he owe money to anyone?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not a lot of money, anyway.”
Clearly, they weren’t getting anywhere. Frustrated, Jim tried another approach. “Do you know of anyone who was jealous of him?”
Silence was her only response. Jim’s heart pounded. He was on to something. “Were you dating anyone else? Since Scott was seeing Jessica, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have been seeing other people.” He tried to sound casual, reasonable.
“That’s true. I went out on a couple of dates with Tim Smith, who lives in our apartment complex. But I just did it to make Scott jealous when I found out about Jessica.”
Jim’s chest heaved. It was almost audible. Instinctively, he knew she wasn’t telling the whole truth. “How well do you know this Tim?”
“Pretty well, I guess. I got locked out of our apartment one night and Tim let me stay at his place. I was so upset the day Scott went missing, I asked Tim to stay over that night and keep me company.”
She didn’t have to say anything else; images of what was going on, of what scene might have ensued between Leisha, Scott and this Tim, flooded his mind. Dumbfounded, he gripped the receiver, unable to speak.
“Hello? Hello?” He could hear her disembodied voice, but he was choking on his own anger; his throat was so tight he couldn’t force any words out.
Finally, he asked, uttering his words carefully, “Tim spent the night in your apartment the same day Scott disappeared?”
“Yes. He slept on the floor and I slept on the couch.” Jim wondered if she thought him a fool. Ignoring his silence, she continued, saying there had been a break-in on the day following Scott’s disappearance. She recited a list of Scott’s things that were missing.
Jim tried to follow her words, but dark thoughts spun through his mind. First, she says Scott disappears. Then she takes up with another man immediately, as though she knows Scott isn’t coming home that night. Surely, Scott had gone places before without telling her. How did she know he wasn’t just off with one of his friends and wouldn’t return at any minute?
When Jim finally told Leisha he couldn’t talk anymore and hung up the phone, he realized he couldn’t keep the truth from Barbara any longer. He hadn’t told Barb of Scott’s disappearance for a week and the secrecy was eating him up. It had been almost impossible to carry on as usual, as though nothing was wrong. To smile in all the right places, to tussle with day-to-day business decisions, which suddenly seemed so trivial. Jim hadn’t wanted to tell his wife, because he kept hoping Scott would show up and he wouldn’t have to upset her.
Telling Barbara proved to be as hard as Jim had anticipated it would be. “Why didn’t you tell me right away?” she asked. As he had guessed, she wanted to catch the next plane to Lubbock.
He shook his head. “No. He’s twenty-four years old. He can come and go as he pleases. We can’t be sure yet that anything has happened to him. Besides, even if we went to Lubbock, what could we do there? We don’t know most of Scott’s new friends. We could embarrass him if he’s just gone away for a short period and wants to be alone.”
The question haunted them for another week. Was there some way they could locate Scott if they went to Lubbock? Could they find Scott if they searched long enough and hard enough? Jim was in a state of agitation when Leisha called again the following Sunday night.
She had no word about Scott, but she was full of other kinds of news. “Tim is following me around. He’s making me nervous,” she said. She thought he was weird and she was beginning to be afraid of him.
“I thought he stayed with you the night Scott disappeared.” Jim said.
There was a long pause before she responded. “No—I didn’t tell you he spent the night at the apartment that night, I told you he stayed with me the next night. I don’t remember anything that happened the night of the sixteenth. That was the night after I found out Scott was gone.”
This contradicted her earlier story, but Jim let her words pass unchallenged. “How well do you know Tim Smith?”
Again silence filled the line. Then she said, “Oh, I see him around all the time. I don’t know him all that well. He makes me nervous.”
Funny, she didn’t sound nervous, he thought. “Then why would you let him spend the night?”
That got her attention. The irritation he’d heard in her voice the day he’d called her at work returned. “I don’t know. I just needed some company, that’s all. But now I can’t get rid of him.”
Jim decided to prod her. “Was there any trouble between Tim and Scott?”
Again, a long pause before she answered. “Well, they didn’t much like each other.”
Didn’t much like each other. That wasn’t a likely description, if Tim was interested in Leisha and thought Scott was in his way.
“Was there any real trouble between them?” Jim persisted.
“They didn’t fight, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said.
“Did Tim ever go to your apartment?”
“Once or twice. One time, I loaned him the keys to the apartment, so he could wait for a FedEx package. I guess he could’ve had the key copied.”
At her words, another suspicion insinuated itself into Jim’s mind, and he wondered if she had planted it deliberately. Was she hinting that her friend, Tim, might have done something to Scott? Why would she do that, unless she knew something had happened to Scott? What was she hoping to accomplish by telling Jim all these things?
After ending the call, Jim sat at his desk, pondering his son’s fate. For days, he had been haunting the telephone, hoping against hope that it would ring and he would hear Scott’s voice: “Hey, Dad! You’ll never guess where I am!”
It hadn’t happened and he was beginning to think it never would. It was time to call the police and report Scott missing. He picked up the phone again and called the Lubbock Police Department to file a missing persons report.
It was Sunday night and it was also the Memorial Day weekend. He knew there would be few detectives on duty, but Jim couldn’t wait any longer. He had to find out the truth.
The officer who answered introduced himself as Corporal Jimmy Brazell. “Are you a relative of Scott Dunn’s?” Brazell asked.
“Yes. I’m his father.”
“Do you think your son has come to some harm?”
The question stirred the fear in Jim’s soul. Why would the policeman immediately focus on such a thing? Did he know about an accident of some kind? Or worse? For the first time, Jim had to voice his deepest fears. “Yes. My son has been missing for several days. He’s never disappeared like this before. I think it’s highly possible that he’s been hurt, kidnapped or in accident. I’m afraid his life might be in danger.”
Brazell explained what the police routine would be. “When we get a report like this, Mr. Dunn, whoever takes the information gives it to someone in the records department,
