Greywalker - Kat Richardson [23]
I did have one stroke of luck: Cameron’s roommate agreed to meet me for lunch between classes.
Richard “RC” Calvin waited for me in front of a Greek café on University Way. He was short and muscular and unremarkable otherwise. We ordered at a counter and sat down nearby.
I put my notebook next to my coffee cup. “I know you think you don’t know anything, but you might be able to give me a start. When did you last see Cam?”
He rolled his eyes as he thought. “Uh . . . sometime around the end of February, I think. It must have been a Thursday night, ’cause that’s when we were usually both home at the same time. See, Cam didn’t have any Friday lectures, like I do, so he’d usually stay up late on Thursdays and be hanging around when I got home from my late class.”
“Didn’t he go out?”
“Oh, yeah, he’d blow out of there after we talked about the rent and bills and stuff. You know, it’s funny, I really didn’t remember till just this second, but he said he’d be gone for a while, so not to worry. I guess I really took him serious, huh? ’Cause I didn’t think anything of it till his mom called looking for him. Huh! That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?”
“Not really. Did you ever think that he’d returned to the apartment?”
“Uh, yeah. About a week ago or so some of his stuff disappeared. I was going to borrow a book from him, so I, like, went into his room, and most of his stuff was gone. Little stuff, like clothes and paperbacks, a couple of big things, like his laptop, but a lot of his stuff was still there, so I didn’t think he’d, like, skipped or anything. His duffel bags were missing and his backpack, so I figured he’d gone on a trip, y’know?”
“He never called you after that?”
“Well, no. We’re just roommates. We’re not buddies or anything. We’re kind of from different worlds, y’know?”
I nodded. “Was he distracted, seem to have something going on? Did his behavior change suddenly, or his schedule, anything like that?”
“Um . . . well, I thought he might have got a girlfriend or something for a while, ’cause he got a lot of calls from a chick and he was going out a lot at night, but he told me it was just his sister, so I didn’t think any more about it. Then some guy called for him a couple of times, usually late, like when I was about to go to bed. Cam was home both times, so he took the phone to his bedroom, like he didn’t want me to listen in. I don’t know, maybe he’s gay or something. Anyhow, the guy never called again.”
“Could the man on the phone have any connection to Cameron’s disappearance?”
RC shrugged his beefy shoulders and dug into his souvlaki. He hunched over the food, eating as if the plate was going to be jerked away any second. He talked with his cheek stuffed with food. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t think so. Cam had the flu about then, so he was sleeping all the time. Could have been someone from the U, I guess. The guy sounded older—forty or fifty, maybe. Hard to tell, y’know, and it wasn’t any of my business anyway.”
“Do you remember the man’s name? Did he give it?”
He took a swig of his soda before answering. “I can’t remember. I think he told me, once. . . . Everett. Something like that. Something snooty. Just can’t remember.”
“If it comes back to you, let me know. You said Cameron had the flu. How could you tell?”
“It’s pretty easy when the guy’s been puking his guts up for a week. He was really white when I did see him—pasty, y’know—and kind of thin and wasted-looking. If he hadn’t been worshipping the porcelain god, I’d have thought he was on drugs or something. He looked like, y’know, in those old movies when someone’s got a terminal disease—all white with big eyes. Couldn’t keep anything down. Actually, I don’t think he was eating at all for a while, just drinking water and some kind of nasty-smelling soup.” He looked