"I was in love with this girl. Her name was Nancy Jo Bosworth. We'd met in a computer class at USC in our last year of graduate school. She was this delicate and vivacious angel, with hair that was like layers of golden wings." He grinned, flushed. "It's corny, I know, but I don't know how else to describe it. Her hair was soft and full and ethereal and her eyes were life itself. I called her my little golden lady and she called me her big silver knight. Man, was I smitten."

"Obviously," Hausen said

The German smiled for the first time. Hood was glad he was getting through; this was killing him.

"We got engaged after we got out of school," Hood continued. "I gave her an emerald ring that we picked out together. I landed a position as an assistant to the Mayor of Los Angeles and Nancy went to work for a video game company designing software. She actually flew north, to Sunnyvale, twice a week just so we wouldn't have to be away from each other. And then one night, in April of 1979-- April 21st, to be exact, a date which I tore out of my datebooks for the next few years-- I was waiting for her outside a movie theater and she failed to show. I called her apartment, no one was there, so I rushed over. I drove like a crazy person, in fact. Then I used my key, went in, and found a note."

Hood's pace slowed. He could still smell the apartment. He could still feel the tears and the thickness that filled his throat. He remembered the song that was playing in the apartment next door, "The Worst That Could Happen" by the Brooklyn Bridge.

"The note was handwritten, quickly. Not Nancy's usual careful penmanship. It said that she had to go away, she wouldn't be coming back, and I shouldn't look for her. She took some clothes, but everything else was still there: her records, her books, her plants, her photo albums, her diploma. Everything. Oh, and she took the engagement ring I gave her. Either that or she threw it away."

"No one else had any idea where she was?" Hausen asked, surprised.

"No one. Not even the FBI, which came and asked me about her the next morning without telling me what she had done. I couldn't tell them much, but I hoped they would find her. Whatever she had done, I wanted to help. I spent the next few days and nights looking for her. I visited professors we'd had, friends, talked to her coworkers, who were all very concerned. I called her father. They weren't close; and I wasn't surprised that he hadn't heard from her. I finally decided that I must have done something wrong. Either that, or I figured she'd been seeing someone else and eloped."

"Gott," Hausen said. "And you never heard from her after that?"