Gone

by Karen Fenech

  “It was concluded, I take it, that Sara’s disappearance was believed to have happened in Columbia, not Farley?” Jake asked.

  “Yes, but no one saw Sara leave. The investigators weren’t able to determine how she got out of town.” Clare fixed Jake with a hard stare. “No mention of her taking a cab again. Is that because she didn’t and someone confirmed that, or because no one checked it out?

  “It’s also possible,” Clare went on, “that she got a ride back to Columbia with her lover. Who no one’s been able to identify, and who didn’t come forward when Sara was reported missing.” Clare waved her hand at copies of newspaper clippings. “Sara’s face was all over the media at that time, yet her mystery man never came forward to offer help. He may be the last person to have seen Sara. Why didn’t he come forward? Because he was married and wanted to protect his reputation, even at the cost of finding her? Or, because he knew exactly how she disappeared because he made it happen?

  “The last place anyone actually saw Sara was in Farley,” Clare said. “No one saw Sara in Columbia since the day she left to surprise her lover. It was her purse and contents that were seen.” Clare felt a chill go through her. “The last place anyone saw Beth was also in Farley. I don’t want to think what may have happened to Sara McCowan also happened to Beth. Four years later, and that woman still hasn’t been found.”

  “We’re a long way from linking that disappearance to Beth. That said, I’ll call Frank Nobleton.” Jake glanced at his watch. “He was the sheriff here four years ago. I’ll see if I can set up a meeting for today.”

  * * * * *

  Former Sheriff Nobleton agreed to speak with them that morning. Nobleton lived in a red brick single-story house in town with potted plants thriving on the porch. Jake pulled into the driveway, alongside a pickup truck. The cab had a sticker in the window which read: “Gone Fishin’.”

  Jake knew Nobleton casually from town functions. By the time Jake had moved to town and been assigned to the Bureau resident office, Nobleton had retired.

  A man wearing a wide-brimmed canvas hat decorated with fishing lures opened the door.

  Jake extended his hand. “Hello, Frank.”

  Nobleton shook Jake’s hand and nodded, making the lures on his hat jiggle. “Jake.”

  “Frank, this is Special Agent Clare Marshall.” Jake turned to Clare. “Clare, Sheriff Frank Nobleton.”

  Nobleton accepted her handshake.

  “Well, come on in,” Nobleton said. “I want to get this over with while the catfish are still biting.”

  He stepped back from the door and led them a few steps through a hall and into a dark wood paneled living room. A glass pitcher of what appeared to be iced tea with a crocheted doily over the top had been placed on a tray, in the center of three glasses.

  Nobleton did the honors without asking if anyone would like to partake of the refreshment. A plate of sliced lemon cake sat on a polished coffee table.

  “Help yourselves,” Nobleton said, gesturing to the plate. “My wife won the prize for her lemon cake three years running at the Farley Fall Fair.”

  Clare joined Jake on a burlap couch. She left the cake and the tea untouched, anxious to learn what Nobleton had to offer about the investigation. Jake appeared to be of the same mind.

  Nobleton took his glass of iced tea and settled onto an arm chair that matched the couch. “Okay, Jake, you said you wanted to talk with me about the girl who was reported missing a few years back. Something going on with the case?”

  “We’re looking to see if there’s any connection with another disappearance,” Jake said. “That’s all at this point.”

  Nobleton nodded. “What do you want to know?”

  “Walk us through the investigation, Frank,” Jake said.

  Nobleton drank from his glass then passed the back of his hand across his lips. He nodded somberly. “I’d been Sheriff here for going on fifteen years when this happened. In all that time, the biggest crime we’d ever had was kids taking cars for joyriding and the odd disagreement that got out of hand at Charley’s Bar. I was on my way out, going to retire, but no way that little girl was going to go missing on my watch. I made sure that we were in the clear here.”

  “How did you determine that for certain?” Clare asked.

  “By the time Sara McCowan’s friends reported her missing, a couple or three days had passed. As I recall, they didn’t think nothing of it when she didn’t show up the first night back at their hotel room. She’d told the girlfriends that she’d met someone and she had a history of staying over with her men friends. She didn’t call the next day or return to the room. The third morning when they’d had no contact, the girls got antsy. Sara, they’d said, was a party girl, but three days without any of them hearing from her while on vacation was unprecedented.

  “The girls did a little checking for Sara on their own. Looked around the city. Went back to the places they’d gone to.” Nobleton shrugged. “With no result. That’s when they went to the Columbia PD and filed a report. Girls claimed that Sara was paying a surprise call on her new man who lived in Farley.

  “Columbia PD issued an alert,” he said. “We followed up here. Two detectives from the precinct come out here, talked to me. The way I remember it, the girl was confirmed to have found her way to Farley’s Main Street. That’s how Columbia PD ended up in our town. I rode along with them while they went about Main Street, flashing a picture of Sara to our business folks and asking if anyone had seen her. As I recall, we had a few takers.” He scratched the gray stubble on his chin and squinted in thought. “Clem Potter at the drugstore remembered the girl. Earl Lowney, too. I think there were one or two others, though I’d have to check the file in my old office to get the names.”

  “You conducted the interviews with the witnesses yourself?” Jake asked.

  “I did some of the talking, along with the investigators from Columbia PD. I told the detectives Farley people would talk better with me than with outside cops and hell, Farley was my jurisdiction. No way I was going to step aside and let the two city boys run roughshod over the people in my town.

  “Some time after we’d finished the interviews,” Nobleton continued, “word came down that the missing girl’s cell phone had turned up in Columbia. Looked like she had made it back from Farley to the city after all. I never did believe one of our people had anything to do with what happened to that little girl.” Nobleton shrugged. “Case closed in Farley.”

  “Except that Sara McCowan was never found,” Clare said.

  Nobleton nodded. “Sad thing.”

  “From what we read in the reports, it was never concluded that Sara was the one who left the cell phone in Columbia,” Clare went on.

  “You’d have to ask the Columbia PD about that,” Nobleton said. “My part ended when the investigation moved out of Farley. I retired six months later and Oz took over for me. You might want to ask him if he received any follow-up after that, though I doubt it. Like I said, the girl’s disappearance was no longer our jurisdiction.”

  Nobleton’s eyes widened and he looked from Jake to Clare. “Anything else or is that it?”

  “Clare?” Jake asked. She shook her head and Jake added, “Thanks for your time, Frank.”

  As they got into his car, Jake said, “Let’s hear what Columbia PD has to say about the investigation.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jake had called ahead and arranged an appointment with the Columbia Police Department detectives who’d been assigned to Sara McCowan’s disappearance.

  Detective Chad Brownley met them in the precinct lobby. He glanced at their Bureau IDs then shook hands with Jake and Clare in turn. The detective’s gaze lowered, taking in her outfit, Clare figured. Once again, she was wearing the green hospital scrubs, though freshly laundered. Hardly usual attire for the Bureau.

  With a friendly instruction to follow him, Brownley wheeled around and strode down the long tiled hall, his unbuttoned suit coat flapping behind him.
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  He led them to a room used for interviewing witnesses and suspects. The room had a film on the beige walls and ceiling that looked to be caused from smoking, back when smoking was allowed in the building, and an odor that had permeated the cushions in the four chrome chairs. There he introduced his partner, Detective Willie Stokes.

  After the preliminaries had been dispensed with, Stokes said, “It’s been a while. Brownley and me have been reviewing the case file since you called, Agent Sutton.”

  Stokes was a rail-thin man with dark, curly hair cropped close to his scalp.

  “Don’t know what to tell you, here, Agents,” Stokes went on. “Unless you got a break in the case, something new to add, this trail is colder than my mother-in-law’s smile.”

  “Was there a connection between the two boys who found the phone and Sara?” Jake asked.

  Brownley shook his head. His hair was pulled back in a long ponytail that trailed halfway down his back.

  “The two boys who had Sara’s cell phone were just kids, thrilled that they’d found a new toy,” Brownley said. “Both thirteen at the time, I think. It’s in the reports.” He shrugged. “No connection whatsoever to Sara. We asked if they’d seen her or anyone for that matter drop or lose the purse. Hell, we asked them if they’d stolen it from her and told them we wouldn’t prosecute if they had—that they’d be in the clear—that’s how desperate we were to get a lead. The boys said they just found the purse laying on the walkway in front of the club. What really caught their eye was the cell phone tucked into the back compartment. When they tried it, it worked, and they kept using it.

  “One of the parents found it hidden somewhere,” Brownley went on. “Knew it didn’t belong to their kid and turned it in. When ID came back to Sara McCowan we were all over it, and the two boys. Of course, by the time the phone was turned in and checked, another couple of weeks went by. Checking phone IDs isn’t a priority here.”

  “What about her cell phone records?” Clare asked. “Calls to Farley?”

  “We tried to get a bead on her through her cell phone use as soon as we had cause to get the records released from her service provider,” Brownley said. “Cell phone use showed the boys had run up a hell of a lot of calls to 1-900 numbers and to European and Asian countries—who the hell knew why. When we got through their muck and to Sara’s calls, there was no one we couldn’t identify. And zero calls to or from Farley. We found nothing at all about this man she claimed to have met, and been seeing. It was like he was invisible. We thought who takes such great care to make sure he can’t be linked to a woman he’s seeing. We figured either the guy was married, like one of Sara’s girlfriends suggested, or he was into something illegal. Thinking that though didn’t help us find him.”

  “Sara’s parents had been hoping for a ransom demand,” Stokes said. “Sara didn’t come from money, but still, the possibility wasn’t ruled out, at least not until so much time passed and no one got in contact with the McCowans.

  “Brownley and me were afraid that Sara’s disappearance was going to be the first of others—that we had someone targeting young, pretty college girls,” Stokes continued. “But no one else went missing under similar circumstances. To this day, we don’t have a clue what happened to Sara. Why she was singled out. Or by whom.”

  Brownley shook his head slowly. “We made an appeal through the media, asking the man that Sara had been seeing to come forward—that we just wanted to talk with him—that he could be instrumental in helping us find her. No one responded. We appealed to the public, with the same spiel—saying the guy wasn’t wanted for anything—we just wanted to talk with him—to ask for his help. Nothing.”

  “Sara’s parents put up a reward.” Stokes shrugged. “Again, nothing.” He looked to Jake. “You said Sara’s disappearance was flagged in connection with the recent disappearance of a woman from Farley?”

  “Yes,” Jake said.

  “What about the cab companies?” Clare asked. “There isn’t one in Farley. Was it determined if Sara called a cab company outside of Farley and used that same mode of transportation out of town?”

  “We didn’t find the one that drove her back,” Stokes said.

  Clare took that as a no, it had not been determined.

  * * * * *

  Back at his house, Jake rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m going to hit the shower. If you want to start nuking the food, I won’t be long.”

  They had picked up Chinese takeout from a place in Columbia that Jake knew of. He cleared a space on the kitchen table, where Sammie had left crayons and paper that morning, then set the two bulging bags down. Clare removed a carton of egg rolls from one bag, emptied them onto a plate, then placed it in the microwave. She set the timer, then leaned back against the counter to wait.

  Jake finished showering then went to the Norths. Clare had everything warmed by the time he returned with Sammie.

  Later, after the dinner had been eaten and the dishes cleared, Sammie bathed and down for the night, Jake and Clare sat down at Jake’s dining room table with the notes and files from Sara McCowan’s case. Papers pertaining to Sara’s missing person investigation were spread end-to-end on the table. Stokes and Brownley had given them a copy of a file they’d compiled. Among the documents was a map of the areas singled out for investigation both in Farley and Columbia, and the surrounding areas. Red marker circled significant sites, the location where the cab had dropped Sara off on Main Street, the drug store and surplus store where she’d been seen.

  The search for Sara shifted to Columbia when her cell phone records showed calls made from that city after she’d been seen in Farley. Most of the information contained in the file covered the Columbia leg of the investigation.

  The area where her purse was found was combed, but if Sara had been abducted there, it was far too late to establish a crime scene.

  Jake was seated beside Clare at the table. She turned to him. “We don’t know for sure that Sara ever returned to Columbia. I keep coming back to that. It’s possible that she had not been in the area where her purse was found after her sighting in Farley. Also possible that whoever took Sara had simply left her phone there to muddy the waters of the investigation and focus the attention out of Farley. It’s possible the investigation was taken out of Farley prematurely.”

  Jake glanced up from a page he was reading. “The last call on her cell phone that we can attribute to her, rather than to the boys, was made on the day she was seen in Farley—the call to the cab company from her motel in Columbia to arrange the drive to town. I don’t like that we have no proof of Sara’s return to Columbia, either.”

  “We need to retrace her steps on the day she arrived in Farley,” she said. Clare’s cell phone rang. “Hold that thought.”

  She read the caller ID and frowned. Her caller was Supervisory Special Agent Miles Cohen, her boss. Why would he be calling?

  Clare flipped open the phone. “Hello, sir.”

  “Agent Marshall,” Cohen said, “it’s been brought to my attention that you recently reported your sister missing. How is the investigation progressing?”

  “We’re pursuing a number of leads.”

  “I’ve read the missing person’s report you filed,” Cohen went on. “At this point, you have no evidence of foul play in her disappearance, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir—however—”

  “The Bureau has received a complaint about your conduct in Farley,” Cohen interrupted. “Specifically, as it pertains to the investigation into your sister’s disappearance. The complaint alleges harassment.”

  The complainant had to be Dean Ryder, Clare thought. “It is still to be determined what role my sister’s husband may have played in his wife’s disappearance.” Clare was struggling to hold onto her temper, which would do her no good to lose with Cohen. “One man’s interpretation of events.”