Full Tilt

18

Bragg Creek, Alberta

Is Vanessa alive?

It was one of a million questions Kate agonized over while driving to meet the retired officer who’d run the investigation into Tara Dawn’s disappearance.

Maybe I’m wrong?

Maybe I’m giving too much credence to coincidences and resemblances? Maybe I’ve become blind to reason over the years?

Kate found the Sweet Pines Café, a small log building in Bragg Creek, a postcard-perfect community at Calgary’s southwestern edge, tucked in the thick forests in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Retired inspector Elliott Searle was right where he said he’d be: in a corner booth reading a newspaper.

“Inspector Searle?”

“Yes.” He stood.

“Kate Page. Thanks for meeting me, sir.”

“Call me Elliott. It’s no problem.” He shook her hand. “Have a seat.”

He was an imposing figure in faded jeans and a navy shirt that accentuated his short, silver-white hair and piercing eyes. He had a gravelly voice befitting a capable man accustomed to being in charge.

“I work with missing persons groups,” Elliott said. “They told me about your case. I’m aware of the current activity and your involvement. Police circles are tight, Kate, and no cop would do anything to damage a case. I’m sure you already know that.”

“I’m well aware.”

They both ordered coffee. Before it came, Kate got to the point.

“I think Tara Dawn Mae is my sister.”

The old Mountie’s poker face betrayed nothing as Kate related the whole story. She reached into her bag and pulled out the Mae family albums, which the Ingrams insisted she have. She flipped through the photographs, then showed Elliott pictures of the necklace as she raised question after question about her crash in BC, Tara Dawn and the case in Upstate New York.

“The adoption records were incomplete,” Elliott said.

“Incomplete? I don’t understand.”

“Before our meeting I reviewed my personal notes to refresh my memory. When Tara Dawn vanished, part of our investigation was to examine the family history, their background. That’s when we found that the adoption records were incomplete. The Maes had said a distant relative, a cousin, who was a heroin addict and had been charged in a robbery and was jailed in South Dakota, was Tara Dawn’s mother. She lost custody of the girl and begged social services to give her to a family member.

“We pursued that account and found that a relative of Barton’s had in fact committed suicide in a South Dakota jail. But if there was any sort of adoption, there was no record of it. A courthouse fire had destroyed a lot of state court records, so anything pertaining to any adoption would’ve been lost. The family court in Alberta acknowledged the fire and that records were incomplete but still allowed the adoption.”

“Why?”

“They accepted the account given by the Maes’ lawyer and because no party had come forward to challenge it.”

“What do you think of that, in light of what we know now?”

“The adoption story’s questionable, but when it came to the disappearance, the Maes struck me as honest people.”

“Why do you say that?”

“We polygraphed each of them twice, once with our examiner and once with a Calgary police examiner. The tests concluded that the Maes were being truthful about Tara Dawn’s disappearance. We were confident of their account of what happened at the truck stop. We had supporting witness statements, and we used credit card records and receipts to track down as many people as we could who were there at the time. Unfortunately, only one security camera was working properly so we did not get all the plates.”

“Did you have suspects?”

“There were two ex-cons on parole passing through, but we cleared them off the top. There was also a church group charter bus of children. We thought Tara may have somehow got taken onto that bus in error, but we tracked the bus and cleared it.”

“So no one, really?”

“No. It was very busy at the time. A lot of traffic but, no, nothing emerged. We believe she was abducted and our action and investigation was exhaustive. When it happened we moved fast and took no chances. We set up roadblocks to inspect vehicles and alerted the border crossings, but we didn’t have the resources to cover every point immediately.”

“But what about the adoption-you say it’s questionable?”

“Either it happened the way the Maes said it did, or it didn’t.”

“If it didn’t, how did the Maes come to have Tara Dawn? And how did she get to Rampart and leave a cryptic message fifteen years later?”

“Only one person knows the answers to those questions, Kate, and that’s Tara Dawn.”

Searle declined the waiter’s offer of more coffee, indicating their time together was nearing an end. Kate reviewed her notes.

“In my research I read a couple of articles that said you’d received more than one-hundred-and-fifty tips. Did anything come of them?”

“We followed all of them for leads. They yielded nothing.”

After letting a long moment pass, Kate unfolded a photocopy of a newspaper clipping from the Medicine Hat News.

“What about this? I dug this old news story up.”

Elliott looked at the old article, which said that on the day before Tara Dawn went missing, Medicine Hat City police received a report of a man trying to lure a girl into his van.

“Medicine Hat’s about a hundred kilometers, or sixty miles east of the truck stop, right?” Kate said.

“That’s right.” Elliott tapped the clipping. “This is one incident that continues to eat at me to this day.”

“Was there something to it?”

“We followed it up with Medicine Hat police. It seems kids nearby got a plate, but they weren’t sure if it was an Alberta plate, or Saskatchewan, North Dakota, BC or Montana.”

“So, if you got the plate number that’s only about sixty possibilities to run down?”

“Well, then the kids weren’t certain on the sequence. Then another kid said the stranger was only asking for directions, that it was not a lure or abduction attempt. Still, that one haunted me because the Medicine Hat van was generally similar to one that was seen at the truck stop at the time of the abduction. We pursued that lead but it led nowhere.”

“Would you give me the license number?”

“I’m off the case, that plate is not mine to give you, Kate.”

“I see.”

She closed her notebook and put it in her bag.

“I wish it were different,” Elliott said.

“It’s okay, I understand. You’ve been very helpful.”