The Dreams of Ada

by Robert Mayer

  When she worked at Love’s, she dated for a time a man from Texas. She seemed to be in love with him, but it didn’t work out. When she and Janet moved into a new apartment at Fourteenth and Rennie, she met Steve Haraway, who lived in the same building. They began to date. They were married on August 6, 1983. Though Steve’s father, Dr. Jack Haraway, was a prominent member of Ada society, a member of the Rotary Club, with a nice house east of the city, the young couple moved into Denice’s apartment, and continued to work after school to pay their expenses.

  Steve was the outgoing half of the couple. He was in the ruling clique of Pi Kappa Alpha, the largest fraternity at East Central. He was gregarious, talkative. Denice was the shy one, sweet but quiet. Steve’s friends liked her, but felt they didn’t know her well. Steve maintained contact with his single friends at Friday night “boys’ nights.” Every Friday the Holiday Inn had a seafood buffet. While Denice worked at McAnally’s, Steve and his friends from school ate seafood there, laughed, joked. Then he’d go home to Denice.

  At the college, Denice was a good student, though not exceptional. In February she began student teaching at Hayes Elementary School, which was halfway between her home and the college, as part of the requirements for a teaching certificate. She taught second-graders, the class of an experienced teacher named Donna Howard. Denice would stand or sit at Mrs. Howard’s desk in the front of the class, running the lessons, while Mrs. Howard sat and observed in the back. Denice had a good rapport with the kids, showed every sign of becoming an effective teacher. Each Friday she would take home teachers’ guides, to prepare lessons for the following week. On Friday, April 27, she took home the teachers’ guides as usual.

  In the early hours of Sunday morning, the news of Denice Haraway’s disappearance traveled over the telephone wires. Steve Haraway’s best friend, Monty Moyer, who’d been called by Steve, in turn called Steve’s second-best friend, Gary May, who spread the word to another friend: volunteers would be needed to search the county. Most of Steve’s Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity brothers offered to help; so did the Ada Amateur Radio Club, some of whose members undoubtedly had heard the news crackle over the scanners the night before; so did the Ada Rifle and Pistol Club. The entire police force was called in to work, and the sheriff’s department, and the highway patrol. Normally all but deserted on Sundays, Ada police headquarters was as crowded, and as solemn, as any church in town that morning. The two men to whom those congregated there turned for guidance were Gary Rogers and Dennis Smith.

  Gary Rogers was the resident agent for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI). He lived in Ada and had an office at Ada police headquarters. He was quickly assigned by his superiors to head the investigation into the disappearance of Denice Haraway. A slim, neat man, Rogers was almost dandyish in appearance at first glance, with carefully slicked brown hair, a neatly trimmed moustache. In the gray business suits he wore on most workdays, he gave the appearance of being manicured rather than tough. But below the business suits he wore western boots; below his left armpit was a holster containing a loaded revolver. On other days, more relaxed, he might wear complete western garb, looking almost like a cowboy, except for the slick hair, the neatness of the moustache.

  The man directing the investigation for the Ada police department was Dennis Smith, the detective captain. In appearance and personality he was much the opposite of Gary Rogers. Smith was barrel-chested whereas Rogers was slim. The top of his head was as bald as a melon; the only hair remaining was a fringe on the sides and around the back. He preferred to go tieless, wearing short-sleeved Ban-Lon shirts on days when the job’s demands did not require a suit. Whereas Rogers had the businesslike manner expected of OSBI agents, Smith was a stormier presence, closer to the movie image of a bulky small-town sheriff. Whereas Rogers was under orders, like all OSBI agents, not to talk to the press—a publicity office in Oklahoma City would take any inquiries—Smith could make his own rules. Tough-looking, he had a gentle voice which, without warning, could suddenly turn gruff. His sense of humor was sometimes sadistic; he seemed to enjoy putting people on the spot for a moment and watching them squirm. But he could also show compassion. To some, his pale blue eyes seemed to twinkle in his large head; to others, this was a threatening glint. “He’s got them hard eyes,” one acquaintance would say.

  On a large map, Rogers and Smith divided Pontotoc County into sections. The volunteers at headquarters, as well as the officers, were assigned different sections to search. Two to a vehicle, they moved out into the city, then into the areas around the city, and then farther away into the countryside. They drove up and down state roads, county roads, the narrow blacktops or dirt roads of oil leases. Mostly they were looking for an abandoned gray pickup, a late sixties or early seventies model gray-primered Chevrolet. That was the description given by Gene Whelchel and the Timmons brothers. Descriptions of the two men Karen Wise said had been “acting weird” at J.P.’s Pak-to-Go also were sent out. One of the men was described as being from twenty-two to twenty-four years old, five-feet-eight to five-feet-ten, with blond hair below his ears, and a light complexion. He was said to be wearing faded jeans, a white T-shirt, and tennis shoes. The other suspect was also described as twenty-two to twenty-four years old, with shoulder-length light brown hair and a slim build. He was wearing faded jeans, a blue T-shirt, and tennis shoes. The three witnesses at McAnally’s had seen only one man leaving with the woman. He roughly fit the first description. None of them had noticed anyone else waiting in the truck. But police believed there must have been someone else behind the wheel, since both the woman and the man had entered on the passenger side.

  When they came to bridges over creeks, or to dumping areas strewn with refuse, the searchers got out of the cars and pickups and threaded through the underbrush, looking for bits of clothing, looking for a body. Steve Haraway himself went, paired up with his friend Monty Moyer. Gary May was paired with another friend. Fraternity members had come from Oklahoma City to help.

  The search began shortly after lunch—more commonly called “dinner” in Ada—and gradually widened to the farthest reaches of the county, which encompasses 714 square miles. When the sun set and darkness settled over Pontotoc, some of the searchers went home. Others continued the search, shining flashlights out the car windows as they drove slowly on the narrow roads. It was two o’clock in the morning before the last of them—Steve Haraway’s closest friends—gave up and went home. None of the searchers had found anything of interest—no gray pickup, no trace of Denice Haraway.

  The news of the disappearance, and of the search, was reported to the town by the local radio and television stations.

  After a long day of fruitless searching, spirits were low at police headquarters. Then came a report from McAlester, sixty miles to the east, site of the state penitentiary. A trooper there had stopped a pickup that matched the description. There were two men inside who also roughly matched the descriptions, but they were wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots; there was no young woman with them. The men were detained in McAlester while their pictures were taken and they were fingerprinted. For a time, Dennis Smith and Gary Rogers had hopes for a quick solution to the case. But within a few hours, the men were cleared of any involvement.

  As hour after hour passed with no trace of Denice Haraway turning up, the specter of another young woman loomed large in the minds of the police. Her name was Patty Hamilton.

  Patty Hamilton was an eighteen-year-old girl who had lived in Seminole, in the adjoining county, thirty miles north of Ada. She used to work as a clerk in the U-Totem convenience store, at 401 West Strother. Shortly after 4:30 in the morning of April 9, 1983—one year and nineteen days earlier—Patty Hamilton had disappeared while working. Her disappearance was reported by a customer who entered the store and found no clerk. About $110 was reported missing from the cash register. Patty’s locked car was found parked outside the store, with her purse in it. Her keys were in the store. On the counter were two cans of so
da pop. There was no sign of a struggle. Less than an hour earlier, Patty had been talking on the phone with her mother, who worked all night as a dispatcher for a Seminole cab company. She told her mother she was going outside to sweep the driveway. She had not been heard from since; had not been seen, dead or alive. Police believed that Patty Hamilton probably had been abducted and killed. But there was no evidence, no suspects. Leads checked out in the early days had proved fruitless. With more than a year gone by, there weren’t any leads anymore. The disappearance remained a mystery.

  The OSBI case agent in the disappearance of Patty Hamilton was Gary Rogers. The last thing he needed in Ada was another Patty Hamilton case.

  Dennis Smith was exhausted. Nearly a thousand man-hours had gone into the search that day. They had turned up not a single clue. But his eighteen years of experience told him there was only one logical explanation for the disappearance of Denice Haraway: she had been taken from the store to be raped. And rape victims, when their attackers are through with them, usually find their way to a road, or a phone, within a few hours.

  Donna Denice Haraway had not.

  They had found no body, no clothing, no weapon, no blood. But as he sagged into his bed, the detective captain was already convinced: Donna Denice Haraway was dead.

  2

  OF DEER AND CALVES

  Dennis Smith’s grandfather had been a farmer in Arkansas. He moved to the Ada area around the turn of the century, when it was still called Ada, I.T.—Indian Territory. The first white settlers, two brothers named Daggs, had ridden their horses up from Red River County, Texas, early in 1890, and had built log homes near what would later become a cement plant. A fellow named Jeff Reed came up with them to help drive their cattle. It is Reed who is considered the founder of Ada. Impressed by the site, he returned to Red River County, sold his interests there, and came back to Ada to live.

  At first the place was called Daggs Prairie, after the first two families to settle. Jeff Reed dealt in cattle for about a year, then opened up a small store. The store became a trading center for the Indians and the few white settlers in the area; it gave the settlement its first commercial importance. Indians raised small crops for subsistence; the Daggs brothers began farming to sell the produce. The only transportation in the area was on horseback. Virgin, untilled lands stretched for miles in every direction.

  The settlement soon became known as Reed’s Store. As the place grew in population, one of the Daggs brothers opened a second store. Local residents began to want a post office, and J. B. Reed set out to get them one. He prepared a petition, spent months traveling through the countryside to get the required number of signatures; sometimes he rode fifteen miles to get one more. The first name he proposed to the Post Office Department was “Sulphur Springs,” after two such springs nearby. It was rejected, because there was already a town by that name in the Territory. The second name he suggested was “Reed’s Store.” It, too, was rejected. The third name he submitted, “Ada,” was accepted in 1903. It was the name of his eldest daughter.

  Slowly the new town grew. More settlers arrived to farm the land. More stores opened. All over the west railroad lines were being built, and several local men formed a company to start a railroad. They routed it through Ada. A bridge was built over Sandy Creek, the first bridge in the county. A man from Shawnee bought a corner lot at Main Street and Broadway and opened the First National Bank. A man named George N. McKnight was elected mayor, a fellow called “Uncle Dick” Couch became the town marshall. By 1903 there were several dozen stores in Ada, selling all manner of merchandise—hardware, meat, feed, lumber. Seven doctors had opened offices, two dentists, a dozen lawyers. The Ada Weekly News had begun publication. The Oklahoma-Indian Territory Anti-Horse Thief Association held its convention in Ada that year. More banks opened. A baseball field was built. More than 20,000 bales of cotton were marketed in Ada that fall.

  Into this new town bustling with horse-drawn wagons. Dennis Smith’s grandfather arrived from Arkansas to try his luck at farming. He watched as Ada, Indian Territory, became, in 1907, part of the new state of Oklahoma. He saw stone masons arrive, churches rise on many street corners, small factories open. He watched the early livery shops give way to the first automobile dealers, saw prospectors arrive, hunting for oil and natural gas, and finding both. In the 1920s and 1930s the town prospered from an oil boom; the Kings Road mansions began to go up.

  Dennis Smith’s father did not participate in the boom, did not get rich; as always, the rich were the minority, even in boom times. Smith’s father went to work as a janitor at the First National Bank on Main Street. He would remain there until he retired in 1972 and moved to Odessa, Texas.

  Ada is a place where people tend to stay, generation after generation. While some of the children who grow up there move off to big cities in search of larger opportunities, most do not. It is a place of roots, not rootlessness; of extended families, not nuclear ones. Most people own modest frame houses in which they raise their children, who in turn raise their own children in the same or similar houses. There are plenty of jobs to go around—at the feed mill, the glass factory, the cement plant, for the men; at Solo Cup, Blue Bell jeans, the convenience stores, for the women. It is a place of simple living: work, children, television, hunting, fishing, church. When the photo portrait-maker died, his son took over the business, to continue immortalizing the next generation of Adans, in life, in full color; the son of the monument maker went into his father’s business, to continue immortalizing Adans in death, in gray granite.

  If there was fear in Ada, it usually was the fear inspired by tornadoes, or the fear people find deep in their own souls or in their personal relationships, never simple, even in simple towns. Or the fear of God. But there had rarely been fear in the streets.

  Dennis Smith was born in 1943, romped as a toddler on Ada’s quiet lawns while the nation was at war. When he was in the third grade, he was sent to a charity camp called Sheep Creek, about fifteen miles out in the country. The camp was owned by the wealthy Norris family. He spent a month there, splashing about in a lake, learning to swim. The boys had no life preservers but would strap large gallon cans to their chests to keep them afloat. He also learned to wrestle there.

  In junior high school, Dennis met a boy named Bill Peterson. They became friends, often hung out in the same crowd. They would swim together at a place called Blue Hole. Sometimes, along with other kids, Dennis was invited to the Peterson home, a palace compared with his own family’s working-class house. The fact that Bill Peterson’s grandfather, P. A. Norris, owned the bank where Dennis Smith’s father swept the floors did not seem to impede their friendship; it lasted well into high school. Then they began to drift into separate crowds. No one could know then that Dennis Smith one day would become Ada’s detective captain, and Bill Peterson its district attorney.

  When Smith graduated from Ada High, he enlisted in the Marines. He was stationed in California and in Okinawa. This was after Korea, before Vietnam. He thought for a time of making a career of the Marines, because of the Corps’ excellent retirement plan after twenty years; but he didn’t. Instead he returned to Ada, went to East Central, and joined the police force. He does not pretend he became a cop to make the streets of the town safer, or to help combat evil; he became a cop when he learned that the Ada police department also had an excellent retirement plan after twenty years: half the pay of your highest annual salary.

  For nine years he was a uniformed officer, patrolling the town in a squad car; then he became a detective, attended OSBI seminars in detective work. He would reach his twenty-year plateau for possible retirement in January 1986. In the interim he was married, divorced, remarried. He had two boys, now teenagers, James and Shawn. His bull chest, round face, bald pate, “hard eyes” became familiar in the town as he probed the burglaries, the drug traffic that were increasingly common in Ada.

  About every two years there was a murder. Most of them were family-related, and were s
olved fairly quickly.

  Main Street terminates abruptly at the campus of East Central University. It is a pleasant campus, the administration building off to one side, the library dead ahead, the education building behind it to the right. Walkways connect the buildings between grassy, tree-shaded lawns. Behind the library the land slopes sharply downward. Set into the slope is the science building. Across a roadway at the bottom of the hill is the football stadium: Norris Field.

  Founded in 1909 as East Central Normal School, the institution had expanded through the years to become East Central State Teachers College, then East Central Oklahoma State College, and finally East Central University. By 1984 it was serving about 4,000 students. Most of them had grown up within a fifty-mile radius of the campus. Others came from all over the state.

  The education department had long been the mainstay of the school. The director of elementary education was Norman Frame, who had been at the college for twenty years. As an elementary education major, Denice Haraway had taken several of Frame’s classes; he also had been, for the past three years, her faculty adviser. During the first two years her name was Denice Lyon. She struck Norman Frame as a very beautiful girl, the kind whose presence brightened your day—although not all that serious about her work, about average. Then, having married in August, she turned up for her senior year as Denice Haraway. Frame noticed a change. Her marriage seemed to have matured her; she worked harder, was more serious about wanting to become a teacher.

  In his early days in Ada, Norman Frame had been active in the First Christian Church. So, too, had Dr. and Mrs. Haraway. He and the Haraways had become friends, had visited each other’s homes; he’d known Steve Haraway then as a nice little boy, a bit shy but coming out of it. He remembered this when he heard the news of Denice’s disappearance on Sunday, on television, and he recalled his last conference with Denice. It had been in late winter, when she had completed her classes, just before she’d started her student teaching. He’d given her a grade of 90 in his class. No one was more surprised than he at how well she had done; it was a tough course. When he told her that, in his narrow office in the education building, she smiled slightly. He could tell that she was pleased, very proud of what he was saying; but she was trying to maintain her ladylike decorum, trying, in that way she had, to retain control of her emotions.