Vanishing Point

Wednesday

My staff members were milling around our conference room on the second floor of Pier 24 1/2, cups of coffee and muffins in hand. I set my briefcase on the round oak table and began taking files from it. While I arranged them, I studied my investigative team.

Ted was clad in chinos and a vintage Hawaiian shirt, his latest fashion statement. His black goatee was trimmed very short because, he’d told me, it had begun to show more gray than the hair on his head. Beside him stood Kendra Williams, his latest candidate for the position of “paragon of the paper clips.” Dozens of young men and women, all of them eager to become Ted’s assistant, had been paraded before my eyes in the past few months, but none had worked out. So far Kendra, whom I’d met the previous afternoon, seemed the most promising. A tiny woman of twenty-five, with a chocolate-brown complexion and cornrows, she had greeted me cheerfully and hadn’t so much as winced when a great crash echoed up from the floor of the pier-two deliverymen dropping a crate destined for the architectural firm off the opposite catwalk. An ability to remain calm in chaotic circumstances was often required here at the pier, and apparently Kendra possessed it.

God, I hoped she proved equal to the challenge of the job! I would need to rely heavily on Ted’s efficiency in the days ahead, and it would be good if he also had someone competent to fall back on.

Mick, who headed our computer forensics department, was leaning against one of the bookcases that lined the room, talking with his new assistant, Derek Ford. While both were tall, the resemblance stopped there. My nephew’s blond good looks came from the Scotch-Irish side of our family; Derek was a handsome, dark-haired Eurasian. Mick showed evidence of putting on weight, a consequence of his and Charlotte’s fondness for trying whatever new restaurant came along; Derek was very lean and had told me he followed a strict vegan diet. Mick dressed casually, with little concern for style; Derek was a devotee of urban chic, a tattoo of linked scorpions encircling his neck. But the two men had instantly bonded over their fascination with the endless possibilities of computer technology. Together they were working on developing investigative tools that I failed to understand. Of course, I didn’t understand the tools they now possessed, even though Mick would dismiss them as rudimentary. I did know that one day they’d be able to retrieve just about any piece of information I’d ask for. And they’d retrieve it within the bounds of the law. Or else.

Charlotte and Mick also shared a love of technology, but her expertise was in business and finance: give her a credit card number, and she’d run a subject to earth in no time; present her with evidence of corporate chicanery, and she’d build a case that would stand up in any court. She stood by the door with her new assistant, Patrick Neilan. Charlotte was telling him a joke, one that involved a lot of hand gestures and shaking of her brown curls. When she finished, Patrick blushed to the roots of his red hair before his wide mouth twitched and he snorted. Charlotte threw her head back and let fly one of her bawdy laughs. A risqué joke, no doubt about that.

Only two staff members had yet to put in an appearance: Julia Rafael and Craig Morland. I’d decided to call the meeting to order without them when they rushed in, practically knocking each other over. Julia, a tall Latina with haughty features, moving stiffly as a result of having been shot in the chest by a sniper last month, immediately looked mortified. She was a relatively new hire; minor faux pas that wouldn’t have fazed the rest of us severely discomforted her, and it didn’t help that during our last investigation she’d unwittingly become embroiled in a situation that had almost cost me my private investigator’s license. Craig, who shared an office with her, sensed her discomfort, and threw his arm around her shoulders, leaning on her and miming great pain. After a moment Julia smiled wryly. Craig, in his running clothes, his longish brown hair tousled, barely resembled the tightly wound FBI field agent whom I’d met a few years before. Over the time he’d worked for me, I’d found him to be a surprisingly perceptive and sensitive man-just the kind of person Julia needed as a friend.

Once they got their coffee and muffins, I called, “Let’s get settled, folks. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

For an hour I went over every case on the assignment sheet, finding out its exact status from the person who was handling it. Then I called a fifteen-minute break while I did some further reshuffling. Finally I was ready to get to the Laurel Greenwood disappearance. I’d had Ted make up packets containing all the background information on the case, as well as a transcript of my tape of yesterday’s meeting with Jennifer Aldin. While they glanced through the packets, I summarized the situation.

“Normally,” I concluded, “I wouldn’t be briefing everyone on this. But the case is high pay and thus high priority; and it promises to be a difficult one. Any cop will tell you that if you don’t solve a missing person case-no matter if it’s foul play, kidnapping, or deliberate disappearance-within the first twenty-four hours, chances are you’ll never solve it. And what we’ve got here is a twenty-two-year-old case. Nearly impossible.”

“Not for this agency.”

“I said nearly, Mick.” I looked around the table. “I’m going to need to count on all of you. Those who aren’t assigned to the investigation this morning will keep their individual caseloads, and pick up the slack from others. As the investigation progresses, it may be necessary to pull some people off and make reassignments. So you’ll need to familiarize yourselves with the information in your packets, and of course, you’ll be briefed on what’s happening during our regularly scheduled conferences.”

“You’ll be in the field, Shar?” Craig asked.

“Yes. Ted’ll be holding things together here in the office, and Kendra-you’ve all met Kendra, right?-she’ll be holding him together.”

“About time somebody did,” Charlotte said.

“Wait till you turn in your next expense report,” Ted warned her.

I said, “Okay-assignments. I’ll be personally talking to everyone we can locate who is mentioned in the accounts of Laurel Greenwood’s disappearance, as well as anyone else Jennifer Aldin suggests. Derek-you’ll locate and background those people, starting immediately. I’d also appreciate it if you’d make yourself available to conduct spur-of-the-moment searches for me while I’m in the field.”

Mick was frowning, hurt at being left out.

I said to him, “You-the genius, as Derek calls you-need to concentrate on running your department.” There was a growing corporate demand for computer forensics-the science of recovering files that had been inadvertently or deliberately deleted. Mick had originally suggested we offer the service to our existing clients, and once we’d announced it, the work had poured in, both from them and other companies they’d referred to us.

“Shar,” he said, “I can handle both.”

“Not and have a life, you can’t. And I think Charlotte would agree that you having a life outside the agency is a good thing.”

“Amen to that!” Charlotte exclaimed.

“Don’t get excited,” I told her. “You may end up being the one in your household who needs coddling and cosseting.”

“Say what?”

“Needing TLC after a hard day at the office. You’ll retain your caseload, but I may have to call on you if any tricky financial angles come up. Plus I’m temporarily taking Patrick away from you. Patrick,” I added to Neilan, “you’ll be assisting me full-time.”

His eyes widened, and then his freckled face glowed with pleasure.

Patrick Neilan was my newest operative, and I suspected most of the staff regarded him as a sympathy hire. When I’d first encountered him-as a witness during last month’s major investigation-I’d learned that he was also the subject of a search we had undertaken for his ex-wife the year before. My regret at the fact that the information we’d provided her had resulted in his financial downfall had prompted me to hire him temporarily, and he’d shown the potential to be a good investigator. Now that I’d hired him full-time, I wanted to give him the chance to prove himself to his coworkers.

I added, “Let’s get back to work, everybody. Patrick and Derek-I want to see you in my office.”

My office was at the far end of the pier, a large space with a high arching window overlooking the bay and the East Bay cities and hills. One side wall rose toward the roof, a strip of multipaned windows at its top letting in soft northern light; the other was an eight-foot-high partition with a door that opened onto the catwalk. The furnishings-desk and clients’ chairs; file cabinets; armoire that served as a coat closet; easy chair beneath a schefflera plant, in which to do serious thinking-seemed dwarfed by their spacious surroundings. When we’d moved in, the rent set by the Port Commission had barely seemed affordable, even though it was low by waterfront standards because of the pier’s unfortunate location under the western span of the Bay Bridge and next door to the SFFD fireboat station. But within a couple of years, we’d taken over all the upstairs space on the northern side and were handling the increased cost easily. We’d also become inured to the fire station’s siren going off, as well as the roaring and clanking of traffic on the bridge’s roadbed overhead.

I dumped my files on the desk, motioning for Patrick and Derek to be seated. Then I pulled a list from on top of the pile and handed it to my computer expert.

“These are the people we need to locate and background,” I said. “Whatever information we have on them appears in your packet. E-mail the files to me, copy Patrick, and also print it out for Ted to copy and distribute to everybody. Any questions?”

Derek studied the list. “You want me to search in the order you’ve got them listed?”

“Yes, but don’t waste too much time on those that’re difficult to locate, just move ahead.”

“Will do.” He stood.

“One more thing,” I said. “Mick will want to help you. Don’t let him. He’s got enough to do.”

Derek nodded and gave me a little salute as he left the office.

I turned to Patrick. “Okay, your function will be to coordinate things here in the office. I’ll be messengering tapes and e-mailing reports back from the field for you to organize and study for patterns or leads that I may have missed. Any and all suggestions or theories will be welcome. As you saw last month, I’m not the sort of investigator who refuses to listen to input, so feel free to offer your two cents whenever. Right now”-I looked at my watch-“I think we should grab some lunch. Then I want you to come with me while I conduct a field interview with Jennifer Aldin’s sister, Terry Wyatt.”

Patrick stood, looking eager. He was thirty-four, twice a father, had a business degree from Golden Gate University, and had been an accountant before his job was eliminated and he’d been forced to turn to security work to make ends meet. His wife leaving him for another man, her frequent refusals to allow him to see their children, her garnishing of his small wages-all that should have left him a broken man. But Patrick had somehow maintained a balance, and now, as he began a new career, he exhibited both optimism and an almost childlike pleasure in life.

We walked down the Embarcadero and had burgers at Miranda’s, my favorite waterfront diner, then headed east over the Bay Bridge in the agency van, our destination Davis, the university town west of Sacramento. On the way I conducted an informal training session on the art of the field interview: how to structure it; when to press for answers; when to sit back and wait for the answers to come; what body language to watch for; what tones of voice, inflections, and hidden meanings to listen to.

“Even when a person has nothing to hide, there will be details they’ll deliberately omit or that will slip through the cracks,” I told him. “A bad memory, a rewriting of history, an aversion to a certain subject, or simply the idea that something isn’t important-they all can contribute to your getting an incomplete picture.”

“You say ‘picture,’ rather than ‘answers’ or ‘set of facts.’ What exactly d’you mean?”

“What do the facts a given individual provides you with add up to? How do they relate to the facts others have given you? Do they agree? Contradict? Where do they fit within the framework of the investigation? What other avenues of investigation do they point to?”

Patrick shook his head. “Conducting and analyzing an interview’s more complicated than I thought. You study this in school?”

“Nope. I was a sociology major at Berkeley-which was interesting enough, but not very practical. Some of this stuff I learned from my first boss, the man whose investigator’s license I trained under. But most of it came from trial and error. A lot of error. When I started training people myself, I realized I’d have to articulate the process, or they’d make the same mistakes I did. That meant I had to do a lot of thinking about what it is I actually do, whereas before I was just winging it.”

“I’ll bet you could write a textbook.”

“I was asked to, after I gave a talk at a symposium last year, but it’s not going to happen. I spend too much time at my desk as it is.”

I took the central Davis exit and followed Terry Wyatt’s instructions to a quiet, tree-shaded block of Twelfth Street, lined with ranch-style homes that I judged to have been built in the 1950s. The uniform size of the lots indicated the area was an older subdivision, and all the houses probably had once been alike, but over the years they’d been remodeled and embellished with decorative touches so now no two looked the same. Terry Wyatt’s was the exception; its clean, simple lines were in the classic suburban style of fifty years ago.

As Patrick and I approached the front door, a dog began barking, and I heard the scrabbling of toenails on hardwood. Then a second canine voice joined in, and a woman called, “Augie, Freddie-stop that!”

The dogs quieted instantly.

“Well trained,” Patrick murmured.

The door opened partway, and a tall woman with dark blonde hair who bore an unmistakable resemblance to Jennifer Aldin looked out. She was holding fast to the collar of a black dog of indeterminate breed; the dog’s eyes were lively and inquisitive.

“Ms. McCone?” the woman said. “I’m Terry Wyatt. Just give me a minute to put the dogs outside.” She closed the door and went away, calling, “Come on, I don’t want you bothering my company.” After a moment she returned, admitting us to an entryway.

“They sound like watchdogs,” she told us, “but actually they’re just overly enthusiastic about visitors.” She glanced questioningly at Patrick, and I introduced him as my assistant. After they’d shaken hands, she said, “Would you mind sitting in the dining area? I’m making some jam, and I need to keep an eye on it.”

Terry Wyatt led us through a roomy kitchen to an area containing a baker’s table and invited us to sit. Behind us was a living room with a fireplace and built-in bookcases, and beyond it a glass door overlooking the backyard. The dog I’d glimpsed earlier and another tan one stood outside, noses pressed to the glass.

“Ignore them,” Terry said, noticing the direction of my gaze. “They’ll get bored and go play.”

Up close, Terry’s resemblance to Jennifer was even more striking; while her hair was darker and cropped short, she had the same high cheekbones and scattering of freckles, the same direct gaze. Her movements were similar, too-quick and economical-but I sensed an absence of the tension that was present in her sister; in fact, Terry radiated calm well-being.

She brought us soft drinks, then went back to check a big pot on the stove. A tantalizing odor rose from it as she raised the lid. “Pluots,” she explained, taking a seat at the table. “My favorite produce guy at the farmer’s market insisted I take an entire box. You can only eat so many Pluots-hence jam.”

“Are you going to put it up in jars?” I asked, taking out my tape recorder.

“Sure.”

“I’ve always been afraid to do that.”

“Botulism, you mean?” She grinned. “Maybe, if you were putting up green beans and really didn’t know what you were doing. I have a degree in home ec from UC and teach at a cooking school. Haven’t killed anybody yet.” She glanced at the recorder.

“You mind if I tape our conversation?” I asked. “It makes for greater accuracy.”

“Not at all. It’s just that seeing the recorder brought me back to the point of your visit. Jen’s really serious about finding out what happened to our mother, isn’t she?”

“Yes. How do you feel about that?”

She shrugged. “Ambivalent, I guess.”

I glanced at Patrick. He’d taken out a notebook and was uncapping a pen.

“In what ways?”

“Well, it’s important to Jen’s peace of mind, and that means it’s important to me. We’re closer than most sisters; we had to be. After our mother disappeared, we had kind of a weird upbringing.”

“In what way?”

“Our father became very distant, wrapped up in his own grief, I suppose. Our Aunt Anna assumed the mother’s role in our lives, but she made it clear she resented the responsibility. And Mom’s best friend, Aunt Sally, whom both of us loved and would gladly have gone to live with, was more or less banished. Dad and Aunt Anna were really strict with us; we weren’t allowed to hang out with friends or date, and they always wanted to know exactly where we were at any given time. If we were delayed at school or something like that and didn’t call, we were grounded. Which was ridiculous, really, since the way we lived was like being grounded anyway.”

“Perhaps they were afraid you’d vanish like your mother did.”

“I suppose. But in a way, their overprotectiveness did make us vanish, because once we left for college, we seldom went home.”

“All this started when you were four years younger than Jennifer, at a very impressionable age,” I said, “but your father’s recent death doesn’t seem to have triggered any need in you to find out what happened to your mother.”

“I think that’s precisely because I was so young. To tell the truth, I don’t remember Mom all that well, and I never missed her the way Jen did. Besides, I have a feeling…”

“Yes?”

“A feeling that we may be opening up a Pandora’s box here. I mean, whatever you find out, it’s not going to be good, is it?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, odds are Mom’s dead, has been dead the whole time. Once we know for sure, we’ll have to grieve for her all over again. And if she’s alive, it’ll mean she went away of her own volition, or was taken away and didn’t try to come back to us. Her being alive is the absolute worst I can imagine, because it means that she was just acting the role of loving mother. It means she never cared for Jen or our father or me at all.”

“I understand how you feel.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. A while back, I found out I was adopted, and decided to locate my birth parents. I did, and it turned out they’re good people, and I’ve established a relationship with both of them. But every now and then-even though I understand the circumstances that led to them giving me up-this anger just comes out of nowhere. On some level I feel that they didn’t love me enough and should have tried harder to keep me.”

Terry nodded. “If you get angry, even though your parents had good reason for what they did, imagine how angry Jen and I will feel if our mother’s alive. Because I can’t imagine any reason that would justify her abandoning us.”

“Yet you didn’t try to talk Jen out of going ahead with the investigation.”

“No, and I’m willing to help any way I can. As I said before, if it’s important to her well-being, it’s important to me.”

“Then let’s get started.”

For the next hour we went over Terry’s memories of when her mother disappeared. Her recollections were much the same as her sister’s, although less detailed and insightful, which was natural, given her age at the time. Some details conflicted: Terry remembered being brought home from school the day after the disappearance by the neighbor woman, while Jennifer had said the school bus dropped them off; Terry didn’t think their Aunt Anna had been particularly upset that afternoon, while Jennifer had taken specific note of it; Terry remembered their father telling them at the dinner table never to say their mother was dead, while Jennifer had said it was at breakfast. Understandable discrepancies, given her youth and the passage of time.

But one of Terry’s memories was puzzling, a new memory that had only surfaced after their father’s death, when Jennifer had begun calling four or five times a week, often late at night, to talk about their mother and speculate on what had happened to her. Terry remembered waking on the morning of her seventh birthday, some nine months after her mother’s disappearance, to the smell of Laurel’s perfume in her room, and finding a fuzzy toy lamb tucked into bed beside her. Excited, she’d shown it to her father, saying it must be from her mother. But he said he’d put it there, and that she must have imagined the perfume.

“He was lying, though,” she told me. “Kids can tell when adults lie. I don’t know who put that lamb there, but it wasn’t Dad. Besides, it was one of those promotional items they spin off successful children’s book series, in this case the Littlest Lamb. The book that my mother was reading to me at the time she disappeared was The Littlest Lamb and the Biggest Gnu. Big coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

I asked, “Did you tell Jennifer what you remembered?”

“God, no! Do you think I want to make her any more crazy than she already is?”

“So what d’you think?” Patrick asked as we drove back to the city. “The mother sneaked back into the house to leave Terry a birthday present? Or Terry just thought her father was lying about putting the toy there? Or somebody else left it?”

“Any and all of the above. I wonder if Jennifer has a similar recollection of her own birthday? Laurel was reading her The Wind in the Willows. Maybe Jennifer received a Mr. Toad.”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

“I intend to.”

When we got back to the pier, I told Patrick I wouldn’t be needing him anymore that day. Then I went to my office and called Jennifer Aldin.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her.

“Much better. I’m sorry I got so emotional yesterday.”

“No apology necessary; we were discussing an emotional issue. I met with your sister this afternoon, and we went over her recollections of your mother’s disappearance; tomorrow I’ll be heading down to Paso Robles to talk with your aunt and any of the other people involved in the case who are still in the area. I have a couple of additional questions for you before I go. Do you know what became of your mother’s postcard collection?”

“I think Aunt Anna has it. She took a lot of Mom’s stuff. Why?”

“I’m interested in seeing it, and anything else of hers. It may help me to understand what kind of a woman she was. Another thing: do you remember the first birthday you celebrated after your mother disappeared?”

“My eleventh? Not really. I blanked out a lot of that year.”

“You don’t remember anything unusual happening that day? A special present, maybe?”

“… No. I don’t even remember if I had a party. I doubt I did. Mom organized great birthday parties, but I can’t imagine Dad or Aunt Anna doing that. But my birthday was ten months later. Why are you interested in it?”

“I’m trying to put events in context.” Vague replies involving words such as “context” and “nuance” and “subtext” have stood me in good stead over the years.

Quickly I ended the conversation and went down the catwalk to Derek and Mick’s office. Mick had gone home-it was after six-but Derek remained at his desk, hands poised over his keyboard. As I stepped through the door, he hit the print command with a flourish and swiveled around.

“Shar!” he exclaimed, looking startled. “I just e-mailed you my file, and it’s printing out.”

I sat down on Mick’s chair and propped my feet on the bottom shelf of the workstation. “How many people were you able to find current addresses for?”

“Most of them. A few have died, a few are untraceable, but the others aren’t far from where they were twenty-two years ago. I backgrounded all but two of them and can finish up tonight if you need me to.”

“Let me look at the list first.”

The printer clicked and whirred and clattered on, sliding out pages. When it shut off, Derek put them in order and handed them to me.

Mary Givens, the neighbor who had been close to the Greenwood family, had died five years ago, but Laurel’s best friend, Sally Timmerman, was still at the same Paso Robles address, as were Roy Greenwood’s dental assistant, the pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, and the printer who had produced Laurel’s greeting cards. Jennifer and Terry’s regular babysitter had married and moved to nearby Templeton. Bruce Collingsworth, chief of the Paso Robles Police Department at the time, was deceased, but the detective who had handled the case was still on the force. Jacob Ziff, the Cayucos man who had stopped to chat with Laurel at the overlook where she was painting, was listed at an address on Studio Drive in that town, but the Sea Shack restaurant had gone out of business in the early nineties, and its staff had scattered. One of the dogwalkers who had spotted Laurel in Morro Bay was still living there; the other was untraceable. Derek had backgrounded all the individuals except for Jacob Ziff and the Morro Bay man.

Not bad, given the length of time that had passed. Tomorrow I’d fly down to Paso Robles-fortunately, Hy had taken a commercial flight to San Diego so the Cessna was free-and start with the maternal aunt, Anna Yardley, then talk to the other people there. They would probably suggest still others I might interview. I like to think of the initial inquiries in this type of investigation as pebbles dropped into a pool of water: concentric circles spread out around them, each bringing you into contact with people who knew the subject in different ways and bring different perspectives to the case.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’d drop the first pebble.