again he gave a recitation of who he was and what had happened-that the body of a murder victim, presumably Richard Lowensdale, had been found and that his investigation into the matter indicated that Lowensdale was in fact Richard Loomis, the man Dawn had reported missing earlier in the day.
Dawn heard him out in such aching silence that for a while Gil wondered if the connection had been broken.
“Did you say Lowensdale?” Dawn asked finally.
“Yes. Richard Lowensdale.”
“That sounds like it could be the name she told me,” Dawn said, her voice suddenly hollow and devoid of any inflection. “But if Richard had to go by another name, he probably had a very good reason.”
“She who?” Gil asked. “Who was it who gave you that other name?”
“Brenda. Richard’s ex-fiancee. Somehow she gained access to his computer, and she started calling all of Richard’s friends and trying to tell us what a terrible person he was. That his name wasn’t really Richard Loomis, that it was Richard Lowensdale, that he was a liar and a cheat.”
“How did she get inside his computer?” he asked.
“I have no idea, but I’m sure Brenda is behind whatever has happened.”
Gil thought it interesting that both Janet and Dawn seemed to know about the alleged stalker, Brenda, who probably really was a stalker. It seemed unlikely, however, that Janet knew about Dawn and vice versa.
“Do you have a photo of Mr. Loomis?”
“No,” she said. “Richard doesn’t allow any photographs of himself.”
“He was terribly disfigured by a campfire accident when he was younger,” Dawn said. “You can imagine how painful it must be to live with that kind of disfigurement.” She paused and then added, “Do you think there’s a chance my Richard is still alive?”
“No,” Gil said. “I don’t think so.” It was a brutally honest answer.
“What should I do now?” Dawn said. “If I come down there, do you think I could help find him?”
With Janet Silvie already planning on flying in from Buffalo, the last thing Gil needed was for Dawn to show up as well. His investigation was already complicated enough without having two feuding fiancees land in the middle of it. He remembered what Rachel had said about selling tickets to the catfight.
“It might be best if you didn’t do anything right now,” he said. “If I find anything out, I’ll be sure to be in touch with you.”
“All right,” she said quietly. Dawn sounded strangely subdued. “Thank you for calling me. I appreciate it.”
Gil gave her his cell phone number in case something came up, not that he thought anything would. He was dead tired. He was sitting there wondering if he should give up for the night and go home when Janet Silvie called back.
“Getting from here to Sacramento is going to take all day,” she said. “Even if I leave here at seven-oh-five a.m., I won’t be there until after six tomorrow night. That’s the best I can do.”
Gil was relieved to hear it. He wasn’t thrilled that Janet was coming, but he hoped he had managed to deflect Dawn Carras. He stayed at the office for a while longer but not much. He was verging on putting in another twelve-hour overtime day. When Chief Jackman found out about that, he would not be thrilled.
Gil went back to his house. Opening the door, he stopped in the doorway and surveyed his desolate surroundings. There were only three pieces of furniture in the living room and that was it. Linda had left him the low-profile Ekornes recliner that she had always hated because it was so hard to get in and out of it. Truth be known, Gil loved it, but every time he settled into it and tried to relax, the phone rang. Still it was better than having no chair at all. Linda had also left Gil a single television set, his son’s cast-off nineteen-inch. It was old-fashioned, definitely not high-def. It was also dying. On the right-hand side of the screen was a black border almost two inches wide. The television sat on top of the chipped brass and glass coffee table that had been deemed unworthy of moving.
That was the living room. In the kitchen he had no table, just a single stool parked by the kitchen counter. His cooking equipment included a coffeepot and his place-setting-for-one set of dishes. The only reason he still had a microwave was that it was a built-in. He had no pots and pans. No extra glasses. For bedroom furniture, he had the AeroBed that he and Linda had once used for out-of-town guests. Oh, and a pair of suitcases. When Linda removed the dresser and the chest of drawers in the bedroom, she had dumped Gil’s clothes out of his drawers and into a pair of open suitcases on the bedroom floor. She had taken the washer and dryer too.
That was it. Linda had been gone for two months now. She had told him it was all about the job, but when he had driven up to Mt. Shasta to see the kids, they had told him about the new man in her life-someone she had hooked up with at last year’s all-class reunion, one she had attended solo because, surprise, surprise, Gil had been working.
So here he was, living in an almost empty house on Rattlesnake Road. When he and Linda bought the house, they had gotten a great deal on it because the couple who lived there before were going through a nasty divorce. Gil probably should have thought about that and realized that a street address with the word
Difficult as it was to fathom, he had fewer possessions now than he’d had in college. He had spent those two months going to work, doing his job, and feeling like a human train wreck. But today he had seen a real human train wreck, the bodily remains of Richard Lowensdale.
After spending so much time at the crime scene, Gil was appalled to see the resemblance between his place and Lowensdale’s house on Jan Road. His house didn’t stink like that-he still took the garbage out to the street every week-and it wasn’t overheated. All the same, it looked forlorn and empty and uncared for, and there were several discarded newspapers on the floor next to his chair.
Someday soon he was going to have to do something about that. But right now he needed sleep, and having an AeroBed in the bedroom beat the hell out of sleeping on the floor.
34
San Diego, California
When Brenda awakened once more, enough time had passed that her clothing was no longer damp. She had no idea what time it was or if it was day or night. She wondered if she was still wearing her watch, but with her arms fastened behind her, there was no way to tell if it was on her wrist or if it had been taken from her somewhere along the way. And even if she had been able to hold it up to her face, she wouldn’t have been able to see it. There was no light. Only the occasional rumble of an airplane passing overhead told her she wasn’t marooned in outer space.
She tried not to think about how thirsty she was, but her mind tricked her into remembering all the words to an old country/western song that her father used to sing:
Even when she concentrated on something else, the unwelcome words continued to echo inside her head.
