"You think he's gone to meet Grasso?" he asked, concern in his voice. I acknowledged agreement. "Wouldn't he leave a note or a message of some kind, telling you what was going on?" I agreed to search while he'd put out an all-points bulletin on the vehicle Howie was driving.
A quick search of the room revealed nothing. In desperation, I turned on the tape recorder which had run to its end. I backed it up, stuttering it back and forward until I heard Howie's voice. "Sleeping, just sleeping. . ." it said in his sing-song chant. There was neither a message nor, I realized, success with our endeavor. I turned off the recorder and left to drive to police headquarters.
When I arrived at Detective Dick's door, he was on his way out. "Come on," he said, grabbing my arm. "They've spotted the van!"
We raced from town at white knuckle speed, siren screaming while Dick received updates on his radio. The van was in a road side pull off. It was empty. There was no sign of mayhem in the vehicle although a restraint was bolted to the rear floor. There was a crude map to the Pacific Crest Inn.
The ride took about forty minutes and as we arrived, two patrol cars were pulling away from the scene. Three unmarked vehicles remained. As we screeched to a stop, Agent Osborn, tall and picturesque, approached our car. She wore a somber look as she glanced nervously at me before speaking to the detective.
"We just received word of a horrific accident about ten miles up the road. There's a chance it might be the vehicle we're looking for." She waved her hand behind her. "There's nothing here for you to see." Dick slammed the car in reverse as she let go just in time. He accelerated amid a spray of pebbles as he raced after the receding tail lights far up the road. We caught up to accident in six or seven minutes. The scene was defined by a cluster of police cars and fire engines bathed in rotating lights.
A car, an unrecognizable hulk of blackened metal, was ground against the concrete abutment of an over pass in a puddle of water. There was no way to discern if it was the vehicle loaned to Howie.
As we alighted, an officer I recognized from the command center strolled up to us. "There wasn't an inch of skid marks," he said, shaking his head. "He must have been flying a hundred miles an hour to make that mess." I knelt by the side of the highway and tried to lose my lunch that wasn't there.