. Plenty of professors take their students out during the semester. I’m not the only one.”

“What time did you leave Dubliners?”

“Nine thirty. Maybe ten.”

“And was Madeline still there?”

“Well . . .”

“Well, what, sir?”

I saw where it was going.