by Stuart Safft
“Yes, I hope so. Please call me immediately if you learn anything.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. And please let me know if you hear something before I do.”
“I will. Thank you, Adele. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Sanders.”
Steve then took the wireless phone and the local phone book back to the couch, sat down again and began calling each of their neighbors and the few friends and relatives he could think of. But the results were no more useful than the call with Adele.
While Steve was busy on the phone, Joe and Ginny split up and started searching the house. Joe took the main floor, focusing on the kitchen and home office to try to find anything that might indicate where Ellen had gone. He rapidly rummaged through most of the kitchen. The only thing of possible interest was a copy of Ellen’s contact information from her cell phone and laptop; overly organized Ellen had printed this out and placed it in one of the kitchen drawers. Joe took a photograph of this list. He then went into the office and carefully went through all of the drawers. He looked for but didn’t find a paper calendar or agenda. Skimming through the papers stacked on the desk, Joe came up empty-handed. Returning to the kitchen, he picked up Ellen’s smartphone and laptop, opened them, and after a moment walked back to Steve in the family room.
“Mr. Sanders, I can’t open your wife’s cell phone or computer. Do you know the passwords your wife uses for these?”
“Not really,” answered Steve. “I used to know them, but a couple of years ago her company started requiring everyone to change all their passwords every three or four months and I lost track.” Steve gave Joe a few old passwords that he remembered. Joe tried them, but the phone and laptop remained locked.
“In fact, her assistant said she called Ellen’s cell phone, but only got her voice mail. It’s probably still set on vibrate only, which is what Ellen sets it to at bedtime every night so that calls don’t wake us up all night long. That’s probably why I never heard it ring. My God, what if Ellen’s been trying to call it to tell me where she is or to ask for help?”
“That’s unlikely, Mr. Sanders. If she couldn’t reach you by calling her cell phone, surely she would have tried your cell phone or your home phone,” replied Joe.
“Whew! Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Meanwhile, Ginny was searching upstairs, checking all the rooms. Nothing seemed out of place and nothing offered any clues. No clues directly regarding Ellen’s disappearance, that is. But Ginny couldn’t help but draw several conclusions from what she saw. Both Ellen and Steve appeared to be very neat, perhaps almost obsessive — every single item was neatly put away, no clothing was lying out, all the night table and bathroom drawers were fully closed. Ellen, based upon the clothing hanging in her massive closet, appeared to dress well with a nice sense of traditional style. Most of her clothes were work-related: dress suits, twin sets, white blouses, black, medium-heel shoes. Even her casual clothing — shorts, bathing suits and so on — was attractive but conservative. Her makeup reflected someone who cared about her looks but was not fixated on her appearance. Steve’s clothing — several black and navy suits, along with a collection of white shirts and striped ties — was what one expected a conservative lawyer to wear. All the clothing was expensive, but not extravagant, indicating a quality level consistent with the house itself and all its furnishings.
Ginny returned downstairs. She and Joe both shook their heads to indicate they’d found nothing useful. They then checked out the basement together, after which they checked the garage and Ellen’s car, paying particular attention to the trunk, the driver’s seat and the glove compartment. After striking out, they toured the property, focusing on the more densely planted beds and the swimming pool. Again, nothing.
Checking back with Steve, they learned that he had finished calling everyone he could think of. No one he spoke with could offer any help, and he had left voice mail messages for the several people who hadn’t answered the phone when he called.
“Can we sit down and talk for a few minutes, Mr. Sanders?” asked Joe.
Leading them back into the family room, Steve replied, “Sure, but call me ‘Steve.’ ”
“OK, Mr. San, er Steve,” said Joe. “Well, we did the simple initial things, but nothing popped up.”
“Does that mean you’re done for now?” asked Steve in a half-disappointed and half-challenging tone of voice.
“No, not at all,” replied Ginny, “even though, as we discussed, we can’t start the official case until tomorrow morning.”
“That’s crazy! What can you do now?”
“First of all,” said Ginny calmly, “we’d like to borrow a recent photo of your wife that we can distribute as part of the BOLO that we’ll be issuing.” Steve nodded, headed for the home office and was soon back with a 5-by-8-inch color photo of Ellen from the waist up.
Ginny took the photo from Steve. “Thanks. We’ll return this as soon as we’re done with it.”
“OK,” replied Steve.
“Please describe your wife,” continued Ginny.
“Uh, OK,” replied Steve. “She’s very pretty. She has dirty blond hair that comes down to about here,” said Steve as he held his hand just below his shoulder. “She’s 5 feet-10 inches tall and slender — not skinny, just slender.”
“What’s her weight?” asked Ginny.
“Uh, I don’t know exactly, but someplace around 150.”
“Anything else?” asked Ginny.
“Ellen and I often joke about everyone thinking she must be my trophy wife. She has the looks for it, and she is 11 years younger than me. But what people don’t realize is that besides her being extremely bright, she earns more than three times what I do.”
“So, how old does that make her?” asked Joe.
“41.”
“What was she wearing when you saw her this morning?” continued Joe.
“What she wears most every day to work. A dark blue or black, I can never tell which, jacket and skirt, with a white blouse and some kind of scarf around her neck.”
“Any unusual jewelry?” asked Joe.
“Just the regular stuff. Her wedding and engagement rings, a couple of plain bracelets and a gold necklace. Nothing unusual.”
“Any tattoos or unusual birthmarks?” asked Joe.
“No.” Then quickly standing up, Steve continued, “Hey, are you asking this stuff to help identify her body? Christ! What aren’t you telling me? Please! I need to know!”
“No. No. Hold on, Steve. Don’t jump to any crazy conclusions,” quickly responded Ginny. “We’re just trying to get a complete description of your wife that we can include with her photo in the BOLO we’ll be issuing when we get back to headquarters.”
Sitting back down, Steve replied, “Sorry. I’m just a wreck right now, and I can’t think very straight.”
“Not a problem. We understand,” said Ginny.
Joe then started a more rigorous series of questioning. “Steve, has your wife ever gone someplace before without telling you in advance? Have you and she been having any relationship problems recently? Did your wife seem at all different lately? Was she worried or stressed more than usual? Any problems at work? Do you know who she was talking to on the phone earlier today when you returned from jogging? Can you think of anyone who wants to hurt her or is upset with her? Or with you? Walk us through again the exact sequence and timing of things this morning.”
Steve answered all these questions with a series of “No’s” and recounted the activities of earlier that day.
“When you left to go jogging this morning, was the door locked?” asked Joe.
“Yes. We lock it and put the alarm on every night when we go to bed.”
“So, the alarm was on and the door was locked when you were leaving to jog?”
“Yes
, but I turned the alarm off and unlocked the door as I was leaving.”
“Let me be specific here. After you were out the door, did you stop and reset the alarm or lock the door?”
“No. I never do. It’s very safe out here. When we’re home and awake, the doors are normally unlocked, even if we’re out back in the yard or the pool.”
“OK, thanks,” said Joe. “Now I’ve got a more awkward question, but it needs to be asked.”
“OK, go for it.”
“Any reason to think that your wife may be seeing another man?”
“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
Forty-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.”