A Killing Spring by Gail Bowen Page B

the brilliant quarterback for the University of Oklahoma and the Ottawa Rough Riders, had parlayed fame on the football field into a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and special status as one of Newt Gingrich’s boys. As always, Jumbo was almost, but not quite, on topic. Linda Van Sickle, the young woman Reed had ranked second, had submitted a case study of a civic government that showed how the city council’s political timidity was growing in direct proportion to the increasingly adversarial nature of local media outlets. It was a brilliant paper, good enough to be published. So, I discovered, was Val Massey’s essay, “The Right to Be Wrong: The Press’s Obligation to Protect Bigots and Bastards.” Reed’s decision simply didn’t make sense. I skimmed through the rest of the essays. Of the sixteen people in our seminar, I would have ranked seven ahead of Kellee Savage.
    When Alex called, I was still mystified, but the words on the page were starting to swim in front of me, and I knew it was time for bed. Alex sounded as tired as I felt.
    “Glad you went home?” I asked.
    “I don’t know. I’m glad I was there, but I wish it hadn’t been necessary.”
    “How’s your nephew?”
    “Immortal,” he said. “Like all kids his age are. That’s whythey can drink and sniff and snort and speed and screw without protection.”
    “You sound as if you’ve had enough.”
    “That doesn’t mean there’s not more coming. Jo, sometimes I get so goddamn sick of these little pukes. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I’m sick of going to their funerals.”
    “Is it that bad with your nephew?”
    “I hope not. Jo, I’d really rather not talk about this.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Come over, and we don’t have to say a word. That’s the advantage real life has over telephones.”
    He laughed. “It’s a tempting offer, but I’d better not. Even without words, I’d be lousy company tonight.”
    “Then come tomorrow morning,” I said. “I don’t have to teach till ten-thirty, and the kids leave for school at eight.”
    “I’ll be there,” he said. “Count on it.”

CHAPTER
6
    When I first met Alex Kequahtooway, there was nothing to suggest that he would be a terrific lover. He was knowledgeable and passionate about serious music, but he was guarded in his response to everything else. We went out for three months before we were intimate, and during that time of coming to know one another, he was kind but almost formally correct with me. After we became lovers, the kindness continued, but it was allied with an eroticism that awed and delighted me. Alice Munro differentiates between those who can go only a little way with the act of love and those “who can make a greater surrender, like the mystics.” Alex was one of love’s mystics, and that morning as I lay in bed beside him, breathing in the scent of the narcissi blooming in front of the open window, listening to Dennis Brain play the opening notes of a horn concerto on the radio, I was at peace.
    He took my hand, leaned over and kissed me. “Mozart,” he said. “The second-best way to start the day.”
    It was a little after 10:00 when I nosed into my parking spot at the university. The test I was about to give was on my desk, and I checked it to make sure it was typo- andjargon-free, then I went down to the Political Science office. I needed exam booklets, and I wanted to make copies of a hand-out for my senior class. As I counted out the exam booklets, I was still humming Mozart.
    When Rosalie Norman, the departmental admin assistant, saw me at the copying machine, she hustled me out of the way. “I’ll do that. Every time you faculty use it, something goes wrong, and I’m the one who has to call the company and then try to figure out whose secretary I can sweet-talk into doing your photocopying until the repairman decides to show up.”
    On the best of days, Rosalie was not a sunny person, but that morning, even the most casual