Page 20 of Thunder Road

“Eww,” Ross protested. “TMI.”

“Hey, I grew up watching all those nature shows with my brothers. Wildlife is brutal, man.”

“Has Simon tried to contact the ghosts of the people who vanished? If the creature sucked out their soul, would they stillbe around as a spirit, or would they just be, I don’t know—erased?” Ross asked.

“Yes, they were ghosts, but fading according to Simon.” Vic looked at the list again. “Okay, we can’t do magic, but we do data—which is almost the same,” he said, and Ross snorted. “Hear me out. Let’s plot the last known locations. It might help us figure out where the creature is doing its hunting.”

“If it can look like anything, how do we catch it?” Ross asked.

“I’m going to leave that up to Simon,” Vic replied. “He was headed to some college library to do research. But I figure this is a legit part of our job since it’s people who are victims of a crime in our territory. And if Simon’s right and it’s connected to the lighthouses becoming automated, this has been a forty-year crime spree.”

Ross fed the data into a program that would map the data points while Vic scanned the printouts for anything they might have missed. No matter how good and helpful computers were, human intuition often spotted connections that defied binary logic.

Vic’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number.

“Detective D’Amato? You just called my sister about our brother, James Hinton, who went missing ten years ago.”

“Can I put you on speaker?” Vic asked and got approval. He set his phone on the desk so Ross could hear. “Go ahead.”

“I’m Scott Hinton, and I was with Jimmy the day he disappeared. I was trying to cheer him up. He’d had a rough go for a while. Job trouble, woman trouble, health problems. Even though he was only in his late twenties, life had beat him down. He was my older brother, and I didn’t want to see him unhappy.”

“What happened?”

“We went down to Ocean Boulevard to walk around and kill an evening. Get some food, have a couple of beers, people-watch and hang out,” Scott said. “I could tell Jimmy was trying to get inthe spirit and appreciated being together, but he was just so sad. We went to the big arcade and played games.

“We were together all evening. Then I went to the bathroom, and it was crowded so it took a bit. When I came back, Jimmy was playing pinball against a guy I’d never seen before. They were joking around, and Jimmy said, ‘I bet I can beat you.’ Just joshing, not even putting money on the line,” Scott went on.

“He had perked up, so I didn’t interfere. I went to get drinks. When I came back, they were both gone. No one saw them leave, but we never saw Jimmy again.”

Vic knew that the timeframe was before security cameras were everywhere. “Did he drive? Was his car missing?”

“No,” Scott said. “I drove that night. I went nuts looking for him. Got the arcade staff involved, called the police, nothing. But people said he probably just made a new friend and went to have a beer, and he’d turn up in the morning. Except Jimmy wouldn’t leave me like that. We were close.”

“When he didn’t come back, I put up signs. Filed a missing person report. Went back to the arcade every night to see if the guy he played with was a regular. They said he often came in a couple of nights a week, but no one knew who he was.” The agitation in Scott’s voice made it clear that despite the years that had passed, the disappearance was clear in his mind.

“I thought maybe if he went after Jimmy, he’d go for me too if I hung around. He didn’t show. Even the arcade staff said that they hadn’t seen the guy since the night Jimmy went missing,” Scott said. “I always hoped that Jimmy would show up out of the blue, and it would be some weird story about bad drugs and a road trip, but that didn’t happen. I still miss him.”

Vic could hear the pain in Scott’s voice and couldn’t imagine losing one of his brothers like that. Ross had stopped his work to listen and looked shaken.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Vic said. “I know it’s been a long time, but do you remember anything about the stranger Jimmy played with? What he looked like?”

“That was almost forty years ago. Whatever he looked like then, he won’t be the same now, if he’s even still alive,” Scott replied.

“It might help us match him to photographs in the system,” Vic replied and crossed his fingers.

“Okay. What’s stuck in my mind, even after all this time, is that he was unusually tall, like a basketball player, and pretty beefy. Plain features—not ugly, but not handsome. I think the word is rugged. Shaggy blond hair. Huge hands.”

“Did you hear him talk? Did he have an accent?”

“No, sorry. I remember wondering if he was a pro wrestler because he looked very muscular.”

“Anything different about his clothing?” Vic pressed, probing for some kind of lead.

“Not fashionable—just a plain T-shirt and loose-fitting jeans. I figured maybe he had trouble finding things in his size.”

“Thank you,” Vic told him. “I’m sorry to bring up bad memories.”

“Don’t be. I think about Jimmy every day. If you find out what happened to him, I want to know,” Scott said. “And if you can catch the guy who took him away—make him pay.”

---