6:42 PM
David awoke from his lavish bed and stretched. Still trying to fend off the lingering slumber, the Toreador walked drudgingly to the laptop in his office, swished around his desk mouse and clicked on the news feed in his web browser. He did a double-take; suddenly, he noticed that his name was splattered all over the place, from the local news sites to the art blogs across the state.
“2 DIE IN CRASH; TOP ART CRITIC, MISSING GIRL DEAD”
“DAVID LOWELL, 34, DIED IN CRASH UPON IMPACT”
“David Lowell’s untimely death: Artists react”
Shock slowly shifted to seething anger at each related headline and subject line. The stories went on to elaborate how David Lowell and Jorja Thompson were supposedly in the car and crashed into the bay and were presumed dead, though their bodies were not found. A select, brazen few even suggested that he, David, of all people, became a house squatter at one point after discovery of police reports describing two footprints in a ransacked house and a tampered alarm system in the wealthy residential areas of San Mateo. This was it, David thought. Now he could not risk the public’s eye at night nor could he return to run any sort of art gallery in the daylight as he wished he could in life.
Among those headlines read ones that also caught his attention:
“HOMELESS SEE BRUTAL MURDER AT BEACH NEAR CRASH”
“HOMELESS MOM DIES FROM SEVERE INJURIES AT SEASIDE”
One headline particularly perplexed David in between his nearly uncontrollable anger. “Huh?”
“APT. RESIDENT SUFFERS BLOODLOSS FROM PUNCTURED ANKLE”
David paused and thought for a moment and recalled his meeting with his fledgling Jorja and a supposed friend of hers. ”Kellen, was it?” David spoke to himself. “Great. Fantastic. I am sure he had something to do with this.” As far as he was concerned, his life was over; his reputation had been left to ruin, and his “life” had been taken.
Time for some repayment, David thought. I’ll give this fellow a graceful tragedy.