Lost to Eternity by Greg Cox

Author:Greg Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2024-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

No email or web address, she noted. Not in 1986.

“Thanks! This is great. More than I expected, actually.”

“Glad to be of help. Would you like to borrow the rest of my mom’s files from back then?”

“I was about to ask.”

* * *

She wanted to call the number on the card right away, as soon as they got back to their rental car, but Dennis insisted on looking up “Wilmer Offutt” first before they went further. It was a reasonable, if frustrating, precaution, but no way was she going to wait until they drove all the way home, so they compromised by pulling into a roadside diner with free Wi-Fi and setting up shop in a corner booth surrounded by retro 1950s décor. Melinda treated herself to a milkshake and fries while Dennis searched the internet via his laptop. Jukebox oldies played in the background as she waited impatiently for the results.

“Anything?”

“What’s the rush?” he replied. “That card is almost forty years old. Chances are, that number hasn’t been good since before we were born.”

“Probably, but I still want to know who this Wilmer Offutt character is. Might be somebody we want to track down, if possible. What have you found on him so far?”

“Next to nothing, which is more than a little suspicious. Not a lot of dudes with that name cited online, and most of them don’t seem like a match for the guy the nurse and Todd remember. Wrong ages, appearances, backgrounds, et cetera.” Dennis squinted at the laptop’s screen, multitasking as he spoke. “Granted, I’d need to put in a lot more hours before I could reach any definite conclusions, but I’m going to go out on a limb and surmise that ‘Wilmer Offutt’ was not this guy’s real name.”

Okay, that has potential to make for a good ep, she thought. “You think he was using an alias when he was sniffing around for that kidney pill back in the eighties?”

“Maybe, probably.” A worried expression conveyed that this didn’t exactly put Dennis’s already anxious mind at ease. “Why would he want to conceal his identity? What was he hiding?”

“That’s just what I want to know.” She wiped her greasy fingers off with a napkin before picking up her phone and the borrowed business card. “I don’t know about you, but knowing that ‘Offutt’ was going under an assumed name makes me all the more eager to try this number, just in case.”

Dennis gulped. He’d hardly touched his own order, which was going cold beside his laptop. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

“Like you said, the number’s probably long-dead anyway, so where’s the harm?” She saw him start to open his mouth. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”

Before he could spin any worst-case scenarios, she entered the number and held the phone to her ear. To her surprise, the call was picked up on the first ring and a recorded voice responded:

“Please leave a message at the tone.”

The voice was James Earl Jones deep, the prompt as bare-bones as possible.

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