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 to pay a call on Leisha Hamilton.”
White, who had not heard the full phone conversation, nodded. “Maybe we should call and see if she’s at home.”
English turned back to the phone and dialed Leisha Hamilton’s number. The woman answered immediately. English told her he was following up some leads regarding Scott Dunn. She agreed to talk to him, launching into the story about Tim Smith that English had just heard from Jim Dunn. Tim had been coming into the restaurant where she worked, just sitting and watching her work her entire eight-hour shift. And he had been leaving notes on her car and on her apartment door. No matter what she said to him, he would not leave her alone.
“Oh, there’s something else,” she added. It seemed that her father, who lived three hours away, had visited on May 28 and she had cleaned up the house. When she vacuumed the living room floor, she moved the couch and discovered that a large piece of carpeting had been cut out, leaving the bare carpet padding.
English’s chest felt tight. He tried to free it by taking a deep breath. Why would someone remove a piece of carpet? He couldn’t think of one reason for such an act that didn’t mean trouble for Scott Dunn. Something was wrong here. “Leisha, my partner and I would like to come and take a look at the apartment. All right?”
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
“We’re on our way,” he said, nodding to White. The two grabbed their jackets from the rack and left the office, shrugging into them as they walked. They drove to the Regency Apartments, an older unit that covered about half a block. Its front was a mosaic of narrow windows, aqua-colored doors flush with the building and faded light blue siding. A small, fenced pool was next to Leisha’s unit. Number 4 was the northernmost apartment on the west-facing building. The small apartment was of the mass-produced variety popular in the sixties, with a low roof and two small windows flanking the blue wooden door.
English parked in a small area adjacent to Apartment B4, walked quickly up the short sidewalk and knocked on the door. The good-looking woman who opened the door was tall, slim and dark-haired. They stepped into a small, sparsely furnished living room. The couch sat immediately to their right, on the west wall of the tiny room. English walked across the room and, looking back at the couch, saw a tan oblong of padding underneath it, where a large chunk of the gray and green pile carpet had been removed. The thought crossed his mind that she would not have had to move the couch to see the cut-out in the carpeting. Across from the couch was a portable television on a stand and a portable stereo. A chair that matched the couch was the only other furniture in the living room. To the left was a small kitchenette, separated from the living room by a breakfast bar. The two men moved the couch and measured the area, roughly three feet by five feet, which had been cut out. A pretty big hunk of carpet, English thought.
Then his eyes opened wider. Directly in front of the stereo, the carpet was stained pink in a large, irregular pattern.
“What’s this?” White asked.
Leisha shrugged. “That was here when we moved in. I have no idea what it is. Kool-Aid, maybe?”
“Why do you think you never noticed before that the carpet had been cut?” English asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve been sleeping on the couch ever since Scott left. I’ve had sheets hanging over it, so I never noticed it.”
George White nodded amiably. “Mind if I look around the rest of the apartment?”
Leisha shrugged again and White went into the north bedroom. English glanced cursorily around the small kitchen.
“Tal! Come look at this!” White called from the bedroom.
Hearing the urgency in his partner’s voice, English hurried into the other room. He stopped just inside the doorway and stared. The room was empty. Not a stick of furniture. A few boxes, half-filled with clothes and miscellaneous items, were scattered about the floor. George White was holding the edge of a brown afghan that was spread neatly in one corner and staring at the carpet below it. English’s eyes followed White’s. A half-moon shaped piece of clean carpet, about three feet long and two feet wide, had been patched into the existing carpet in the room. Along the ragged edges of the patch, where the original carpet had been cut, were large brown splotches.