by James Renner
I just wanted to write to you and say thank you for your work on Maura’s case and that I am sorry I haven’t contacted you in the past.… Of course I would love answers to this mystery as much as everyone else. Unfortunately I think you know everything and probably more than I do at this point.…
As I left Katie’s house, Mike Lewis, the private eye, e-mailed me another dossier. Out of curiosity, he’d run a background check on Maura. Something odd popped up. Someone had used Maura’s social security number in Saco, Maine, in October of 2004, eight months after she disappeared.
My next stop was the house in Hanover that Maura’s sister, Kathleen, had once shared with Tim Carpenter. When I arrived at the modest split-level, I found a construction crew breaking for lunch. They were busy remodeling the place. The owner was there. Said she got the property for a steal but it was turning into a lot of work. No, she didn’t know where I could find Kathleen. Heard she’d gotten into some trouble.
The guy next door was more help. “Don’t know where Kathleen is,” he said. “But Tim’s at work, right here in town. You could probably catch him.”
“Where?”
The town council calls it a “transfer station,” but everyone else just calls it the dump. Tim was wearing a fluorescent vest, directing traffic to the smasher. The smasher is in a concrete ditch about six feet across and thirty long. People put their trash in there and then a giant stainless-steel piston smashes everything flat.
My first impression of Tim Carpenter was that he was the sort of guy who’d seen hard living. Tragically skinny. Thin, long face; patchy beard. Based on looks, he was the kind of guy who’d deck you for saying, “Hi.” But once he started talking, I was taken by his levity, his carefree old-hippie attitude, that openness you get from surviving hard times.
He started at the beginning. And I mean the beginning. Turns out Tim was adopted, born at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers up in Burlington. He was part Blackfoot Indian, he said, which explained the stories his neighbors had about the tepee he built in his backyard. He’d met Kathleen when she was still living in Hanson, next door to his parents’ place. He seems unconcerned with the question of love. It was a relationship. It happened. There were good times. It ended.
They were both into drinking and drugs, he said. But he got sober and she didn’t. “I took her to detox in Branson. That’s where she met that St. Francis fellow. Couldn’t keep away from him, after.”
“Help me with some answers,” I said.
Most of what he had to say concerned the weeks after Maura vanished. Tim and Kathleen had driven up to Wells River right away to help Fred with the search.
“He was weird about it,” said Tim. “Me, if it was my daughter, I’da been outside at the crack of dawn, starting the searches every damn day. Him, he’d get up maybe 10 A.M. and I’d say, ‘We better get started.’ Then he’d stop about 5 P.M. and bring everyone to the restaurant and start drinking and it would be a party.”
Tim felt that, when the media was around, Fred would put on a show, act manic, like they had to find her right now, right fucking now. But as soon as the cameras were gone, he’d slow up and go back to normal, Tim said.
Later, Fred asked Tim to drive his truck to Maura’s dorm. By the time they got there, Fred had put everything Maura left—a computer, clothes—into boxes. They loaded the stuff into Tim’s flatbed and from there, everything went into his closet in Hanover. Fred was not interested in picking through the material for clues, so Tim let another guy, a volunteer named Rick, look through it to see if he could find anything interesting.
“There was something Fred said once that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” said Tim. “I remember him pointing up to the mountain and saying, ‘She walked up there. We’ll find her at the top. Drunk and naked.’”
The last he’d heard, Kathleen was still living up in Swanton or St. Albans. Maybe homeless.
We were wrapping up, so I asked Tim a tough question about Fred. He thought for a couple seconds, then nodded. “Twice, Kathleen got blackout drunk and said something about it,” he said. “But it was never something I asked about when she was sober.”
After that conversation I drove directly to Hanson, hoping to catch Fred himself, at his old house. But he wasn’t there. He’s lived on the Cape for some time now. I knew that. But Fred, Jr., was home. I told him what Tim had told me.
“Never happened,” he said, standing in the doorway. “You know what? I want to reach out and strangle you right now. But I know you’re goading me. You want me to kick your ass. That would make a good scene in your book.”
* * *
On my way to Swanton, somewhere along Route 91 northbound, Tim called me.
“I thought of something else,” he said. “That guy Rick, the guy who was helping us out? You should talk to him. His name’s Rick Graves.” He gave me the man’s number, and I recognized the area code right away.
“Wait. This number isn’t Massachusetts,” I said. “Where’s this guy from?”
“Saco, Maine,” said Tim.
FORTY-SEVEN
Graves
“I was hip to hip with Fred on those searches up in New Hampshire,” said Graves when I got him on the horn. He was forty years old in 2004, working at Home Depot, measuring floors, when he heard about Maura’s disappearance. Graves was a searcher—that’s what he did for fun, searched for stuff. Not just people, but downed planes or anything that was lost. He’d gone searching for a Learjet that crashed into a mountain around that time. When he saw a news story on TV about Maura, he figured he’d drive down and help. He went with a friend named David Lachance, a self-taught dowser.
They found Fred at the Wells River Motel. The family was glad to have the extra help, he said. Graves rented a room and began to explore the woods around Haverhill for Maura’s body. Every weekend for a year Graves drove to New Hampshire, then every other week the following year. “It takes you over,” he explained. “It was my whole life for three years.”
Tim and Kathleen helped with the searches, too. So did Fred’s cousins Sookie and Patti. It worked like this: In the mornings, Fred would go jogging, then return to the motel to shower. After that, Fred would give everyone “leads” and they would break into small groups to go scouting. The immediate area around where Maura was last seen was heavily searched.
Though they never found a body, they did, occasionally, find odd things. Graves found an empty vodka bottle on Lime Kiln Road, not far from the crash, but nothing ever came of it. Once, Fred and Kathleen discovered a pair of thong underwear in a driveway. But the cops said it wasn’t Maura’s. “Me, I think it might have been hers,” Graves said. Then there was the time he found a trash bag full of blood and hair in the woods. Everyone got really excited for a while, but the remains turned out to be a deer.
Days like that took a toll on everyone. Sometimes Graves would call his girlfriend back in Maine and tell her he was never going to come back to Haverhill, that he was done. But he always returned the next weekend.
At the end of each day, everyone would meet back at the motel and then go out to eat. Fred always paid the bill. “I offered once,” said Graves, “but he wasn’t having it.”
Graves said Fred was decent enough, considering the circumstances. “I took psychology,” he said. “I know good people and I know bad people. Fred is conservative. He only talks to who he wants to talk to.”
Fred gave him special assignments, like handling all the psychics who called. Graves also wrote up the Freedom of Information request that Fred used to launch his legal battle against the State of New Hampshire. And Fred allowed Graves to put a trace on Maura’s social security number, which is why his address in Saco dinged on my P.I.’s background check.
Locals often stopped by the motel to share tips with them, some of which they forwarded to police. One big lead was about a red truck seen near the crash the night of Maura’s disappearance. Someone got the license plate number and Graves was able to tr
ace it back to a local man. But nobody ever talked to him.
In the boxes from Maura’s dorm, Graves found a few notes to Billy. He discovered that Maura was contacting brewpubs all around Massachusetts, looking for a job. But there was no smoking gun in all that junk, he said.
Looking back, Graves believes something of great importance happened at that party the night Maura wrecked her father’s car on the way to his hotel.
“We heard a lot of rumors about that party,” he said. “We never got everything out of Kate or Sara. We never figured out who else was there. I think one of them knows something.”
Graves had some tough questions for Fred, too. Such as why he sometimes lied to the media. The story Fred told Graves didn’t line up with the story in the newspapers about the night of that party. “When Maura drove to his motel that night, the manager called Fred’s room and told him to come to the lobby. Fred told me that when he got there, he found Maura slumped over in a chair, crying. He never told me what she was crying about. And I never pushed him. One guy you don’t want to push is Fred Murray. He’ll clam up and never talk to you again.”
One afternoon, Graves drove into Hanover to pick up Tim. Fred was there. But Fred didn’t want to talk to Graves, Tim told him. Fred didn’t even want to see him. “I haven’t talked to him since,” said Graves. “That was a real kick in the ass, you know? He just wants it left alone now. I think he just wants to be at peace.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Borderland
On my way to St. Albans in search of Kathleen Murray, I stopped for a bite and to check my e-mail. Several Irregulars alerted me to an official statement that had just been released by Maura’s siblings and posted to the Maura Murray Facebook page. My recent conversation with Fred, Jr., had drawn a response.
Over the past couple of years, a number of people have decided that personal gain by making unsubstantiated claims is more important than the fact a young girl is missing and a family is left shattered, still seeking answers. Maura’s story is not a fictitious account dreamed up by a script writer. Instead, it is an actual case that still needs answers. Painting a story based upon conjecture and allegations, as well as sensationalizing to meet some Hollywoodistic standard, seem more important to some than a bonafide effort to help us discover Maura’s whereabouts. Recently, outrageous and completely false allegations vilifying our father and our family have surfaced during this difficult time. While some may give instant credibility to these allegations, there is never a mention of any investigation to determine the presence of any biases or motives to fabricate of these sources. We feel all sources of information, along with any persons of interest, should endure the same level of scrutiny to determine if derogatory facts exist which may call their credibility into question. We remain a united family struggling with the unconscionable burden of a missing loved one, a burden that we wish upon no one. Each and every day our family lives and relives this tragedy, the weight of which has affected us all, none more so than our father. We remain steadfast in our efforts to find our sister, and we thank all of those who have provided and continue to provide love and support along this difficult road.
Regards,
Kathleen, Freddie, Julie and Kurtis
That letter stung. It did. It made me feel just like the sleazy reporter they make me out to be. I’m used to this kind of reaction from the families of murder suspects. But coming from the family of the person I was trying to find was a slap in the face. What bothered me most was the easy argument that I was out for personal gain.
By that time, I had spent over $500 on public records. I had traveled to New England four times. During each of those trips, I paid for hotels and food and gas. I had yet to receive even an advance on the book. My time would have been better spent writing a new novel.
I found it curious that Fred had not signed the letter.
Confused as ever, I got back in my car and drove north.
* * *
There is something wrong with Swanton. There’s some darkness in the musty breeze rolling off Lake Champlain, in the low-lying gray clouds, the brick-front downtown slanted against the main road. This place is American. Americana. The Dam Furniture Store with its hand-painted sign; the Swanton House of Pizza by the curve down to the Missisquoi River. It doesn’t feel right. None of it. The edge of Canada is within sight. Directly north is the part of Canada that is decidedly French, home of the Québécois. So yes, Swanton is part of the United States, but there’s something foreign about the place. In the architecture. In the lilting of the words from the mouths of strangers. There is no cultural anchor here, and the effect is disconcerting.
My iPhone cut out on 91. Without GPS, I had to cruise around a bit before I found Jonergin Drive. Kathleen had lived in a blue trailer here. I arrived at night and no one was home. I struck up a conversation with the family next door. The man was cleaning his boat and invited me inside. His wife told me that she remembered Kathleen, that she’d been one of “St. Francis’s girls,” but she hadn’t seen her in a while. St. Francis was gone, too.
I grabbed a room at a cheap motel down the road. It was little more than a flophouse, and bitter cold when I entered. It took ten minutes for the industrial wall heater to wake up the room. I got up early and made my way to a greasy-spoon diner on the other side of town. Gnomini was waiting for me inside.
I’d never met any of my Irregulars before. “Gnomini” often posted on Websleuths, and was one of the frequent readers who helped me now and then. Turned out he was a former reporter, retired and hard of hearing. After breakfast, I got into his car so he could drive me to another address we’d found for Kathleen. As we drove across the train tracks, I thought again about how eager, apparently, I was to get into strange men’s cars. I didn’t know this man. Not really. He was no more than an online avatar to me. He could kill me and bury me and nobody would ever know. Is that what I wanted? I was beginning to suspect that maybe it was.
The address we had turned out to be the probation office in St. Albans. That’s where Kathleen’s mail was being forwarded.
Gnomini took me back to the diner and then, on a whim, I drove by the trailer on Jonergin, where Kathleen had lived with St. Francis, one more time. A man was inside, ripping out the walls and throwing everything onto the lawn. I parked on the shoulder and walked over, knocked on the open door.
“Just bought the place,” he told me after I introduced myself. “Gonna gut it and fix it up, rent it out.”
I asked him if he’d found anything interesting while cleaning.
“Needles, man,” he said. “Fucking needles everywhere.”
FORTY-NINE
I Saw Your Think
“I have to tell you about something that happened with Casey,” Julie said shortly after I returned home. Normally, when my wife said something like this, it wasn’t good. But this was different, I could tell. Julie didn’t look sad; she looked excited and maybe a little scared.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Well. We’re sitting at the table, having dinner. And I was thinking about what I would pack him for lunch tomorrow. And I thought to myself, I’ll make him a salami sandwich; I bet he’d like that. I’d never made him a salami sandwich before but then I thought it, that I would. And then he looks at me and says, ‘Yes. I’d like a salami sandwich for lunch. You could pack it in my bag.’”
Something you should know about my wife. She is a skeptic to the nth degree. She was raised Catholic but was never confirmed because she didn’t believe. When pressed, she’ll call herself an agnostic, but she’s really an atheist, or damn close. She doesn’t believe in UFOs. She doesn’t believe in Bigfoot. Doesn’t believe in ghosts.
“Do you think he read your mind?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I asked him why he said it and then he said, ‘Mom, I can see your think.’”
“‘Your think’?”
“Like a balloon or something above my head. Like a thought balloon from a comic strip.”
&nbs
p; It became a cute running joke for us, this phrase “I can see your think.” But it happened again and again, with increasing regularity.
On the way to soccer practice, he asked me who would coach his team that day.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “The coach, of course.”
He looked troubled. “What if she’s sick?”
“She’s never been too sick for practice before,” I assured him.
When we got there, a man we didn’t recognize was gathering up the kids. The coach had called in sick.
The defining moment for me happened at Wal-Mart. I took Casey to return a birthday present. We were in line at Customer Service behind a quiet, elderly woman. Casey began to sing, “Just thinkin’ about, tomorrow…”
The woman kind of jumped and looked around at my son. Something had terrified her. But all he was doing was singing this song from Annie. I thought it was maybe a little weird, since we hadn’t seen that movie in like six months and he was singing it out of the blue, but so what?
As she was leaving, the woman stopped next to me. She seemed to consider whether or not to say anything, and then finally she said, “I’ve had that song stuck in my head since yesterday. The one your son starting singing. I think he picked it out of my head.”
“He likes that movie,” I said by way of explanation.
But she shook her head. “He didn’t start it at the beginning. He started it right where I was in the song and sang along with me in my head. And now it’s gone.”
It was early April and I was driving Casey to school, with Lainey in her car seat.
“Do you want to go to jail?” he asked.
“What? No,” I said. “Why would you ask that?”
He just shrugged. But I could see his face in the rearview, and he looked troubled. He looked the way he’d looked when he knew his coach was sick.