“Such as?” I asked.
“They didn’t really have all that much. According to the one officer, they didn’t give the matter much thought at first. They never take a disappearance from a dorm room seriously. They’ve opened too many missing person reports, only to find that the ‘missing’ person was sleeping off a bender at a friend’s place.”
I nodded. I could easily understand that. Personal responsibility was not something that all undergraduates displayed.
“So it was several days before they really started looking for him. The trail was pretty dead by that point. The officer estimated that it had been four or five days until they began to take it seriously. Fisher could have been anywhere by then.”
I had figured that they hadn’t gotten far. The police had assumed this case to be like a thousand others where the so-called victim showed up safe in a few days. So they tried to make up for lost time, but as I was learning, there were not many solid clues to be found.
“Did they say anything about follow-ups or new leads?” I asked.
“No, no one ever came forward and admitted anything. The police’s normal CIs were unlikely to have anything to do with a graduating student athlete. They just didn’t run in the same circles.”
“Could you find out about the security guard’s stabbing? Maybe get the file?” I asked, still wondering about that. I was going to come at this case from different angles than the original police investigation.
The police had been stymied, so why go down that road again? I wondered if there was more that even Land had not been able to glean from the police, but at the same time, I would have to start this case from scratch. I wondered how long it would really take to get to the bottom of Fisher’s disappearance. Would I still get my information if I came up empty-handed? I felt sure that I could trust what the professor said, but I also knew my own work ethic, and just being paid for a part of a job would seem unfair.
I wouldn’t have an “in” with the police, since the good detective seemed to be blocking any possible collaboration with the police local to the university, but at the same time, I doubted that either the police or Danvers had come up with a list of people who had known Ronald Fisher in his last days of college.
Land excused himself after that, and I went back to Dogs on the Roll. I kept sneaking glances at Sabine, to see if she suspected what I knew, but it was hard to tell. The Mendoza family could be inscrutable at times.
Finally, the shift was done, and I took a short respite with Land before I headed over to Let it Slide for the evening. On the short walk over to the other food truck, I dialed all three numbers that Professor Wallace had given me. Of course, at a little before three on a weekday afternoon, all three went to voicemail, but I repeated my story of writing an article regarding the disappearance of Ronald Fisher. I had hopes that at least one of the alumni would call me back and have some more information that the police had glazed over in their original investigation.
Kamila was already in place and cutting up the condiments for the sliders. We’d found a new wholesaler for the meat portion of the sliders. I’d found a remarkable price on them, which made the truck even more profitable. I was feeling more confident about the long-term viability of things now.
Kamila didn’t have much to say. Other than Carter, all of the employees at the food trucks were rather taciturn. For the most part, I enjoyed being able to concentrate on my tasks at hand and the cases I was looking into. Agatha Christie once admitted that she plotted while washing dishes. I found that taking orders and making change helped me to put puzzles together.
The problem at hand was that Ronald Fisher had disappeared, and no one had seen him dead or alive after that evening. There had been call-ins to the police, people thinking that they’d seen Fisher at the movies, the drive-through, or bank. Some called from across the country. However, the police, who had been following the case more carefully at that point, had followed up on all the sightings and come up with nothing.
My mind told me that Fisher was dead. He’d gone out without sufficient clothing and no money on him. He’d left everything that he owned and walked out into the middle of the night to never return. My computerized searches had turned up no sign of his social security number, no work history, no anything. He’d walked out of the dorm and into the ether, becoming just an unsettling legend to the alumni of my university.
As if on cue, my phone rang. I nodded to the customer and held up a finger for him to wait. I hated to make customers wait for anything, but the number displayed was one of the three alumni I’d called that afternoon.
Sylvia Vallera had been listed as a friend of Fisher’s. At the time, I’d thought she was perhaps a love interest, but the RA’s statements made me wonder if that was true. Perhaps she was just a friend. I’d find out now.
I clicked on and answered the phone. “Hello?” I said hopefully.
“Are you Maeve Mendoza?” the voice asked. “I had a message to call you.”
Though she didn’t mention it, I’d been very explicit in my message about what I wanted. I wasn’t in a place to ambush anyone, and I hoped that a few minutes of reflection might bring back memories that would add important details to my search.
“Speaking,” I replied, thinking of the customers who could hear every word that I was saying. I would have to be circumspect in my questions and responses.
“Listen, I think we need to meet in person,” she said without preamble. “I thought I could do this over the phone, but I can’t. I want to hear more about how you got involved in this, and I have things to say that I don’t want recorded on the phone. I can feel safer that this isn’t being recorded if I am in the same room with you.”
I tried to imagine a world where someone was quite so paranoid about something that had occurred a generation before ours. I realized that Sylvia was waiting on an answer. I suggested a few dates and times, and we settled on a meeting at the park near downtown. I wondered if she knew that I had once witnessed a murder there. I had a little shiver up my spine as I hung up. Was I getting in too deep with these people who I’d never met?
Kamila was eyeing me as I slid the phone into my pocket and handled the next few customers. I had almost forgotten that she watched my every move until the crowd thinned out before dinner.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, wondering if I was going to lose another cook. Some people were not ready to deal with an owner who solved crimes in her spare time.
“Yeah, Professor Wallace told me about the disappearance of that young man, and his desire to find out the answers, but I hadn’t realized that you would be literally tracking people down to ask questions. It’s exciting,” she said. This was a far cry from the taciturn cook I’d met at the beginning of shift. She seemed suddenly enthusiastic.
I shrugged. I typically didn’t think what I did was exciting. In most cases, the solutions to these problems were merely a means to an end. In my haste to get the truck back in operation, I’d forgotten that Kamila knew Professor Wallace.
“It’s not a big deal. He promised me some help with optimizing the trucks’ hours of operation to maximize the profits. In most cases, I ask questions to remove a problem that affects me personally.”
She beamed. “How exciting. So do you know who did it?” Her voice was rather breathy as she asked. Equally apparent was the accent which grew thicker when she was excited.
I shook my head. “Early days. I’m just trying to get some background at this point. I have no idea what happened.” I was stuck on her words of “who did it.” Did everyone assume that Fisher had been killed as well?
I decided to follow up with her. “So why do you think someone did it?”
“I guess just from what I’ve heard over the years. A few of the advisors and professors were at the university when it happened, and they all had stories about the disappearance.” She continued to chop while she talked, a type of multi-tasking that would have left me with no fingers.
I was intrigued now. I ha
d assumed that the stories had died down within weeks of the actual event, and here Kamila was telling me about recent discussions about his disappearance.
“Well, for instance, his room was packed up and repurposed in just a couple of weeks. Usually the university waits until the next semester starts to reassign someone to a room, but they had another person in that dorm room in a matter of a week or so. Like someone in charge knew he was never coming back.”
“Who did you hear this from?” I asked. I was intrigued that Kamila who had come from another country and was working here on a visa had heard anything about a 30-year-old mystery. It didn’t seem likely to me.
“Professor Wallace and another man. They were talking about it the day that I went in to see him about the job with you. They were discussing the case and the particular aspects of it that they found odd. I’d not seen the other man before, so I can’t help you identify him.”
I had a moment of panic. I had trusted that Professor Wallace had told me everything that I needed in order to look into this case. However, now I was learning that he’d held back pieces of information. I wasn’t sure if they were important or not, but that was for me to decide in an investigation of the disappearance—not him.
I had thought that the crime had been one of passion, a disappearance perhaps predicated on Fisher’s orientation. Yet now I had to wonder. The university was in charge of housing assignments, and they were very slow to move typically. Instead in this case, they had moved quickly to remove all signs of the missing senior.
Then there was the methodical nature of the crime. The typical crime of passion was completed in the heat of the moment, and nearly always there were people who saw something or knew something. In this case, Ronald Fisher had disappeared without a trace—with no one seeing him leave. He was never seen again. Those signs pointed to something more premeditated, which did not look good for the missing man.
“So this was recently?” I asked, thinking back to when Wallace had called me with the information.
“A few days ago,” Kamila replied.
“Would you recognize the other man if you saw him again?” I asked, wanting to find out more about the connection between this man, Wallace, and the missing student.
She squinted at me, apparently thinking before answering. “Maybe,” she said finally. “He was in the office most of the time, so I only got to see him for a few moments as he left. I have a pretty good eye for faces.”
I smiled at her, thinking she would fit in just fine.
Chapter 4
The next day I decided to close Let it Slide for the day. I needed Kamila to come with me to the university. I was going to take a tour of the dorm where Ronald Fisher had lived, to determine how easy it would be to leave the facility without being caught. Then we were going to file her needed paperwork, copies of which had to go to the appropriate immigration people. The classes she had audited were a part of her work experience here, and I had to sign all of the needed forms.
And as a bonus, I was going to wander around campus with her to see if we could find the man who had talked to Wallace. I wasn’t sure about asking Professor Wallace directly. He might take offense at being questioned about his motives, which could jeopardized his promised analysis of the food trucks and their hours.
I told Land of my plans. He knew that I was not one to slack off, but the long hours had been taking a toll on me. I would enjoy doing something different than serving and taking food orders for a few hours, even if it was a long ride up to the campus.
***
The next morning, I was in early. My idea was that I would work the shift with Sabine until lunchtime and then Kamila and I would leave for the university. Sabine rolled in around 6:00 a.m.; she still had not mentioned a thing about her fiancée’s plan to prove he was a better investigator than I was. So I thought that he had likely kept his scheme to himself.
I told her a version of the truth. We were going to the university to fill out Kamila’s paperwork and to look at the scene of the disappearance. I thought that sounded benign enough without giving any real clues as to my plans. It was hard to keep her at arm’s length when she hinted that she was ready to discuss the details of her wedding.
Kamila was rather taciturn on the way to the university.
I was lost in my own thoughts, feeling exceptionally worried that I was being played by Professor Wallace. If he had been talking to someone else about the case and shared information that he had neglected to tell me, then I wasn’t sure if he ever planned on giving me the analysis he had performed—or if it even existed.
We pulled into the parking lot nearest to the administration building where Kamila needed to complete the paperwork to stay in the United States.
Land had given me a full rundown on what we needed to fill out and approximately what papers we would need to finish things. Kamila had a manila folder of information, which she studiously kept closed and away from my prying eyes. I was curious to see what else I could learn about her, especially since I was being asked to trust her with my food truck and every day’s takes from the register.
We went into the administration building and checked the sign on the wall for the room number of the office. The building looked the same, though I’d never been to this part of the structure. My actions mainly consisted of paying large sums for tuition and board.
Given Kamila’s secretive nature, I wanted to go up with her, but the clerk called her back to a cubicle to complete the paperwork. I sat in one of the stiff metal and plastic chairs along the wall.
After ten minutes or so, I was called back to the cubicle. The papers were completed except where there were a few Xs marked with blue pen. I was instructed to sign there to confirm that Kamila was indeed an employee of the food trucks.
That done, we walked back to the car and Kamila tucked the manila folder in the door pocket. She seemed in better spirits, now that we’d accomplished that. Land had shared some of his difficulties in getting acclimated to the United States along with some of the immigration process. However, he’d been a former law enforcement officer and soldier who had collaborated with the police here. Hence, his process was expedited, and few questions were asked of him. Kamila’s process looked much more involved.
We walked towards the dorm where Ronald Fisher had disappeared. I wasn’t really sure of what I could hope to find, but I wanted to be able to visualize the space and see if there were hiding spaces or easy exits.
“You do know that this is an all-male dorm?” Kamila said as we grew closer to the structure. “How are you going to work that? Pretend to be their dates?”
I sighed. I think I had known it had been an all guys’ dorm back when I was a graduate student here, but I had not had much interaction with the undergraduates. I wasn’t sure of the rules of going into the dorm unescorted, but to be honest, I wasn’t worried about that now. I wanted to get this matter solved, because now I had the additional worry of wondering if the analysis was a complete and valid document or just a ruse to get me to look into this matter.
When we got to the dorm, the front desk was manned by a security guard. We watched as the man checked each person who entered via ID. They had to walk through a metal detector and guests had to be called up and identified. I knew that the security guards in the 1980s had not had this level of protection. I wondered how easy it would have been to sneak into the dorm the night Ronald Fisher had disappeared.
There was no way I would be allowed to walk around the dorm with this type of security in place. So it was off to Plan B.
I had learned a trick from Land some time ago. Kamila and I waited until one of the side doors opened. A very young-looking man exited hurriedly, and we caught the closing door and entered like we’d done this a million times before.
Once inside, I had only a small idea of where to go. Ronald Fisher had lived in room 345. So he could be on the third or fourth floor, depending on if the rooms at the entrance level were 45 or 145. We checked a few an
d found that we only had to go up two levels.
Kamila led the way, like she knew where she was going. I tagged along, watching for security guards or men who looked like they followed the honor code faithfully. However, no one challenged us or even seemed like it was an imposition.
We made it to the third floor without issue. Once on the floor, we walked around looking for 345. The room was in a nook that was semi-excluded from most of the other rooms. I found it odd that one of the few students in the dorm that summer would have been segregated from most of the other rooms. A bank of vending machines, the elevators, a stairwell, and what appeared to be a janitorial closet lay between him and the other rooms. The rest of the rooms were on the far side of those areas.
My first question was answered. Yes, Ronald Fisher could have left the building without much fear of detection. He was close to the elevators and far enough from other rooms that any noise would not have been heard or attributed to the vending machines or elevators. So nothing had been eliminated in terms of the disappearance.
We both heard the elevator chime and looked at each other. I grabbed the closest doorknob and turned. It was unlocked. We hustled into the room before the elevator doors could open.
We found ourselves in a dorm room that was furnished, but currently unoccupied. I was glad for that. I wouldn’t want to explain why I had entered someone’s room.
The footfalls had almost quieted to nothing when I saw something that could make our last errand go much faster. I reached out and pulled a current yearbook off the shelf. I handed it to Kamila.
“What am I supposed to do with that?” she said, not taking the book from me. I wondered if she thought I was stealing it. Her hyper-concern over taking something was a point in her favor about being at the food truck by herself.
“Look for the man you saw talking to Professor Wallace. Start with the faculty and see if you can recognize anyone.”
She flipped through the pages and suddenly stopped. I thought that she had come to the end of the faculty with no luck, but instead she pointed to a photo on the page. “This is him. This is the guy I saw talking to Professor Wallace.”
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 139