Ride Away Home

by William Wells

  Not something I particularly wanted to hear. He takes a swallow of coffee and asks, “So, where’re you heading?”

  I’m tempted to blurt out the truth, but instead I tell him, “Oh, you know. Typical midlife crisis (a lie.) Buy a motorcycle, take it out on the highway to see what it’ll do, and get some breakfast.”

  The joyride dodge again. I ask Ray where he’s going.

  “Driving from Bismarck to Chicago with a load of hogs. Some of ’em may end up on the menu here,” he says. He downs the last of his coffee, stands and says, “Had my own midlife crisis some years ago. My buddy Jack Daniels helped me through it, though I don’t recommend that route. Safe trip, Jack.”

  He picks up his check, drops a five-dollar bill onto the counter, and heads for the cash register stand near the door. I finish my breakfast, leave a five-dollar tip for Sally, too, and head for the parking lot. The song playing as I leave is “Born To Be Wild.”

  4

  Traffic is heavier now, especially the big trucks in a hurry to get from here to there to deliver their loads on schedule. It always annoyed me, in a car, when they would run right up on my tailpipe when I was in the right-hand lane, and then, if the right lane was still obstructed, they would pop out behind me when I swung out into the passing lane, pushing me to speed. But on the cycle, I discover that I can bob and weave through traffic, more confident now, maybe foolishly so. As I do, I notice disapproving looks from some drivers, as if I’m a badass, nonconformist outlaw. Good. Lock the doors and hide the women and children, here comes an outlaw (who could help you with your tax return).

  A gap in the traffic. I power up a rise, the highway bordered on the left by the limestone cliffs of the Wisconsin Dells, and open farmland on the right. I check my watch. About half an hour to Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin, my first destination.

  I LEAN the cycle onto the Madison exit and turn left onto Johnson Street, which runs between Lake Monona on the left and Lake Mendota on the right, enjoying the scenic view, unobstructed by the confines of a car.

  Madison is a little gem of a college town, always ranking highly on those best-places-to-live lists. But for the past year Madison has, for me, taken on the stark grimness of a crime scene. Which, for the Tanner family, it is.

  I veer right onto University Avenue and turn through the main gate of the University of Wisconsin campus. Students turn at the sound of the Harley. The engine noise also attracts the attention of a university security guard on a motor scooter, the kind with an enclosed cab and small truck bed on the back. I notice that the guard is wearing a black snowmobile suit. My Harley could eat that little putt-putt for lunch and still have room for dessert. A few hours on a Harley-Davidson and I’ve become an arrogant son of a bitch.

  Campus security, what a joke. I feel the urge to drive around shouting a warning to every coed I encounter: Be careful! Don’t go out alone! Of course, this would be madness. These girls would just stare at the lunatic on a motorcycle, maybe call 911 on their cell phones. I’d be the one who would frighten them. The Devil among them.

  A couple is strolling on the sidewalk with their backs toward me: a girl with shoulder-length blonde hair, wearing jeans and a green ski parka, and a tall boy in khaki slacks and a varsity letter jacket. This is a Division I school. Big-time athletics. The boy must be good at whatever sport he plays. In case of trouble, I hope he’s around to protect her.

  From the back, the girl looks like my daughter, Hope. All of these college girls look like Hope to me: young, beautiful, happily oblivious to the true nature of the world, on their way to class, or their dorm rooms or apartments, or Starbucks…. On their way to their futures, careers if they want, husbands, first houses, children. They can have it all, they are certain. Let them think that, as long as they can. I will not tell them otherwise. I will not share the awful knowledge I’ve sadly acquired about what can happen when God looks the other way.

  North along Campus Drive, then right onto Highland Avenue, which runs along the western boundary of the campus. I turn onto Hiawatha Street, with its rows of student rental apartment buildings: converted Victorian houses, cinder block and brick mid-rise buildings, ranch house style duplexes. Oak and maples line the street, their spring buds coming out.

  I pull up and park in front of 310 Hiawatha, a four-story tan brick 1950s apartment building. Sitting astride the Harley, I watch young men and women, some wearing backpacks, some plugged into iPods or chatting on cell phones, pass in and out of the building.

  ON A late August Saturday afternoon, about a year and a half ago, I arrived here driving a U-Haul truck, with Jenna and Hope, the truck loaded with furniture and Hope’s clothing. She was excited to be moving into an apartment off-campus after a year in the freshman dorm. On the night of March 1 during that sophomore year, Hope got a cell phone call, then left the apartment she shared with two other girls, telling them she would be back in an hour or so. She didn’t say who called her or where she was going. It was about ten P.M., one of her roommates told police. No, it was more like eleven, the other said. Hope was wearing jeans and a red sweater, one said. No, it was a grey University of Wisconsin sweatshirt and black tights, the other said.

  Such is the reliability of eyewitnesses, I was told by Detective Lieutenant Vernon Douglas of the Madison Police Department, when Jenna and I arrived in Madison two days later. Vernon Douglas is a tall, muscular, middle-aged black man who looks like he could have played football for a Division I school, which, I later learned, he did, at Michigan State. When two or more people invent a story, he explained, that story is identical. But honest recollections by witnesses almost never match.

  Everyone involved with the victim of a crime goes onto the list of suspects, Detective Douglas told us, even two sweet girls like Hope’s roommates, Maureen Fox from Fargo, North Dakota, and Sherry Silverman from Plainfield, New Jersey, who were quickly eliminated. Jenna and I met them and their parents the day Hope moved into the apartment. We all went to dinner that night. Everyone was very nice.

  Hope was supposed to meet Maureen the following day at the Counseling and Guidance Services Office to get details about the university’s Junior Year Abroad program. They’d talked about applying to study at the University of Florence or the Sorbonne in Paris. When Hope didn’t show up for the meeting, Maureen tried to call her on her cell phone. Hope didn’t answer, and she didn’t come back to the apartment that night. The next morning, Maureen and Sherry went to the Campus Police Department. The campus police spent an hour checking, and found that Hope had not attended any of her classes the previous day. That’s when the campus police chief called the Madison Police Department.

  Hope frequently spent the night at her boyfriend Slater Babcock’s apartment, her roommates told Detective Douglas. Hope had never mentioned Slater’s name to Jenna or me, just saying that she was currently dating “a nice guy who plays lacrosse.” When she left the apartment that night, she took her cell phone and keys, but not her wallet or any overnight gear. Her yellow VW Beetle convertible was still parked on the street.

  Jenna answered the call from the dean of students. In a panic, she called me at my office and told me our daughter was missing. Two hours later, we were on a flight to Madison.

  I rented a car at the Dane County Regional Airport and we drove directly to the Madison Police Department headquarters for a briefing by Detective Douglas. I didn’t know him well enough then to call him Vernon, but, before long, I would.

  Earlier that afternoon, he’d brought Slater Babcock from his classroom to headquarters. Slater called his father, and then told Detective Douglas that he wanted an attorney. Slater’s father, Charles Babcock, an investment banker from Stamford, Connecticut, hired a Milwaukee criminal defense attorney to represent his son, once the police identified him as a “person of interest.”

  Hope and Slater had been dating for about two months, Maureen and Sherry had told Douglas. He was a “spoiled rich kid from Connecticut,” they said, but, as far as th
ey knew, he had never threatened or harmed Hope or anyone else. He didn’t seem like that kind of person, they said. They didn’t think Hope was very serious about Slater, she just enjoyed his company.

  Before we arrived, Slater was allowed to leave the police department headquarters, where he’d spent two hours in an interrogation room, refusing to answer questions until his attorney was present. The next day, with both his attorney and his father present, he came back and was questioned by Detective Douglas. Over the next three days, he was also questioned by a state police detective, and an FBI agent from Milwaukee.

  Slater Babcock never wavered from his story. Yes, he’d spoken with Hope by cell phone on the night she disappeared, but they hadn’t talked about her coming to his apartment, which was a half-mile away from Hope’s. Whenever they spent the night together it was at his place because he lived alone. Sometimes she came over unannounced to surprise him. Maybe that’s what she was doing. She often walked instead of driving because his building had no parking lot, finding a spot on the street at night was difficult, and Hope liked the exercise.

  Interviews with Slater’s neighbors produced no evidence that Hope was at his apartment that night, but there was no reason for them to know about that anyway, unless they happened to see her outside. There being no evidence of Slater’s involvement in Hope’s disappearance, he was told there would be no further questions at this time, but to notify Douglas if he was planning to leave the area.

  I told Detective Douglas that I wanted to speak with Slater, but he ordered me not to talk to him, or get anywhere near him, because I might say or do something that could be prejudicial to the case and also get me into a great deal of trouble.

  During our first meeting with Detective Douglas, he assured Jenna and me that the department was “bringing its full resources to bear upon the case.”

  I was shocked when he said “the case.” Our daughter was now a “case,” a police file number. I couldn’t tell if Jenna picked up on that, and I didn’t mention it to her later.

  Detective Douglas asked us if Hope had any history of “going off on her own” without telling us. It happened, he said. It was a possibility he had to explore. Last year, a female student went to Cancun with friends during spring break after telling her parents she had to stay on campus to study for exams. The parents found out when they decided to drive to Madison from their home in Green Bay to surprise their daughter with a care package of her favorite goodies, and take her to dinner. Douglas tracked her down.

  I was distressed to learn, from his business card, that Vernon Douglas was a homicide detective, and I told him this. Homicide, as in murder. So the police were assuming that Hope was dead rather than just missing?

  “We have two other detectives in the department,” he responded. “One specializes in thefts and robberies, the other provides general backup wherever needed. It was the chief’s call. I’ve been around the longest, and finding your daughter is the department’s top priority. Believe me, we’re doing everything that can be done. We’ve called in the FBI, we’re monitoring her credit cards and cell phone activity. We’ve looked at her Facebook page, e-mails, blogs and Tweets. So far, nothing from those avenues. But we’re not stopping.”

  On the morning of our second day in Madison, Jenna and I met with Winton Toller, the university’s dean of students. Toller informed us that a convicted sex offender who lived near the campus had been cleared by police; he was in the hospital for an appendectomy the day Hope disappeared.

  I asked the dean how in the hell a sex offender could be allowed to live in a neighborhood near the campus. Were there other felons in the neighborhood? Murderers out on parole? Armed robbers wearing ankle bracelets? Dean Toller, an affable and portly man in his sixties who wore tweeds and a bow tie, was a professor of economics who had held the dean’s job for the past six years.

  Toller said that his office had been notified by the police department about the man a year ago, but the law allowed him to live where he wanted, as long as he registered with the police, which he had. The dean hadn’t been notified that any other such people currently lived near the university, he said.

  Why weren’t parents of students told about the sex offender, I asked him. I’m an attorney, I said, and will look into the possibility that the university had some degree of liability for what’s happened. Dean Toller responded by saying that no one yet knows if any crime has occurred, and we’re all hoping for the best, but the university will certainly review its policies on such matters.

  “Maybe you should try harder to keep track of your students instead of reviewing your policies,” I said as Jenna and I left his office.

  On our fourth day in Madison, I insisted that Jenna return home, convincing her that she should be there in case Hope called or showed up, although I didn’t think either of these possibilities likely. By that time, Jenna was mainly staying in our room at the Madison Concourse Hotel anyway, and was becoming increasingly frantic. Before she boarded an American Eagle turboprop at Dane County Regional Airport, she said to me, “She’s gone, Jack. I know we’ll never see our daughter again and our life will never be the same.”

  I told her that it was too soon to give up. Didn’t that kidnapped girl in Utah, whose name I couldn’t remember, turn up eighteen months later? “We’ll never give up looking for Hope,” I said, giving my wife a hug and a kiss when her flight was called.

  When I said that, I meant that we would never give up trying to find our daughter alive. But now I realize that there is very little chance of that. Now, the best I can do is to try to find out what happened to her, and maybe bring her body home.

  I remained in Madison another three days, checking in with Douglas daily, and driving the campus and city streets in my rental car. I put up missing-person fliers with Hope’s name and photo on them, which I had made at a local copy shop, wherever I could find a spot around campus and in surrounding neighborhoods, alongside the fliers for missing dogs and cats.

  Lyle Ferguson, the Hartfield, Miller managing partner, called to say that I should take all the time I needed, but I knew that my partners would at some point lose patience with my sabbatical from billable hours, even given the circumstances.

  WHEN I arrived back home, I greeted Jenna in the kitchen. She cheerfully welcomed me back as if I’d been on a business trip and said, “I think I’ll have a cup of tea. Would you like one too?”

  “You know I never drink tea,” I said.

  “Oh, I guess I forgot.”

  She put the teapot on the gas range and went into the laundry room as I carried my suitcase upstairs. I was unpacking when I heard the teapot whistling, and keep on whistling. I went down to the kitchen, poured a cup of tea for her, and found Jenna sitting in the family room.

  “I fixed your tea,” I told her.

  “Thank you,” she said, “but I don’t think I’ll have any.”

  I went back upstairs to finish unpacking, pausing outside Hope’s bedroom. The door was closed. Hope always kept it open, even when she was sleeping, and we’d kept it that way since she left for college. This habit began when she was very young and imagined that some fearsome creature was lurking under her bed, or in her closet, or on a ladder just outside her window, ready to snatch her when the lights went off. When she cried out, one of us would pad down the hallway and sit with her until she fell asleep, or take her into our bed, assuring her that she was safe, and believing it then. Now Jenna had closed the door.

  I opened the door and went in, saddened again by the usual accoutrements of a happy, well-adjusted young woman’s life: the frilly canopied bed covered with pillows and stuffed animals; her field hockey and lacrosse sticks; the cork board mounted on one wall, displaying concert ticket stubs, withered wrist corsages; photos of Hope with friends mugging for the camera; Edina High School and University of Wisconsin banners; and all the other artifacts of the living Hope.

  Already, I thought, after less than two weeks since she’d gone missing, our daug
hter’s bedroom was taking on the look of one of those period rooms preserved in a museum where no one has ever lived. Maybe I should string a velvet rope across the doorway.

  I moved to Hope’s bed, turned back the spread, and touched her pillow, irrationally hoping to find it warm. I walked over to the window and looked out at the oak tree in the backyard. Hope’s bedroom is not the largest of the four in the house. Other than the master, one of the other rooms has quite a bit more square footage, and a bigger closet. Jenna chose this room as Hope’s nursery because it’s closest to our bedroom. When Hope was twelve, we asked her if she wanted to move into the larger bedroom, but she said no, she loved the view of the backyard with that big oak tree that was home to a squirrel family. She named the squirrels, pretending that she could distinguish one from another.

  I replaced the spread and went out of the bedroom, leaving the door open. I wondered what could possibly come next for Jenna and me, other than to keep on waiting for Hope to reappear in some form or other, so we could either celebrate the miracle of her safe return, or hold a memorial service and try to get on with our lives, whatever that meant.

  Please, let all this be a dream and let me wake up now, I thought. This would be a good time to start believing in God so that my prayer would at least be considered. If there were a God, then there would be someone to petition when bad things happened to good people. A cosmic appellate court. But to me, any view of history would suggest that such appeals merely rise up into the black void of the universe, either unheard or ignored, certiorari neither granted nor denied. Of what relevance is a Prime Mover who does not intervene in human affairs? Of what use is a Supreme Being who allows wars and pandemics and tsunamis and the death of innocents? Did Jews lose their faith as the Zyklon B gas came hissing out of the showerheads at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka? If religion truly is the opiate of the masses, well, maybe I could will myself to believe just enough to ease my pain and to maintain some level of functionality. But I could not make myself believe.