Scott moved here in January and I came in February. Then, when Max’s wife moved to Lubbock, Scott and I moved into this apartment.” Their move had been recent, “so we haven’t much bedroom furniture.” Max had given her the keys to the old apartment, Leisha said, and she was supposed to have turned them in to the manager, but she hadn’t done so. Now, the keys were missing. “I guess Scott might have taken the keys and gone over there,” she mused.
Something about Leisha’s comments didn’t sound quite right, English felt. He decided to check the situation out a little further. He drove to the apartment on Fortieth Street and pounded on the door, but no one responded. A check with the manager elicited the information that the locks already had been changed. The manager hadn’t seen any sign of Scott Dunn since he and Leisha Hamilton had moved. It was time, English realized, that he paid a visit to Max Gianoli, Scott Dunn’s employer.
Before the detective got a chance to go to ProSound Electronics, however, the Las Vegas, Nevada, Police Department called and said the missing student English had been looking for had turned up there, safe, but without the money he had brought with him. Ironically, the missing person case that on the surface appeared to be the more suspicious turned out to be okay. Meanwhile the case of Scott Dunn, which had looked innocuous, was proving to be more dangerous.
With the problem of the missing ministerial student solved, English turned his full attention to the disappearance of Scott Dunn. A visit to Max Gianoli still topped English’s to-do list. During the short drive, English found himself hoping Gianoli would tell him Dunn had taken a few days off and would be back soon. At ProSound, English introduced himself to a fit, dark-haired man in his forties, half expecting an angry outburst from Gianoli, based on what the man had said to Jim Dunn about firing Scott. English was surprised that Gianoli now seemed genuinely puzzled at Scott’s disappearance. He appeared to have had second thoughts on the matter.
Gianoli said it was not at all like Scott to leave so abruptly, especially not with a big Crank It Up competition coming up. He pointed out a row of statuettes that lined a shelf behind the counter. “Scott won those. He’s the best. Scott can look at a wire and know where it goes. Everybody else practically has to draw a diagram showing where each wire goes. Not Scott. He can just look at the speaker and do it.”
Gianoli also told English that Scott was great for his business. In fact, Scott, good-looking and articulate about his knowledge of electronics, had done a television infomercial to promote the opening of the store. Gianoli confirmed what Jim Dunn had told English, that it was totally unlike Scott to go off without his tools, his car and his prized remote-control boat. “When it comes to his stuff—he likes his stuff and he’s not going to leave that for anybody.”
English questioned two other employees at the store and got the same assessment. Scott was a great installer, a good friend, a grand guy to party with, Pat Taylor told him. Taylor insisted that Scott would not stay away for any length of time without calling and letting them know where he was.
The other installer, Mike Roberts, said the same thing. Roberts insisted that Scott would not go away and leave his tools, which were still there in the shop area of the store. In fact, Roberts currently was using them, because, he said, Scott owed him some money. Since Scott was not around to pay him back, Roberts had appropriated the tools. Roberts said he and Scott had gotten to be pretty close friends. They liked to hang around together in their free time and they were interested in many of the same things. Scott’s remote-controlled boat was a favorite of both of them. The Lubbock area doesn’t boast many lakes and most of them are of the small, playa variety, but they were big enough to put Scott’s boat in. Mike had gone with Scott several times to put the boat in the water.
Roberts told English he had gone by to see Scott at about midnight on Wednesday and stayed for an hour, talking about work, how to get ready for the Crank It Up contest. Scott had not been at work since Monday and Roberts had been installing the stereos in the company van for the competition. Scott promised to come to work the next day. Since Scott’s yellow Camaro was parked at ProSound Electronics, Roberts said he would come by the next morning and drive Scott to work. At about 8:45 Thursday morning, Roberts said, he had knocked on Scott’s door, but had received no answer. He had tried for fifteen minutes to get a response, but had gotten none. At nine o’clock he left. The only unusual thing he had noticed was that the north window of Scott’s bedroom was closed. Normally it was opened wide enough to allow an electric cord to go through it. Scott used the cord to jumpstart his car. Also, Roberts said, he had noticed that Tim Smith’s car was parked in the lot next to Scott’s apartment. He thought that was unusual, since Smith lived several buildings away.
Gianoli, Roberts and Taylor also insisted that Scott would not have gone away for this long and left his cars behind. Not the Scott they knew.
Driving away from ProSound Electronics, English didn’t know what to think. In spite of what Scott Dunn’s father and his friends thought, English still felt that maybe, for some reason as yet unknown, Scott had just taken off, but English could not be as sure as he had been earlier.
The following morning, English found a message on his voice mail at the office. Leisha Hamilton had called and said she was planning to go out of town for a couple of days the following week. He wondered why she would take the trouble to call. He had not suggested to her that she stay in the city or that she keep him informed of her whereabouts. Puzzled, he tucked the note into the new folder labeled Dunn, Scott that he had started.
His partner, Corporal George White, came into the small office they shared. White, attractive and older than English by at least a dozen years, was not quite as tall as his young partner’s six-feet-plus and had graying dark hair. English told White about the Dunn case. For a while, they kicked a few ideas around. Then, since there were other pressing cases to work, they moved on. Nevertheless, a nagging suspicion about the Dunn case, heightened by Jim Dunn’s repeated calls every day, began to develop.
About four o’clock on Friday afternoon the telephone rang. It was Jim Dunn again. Taking a deep breath, hating what he had to say, English admitted to the worried father that he knew no more about his son’s disappearance than he had when they had talked twenty-four hours earlier. He gave Jim a detailed account of everything he had done that week to locate Scott.
“I’m sorry I don’t have any good news,” he told Jim.
Jim had news for the detective and it was not good, either. He told English that Max Gianoli had called both him and Scott’s mother. The information Gianoli had given him made Jim even more certain that something bad had happened to his son.
Max Gianoli had told Jim that Leisha had come into the shop on the Monday after Scott left and that she was really acting weird. She was hysterical and crying—shaking, Gianoli said. She had taken Scott’s car. Gianoli had not threatened to have it towed, as she had reported to Jim, and Gianoli had wondered why she had not just left it on the parking lot if she was so sure Scott was going to come back at any moment. She had told Gianoli that she wanted Scott to have to face her when he came back. The only way to make sure he did that was to keep possession of the things he loved the most—his car and his boat.
Then, Leisha had calmed down enough to tell him that she was afraid of some guy named Tim. She had been dating Tim and she said she thought Tim had done something to Scott. Gianoli said that all the time she was talking, she was looking over her shoulder, as if expecting Tim to come into the store.
According to Gianoli, Leisha said Tim had been following her and was leaving threatening notes on her door. She could not get him to leave her alone. She said she was afraid to go home. Finally, she left the store; Gianoli said he was relieved to see her go.
Promising Jim Dunn that he would follow up on this information immediately, English concluded the call and turned to George White. “I think we need
