Chapter 13

It was raining when I reached the outskirts of Saratoga Springs. I didn't know a whole lot about the area except that it was a resort town that had originally been built as a destination for its natural springs, and then had transformed into a town known for its horse racing. I imagined that right now the city was desperately looking for another dying industry to base their economy on, and maybe they'd found it in convention-hosting. I drove past the giant conference center with its massive electronic sign alternating between welcome k–12 math teachers, and welcome new york state poultry breeders. About two miles from the center, I hit a stretch of road devoted to the smaller hotels and national chain restaurants. Outback Steakhouse. Buffalo Wild Wings. Another mile, and I was in the land of single-story motels, sex shops, and bars without windows. I pulled into the front of a motel offering rooms for $59.95 a night.

Inside, a bored-looking teenage girl checked me in for two nights. She was wearing earbuds, and when we'd begun to interact, she pulled one of them out and let it dangle over her shoulder, while keeping the other earbud in. When I told her I wanted to pay in advance with cash, I caught a flicker of eye movement as she looked over my shoulder to see if there was some kind of clandestine lover waiting in my car. After giving me my change, she said that she needed a credit card for incidentals.

"Like what?" I said.

"I guess like if you trash the room or steal a lamp or something." She smiled at me, and I saw that she was missing several teeth.

"Right," I said, and handed her my card. She took an impression of it with one of those old-fashioned credit card machines, putting a slip of paper over the card, then sliding a metal bar across to get an imprint.

"We'll just toss this if the room's fine after your stay," she said.

"Thank you," I said, and took the key from the counter. I moved the car so that it was now parked in front of my room's door. It was surprisingly clean inside, but very plain. There was only one piece of art, a racehorse print that had been screwed into the wall.

I did briefly wonder if I was being overly cautious, finding a no-tell motel and avoiding toll roads on my drive up from Shepaug. All I planned on doing in Saratoga Springs was to put eyes on Alan Peralta, get a sense of how he acted when he was on the road, away from his wife. Maybe I'd meet him. Maybe not. And then Martha and I could use that information to make a decision on whether to turn her husband in. I had no intention of taking care of Peralta myself, the way I'd taken care of a few predators in the past, even if I did discover he was a murderer. This time, I would find another way. Still, you never know what might happen, and I'd learned that being anonymous was far better than being noticed.

I unpacked in the motel room, then sent a text to my mother telling her that I'd safely arrived. My parents thought I was going to a friend's house in the Berkshires. I'd used Martha's name as the friend, reminding them that we'd gotten back in touch after having known each other in graduate school. They'd both looked suspicious, I thought, although my mother's suspicion was probably that I was having some torrid affair that she wasn't privy to, while my father's suspicion was most likely that I'd gotten tired of being a caretaker and was abandoning him.

The conference didn't officially begin until noon, but Martha had told me that the vendors set up early on the morning of the first day. Alan had apparently flirted with the idea of driving out the night before the conference but had decided to save money and leave very early the day of. My plan was to get a look at him this morning, maybe let him look at me, and then return to the conference center at five o'clock, when the vendors would knock off for the day. Really, I just wanted to keep an eye on him.

After changing into my convention-goer's outfit—black skirt, silky green blouse, three-quarter heels—I left the motel and drove downtown and parked at a meter that took quarters. I went through the revolving doors and stepped inside the cavernous convention center and hotel. Wide stairs led to a main floor that must have been the size of two football fields. To the right was check-in and reception, plus a large seating area dotted with plush chairs and sofas and delineated by lines of potted plants. To the left, across an expanse of brightly patterned carpeting, was a two-level bar and restaurant that, according to some cursive script etched into a large glass barrier, was called Faces. Teachers and administrators were lined up in front of the registration tables, or else were milling about in small groups, chatting and looking at their programs. The air was filled with the din of a thousand voices, mingled together into a meaningless hum. The sound of droning insects in summertime.

I followed a sign that pointed me toward Concourse A and Concourse B and the exhibition hall. As I got to the end of a long, carpeted hallway I saw a steady stream of conventioneers, most with tote bags strung over a shoulder, coming and going through the wide rolled-out doors of the exhibition hall. I walked in, trying to look like I belonged there. The hall was high-ceilinged and larger even than the expanse of the lobby/bar area I had just come from. There were row after row of exhibitor booths, mostly textbook publishing houses or software companies. The largest booths had podiums for presentations and seating areas, along with patches of carpeting brought in and taped down to cover up their sections of poured-concrete floor. Some of the booths were still being set up but most looked ready to go, hopeful vendors doing last-minute adjustments of their wares or standing out front of their booths ready to deliver their pitches. The conventioneers meandered aimlessly up and down the rows.

I left the area where the highest-profile exhibitors seemed to be and wandered to the back of the hall. It took me about five minutes, but I eventually found Peralta's booth, at the far rear of the allotted exhibitor space. It was a simple setup, just a white folding table with one chair behind it, and behind the chair a black backdrop, hung with T-shirts and ties and even some framed posters meant for classrooms. One read weapons of math instruction and had pictures of rulers and graphs and compasses. Another said let's have a moment of science. Alan Peralta was there as well, arranging items for sale on the table that fronted the booth.

I was hoping that maybe no one would be there and I'd be able to talk to him alone, but there was a small loud coven, three middle-aged teachers laughing uproariously as they read out loud the T-shirts and badges on displays. Peralta seemed intent on finishing his unpacking, and ignored them. He was in dark suit pants and a white collared shirt and was wearing a tie decorated with math equations. Ever since Martha had shown me a picture of him, I'd been trying to figure out who he reminded me of, and watching him now it suddenly came to me. He looked like the young J. D. Salinger I'd seen in pictures. Same hairline, same long forehead and heavy brow, same slender, almost emaciated frame.

I wandered away, buying a burrito for lunch from one of the vendors set up just outside the convention center. It wasn't raining, but I had to wipe down a bench in order to sit and eat my food. After eating, I closed my eyes for a moment and tilted my face toward the sun that had just burned through the clouds to make an appearance. Then I steeled myself to reenter the exhibition hall. I'd been to large conferences before, but not for a long time, and I was reminded how the fluorescent lighting and the cacophony of voices combined to sap me of all my energy. Inside, I waited in the endless line at Starbucks and ordered the same thing that the woman in front of me had ordered, something cold with double shots of espresso and lots of flavored sugar syrup. Not my type of thing, but I needed fuel.

The crowd in the hall had thinned out now that the first sessions had begun, and when I reached Peralta's booth, I was happy to see that there was only one customer there, a man wearing a sweater vest who was half-turned to look at the merchandise, a smirk on his face. I walked up to the booth and looked down at the display items. There were numerous ties, all with either science or math themes, and then there were scarves meant for women. Sweater Vest reached out and touched a tie, then moved past me and away.

"Are you math or science?"

I looked up at Peralta. He was tall enough that I saw he'd missed a spot just along his jawline when he'd shaved that morning.

"Math," I said, then took a step backward and surveyed some of the posters that were featured on the booth's black backdrop.

"There's a rack here, with all the posters," he said, showing me one of those racks that you could flip through like a giant book.

"Hmm," I said.

"Where do you teach?"

I looked at him for a few seconds, as though I were deciding whether it was worth my time to answer his question, then said, "Actually, I'm between jobs right now. It's a long story, but in the last month I left a state, a job, and a relationship, and now I've moved near here and I'm wondering what to do next."

"I don't know much, but I do know that they're almost always looking to hire teachers in Albany."

"Oh yeah?" I said.

"That's the extent of my knowledge on the subject, I'm afraid."

"Well, it's helpful. Are there Albany teachers here at this conference?"

"Oh yeah. Huge contingent."

"Thanks," I said, moving down to look through a box of pins.

I thought Peralta might try to sell me something, but he was keeping quiet. "Truth is," I said, "I just don't even know if I want to keep teaching math or keep teaching at all. I like math. I'm good at it, but I don't think it's a passion for me anymore."

"So, what's your passion?" he said.

I looked up at him, his eyes showing nothing but some mild interest. "I know this is crazy, but I'm a math geek who's fallen in love with literature. Sometimes I think I got my life totally wrong."

He smiled. "I do conferences for English teachers, too."

"Oh yeah?"

"Same booth. Different wares."

"I'd imagine."

I was jostled from behind as a woman carrying two enormous and overfilled tote bags crowded in to look at the scarves on display. She began to laugh. I looked Peralta directly in the eyes, long enough to register their color, then raised my eyebrows slightly and said, "I'm Addie."

"Alan," he said, and I watched his eyes move, suddenly scanning my body, not obvious about it, exactly, but not unnoticeable, either. He blinked rapidly, maybe knowing that he'd been caught. I told him I hoped to see him later and moved on.

I walked along the outskirts of the exhibition hall to the exit, thinking about Alan's reaction to me at his booth, how he'd seemed both harmless and on the make at the same time. I think a part of him wanted me to see him check out my body. What I couldn't figure out was if he'd also wanted me to see him suddenly get flustered by it. The animal he'd reminded me of was a rabbit, partly because of his long thin nose and oversized ears, but mostly because he'd gone from calm to skittery before my eyes. Rabbits are prey, I told myself, as I merged in with a large slow-moving pack of teachers working their way from the hall back to the lobby of the center. But lots of prey animals are also predators. Cats, for instance. And it seemed clear to me that Peralta might be one of those humans that were both. We can't all be apex predators in this world.