Missing - Mark Kane Mysteries - Book Five: A Private Investigator Crime Series of Murder, Mystery, Suspense & Thriller Stories...with a dash of Romance. A Murder Mystery & Suspense Thriller

by John Hemmings

  “But if Marisa had her cell phone and it was charged then she could have used it to make a call, so it doesn’t seem a very likely option,” Lucy said.

  “Maybe she had no reason to make a call then; and by the time she needed to make a call she may not have been able to; but the problem is that in rural areas there may be many miles between base stations, which means that pinpointing an exact location would be difficult if not impossible; and if she was in a remote area then her phone might not even be within range of an antenna

  “Then we’ll have to revert to plan A,” Lucy said; “keeping our fingers crossed. I wonder why we do that; cross our fingers.”

  “I don’t have a clue,” I said. “But maybe a nightcap would give me some ideas. Come on, let’s go explore the neighborhood – we might not get the chance again; we could be somewhere entirely different soon.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jillian

  Tommy’s call came as we were having breakfast across the street from the hotel. Jillian would call in sick so she’d be free to see us; she’d meet us at the hotel around nine thirty. That was the good news.

  “She doesn’t know where Marisa went to,” he said, “but she’s got some other information which might help you locate her.”

  “Okay, thanks; we’ll be in the hotel lobby.”

  We crossed back over the street to the hotel. “She’ll be here in about an hour,” I said to Lucy. “You better call Peters and change the time for our appointment.”

  Jillian arrived promptly at nine-thirty. She was wearing a three-quarter-length sheepskin coat over a roll neck sweater and tight Levi’s tucked into knee high boots. She was a few years older than Jacky; early thirties I guessed. We introduced ourselves and went into the hotel coffee shop.

  “Thanks for coming over,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to take time off work.”

  “They can do without me for a while,” she said. “I work as a secretary for one of the assistant managers in the Bank of America; I haven’t had a day off since Christmas.”

  “Lucy used to be a secretary,” I said. “Mine, in fact; but now she’s my assistant investigator.”

  “Wow, that sounds like a step in the right direction,” she said, smiling at Lucy.

  “Somebody has to keep an eye on him when he’s away from home,” Lucy said endearingly.

  The coffee arrived. “I’m so sorry to hear about Vicky and Marisa,” she said. “They’re lovely girls. I had no idea…”

  “There are really only two possibilities that I can think of,” I said. “Either they’ve been abducted or they’re being held somewhere against their will, which is much the same thing. Anything you can tell us which will help point us in the right direction will be very helpful.”

  “Well I’m afraid I don’t know exactly where they are, but I do know a couple of things that may help. When they left my place they said they’d probably be back in a week or so – it was a Saturday when they left. They were still looking for work, especially Vicky, although they’d spent most of the week just having a look around – sightseeing I guess. About a week later there was a call from Marisa to say they’d decided to stay on for a while wherever they were. I thought they’d probably had a change of plan. It didn’t occur to me that anything…untoward had happened to them; although I was surprised that Marisa didn’t call again. It seemed out of character for her – she’s a thoughtful girl and she and Vicky were very grateful that I’d given them a place to stay.”

  “Well, I think that something probably prevented either of them contacting you again – or anybody else for that matter,” I said. “When she called did you ask her where she was?”

  “I didn’t speak to her. She left a message on my answering machine at home.”

  “Didn’t she have your cell phone number?”

  “Yes, of course; I assumed she didn’t want to disturb me at work.”

  “Do you still have the message on your machine?” I asked.

  “Yes. I played it again yesterday when Tommy told me about their disappearance. I didn’t notice the first time I heard it, but there’s something strange about it.”

  “Like what?”

  “The message says, ‘Hi, it’s Marisa. Sorry I lost my cell so I’m calling from a payphone. I’ve decided to stay on here for a while. Don’t worry, everything’s cool. Tell Jaqueline I’ll call her when I get back’.”

  “So what part of the message is strange?” Lucy said.

  “A lot of things; but they didn’t register when I first heard it. First, even if Marisa had lost her cell phone Vicky had one, so it doesn’t make sense; I mean they were together. And she’d never call her Jaqueline. For one thing Jacky’s name isn’t an abbreviation of Jaqueline because Jacky’s only a nickname, and Marisa knows that − it’d be like calling my old man Shakespeare instead of Shakes.”

  In spite of the situation I couldn’t help smiling. “It sounds like you’re in the wrong job, Jillian. That’s pretty sharp thinking.”

  “When I first played the message I didn’t notice the name. I guess I just heard what I expected to hear; but she definitely said Jaqueline; and then when she said ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ that’s strange too; she would’ve said ‘we’. And I think Marisa was even cleverer than that. There was no need to tell me in the message that she was calling from a payphone. I’m sure she was giving me a clue – to check the number to find out where she was. Now I know she’s gone missing I think she was trying to tell me something was wrong, and I didn’t sleep well last night thinking about it; but that wasn’t such a bad thing because I was turning it all over in my mind and I realized that there’ll be a record of the number she called from. I haven’t had time to do anything about it yet.”

  “I’d like to hear the recording,” I said.

  “It’ll be better to listen to it on the machine; so I thought if you have time we can scoot over to my place.”

  “Okay but we need to go to the sheriff’s office first; we told the detective there who’s dealing with the matter that we’d meet him again this morning. And now we need to get that call record as soon as possible. Is there anything else we should know?”

  “Yes; although I don’t know where they went I do know who they went with. I don’t have a name or anything like that, but I know something about it.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Well, like I said, Marisa and Vicky had been roaming around town for a few days. Mainly it was to see if there were any jobs, but they also wanted to see the place. A couple of days before they left they met a group of people who told them they lived on a commune not far away. Marisa told me about it; they met them somewhere near the university campus. They invited Marisa and Vicky to go take a look at how they lived. They said they were into meditation, living off the land and stuff like that. Vicky wasn’t keen to go, but Marisa’s the kind of person who takes an interest in that kind of thing. She told me they were really cool people and it sounded fascinating and she might go and check it out. Then she told me on Friday night that she’d decided to visit this commune over the weekend. I guess Vicky decided to tag along for the ride.”

  “Did she tell you anything else about these people, Jillian?”

  “Not really. She said they were like hippies that she’d read about; they didn’t care about material things – stuff like that. I’m afraid I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it; you know, it’s just typical teenager stuff; sooner or later you grow out of it.”

  “Did she mention any names, or tell you where this commune was?” I said.

  “The group had a name. She told me, but I’ve forgotten I’m afraid. The name had something to do with rebirth, that’s all I can remember. You know, physical and mental rebirth through meditation, clean living, that kind of stuff. They called themselves something to do with rebirth…I’m sorry.”

  “How were they planning to travel there – did she say?”

  “I know she had a rid
e, but she didn’t tell me anything else. She said they’d take them there and bring them back after about a week. I guess she thought it was just part of the adventure.”

  “Okay, I think it’s better for you to come with us to see Matt Peters – he’s the detective assigned to the case. He’ll need your authorization to check your phone records. You could do it yourself, but he’ll get it done more quickly. Then we can take a ride over to your place and listen to the recording.”

  My mention of Peters’ name reminded me of his comment the day before; about how Marisa’s affability might cause her to trust people too easily and lead her into danger. They were prescient words indeed.

  Chapter Nine

  The Tape

  We met Peters at eleven and I introduced him to Jillian and told him about the call.

  “It’s all starting to make some kind of sense now,” I said, “but the missing piece of the puzzle is motive. I’ve no doubt that Marisa and Vicky were abducted. It’s probable that the abduction occurred soon after they left Springfield – presumably when they got to wherever it is they were going. But there’s been no attempt to empty Marisa’s bank account. She has an ATM card and a fair balance in her account. If her captor, or captors, were after that money they’d have taken it soon after the abduction. There’s no way they’d risk trying to access her account now, because it’ll have been frozen. It could be a kidnapping for ransom, but no demand’s been made; that would be unusual too.”

  “I agree,” Peters said. “There doesn’t appear to be an obvious motive.”

  “I guess you’ll be looking at some of the other missing persons in light of this,” I said. “It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any pattern involving those cases.”

  “We’ll get onto that,” Peters said, “although this may well be an isolated case.”

  “The phone record will help,” I said, “but I’m not sure how much; I can’t think that anyone who allowed Marisa to make that call would let her do it from a payphone near where she was being held. Lucy and I were discussing the possibility of tracing her by her cell phone signal. Assuming that her phone was turned on during her journey, even if she didn’t make or receive any calls, an analysis of the wireless signal could give us the direction of travel. Depending on when it was turned off, or disabled, it could help to narrow the area to search. I have the network and cell phone number.”

  “I already have it,” Peters said. “We’ve already checked to see if any calls were made after she disappeared, but there weren’t. We’re on it, but it’s going to take some time I’m afraid.”

  “I guess you haven’t had any luck tracing Vicky’s family?” I said.

  “The information is too sparse to do much except search the national databases to see if anyone with that name’s been reported missing. So far we haven’t found anything.”

  “Well we’d best leave you to it,” I said. “Jillian will give you an authorization to get her phone records; I don’t suppose that’ll take long.”

  “No, we can get that today. I’ll keep you informed,” Peters said.

  Jillian lived in an apartment on Battlefield Road on the south side of the city and we were there within fifteen minutes of leaving Peters’ office. Nobody said much during the journey; I guess we all had the same unspoken thought. So far we’d been referring to Marisa and Vicky in the present tense, but there was a strong possibility that they were no longer alive. It was something I was used to; I’d handled a lot of kidnapping cases over the years and few of them had happy endings. I’d often had to be the harbinger of bad news to a client. It wasn’t a pleasant or easy thing to do, but it was part of the job – like a doctor who has to tell a patient that he has a terminal disease. But Lucy was new to the job and her somber demeanor as we headed to Jillian’s place was silent testimony to her thoughts. And no doubt Jillian was unfairly blaming herself for not picking up on Marisa’s cry for help. There was nothing to be done except to keep going, and hope that we weren’t going to be too late.

  But it wasn’t all bad news, and there were some good reasons to believe that the girls may still be safe. First, there was more than one abductor; or at least more than one person behind the abduction − that ruled out a psychopathic serial killing. And second, there was the phone call. If the plan was to rape or murder the victims there’d be no point in allowing one of them to call home, or call a friend. That call suggested that whoever was behind this was trying to buy themselves some time. They knew that the two girls were expected back after about a week; I believed that Marisa was forced to make that call to buy her abductors some time; but time for what?

  Jillian and Shakes lived in a three-bed apartment on the second floor of a three story block. The living room was neat and tidy and its eastern aspect made it sunny and bright. The television was built into a recess and surrounded with bookshelves; the shelves were full of books too.

  “Those are Shakes’ books,” Jillian said. “They’re pretty much all books about the Civil War. Shakes is an authority on the Civil War; what he doesn’t know you could write on the palm of your hand,” she said. “That’s why we live here,” she added, “it’s as near as we could afford to live to the Wilson’s Creek Battlefield. That’s a National Park just down the road a bit,” she said. “Sit yourselves down, I’ll make us some coffee.”

  Jillian came back with the coffee and set it down in front of the sofa. “God I hope the girls are okay,” she said. “They’ve been gone almost two weeks now; what do you think’s happened to them?”

  “I’ve been racking my brains,” I said; “but so far I’ve come up empty. They may even be very far away from here by now, or…”

  “There’s a chance they didn’t make it, isn’t there?” Jillian said, deciding to air what we’d all been thinking.”

  “Yes; but there’s also reason for optimism,” I said. I told Jillian and Lucy what I’d been thinking about in the car.

  “If they were planning to harm the girls in some way then the phone call from Marisa doesn’t make sense.”

  “Well I hope you’re right; let me play you the tape.”

  The words spoken on the tape had been memorized verbatim by Jillian. “You hear that?” she said, “Jaqueline; sounds a bit like Jacklin; anyway it’s not Jacky.”

  I listened to the words on the tape a few times to try to see if I could ascertain Marisa’s state of mind at the time she uttered them; but they were calmly spoken, carefully measured words. She’d probably been nervous or frightened when she spoke them and she’d obviously made an effort to keep her voice sounding as normal as possible, but I had little doubt that a voice stress analysis expert would be able to detect nuances in the modulation of the voice which would indicate her real state of mind at the time. From what I’d learned about Marisa’s character so far I guessed she wouldn’t want to give her abductors the satisfaction of knowing how scared she must have been. It was strange to hear the voice of the person I’d pictured a thousand times since learning about her existence just a few days before.

  “I think we should get the tape forensically examined,” I said. “We’ll get a copy made first.”

  “Sure, you take it if you like. What do you think the next step is?”

  “If Peters gets the call record today it will hopefully tell us where she was when she made the call,” Lucy said. “The next logical step is to try and trace the location or at least the last direction in which she was travelling when she left Springfield. Until we get that information I don’t think there’s anything further we can do.”

  “I agree. Right now we can only speculate, and there’s not much point in that,” I said. “Jillian, I want you to try to recall the name of the group that Marisa left town with. I know you say you can’t remember, but it’s probably stored in your brain somewhere.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Meanwhile we’ll take this tape to Peters and then Lucy and I will visit the campus. It’s likely that Maris
a and Vicky weren’t the only people who came into contact with that group; we’ll see what we can find out.”

  “You’ll keep me up to date with any developments won’t you? Maybe you can come to dinner tonight. Shakes would like to meet you, and I’ll try to stop him boring you to death with his war stories. A stern look is usually all it takes.”

  “Okay, that’ll be nice. What time shall we come?”

  “How about eight o’clock?”

  “We’ll see you then,” Lucy said.

  Back at Peters’ office I played him the tape. “It may be worth getting the tape analyzed,” I said. “I know we can get the location from the caller number, but there may be other sounds in the background that we can’t hear which may yield some kind of clue as to what was going on. I can’t say exactly what, but there’s no harm in trying if you’ve got the resources to do that. Can you give us a copy?”

  “Okay, leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do. We should have the information about the source of the call anytime now. I’ll call you as soon as I know,” Peters said.

  “There’s something else,” I said. “Jillian thinks that the girls left town with a group of people they met near the university. They claimed to be living in a commune, and they invited the girls to go see it. Lucy and I are going to see if we can find anyone else who might have seen these people; they may well have tried to entice other girls. The group had a name, but Jillian can’t recall what it was, except that it was something to do with rebirth. So we’ll be in the vicinity.” I thought for a moment. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard about any such group yourself − perhaps in relation to some other missing person or persons?”

  “It doesn’t ring any bells off hand,” he said.

  “It was just a thought. We’ll hopefully see you later. It’s vital that we move on this as soon as possible. Every passing day is only going to make things more difficult.”

  “You’ll know everything almost as soon as I do,” Peters said.