14. DOMINIC’S FRUSTRATION
DOMINIC WAS FRUSTRATED. He sat hunched forward on a diamond-shaped cement block in front of the Pacific Beach branch of the San Diego Library. There were plenty of people around, some browsing though used books at an outdoor book sale, others who were obviously homeless and taking advantage of the public facilities offered by the library. One guy in a brightly colored tie dye T-shirt was banging on a pair of bongo drums with surprisingly good rhythm. His tangled black dreadlocks bounced on his shoulders as he bobbed his head to the driving beat.
Dominic had been in San Diego for two weeks now, but with precious little to show for it. The city was beautiful, but he had scarcely noticed the palm trees, blue skies and all the brightly colored flowers that had no business blooming in December. Likewise, he paid little attention to the pleasantly warm days and the nights that could barely be described as cool. Back in his home country it would be cold and dreary right now, and the only colors would be dismal shades of brown and gray.
He had spent his first couple of days here riding the city’s three trolley lines, getting off the train at every stop and trying to sense Leesa’s vibration. When he failed, he hopped back onto the next trolley that came along and repeated the process all over again at the next stop. The trolley provided excellent coverage of central San Diego and the southern coastal strip of the county, but his search produced no results. Next, he risked a small bit of his anonymity by spending a week crisscrossing the rest of the county in a series of taxis, stopping every mile or two and getting out of the car to try to sense Leesa. He changed taxis every few hours to prevent any of the drivers from wondering in more than an idle fashion what their strange passenger was doing.
His was certain his painstakingly thorough search had taken him within a mile or two of every residential section in the sprawling San Diego area, with no luck. Either Leesa was not in San Diego, or he was completely unable to sense her. He wasn’t sure which he hoped was true.
Next, he had visited several public libraries to use their computer systems. Distrustful of the cyber grid and unsure who might be monitoring entries and searches, he seldom used computers and so was not very skilled with the machines. He was loath to enter Leesa’s name or phone number lest it somehow attract attention in the system, but it was a risk he felt he had to take. He tried to minimize the danger by changing computers and libraries frequently. After lots of searching, he had finally located a few people search sites that seemed promising, but none of them would provide any detailed information without first receiving payment via a credit card. That, of course, left him out.
So now he had to make a decision. He had come outside to think about his choices. He could ask someone in the library to help him. Maybe one of the young people who seemed so skilled and comfortable with computers would know a way to locate Leesa without a fee, or, failing that, perhaps he could entice the person to use their own credit card in exchange for a cash payment. But such a request would be at least a bit unusual and was likely to provoke some curiosity. His other choice would be to hire a professional investigator—which was how he had learned Leesa’s phone number in the first place—and rely on professional discretion. Dominic wasn’t comfortable with either choice, but he had hit another in a long series of dead ends and had to do something. Speed was beginning to become increasingly more important than caution.