The Night Monster_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [80]
“I thought we were having dinner last night,” Burrell said, sounding pissed.
“I’m sorry. I had to help a friend recover some stolen goods.”
“How many times did you hit the guy?”
“I didn’t lay a hand on him, Your Honor.”
“I’ve heard that line out of you before.”
An elderly couple came into the bar and inquired about breakfast. Seven in the morning and they were both dressed like they were going to church. I was soaking wet from my swim, and saw them stare at me. I headed outside.
I stood in the building’s cool shade. The tide was up, the crash of waves as loud as a passing train. I lifted the phone to my face. “Sorry about that. How did your search for the file on Daybreak go?”
“Not good,” Burrell said.
My spirits sagged. If I couldn’t identify Lonnie and Mouse outside of their first names, I’d never find Sara. “What happened?”
“I went to the police stockade like you suggested. The Daybreak file was stored in a box from 1990. It’s pretty thick—maybe a hundred pages long. I took it home, and read through it over cold Chinese.”
I made a mental footnote to take Burrell out to dinner someday soon. Otherwise, she’d probably never speak a civil word to me again.
“What did the file say?” I asked.
“I couldn’t read half of it. The pages were blacked out with Magic Marker. There was a memo in the front of the file that said the information had been censored from the file to protect the rights of the patients.”
“Was there a roster of patients’ names?”
“Yes. It had been blacked out as well. I took the page to the lab, and had a tech scan it with ultraviolet light. Unfortunately, the Magic Marker had wiped out the writing. The tech said it was hopeless.”
I leaned against the building. Hopeless. It was a word that rarely slipped into my vocabulary, yet it was exactly how I felt right now.
“I scanned the pages that were legible into my computer, and e-mailed them to you,” Burrell said. “Maybe there’s a clue hidden somewhere in those pages.”
“How many pages did you send?”
“All of them.”
That had probably taken Burrell a few hours. I felt like a real heel.
“I’ll go look at them right now,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back last night. I owe you dinner.”
“Yes, you do,” Burrell said.
She was gone before I could say good-bye.
Dogs do not know failure, at least not any I’d been around. They treated each day like a new adventure, their spirits never wavering. This was especially true for Buster. He rode to my office with his tail wagging, ready for whatever challenges the day held. I wanted to share his enthusiasm, but it was hard. I was running out of road.
I parked by Tugboat Louie’s front door. Thirty seconds later, I was in my office, booting up my computer. I went into e-mail, and opened Burrell’s missive. The pages she’d sent to me were hard to read, but that didn’t stop me. I was determined to read every line on every page, no matter how long it took.
Several hours later my cell phone rang. I had a splitting headache from staring at the computer screen, and I pulled myself away and looked at the face of my phone. It was Jessie, the light of my life. I turned away from the computer to speak with her.
“Hey honey, how’s it going?” I answered.
“I’m okay. How are you? I hadn’t talked to you in awhile, and wanted to see how things were going. Mom called me this morning, and I filled her in. I thought you were going to call her. You said you would.”
Another broken promise. I’d left a trail of those recently. But the fact was, my job was the reason Rose and I were no longer together. Calling my wife when I was in the middle of a job would only exacerbate the problem, so I hadn’t called. I said, “I know this is going to sound like a lie, but I haven’t had a moment free.”
“Are you still looking for Sara?” my daughter asked.
“Yes. It’s consuming every minute of my day.”
“Some kids are going around campus saying that if the police don’t find a missing person within forty-eight hours, they almost never do.