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“Did any of them mention vampire moms who work?”
“Er, no. Pretty sure you’re the anomaly, Sammy.”
I chuckle. “Anyway, I’ll check the email as soon as I can. You were right on the first count, by the way. The reason why I called.”
“Ah, the Gemma Fulton case. It’s a real head-scratcher, eh?”
I tap my foot on the brake pedal absentmindedly. “From what I’ve been able to uncover it kinda sounds like an ordinary Ted Bundy type killer. What do you know that I don’t?”
He chuckles. “Well, I had the same thought. Problem is, the Anaheim guys haven’t been able to find any trace of where either one of them ended up. Her or the man. My buddy over there told me they got a credit card hit at a gas station about two hours north of Fullerton, but that’s it. Gas station people remembered seeing them, but they acted normal. Didn’t raise any red flags.” He clears his throat over the squeak of his chair. I imagine him leaning forward and pulling up some info on his computer. “Could be this guy abducted her and ended up going off the road into a ditch somewhere unintentionally.”
I think about the cabin, but don’t say anything, not yet. “You guys saw the video?” I ask.
“Yeah, Duck checked out the restaurant… and that gas station already.”
I blink. “Duck? What the duck are you talking about?”
He chuckles. “The two Anaheim PD detectives working the missing person case. Waters and Fowler. Water fowl. Just kinda turned into ‘Duck’.”
“Oh, like a Bennifer thing?”
“Whatever that means,” says Sherbet in a tone that tells me he knows exactly what ‘Bennifer’ is but doesn’t think celebrities are worthy of any attention. “Anyway, they tracked down the two men our suspect met with. They work for a small software company and met the guy to discuss hardware purchasing. Our guy is evidently a field sales agent for W.B. Mason or one of those type places.”
I add this to my notes. “Who’s the Jeep registered to?”
“Hang on. It’s in here somewhere. Their reports reads a little different than ours. Found it. Name’s Carson Hoff. Duck went to the home address. No one there. No signs of anything unusual. They’re completely stumped. Only clue they got of note was one of the guys at Hoff’s company saying they thought he said something about going to Idyllwild.”
“Hmm. Idyllwild,” I mutter more to myself than anything. I know of the small town atop a mountain. Lines up with the cabin I saw in the psychometry hit. “That’s north. Gas station hit suggests he went there.”
“Yeah. Hmm.” Sherbet heaves a sigh. “A littletoohmm. The Anaheim guys contacted the local law enforcement up there. Went nowhere. Nothing. Apparently, no sign of either of them. This one’s less ‘something weird happened’ and more me hoping your special talents might make a ballbuster of a case a little easier.”
“Okay.” I exhale. “I’m on it. Let you know if I find something. And thanks.”
“Sure thing.”
After a bit more friendly conversation about bake sales, I hang up and drive back to my actual office to hit the computer. Along with the usual internet sources, I check all my special online services, looking up everything I can find about Carson Hoff.
Hmm. This is interesting. Looks like the guy got married eleven years ago. His wife, Erica, passed away five years ago. After a bit of digging, I find out she apparently drowned in the bathtub. Yeah, that’s only alittlesuspicious. A few emails back and forth with Sherbet gets me a copy of the police report. Seems Carson was in Massachusetts at the time, doing some manner of training at his company’s main office. There were apparently enough people able to corroborate his uninterrupted presence there that the police had to consider the death a freak accident. Erica Hoff slipped (or something) in the bathtub, whacked her head on the wall, and drowned while face-down unconscious in five inches of herbal bath bomb water.
What a way to go.
It’s all too neat for me. The crazy thing here is her picture. She looks superficially similar to Gemma Fulton. Not twins or clones here, but like they could be distant cousins. Gemma’s got mouse-brown hair, long and straight. Erica’s is blonde, but she wore it in almost the exact same style. The shape of their faces is so close I could photoshop mouth, nose, and eyes between them and they’d look the same.
You know, if I could photoshop, which I can’t.
I mightlookyoung, but I am old school.
Anyway, two theories form in my mind. One: Erica Hoff really did die in a freak bathtub drowning and Carson didn’t handle it well. He sees Gemma and has a psychotic break, thinking his wife reincarnated or something like that. Second theory: he killed his wife, managed to get enough people to back up his alibi, and when he saw Gemma, it reawakened his inner serial killer.
Neither of those scenarios explains why both he and Gemma have seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth.
I look at my notepad. The comment about the credit card hit at the gas station stands out in much darker ink than everything else. Weird. I pick the pad up and tilt it back and forth. Nope, not a trick of the light. Must’ve pressed harder on the pen without realizing it. Huh. Wonder if that’s a subconscious psychic clue I’m trying to give myself. Maybe Gemma’s ghost is here with me now and she pushed down on my hand.
Back in the day, when I could see ghosts, I would have known. Heck, I could have worked this all out with her ghost. Except... those days are gone, along with the special way I used to see into the night. Turned out, the same energy that illumined the night for me was the same energy ghosts drew from. Now, my night vision is much closer to what you see on all those ghosts shows... except mine is a little better than that.
And I don’t have to deal with Zak Bagans, though he’s kinda cute when he’s not yelling at poor beaten-down Aaron.
Anyway, the heavy ink isn’t the most glaringly obvious thing, but it’s abnormal enough to make me reshuffle my schedule. I’d been planning to check out his actual house in Fullerton next, but might as well take the longer trip first… especially in light of these potential hints (or hits) from beyond.
