Page 21 of Thunder Road

Vic promised to keep Scott informed and ended the call. He looked over to Ross and knew his partner could read the emotional effect of the conversation.

“If this creature is a shapeshifter, it could have come back every night looking like someone else, and no one would have been the wiser,” Vic said.

“Yeah, that occurred to me too,” Ross said. “Does the creature have a quota? Maybe it just eats until it’s full? So, itwouldn’t have necessarily returned to the arcade until it needed another meal.”

“Let’s keep going and see if we can get a few other stories. Then we can compare notes once Simon’s done his research,” Vic suggested.

They worked their way down the rest of the list. Many of the contacts had either left without a forwarding address or had died. Some were in nursing homes. Others refused to discuss the subject.

Finally, Ross got lucky. “It’s been a while since anyone asked questions about Tom,” Sherry Cranston said after Ross put the call on speaker. “After all this time, we finally accepted that he wasn’t coming home, although he’d be welcome if he did. We still mark his birthday. It would be good to get an answer, one way or the other. Although I want to think he ran off to some tropical island and turned his life around, I don’t think he’d stay out of touch if he were still alive.”

“I know you’ve given the story before, but can you go over it for me again, please?” Ross asked. “Particularly anything you remember about people he was with.”

“We went to a party at a friend’s house,” Sherry said. “Early Eighties—loud music, big hair. We were mostly hanging out and drinking beer. Some of the guys got up a poker game. Low stakes, just something to do.

“Tom had a run of bad luck, and I practically dragged him to the party. Told him to stop moping and that he’d feel better around people,” she recounted, and Vic could hear old guilt in her voice.

“He humored me and went, but he didn’t perk up until someone suggested poker. Tommy wasn’t a high roller, but he liked the game. It was the most interested I’d seen him in a long time, and I knew he wasn’t going to lose his shirt, so I hung outwith the girls in the living room, and the guys set up a game in the dining room,” Sherry went on.

“Did you know everyone at the party?” Ross asked. “Were there any new people or strangers?”

“It was our regular gang, except for one guy I hadn’t seen before. I asked who he was but everyone thought he was a friend of someone else’s,” Sherry replied. “Big guy. Broad shoulders, thick arms, large hands. Rather plain in the face. Built like a lumberjack, although he was dressed like everyone else. Didn’t say much, but he might have been the one who suggested the poker game.”

Vic and Ross shared a look.Trouble.

“They played a few rounds, and everything seemed fine. The girls and I were just talking and listening to music, having a couple of beers. No one was making wild bets. From what I could hear, Tom seemed like he was on a winning streak. I wondered if his friends let him win to cheer him up. I heard him say double or nothing, and the new guy said, ‘I accept.’”

“What happened after that?” Ross asked.

Sherry sighed. “Tom lost. He wasn’t playing for much money, just for fun, but it kinda took the wind out of his sails. He went outside to have a smoke on the back steps, and the new guy went with him. We never saw either of them again.”

“Nothing left behind?” Ross asked.

“Tom’s pack of Lucky’s, his lighter, and a half-smoked cig were on the steps. Nothing from the new guy. I know Tom didn’t just take off without telling me. He never did that sort of thing, and he hadn’t had more than one or two beers,” Sherry said.

“Did the stranger have a car?” Vic leaned in toward the phone.

“That’s the weird thing—when we couldn’t find them, and everyone started talking, no one knew where he’d come from. We all thought he was friends with someone else, but wecompared stories, and he wasn’t. It’s like he just wandered in and made himself at home and no one questioned him,” Sherry recalled. “If he had a car, it wasn’t parked with everyone else’s, and we didn’t hear him leave.”

“When did you realize something was wrong?” Ross pressed.

“I had a bad feeling that night, but Tom’s friends knew he’d had a rough patch and thought maybe he and the new guy just went out to a bar or to score some weed.” She chuckled self-consciously. “It’s been forty years—is the statute of limitations up on that?”

“We’re definitely not concerned about the pot,” Ross assured her. “What next?”

“When he didn’t come home, I knew something was wrong. That just wasn’t Tom. He would have called, and he didn’t just crash with strangers. I checked in with all our friends, and when no one had heard from him or seen him, I called the police,” Sherry told them.

“Since it had only been overnight, they didn’t think it was a real disappearance and told me he probably just passed out watching TV and would wander back home in a while. If he’d been with someone we knew, I wouldn’t have worried. But I didn’t like that he’d gone off with a stranger. Anything could have happened.

“Tom didn’t have much money, so I doubt it was a robbery. He was a nice boy, maybe a little too nice, which got him into some of the scrapes he was trying to get out of. Had a knack for trusting the wrong people who took advantage. I miss my brother.”

Vic and Ross exchanged a glance. They might discover what happened to Tom, but returning him was unlikely.

“I know that after all this time, he’s probably not still alive,” Sherry said with a hitch in her voice. “But if we can’t bring himhome, I’d like to know what happened, and see if we can do something to get him justice.”

“I understand,” Ross said. “That’s why we’re looking into some old cold cases that might be connected. I have you on my list, and if we do find something, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you,” Sherry told him. “You know, Tom was the whimsical one. That’s why I think life went so rough on him when things didn’t work out. He loved fairy tales when he was a kid, and read all the fantasy books and saw the big movies when they came out. I think that if he could have moved into one of those make-believe worlds, he would have gone.”

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