Finally the spasm of nausea ended. The odor was still there, slightly dissipated in the cold wind blowing down from the mountains. If there was something dead inside the purse, then maybe John was wrong about what had happened at the reservoir. Maybe the shoes by the lake didn’t mean that someone had committed suicide. Yes, that was the point when John Connor definitely should have called the cops and reported what he had found, but he didn’t do that. He couldn’t.
There would be too many questions, ones that couldn’t be answered without jeopardizing his future and his friends’ futures too. But he couldn’t just leave it alone either. Someone had been calling on the telephone inside the purse, looking for whoever owned the purse, and John Connor-this John Connor, not the teenager from the movies or the old TV series-was the only one who could answer that call.
Covering his mouth and nose with his shoulder, John returned to the purse and dug around inside it. Peering inside, he saw something that looked like a twig. When he pulled it out, he saw what it really was-a severed finger with a bloodied nail that gleamed in the yellowish light.
When John saw that, it was time for him to barf again.
This was far worse than he could have thought possible. With his eyes still watering, he forced himself back to searching the purse until he found the phone, an old flip Motorola. When he opened it, the message light lit up- fourteen missed calls, all of them listed as “Mom.” A check of the battery life showed that it was down to a single bar.
With his hands shaking, John checked the details screen and copied the phone number into his own phone. Then, stowing the nearly dead Motorola in his shirt pocket, he zipped up the purse, locking in the odor, and returned it to the trunk. Then he punched send on his phone.
“Hello.”
John breathed a sigh of relief when the man answered the phone after only one ring. He wanted to talk to a man, not a woman. It would be easier.
“Hello,” the man said again. “Is anyone there?”
John cleared his throat. “I’m here,” he said. “My name is John Connor. Who’s this?”
“My name is Camilla Gastellum.”
“I live up in Grass Valley,” he said hurriedly. “I heard this phone ringing a little while ago. It was inside a purse I found.”
“Inside a purse?” the woman asked. “A yellow leather purse?”
“Yes.”
“The purse probably belongs to my daughter, Brenda. Where did you find it? And where is she?”
Those were questions John Connor didn’t want to answer. “I found the purse by a lake, ma’am, a lake outside of town here. The purse was there along with a pair of tennis shoes.”
There was a long pause before “They were all by themselves?”
“Yes,” John said, “there was no one around at all.”
“I’m down in Sacramento, and I don’t drive. Could you maybe bring them to me?”
Remembering what was inside the purse, John knew he couldn’t inflict that on anyone else.
“No,” he said. “That won’t work. I can’t do that.”
There was another long silence on the end of the phone. For a moment John was afraid the person had hung up, but then the silence was followed by a deep sigh.
“I’m sorry to hear that you’re involved in all this, young man, but you need to do the right thing. I understand there’s been a homicide in Grass Valley. The dead man’s name is Richard Lowensdale. He and my daughter were involved at one time. A detective came to talk to me about this tonight. I believe his name is Morris-Detective Gilbert Morris. As much as I hate to say it, you’ll need to take that purse to the police department there in Grass Valley. Talk to Detective Morris. Tell him exactly what you told me. Let him know what you found and where you found it.”
John really wanted to say, “No. I can’t possibly.” Instead he mumbled, “Yes, ma’am. I will.”
After Camilla Gastellum hung up, John stood there for a while longer, still holding his own phone and crying. He was crying because he wished he had never picked up the purse in the first place. Now, because he had made that stupid phone call on his own phone, the cops would be able to trace it back to him. Even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, he’d be drawn into it. He and Pete and Tony and Jack would all end up being kicked off the basketball team. He would never go to West Point.
“Oh well,” he told himself finally, “I can still enlist.”
He knew where the Grass Valley Police Department was on Auburn Street, but he didn’t want to go there by himself. Instead, he put the purse back in the trunk, then he went home and woke up his parents. He told them the truth, all of it.
“It’s okay, son,” Will Connor said, crawling out of bed and reaching for his clothes. “You did the right thing. Let me get dressed and we’ll go see the cops.”
36
Grass Valley, California
Detective Gil Morris had been asleep for just two hours when the phone rang at a little past one.
“What now?”
“You’re needed,” said Frieda Lawson, Grass Valley’s night watch desk sergeant. Regardless of rank, nobody argued with Sergeant Lawson. It simply wasn’t done.
“Great,” Gil muttered. “Is somebody else dead?”
“That remains to be seen,” Frieda said. “I’ve got somebody here who’s asking to speak to the detective in charge of the Lowensdale case.”
“That would be me, then,” Gil said. “I’ll be right there.”
Despite the seeming urgency, he needed to clear his head. He took the time to grab a shower, wishing that he had more than just one ragged towel. He would have to do something about that very soon. He either had to buy more towels or go to the laundromat, one or the other.
He stopped off in the kitchen long enough to reload ink into his pen and to grab an additional supply of three-by-five cards. Then he drove back to the department, watching for black ice as he went.
In the waiting room, Sergeant Lawson sat at her desk behind a glass partition. Two people rose from chairs as Gil walked into the room. Gil recognized the older man as Will Connor, the foreman at the local Discount Tire franchise. Beside him, looking miserable, stood a young man Gil also recognized. John Connor, Will’s son, had been a tight end on the Grass Valley High football team and was currently a point guard on the varsity basketball team.
Will Connor stepped over to Gil and greeted him with a firm handshake. “Sorry to drag you out of bed like this,” he said, “but I didn’t think it should wait until morning. This is my son, John.”
John stepped forward too. He held out his hand, but he averted his eyes. On the floor next to the boy’s feet sat a purse, a big yellow leather purse. On the chair beside him was a paper bag.
“Do you want to come on back?” Gil asked, thinking he’d talk to them in one of the interview rooms and gesturing toward the security door that opened into the rest of the department.
“I think we’d better off doing this outside,” Will Connor said.
“Why?” Gil asked. “What’s going on?”
“My son found this purse earlier tonight up near the Scotts Flat Reservoir,” Will said. “The purse and the shoes. I haven’t looked inside the purse, but he tells me there’s a finger inside there-a bloody finger. It’s pretty rank.”
“Crap,” Gil said, reaching for his latex gloves. “Let’s go outside and take a look.”
Once outside, Gil offered Will and John Connor some Vicks VaporRub to put under their noses and gave himself a dose of it as well. Then he opened the purse and spilled the stinking contents into a Bankers Box he had brought outside for the purpose. He used a hemostat to gather up the bloodied finger and dropped it into an
