“Really Bad Day: Friday Morning (Part 2)”

Friday morning, nobody knew where he was. I mean nobody. His roomies hadn't seen him since Thursday morning, he hadn't shown up for work on Thursday, he hadn't gone to my parents' place to pick up his check (he works for my Dad occasionally), and none of his other friends knew anything.

Rick, the guy he was supposed to work for on Thursday, had heard something about Shane getting a ticket. That was an important clue! Shane's a dope sometimes (er, maybe a little more than sometimes): he's been driving around in an unregistered car for awhile, for no good reason at all. His friend Justin crashed his Porsche last week, and Shane's been using his license plates ever since.

Of course I tried to tell him that was wrong, as well as stupid and dangerous, but he didn't want to listen. Justin's plates were free, getting his own would cost almost $200.

The hint that he'd been given a ticket was a good clue. We called around a little, and found that he'd been arrested... of course. However, it wasn't for the false plates! He had a suspended license for not paying an older speeding ticket!

The lady at the court house told me on the phone that he'd been released after his arraignment on his own recognizance with a promise to appear again in September. She had no idea what happened to him after that. That was Thursday afternoon.

Unfortuantely, we were stuck. He hadn't called anybody -- at least not anybody we could think of -- to pick him up after his arraignment. What happened then? Where did he go?

Corinne was afraid he'd hurt himself, that he'd be so ashamed and distraught that he might actually have killed himself. Frankly, Corinne doesn't deal with this sort of thing very well, and when she panics... well, she really panics. She was pretty sure that Shane was dead, and wouldn't let me go to work, because I had to be there to answer the door when the police showed up to give us the bad news.

I'm not picking on her! I love Corinne with all my heart, and I've seen this reaction before: Shane really was hurt badly once in a car accident, and she acted the same way then as now. She's a loving mother, afraid that her only son is lost forever. Nevermind that there was no evidence of this at all. Shane had mentioned a couple of times during his teens that he was almost depressed enough to kill himself, and now Corinne starts worrying whenever he has a reason to be down.

My Mom came down to try comforting Corinne a little. I appreciated the effort, but frankly I was trying to keep a cool head and the extra "worried mother" in the room was not what I was going for. I was pretty sure that Shane's cell phone was dead or missing, and that he was still sleeping at the home of whatever friend had picked him up (after all, he has lots of friends, and we didn't know most of their numbers). This would be normal Shane, the sort of thing he's done many times before.

Continued: Call the Hospitals!