Where's Ellen? (Mystery) (MPP A JOE MCFARLAND / GINNY HARRIS MYSTERY Book 1) (3 page)

“What? Hell, no! Why don’t you focus on finding her instead of insinuating things like that!”

“I’m not insinuating anything, Steve. I’m just asking. We need to cover all the bases.”

“OK,” mumbled Steve. “Sorry. The answer is very definitely ‘No!’ ”

“Steve,” said Ginny. “Can you please take a couple of minutes to help us get a better overall picture of your wife? Where did she grow up? Go to school? Where does she work? Where did you two meet? Where else have you lived besides here?”

“What’s all that for? How’s that going to help find her? We’re just wasting time!” said Steve as he started to get agitated again.

“Please, Steve,” said Ginny calmly. “We never know what information may or may not help. But the more information we have about your wife, including her background, the better chance that we’ll latch onto something important. This won’t take more than a few minutes, and we can assure you that it’s worth investing those few minutes.”

“Uh. OK. Let’s see; where to begin? Ellen was born and raised in Belgium. After she graduated from Katholic Universiteit, the leading Belgian university, and then parted ways with her college boyfriend, she immigrated to Canada where she obtained her master’s degree in engineering at McGill University in Montreal. Ellen then worked in Canada for three years, but she got bored with engineering. She applied to and was accepted into the MBA program at the University of Chicago. Already totally fluent in French, Flemish and German, she quickly became equally fluent in English. She graduated with High Honors from the University of Chicago and went to work as a product manager for Tycon Technologies. At Tycon, she rapidly worked her way up to her current group vice president position. In 2009, two years after Belgium started to allow dual citizenship, Ellen obtained her U.S. citizenship and became a dual Belgium/U.S. citizen.”

“Great,” said Ginny. “That was useful. How about your background?”

“Oh well, my background’s a lot more mundane than Ellen’s. I’m 11 years older than her, and have spent my whole life living within 50 miles of Jasper Creek, where I was born. With Jasper Creek just about equidistant between Cincinnati and Dayton, I went to college and law school in Cincinnati and now practice corporate law in Dayton. I was a very good student. Everyone expected me to go into criminal law. But that wasn’t for me. You two know what it takes to be a good courtroom lawyer, all the drama and bluffing. I’m not good at that and don’t like it. I’m good at corporate law. And even here, I focus on drafting, editing and critiquing contracts; I’m very rarely the one to be leading the negotiations with the other parties.”

“How did you two meet?” asked Joe.

“It was my legal contract work for one of Ellen’s divisions at Tycon Technologies that led to us meeting each other, and from there to getting to know each other, fall in love and marry. I’m still amazed that someone like Ellen would ever take an interest in, much less marry, someone like me.”

“How long have you two been married?” asked Ginny.

“Almost 10 years.”

“And ….” Ginny started to ask before being interrupted by Steve.

“And, no, we don’t have any children,” answered Steve, obviously used to and expecting what was going to be Ginny’s next question. “Ellen loves her career and we both believe that children should be brought up by their parents, not nannies. In fact, with both of us focusing on our careers and on each other, we have only a few good friends. We’re neighbor-friendly with most of the others living on this street and a few other couples living on surrounding streets, but that’s about it.”

“Where else have you two lived in the past few years?” asked Ginny.

“No place. We moved here right after we got married and have lived here ever since.”

“OK. Anything else that you think we should know?” asked Joe.

“No, I don’t think so. What can we do now to find my wife?”

“Well, we’ll be doing a few things informally until, if she hasn’t turned up by then, we open the official case tomorrow morning. In the meantime, you should keep calling your wife’s friends and co-workers and your neighbors who you had to leave messages for this morning,” responded Ginny.

“One other thing,” said Joe. “You should call the volunteer fire department and ask them to organize a search of the surrounding area here. One of the good things about this being a small town is that, in addition to the fire chief and several of the volunteer firefighters being happy to assist, some of the townspeople will surely join in to help. And, without too many other disasters likely to be underway, they should be able to get started almost immediately.”

Turning white, Steve asked, “What will they be looking for? Her, her body?”

“No, not necessarily, not at all,” said Joe. “She could have gone for a walk or run away from something or someone and be lying out there injured in the woods. Or a piece of her clothing or other clues might be found.”

“OK,” responded Steve. “I’ll call the firehouse now.”

“We can’t officially be part of this search, but we’ll check in with the search team once we’re off duty later today,” concluded Ginny.

After a few more questions, a promise to keep Steve informed and a request that Steve call them if he heard or thought of anything else, Joe and Ginny gave Steve their business cards, encouraged him to try to remain optimistic and walked back to their car.

As they headed back into town and headquarters, Ginny asked, “So what do you think now, Joe?”

“Pretty simple, partner, only three logical possibilities: He killed her and hid the body; she ran off with her lover, or we have no frickin’ idea.”

“Whoa! How’d you label him a murderer already?”

“Simple,” replied Joe as he raised one more finger with each reason. “First, as you well know, it’s the spouse way more than half the time. Second, he was the last, and perhaps only, one to see her this morning, if, in fact, she was still alive this morning. Third, there’s no sign of a burglary or break-in. Fourth, as a wealthy, high-level executive, I’m sure she has one nice pile of life insurance and I bet you can guess who the beneficiary is. And, finally, fifth, there’s bound to be a perp involved on such a nice spring day as this.”

“Wow, Detective. Did you learn all that at the police academy or is it your many years of experience?”

“Both,” replied Joe. “Let’s issue that BOLO when we get back to the station and see if that does any good.”

CHAPTER 4

F
orty-five minutes later, Oak Knoll Drive was crowded with one fire engine blocking each end of the street, the fire chief’s red SUV, an ambulance and about a dozen private cars and pickup trucks.

The fire chief ordered one of his captains, “Get the folding table out of my SUV and set it up in the middle of the street in front of the Sanders house.”

“Roger that,” responded the captain.

The fire chief unfolded a large, detailed map and laid it on the table. “Cap, draw a 6-inch-by-6-inch grid on this map, starting here and going all the way over to here. Draw vertical and horizontal lines one inch apart.”

“I’m on it, Chief.” And five minutes later the grid was drawn on the map in black Magic Marker ink. Going left to right from top to bottom, the fire chief then labeled each of the grid squares with a number, 1 through 36.

The 10 or so volunteer firefighters, of course, wanted to help find Ellen. In all honesty, however, they were also at least equally motivated by their adrenaline rush. Their firefighter activities, like those across most of the country, consisted less and less of real emergencies. Increasingly, the calls were false alarms or “burned toast,” the car crashes were minor fender-benders, and the medical “emergencies” were stomachaches or 94-year-old women feeling weak. Conducting a grid search for a missing person felt real. The volunteers were itching to get started.

“All right, all right,” yelled the fire chief. “Heads up. Everyone gather around here by the map. Pay attention; we have to do this right.”

The firefighters along with six or so other volunteers gathered around the table in front of the fire chief.

“OK,” continued the fire chief. “I want you to form four teams. Each team has to have at least one of my firefighters on it. The firefighters are trained for searches like this, so we need one of them on each team to be the team leader. When you get yourselves sorted out, the four team leaders should each go and get a radio from one of the engines. We’ll be operating on channel 3 once we get the search underway.”

The fire chief knew what he was doing, having been a paid firefighter, a lieutenant, in fact, in Dayton before retiring and getting involved with the Jasper Creek Volunteer Fire Department. Once the teams were formed and the team leaders returned with their radios, the fire chief gave each team a number from one to four.

“OK, we’re about ready to go. Team 1, you got grids 1-9; team 2, grids 10-18; team 3, grids 19-27; and team 4, grids 28-36. The members of each team need to line up side by side an arm’s length apart from the person next to him. Then start searching your first grid, walking in a straight line. Walk very slowly and turn over or move everything to be sure you don’t miss anything. And I mean turn over or move
everything
. Don’t skip over anything ’cause you assume it’s not important.”

“What are we looking for?” asked one of the neighbors.

“Anything and everything,” answered the fire chief. “You need to identify to your team leader anything that looks out of place: a piece of clothing, blood, human footprints, broken branches, god-forbid a body or part of a body, and so on. If you see
anything
that seems unusual, call your team leader over. We’d rather have 20 false alarms than skip over something important.”

“OK,” responded some of the volunteers.

“Oh,” added the fire chief, “and each of you take a few bottles of water with you. Despite it being mid-April, you’re going to get very hot and tired, and we want to avoid dehydration. We don’t need to add any ‘rescue the rescuer’ efforts to what we’re already doing. We’ve got about seven hours of daylight left and we have lots of geography to cover. We’ll get some pizza or sandwiches brought in in a few hours. I guarantee that you’ll all have worked up one heck of an appetite by then. Let’s get started.”

CHAPTER 5

M
eanwhile, back in the center of town, Joe parked behind the police station and he and Ginny walked in, stopping at the little canteen area to fill their cups with hours-old coffee before proceeding to their desks. Ginny got busy right away, issuing the BOLO alert, along with the photo of Ellen, to the various surrounding agencies and the State Police. Knowing that they’d automatically kick the BOLO back since it hadn’t been 24 hours since Ellen’s disappearance, she didn’t even bother sending it to the nearest FBI office. In the larger city police departments, the BOLO would have been easily and rapidly issued via computer; in Jasper Creek, however, it was a tedious task, requiring Ginny to manually fax the BOLO and photo to each intended recipient. Someday, mused Ginny, the Jasper Creek PD will get its technology advanced to the 21st century.

While Ginny was working on the BOLOs, Joe walked back to the chief’s office. He knocked on the closed door, opened it and walked in without waiting for a response. The chief, jacket off and sleeves rolled up, was sitting behind his dull gray metal desk, partially hidden behind piles of papers and files and hazily visible through the thick cloud of cigar smoke. It had long been a topic of discussion among the department members whether his constant cigar smoking would first kill the chief or, via second-hand smoke, one or more of the other department members.

Most in the department assumed that the chief had a first and last name, but to everyone he was just “Chief.” Even his wife called him “Chief.” As chief of the department since about the time that Noah was building his ark, Chief ran the department pretty much as he first did decades ago. To him, the department was technologically on the leading edge ever since they upgraded from rotary to push-button phones a few decades ago.

Sitting on the one small chair in front of the chief’s desk, and without any “good morning” or other pleasantries, Joe gave the chief a brief summary of the Ellen Sanders situation, what he and Ginny did and were doing and their intent to open a case the following morning if she had not turned up by then. Joe offered no comments as to his suspicions or intuition about what might have happened to Ellen and, if foul play was involved, the what, who and why of it. The chief said nothing, nodded his head up and down and went back to reading, or making believe he was reading, the open file in front of him. Joe got up, walked out, closed the chief’s door and headed for his desk.
So much for intimate and meaningful interpersonal relations with the chief!
thought Joe.

Joe and Ginny cleaned up some miscellaneous paperwork related to other cases, and then headed out to grab a quick lunch. As they did most days that they were at headquarters when lunchtime rolled around, they first conducted their debate of the pros and cons of pizza vs. Chinese, and then went around the corner and settled in at Sancho’s, the local taco shop, a reasonable peace-making compromise. Half way through their second taco, Ginny got a radio call from the PD’s one civilian employee who served as a combination receptionist, dispatcher, data entry clerk, filing clerk and girl Friday.

“Ginny, the chief wants to see you and Joe ASAP.”

“OK. We’ll be there in a few minutes,” replied Ginny.

Hearing this over Ginny’s two-way radio, Joe muttered, “Uh oh,” thinking that, much like being summoned to the principal’s office, this was rarely a good thing.

Gobbling up the remainders of their tacos, Joe and Ginny hustled back to the PD and headed for the chief’s office.

“What the hell did you two do now?” bellowed the chief as he slowly got up from his chair, slammed his office door closed and maneuvered himself back into his chair behind his desk. As there was only one other chair in the office, both Joe and Ginny remained standing.

“Hello to you, too,” barked back Joe as he rolled his eyes upward and tilted his head toward the ceiling. “What’s your problem this time?”

“What do you mean, Chief?” asked Ginny calmly, trying to nip in the bud another Chief vs. Joe confrontation.

“The damn FBI!”

“Well, that’s something we can agree on. What about the damn FBI?” asked Joe.

“I just got a call from the Special Agent in Charge in their Cincinnati office. An ASAC and a special agent are on the way here now to talk to the three of us. They want to be sure that we’re here waiting for them.”

“What do they want to talk about?” asked Joe.

“The Ellen Sanders case,” responded the chief.

“What?” exclaimed Ginny. As her cheeks turned bright pink, she continued, “First of all, there is no case yet as it hasn’t been 24 hours since her disappearance. And we specifically didn’t even send our BOLO to the Feebies, knowing they’d ignore it because of the less-than-24 hours.”

“Well, they obviously know about it! And rather than ignoring it, one of the agents coming here is an Assistant Special Agent in Charge from their Cincinnati office. They’ve completely bypassed their local satellite office in Columbus. So something big is brewing.”

As they continued discussing this unexpected development, a sharp knock on the chief’s door was immediately followed by the entrance of two men, obviously FBI agents to anyone who even briefly glanced at them. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dan Martin looked like he’d just arrived out of central casting: his 6-foot 3-inch broad-shouldered build, his light-brown crew cut hair, his dark suit, blue tie and nicely polished shoes all screamed FBI. Special Agent Frank Florio was short, muscular and sharp-nosed; his clothes, however, were smaller twins to those worn by Martin.

The chief looked at the new arrivals, and gave a quick look and subtle shoulder shrug to Joe and Ginny. Standing up, but remaining behind his desk, the chief faced the two FBI agents. “Hello, Gentlemen,” said the chief. “Let’s go down the hall to the conference room where there’s more room and enough chairs for all of us to sit.” And so they did, with the chief leading the way, followed by the two FBI agents and then Ginny. Joe brought up the rear of the parade, happy to stay 10 feet behind the others. As they were sitting down in the conference room following brief introductions and handshakes, or mere head nods in Joe’s case, the chief continued, “So what brings you folks from the big city to little old Jasper Creek?”

“I think you already know the answer. The case involving the woman you know as Ellen Sanders,” answered Martin. It was already obvious that Martin would be doing the speaking for the FBI; it wasn’t clear what, if any, role Special Agent Florio would play.

“Whaddaya mean?” challenged Joe. “We haven’t opened up a formal case file yet. So there isn’t even such a case yet. And why did you say ‘known as Ellen Sanders’? And how do you know anything about this? And why is the FBI already involved? And…”

“Hold on, Detective. Keep it in your pants.” interrupted Martin. “The FBI is not already ‘involved’ as you so nicely put it; the FBI is now IN CHARGE of this case. And I mean FULLY in charge. We need you to turn over all your notes and whatever evidence you have, and tell us all you know.”

“Chief,” pleaded Joe. “What’s going on? Please explain to these big-city super special agents that, at least for now, this is a local situation. We don’t need, haven’t asked for and don’t want any so-called help from the FBI.”

Before the chief could reply, Martin again explained to the chief and his two detectives that the FBI would be completely taking over the case starting right then. “We’re sorry for taking over like this, but these orders came directly from FBI headquarters in D.C. If you have any problems with this, I suggest you check with your superiors; I’m sure our SAC has already been in touch with them.”

“Bull,” said Joe. “I can only imagine how sorry you are to be taking the case from us.”

“Believe me when I say that we’ll keep you in the loop as much as we can,” added Martin.

“What’s this all about?” asked Ginny in her sweetest, most cooperative-sounding voice. As was often the case, Ginny and Joe were able to play “good cop-bad cop” off each other without any advance planning. In fact, maybe they were just acting their normal selves, not play acting at all. And, not surprisingly, Ginny always had the good cop role.

“Sorry. We can’t tell you. National security is involved.”

“What!” yelled Joe. “That’s bullshit! That’s how you’ll keep us in the loop? I don’t get it. At first it looked like this lady either snuck off for a quickie with her boyfriend or got whacked by her husband. Or perhaps both. But now that you guys are so insistent on taking over the case, it probably does somehow involve national security or something else really big. It would sure help if you’d tell us what this is all about.”

“Sorry, but we’ve already told you more than we should have. Now please give us all your notes and any evidence and bring us up to speed so we can get out of your hair,” said Martin.

“Gimme a couple of minutes to make a few phone calls,” said the chief as he got up and walked out of the conference room to return to his office. Without the chief’s presence, the tension only built. Joe and Ginny sat silently, alternating between glancing at each other and glaring at the two FBI agents. The two FBI agents stared directly ahead; they might as well have been store mannequins.

After a couple of minutes, Ginny got up and asked, “Would anyone like coffee or water?”

Before saying, “Not me, thanks,” Joe gave Ginny a quick look that clearly meant “no need to be so gracious to these two SOBs.” Ginny returned a look to Joe that said, “Who cares? Give ’em a break.”

Both of the FBI agents simultaneously responded, “No, thank you.” Ginny sat back down next to Joe.

A couple of minutes later the chief reappeared. Speaking to Joe and Ginny, he said, “I did check and, yes, for some unknown reason or reasons, this case now belongs to the FBI. We are to turn over everything we have and then stay off the case and out of their way unless we’re asked to help.”

Joe and Ginny gave each other one of their “can you believe this?” looks just before Joe blurted out, “I don’t get it. There’s probably something big and important going on, but I’ve got no idea what. Seems to me that this should be a local police matter until we’re told enough to agree that it should become a case for the Feds.” After a few more minutes of moaning and groaning, he and Ginny summarized the whole morning for the two FBI agents and gave them photocopies of the BOLO, the photograph Joe had taken of Ellen’s contact lists and the meager notes they’d written so far.

“Thanks for all your cooperation. We’ll keep you informed,” muttered Martin as he and Florio headed for the door and were gone as suddenly as they appeared.

“So much for cooperating and keeping us in the loop,” muttered Joe. “What a pile of crap! Why do we have to put up with this shit?” The chief and Ginny both merely nodded.

The chief concluded, “I know how much you two are dying to continue digging into this, especially given the FBI’s interest, and especially so early in the case. But don’t! They’ll be watching us closely and I don’t need any more headaches with city hall. And, believe me, you two don’t need any more headaches with me.”