Excerpt from David Brown’s Book DREAM BROTHER. The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley

After Jeff and Foti had left, Bowen went back to his business of preparing the house for the band’s arrival. The spare mattresses eventually arrived. After 8 P.M. he left for the airport, which was a half hour away. The plane touched down a little later than its scheduled 9:08 P.M. arrival time. To Tighe, Bowen seemed unusually quiet as they drove back to Jeff’s house.

When Bowen and the band walked in, there was no sign of Jeff or Foti, which seemed odd; they should have been back by now. For a few minutes the band looked around the house, which was strewn with Jeff’s shoes and clothes and his fork-impaled carton of half-eaten Vietnamese food. Bowen noticed the answering machine light was blinking. When he hit “play,” all he heard was an upset-sounding Foti saying something about the water, followed by a string of unintelligible comments.

Bowen didn’t have a chance to play the other messages when the phone rang. It was Foti. “I’m down at the water.” he said. “Something’s happened-Jeff’s missing.” Bowen wasn’t alarmed at first: Jeff always seemed to be truant. But Foti told him this was different. The next voice Bowen heard on the line was that of the police, who told him he had best head down to the river.

After calling out Jeff’s name for nearly fifteen minutes, Foti realized something was seriously wrong and scrambled back up the river incline to the Welcome Center, where he banged on its closed doors until an employee let him in. At 9:22 P.M., he called 911, and the first police units arrived at the river shortly thereafter. Sergeant Mary Grace Johnson, a seventeen-year veteran of the Memphis police force, was driving toward her downtown precinct in her unmarked car when the call came through on channel six: Helicopters and police were needed at the Welcome Center. By the time Johnson arrived at 10:38 P.M., the area around the center was swarming with helicopters and reporters. A kid with blue hair and aqua pants who appeared to be in a state of shock was being questioned by another officer about drug or alcohol use, which he denied.

When Bowen, Tighe, Grondahl, and Kindred arrived, they quietly surveyed the ominous scene, hands in their front pockets. “There’s helicopters and it’s night time and there are flashing lights everywhere, and we’re like, ‘Oh God, man,’” says Kindred. “You look out into this bay and it’s pitch black. At that moment, he was gone.” After being gently informed by police that the search would continue but that the river current was dangerous, they returned to Rembert Street but were unable to sleep; they kept hoping Jeff would walk in, wet and smiling. “That night was a nightmare,” kindred says. “A nightmare.”

Shortly after midnight, there was a knock at the door. It was Andrea Lisle, who was taking her dog for a walk and stopping by to tell Jeff about her trip. “Who is it?” asked someone behind the door. Lisle announced her name and heard angry voices inside, followed by, “Who’s with you?” Lisle said she was alone. “Go away,” went a voice inside. “Come back tomorrow.” Lisle thought Jeff was having an argument with his band and returned home.

By half past midnight, Jeff’s body had not been found, and the calls began going out: to his mother Mary Guibert in California and to business associates, who in turn called friends. Many had a similar reaction, both that night and over the following few days: Jeff always seemed to be missing-what was the big deal this time? Some wondered if he had decided to relieve himself of work pressures by disappearing for a day or two. There was a brief, but easily dismissed, rumor of a hoax.