Missing - Mark Kane Mysteries - Book Five: A Private Investigator Crime Series of Murder, Mystery, Suspense & Thriller Stories...with a dash of Romance. A Murder Mystery & Suspense Thriller

by John Hemmings

  “What kind of job?”

  “Probably waitressing, I guess. That’s what Marisa was doing in Chicago.”

  “Well, that’s a start isn’t it?” I said.

  Lucy, organized as ever, had already packed, so we stopped at my place and she suggested that she’d pack for me and I could make a coffee and go online to book the tickets. There are four airlines that fly nonstop to Springfield and I chose United because it was the shortest flight time. There was an early afternoon flight leaving just after one o’clock and I calculated we’d have enough time to make that. It was a five-and-a-half-hour flight but because of the time difference we’d arrive at about five thirty. I booked us a hotel near to the sheriff’s office so that we could make that our first stop in the morning. The hotel was a bit pricey by my standards and the cheapest rooms were called the ‘Modesty King’ or the ‘Humble Queen’. I thought humble queen sounded a bit like Lucy, well the queen part of it anyway, so I settled for that.

  We took a cab to the airport and were there early enough for me to have a drink; “to calm my nerves,” I told Lucy. She raised her eyebrows and tutted before grudgingly accepting a non-alcoholic fruit punch.

  “So what did you think of the old guy then?” I said.

  “I thought he was charming. I hope we can help him – I’m dreading finding out that something awful has happened to Marisa.”

  “The thing is, Lucy,” I said, beckoning the barman to bring me a beer, “we have not one but two missing girls.”

  “You mean…?”

  “According to Roberts it was Marisa’s new friend who needed to work for a while and Marisa decided to keep her company. It’s logical to assume that they were staying together and quite possibly working in the same place. If Marisa disappeared, then the other girl would have reported her missing – unless of course they both went missing together.”

  “I wonder if the police have thought of that,” Lucy said.

  “Well no doubt we’ll find out tomorrow. Is Brenda happily ensconced in the office?”

  “She’ll start tomorrow; she’s looking forward to it. She loves the new place; I showed it to her yesterday when I gave her the keys. She thinks the posters are really cool. I told her there won’t be much for her to do except to keep Tony and June employed as much as possible. She says my life sounds thrilling – you know, traveling all over the place and solving crimes. I think she’s a bit jealous.”

  “Well it may not be that thrilling traipsing around bars and restaurants for a few days seeing if anyone recognizes Marisa.”

  “It’s a lovely name, isn’t it? I wonder where Mr. Roberts got it from. You know not long before Marisa was born Marisa Tomei won an Oscar for My Cousin Vinnie which is one of my favorite movies. Maybe Mr. Roberts liked that movie too.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t ask him,” I said glibly.

  “I didn’t think of it then,” she said pensively.

  “It seems to me that you have a lot of favorite movies.” I said.

  “Well I have lists in my head; separated into genres of course.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  A disembodied voice was calling our flight so we trudged off to the gate.

  “Pity we’re not going somewhere warm” Lucy said.

  “It’ll be warmer than where we were last month.”

  “We’re not really staying in the Best Western are we?” Lucy said glumly.

  “No I was only teasing you. We’ve got a room fit for a queen.”

  *

  The sheriff’s office in Springfield is on North Boonville Avenue just a block or two from the interstate; it was a short walk from our hotel and we were there at nine. Detective Matt Peters, a congenial-looking man in his late thirties with prematurely greying hair, was there to meet us, the appointment having already been made by Roberts. After we’d introduced ourselves Peters sat on the corner of his desk while we made ourselves as comfortable as possible in a couple of office chairs.

  “There’s not much I can tell you that you don’t already know,” he said. “Right now you’re looking at the only detective assigned to deal with missing persons in Greene County, which encompasses most of urban Springfield and a total population of nearly a quarter of a million people. My duties here include not only locating missing persons but also apprehending dangerous fugitives and coordinating with the United States Marshall’s Fugitive Task Force.”

  “By yourself?” I said.

  He smiled. “The Greene County sheriff’s office has an operating budget of almost fourteen million dollars,” he said. “We employ 266 personnel with 46 Reserves and over 200 Citizen Volunteers. We operate a jail with an average daily inmate population of 544. There are 88 sworn Deputies and 178 non-sworn employees at the Greene County Sheriff's Office. FBI studies show the regional average of sworn officers to citizens is one officer for every 417 citizens. Greene County has a ratio of one sworn deputy for every 956 citizens. It would take 114 more sworn deputies to reach the regional average.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Lucy said.

  “We manage okay, but we don’t have the resources or manpower to launch a major investigation every time a teenager goes missing I’m afraid.”

  “Well you seem to have done everything that could be expected of you,” I said. “It’s up to us now to see if we can find the young lady; or at least find out what’s happened to her.”

  Peters pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Right now we have thirty-six active cases of missing persons on file. Some of them date back a long way, but sixteen of the cases occurred within the last twelve months. There’s no way of knowing how many of the cases involve persons who’ve disappeared on purpose. Frankly there’s usually little I can do. Apart from the initial routine enquiries we publicize the cases as best we can; putting up posters and so on. Of course what you have to understand is that the cases I’ve mentioned relate to Springfield residents, or former residents, perhaps. They don’t include cases of persons who disappear on the way through the city or through the state.”

  “I appreciate your difficulty,” I said. “Nevertheless there’s good reason for concluding that Marisa disappeared while in Springfield. It doesn’t seem likely that she’s left town – at least not voluntarily.”

  “I agree the trail appears to end here,” he said. “Since Marisa’s disappearance her cell phone hasn’t been used and her bank account hasn’t been accessed, neither has the debit card that her father gave to her for emergencies. I understand from Mr. Roberts that she has no other means of support.”

  “Did Mr. Roberts tell you about the other girl? Apparently she was travelling with a girl she met on the bus,” Lucy said.

  “So I understand; but nobody’s reported the other girl missing. Of course, her friends and family may not even know if she’s missing too; it depends how closely she kept in touch with them. As it happens Marisa called her father to tell him where she was and also told him she intended to stay in town for about a month; but as for the other girl we know absolutely nothing. We don’t have a name, let alone a picture or an ID.”

  “Perhaps she found somewhere to work during the week or so before she went missing,” I said, “but she withdrew a hundred dollars from her bank account on the twenty seventh of January so she might not have found work by then. All we know for certain after that is that she failed to call her father on his birthday on the second of February.”

  I noticed a look of slight skepticism on Peters’ face.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Kids forget their parents birthdays all the time; but I’ve been in this business a long while and having seen Mr. Roberts I’m sure that Marisa was not that kind of kid. Anyway we have a gap of six days during which she probably disappeared. It may be possible to narrow that down if I can find out where she was living or working prior to her disappearance.”

  “As for where she was staying we faxed flyer
s to the hotels and motels. While her photograph may not have been much help there’s no record of anyone with that name having stayed in Springfield recently,” Peters said. “As for where she may have worked there are countless places with a high turnover of temporary staff.”

  “As for the hotels and motels,” I said, “If the two girls took a room together then either of them could be on the register. If Marisa’s friend is on the register, then a search would turn up zilch. As for the flyers, with no criticism of your department intended, most of those are probably sitting unread in the desk clerk’s drawer. It’s going to be down to old-fashioned legwork. Fortunately, we have the time, and I’m fairly confident we’ll turn up something.”

  “You’ve got quite a task ahead of you,” Peters said; “but I wish you luck. If I get any new information I’ll be sure to let you know right away.”

  I thanked Peters for his time and Lucy and I headed back to the hotel.

  “So where do you suggest we start looking,” Lucy said.

  “We’ll start at the bus station. That’s where she was when she called her father and told him she was going to look for a place to stay. It’s logical that she and her friend would have looked for someplace nearby, at least as a start. I’m sure they’d have been managing on a small budget so we can forget about most of the hotels.”

  “Okay,” Lucy said, “let’s go.”

  Chapter Six

  Jacky

  The Greyhound bus station in Springfield is on East Kearney Street, otherwise known as the fabled Route 66. On the way Lucy googled the area for motels. About a mile west of the bus station is the junction with Route 65 which leads north to Interstate 44. Along Route 65 were about twenty hotels and motels but my attention was drawn to a motel called the Red Haven which was about five hundred yards to the west of the bus station on the south side of the highway. It wasn’t much to look at, but then it wasn’t designed to be looked at. A yellow neon sign with a red arrow snaked around it told us there were vacancies. There was an L-shaped block of twenty-six rooms and a large lot with a single truck parked there. Right next door to the Red Haven was a diner so we stepped inside for coffee and Lucy brought her laptop. We found the Red Haven on google and were invited to be the first to leave a review. Lack of reviews was always a good sign in my experience – lousy motels usually had a lot of lousy reviews. On the other hand, who was going to go to the trouble of leaving a review? So it probably meant nothing. What did mean something was the price – claiming to be ‘from forty dollars’ – and its proximity to the bus station.

  “I’ve got a good feeling about this place,” I told Lucy. “They’d have been tired. They arrived in the morning so they’d been travelling overnight; why go any further than this? Let’s finish up and see how good the desk clerk’s memory is.”

  In the reception area an amiable-faced large lady of about forty, with a name clip that announced to the world that she was called Pamela, was on the phone. She smiled across at us and mouthed that she’d be with us in a moment.

  “Yeah, it was a surprise to me too,” she said into the phone. “I’ll call ya back, got some customers.” She put the phone back in its cradle and smiled warmly at us. “So what can I do for you folks?” she said. She peered over our shoulders into the parking lot. “You don’t have a vehicle, huh? You come in on the bus?”

  “No we came by taxi as a matter of fact,” I said. “We’re not looking for a place to stay I’m afraid; we’re looking for a lost girl − two lost girls in fact.” I handed her my card and one of Lucy’s. Lucy’s card had embossed gold lettering on a white background; mine didn’t.

  I took out the envelope with Marisa’s pictures and spread them on the counter-top. “This young lady has been missing for about two or three weeks,” I said. “Lucy and I have been hired to find her if we can. She’s from Boston, and we know that she and another girl arrived on January 23rd. She called her father from the bus station and told him they were going to find a place to stay. Given the proximity of this place to the bus station and your more than reasonable prices I think there’s a good chance that they may have come here.”

  Pamela reached over and thumbed through the register. “January 23rd,” she muttered, “let me see. This could be them.” She turned the register around so that I could read the page and pointed at an entry timed at eleven ten. “Is that the name?”

  The name in the register was Vicky Boraski. “The girl in the photographs is Marisa Roberts,” I said, “but we don’t know the name of her travelling companion, so it could be. Were you on duty that day?”

  “No, that was Jacky. You want me to call her?”

  “I’d love you to call her, but we may draw a blank. Maybe we can arrange to meet somewhere convenient for her.”

  “Nowhere’s more convenient than this,” she said; “she’s in the end chalet, though she’s prob’ly snoring her head off right now.” She laughed and her shoulders shook sending a ripple effect down the rest of her body.

  “We can come back,”

  “Hell no, I’ll go wake her up. Jimmy!” she called out.

  A skinny kid of about fourteen put his head around the door behind her. “This is my son, Jimmy,” she said. “Jimmy, you look after the desk for me for a moment; I gotta go get Jacky up.”

  “Sure mom,” Jimmy said. He looked at us. “Hi I’m Jimmy,” he said. “You folks from out of town?” Pamela was already outside, striding purposefully to keep the cold at bay.

  “We sure are,” I said. “I’m Kane and this is Lucy – we’re from Boston.”

  “Wow,” he said. “We get folks from all over, here.”

  “I bet you do,” Lucy said. “You’re right next to the Mother Road.”

  “Yep,” he said. “The birthplace of Route 66.”

  “I guess that’s one of the first things you learn in school,” Lucy said.

  “First paved highway to stretch all the way from east to west,” he said proudly. “I’m gonna follow it all the way to LA one day.”

  “Not the other way – to Chicago?” I said.

  “Nah, too cold. I’m gonna get myself to LA and be a movie star; or maybe join a band or something; I haven’t right figured it out yet.”

  Pamela returned to tell us that Jacky would be over in about fifteen minutes.

  “Okay, we’ll go and grab a bite to eat next door,” I said. “You want to come with us Jimmy? Lucy here knows everything there is to know about movies − maybe movie stars too.”

  Jimmy looked at his mom. “Yeah, go on then,” she said.

  Fifteen minutes later we were back, and a few minutes after that Jacky appeared. She was a tall girl in her early twenties wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Both arms were covered in multicolored tattoos which disappeared under the short sleeves of her shirt; who knows where they ended up.

  “Hi Jacky, I’m Kane and this is Lucy. We’re sorry to bother you,” I said, “but it’s vitally important that we find these girls as soon as possible.”

  “Ah, shoot it’s no problem. Pam told me who you’re looking for; I know her − let me look at the pictures.” She looked at Marisa’s photographs for a brief moment. “That’s her,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. I spent some time with them after they checked in here.”

  “Look, can we take you next door for coffee, and you tell us as much as you can?”

  “Okay.”

  The single waitress in the diner welcomed us back for the third time in less than an hour. We sat in a booth by the window.

  “Before you tell us anything let me fill you in on what’s happened,” I said to Jacky. “Lucy and I have been hired by Marisa’s father to try to locate her. We don’t know anything about Vicky, the girl she was travelling with, except that they met on the bus from Chicago. Marisa told her father they intended to stay here for about a month before continuing west; Vicky needed to work for a while. About a week
later they both disappeared. The folks in the sheriff’s office have done their best but haven’t turned up any leads. What we need to do is find out where they were staying and working before they disappeared.”

  “Well you’ve come to the right place,” Jacky said. “How’d you figure they’d been here?”

  “A lucky guess,” I said.

  “Well not really,” Lucy said. “We knew they’d be tired after their journey from Chicago – they’d been travelling overnight – and this place ticked all the right boxes. We know they were travelling on a budget; it seemed a logical place to start.”

  “The police never came here,” she said.

  “Well, they’re a little busy and a little short-staffed,” I said. “They faxed flyers to hotels and motels with Marisa’s picture.”

  “We oughta get that fax fixed,” she said; “been sitting under the counter for the last coupla months.”

  “Can you tell us as much as you know?” Lucy said.

  “Well I was behind the desk when they came in. I guess they were tired but it didn’t show because they were both so excited. Marisa loved my tats – you’ve probably noticed.” She grinned. “Anyway she wanted to know what they all meant, because they’re like pictures. Marisa thought they were like symbolic or something. She laughed when I told her I was mainly blasted when I had them done and I just chose them because I liked the look, y’know; they don’t really mean anything. But Marisa said they did mean something because they said something about me; about who I am. Anyway they stayed here for,” she thought for a moment, “three days. It was a Friday when they arrived and they stayed over the weekend. I got them a temporary job right here in the diner – Vicky did some work in the kitchen and Marisa waited tables, but it was only until they could find their feet. I told them I’d ask around and Tommy said he would too; see if we could find a better paid job for them both to do.”

  “Tommy?” I said.

  “He’s my old man; he rides with the Scouts.”

  “The Scouts?” I said.