Subj: Happy Thanksgiving!
Date: 11/25/99 08:22:17 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: [email protected] (Frances Carlton)
To: [email protected] (Mary Smithson)
Dear Sis,
Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. Sorry I couldn't make it home. Next year, I promise. Give the kids a hug and a kiss from Aunty Franny.
I suppose you saw the news about the Luna Foundation and Dr. Rayne. The security guy there, Nick, I've mentioned him before, asked me over to the island today. He wanted someone he trusts and didn't want anyone looking over our shoulders. Except for him and 1 or 2 guards, the place was vacant - all off enjoying turkey and football.
I did a sweep of the room, actually the bits and pieces of the room, where Dr. Rayne allegedly died. The room itself doesn't really exist as such any more. I told him it was a waste of time, as the forensic team had already been over it with a fine-tooth comb, but he was insistent in that roguish, little-boy way of his - I could never turn him down when he smiles like that! So I went over there on a hunt for evidence; scraps of fabric, hair, teeth, blood-stains, whatever. I didn't find anything of course, the same as the first experts on site, but I took some soil samples, collected some bits of masonry and morter, some drops of melted metal and glass. Anything to look like I was really doing something, just to pacify him. I'll go through the motions and analyse it all tomorrow, for all the good it will do. It is what it is, but I've never seen Nick so shaken. He tries to cover, to be a rock, but he's a rock that's been totally undermined and may go sliding down the slopes at any moment.
Word at the station is that they've side-lined the notion that the house was destroyed in a terrorist bomb attack - they think it was either a suicide or an insurance scam. I even heard someone voice the theory that Rayne was the head of a cult who believed that the coming millennium would usher in Armageddon, so he killed himself in some kind of misguided messianic gesture to save the world. What nonsense!
Since my return from Angel Island, I can't settle to anything. I tried to eat my microwaved turkey dinner, but my stomach is churning. The cat enjoyed it. I had to turn off the TV - every time I switch channels, I find yet another report about the mystery explosion. I tried reading, but each book I take down from the shelves falls open at a passage or poem about death. Damn it, I didn't even know Derek Rayne! I only met him a few times, only exchanged a handful of words with him. He was pleasant, kind and rational, and I found it reassuring to know that there were people like him in the world, people who dared to look into the darkness and stand up to it.
It'll be midnight soon. Stupid of me, I know, but I don't feel so safe anymore. Sorry to lay this on you on a holiday, but I needed to unload to someone. Whenever you need an ear - turnaround's fair play.
All my love, Frances
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