Impulse by JoAnn Ross

Author:JoAnn Ross
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Police, Radio Industry
Published: 2006-06-17T16:02:51+00:00

26

Wind River college was an eclectic collection of block and frame buildings dating back to the school’s founding in the late 1970s.

The ten-acre campus might not be as famous or as visually appealing as some of the Eastern Ivy League colleges, or Vanderbilt in the South or Stanford in the West, the fraternity and sorority systems were pretty much nonexistent, and the sports were nothing to shout about, but thanks to endowments from local oil- rich sponsors, the administration could afford to bring in high-caliber professors, which, to Will’s mind, was what college should be about, anyway.

The Social Sciences department was housed in a two-story, rectangular frame building that someone had decided to paint an unfortunate shade of yellow. While it would never win any awards for architecture, north- facing windows offered a million-dollar view of White Owl Mountain.

Although he'd learned early in his career the dangers of pigeonholing people, if asked, Will would’ve had to admit that in his mind he was picturing Dr. Drew Hayworth along the lines of Freud, A small, rather fussy-appearing man with a tidy goatee wearing a three-piece tweed suit. Or perhaps a sports coat with leather patches on the elbows.

The office would be minimalistic, the upholstered pieces wrapped in a pewter gray suede; the art on the wall would be stark black-and-white, perhaps with a few shades of gray, framed in narrow, black metal. Nothing that could be recognized as anything in real life, but more like a Rorschach inkblot test.

He would’ve been wrong on all counts. The man who greeted him was about his own height of six feet two inches, with blue eyes and an open, almost boyish grin. Rather than a suit, he was wearing a navy cashmere, V-neck sweater worn over a blue oxford-cloth shirt, perfectly creased jeans, and hiking boots, which, from the scuffs, appeared to have actually been worn for hiking.

He looked younger than Will’s own thirty-six, but Will figured the guy must be at least that old to have written as many books as he had. There were two bookcase shelves of them, all, from what Will could tell at a glance, clinical studies of psychological disorders.

Including, he couldn’t help but notice, anxiety attacks. A couple had the bright and flashy look of commercial self-help books—one, as Faith had mentioned, on moving past grief; the rest appeared to be more scholarly.

The furniture—the requisite shrink couch and a grouping of wide-armed, oversize leather chairs—appeared comfortable and designed to invite patients to put their feet up on the heavy wooden coffee table.

Rather than inkblots, the wall was covered with Western oil paintings and old sepia photographs, including one Will recognized from the late 1800s, of Arapaho women doing the Ghost Dance. A Native- painted rawhide drum depicting a buffalo hunter on horseback claimed the spot of honor atop a low bookcase.

An eight-foot, perfectly shaped native blue spruce, adorned with white lights and hand-beaded native art, took up the far comer of the room.

“You’ve certainly settled into the spirit of the valley,” Will observed after they’d shaken hands.

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