by JM Addison
*
She had to weigh the facts. He was missing. No one knew where he was. Someone followed her last night after being at Chris’ place. She could only assume the place was being watched. It all added up to be more concern that she was willing to neglect. She decided she would report it to the police. Probably the sooner the better.
She could wait for Will to come through, but even just a few minutes after meeting with him, she felt as if he was busy with his own day’s activities and would put her request to check on her brother in the background – perhaps simply and innocently just forget about it altogether. So the police seemed the next likely place to turn.
Now the matter of what police to go to. The township had its own police department. Nothing like a major law enforcement agency like the Boston Metropolitan Police or the FBI or something. But she knew where the station was and it wasn’t too far. She realized that it was after lunch and she hadn’t gone for any food yet. Why not combine lunch with a quick trip to the police?
On her way to the police, she debated her lunch options. She knew that if she skipped lunch, she would pay later. On the other hand, how could someone think about eating when they were about to report a missing person to the police?
As she approached the police station, she recognized a small, street side, take-out deli. She pulled up and left her car at the curb. As she waited at the counter to be served, she thought about what she would tell the police. “Excuse me, my brother’s missing”. Or “I’d like to report a missing person…” She thought the best thing to do was simply ask how a person would go about reporting someone missing and let them direct her from there.
She ordered a tuna wrap and an apple with a bottle of juice, paid her bill and took her lunch back to the car. She had that odd paranoia feeling again that perhaps someone was watching her. How ridiculous, she thought. Last time was because someone was watching Chris’ apartment and whoever followed her was simply someone sitting and watching his place. Were they waiting for him? Could Chris have gotten himself in some sort of trouble and he disappeared on his own?
As she pondered these thoughts she realized she was more hungry than she led herself to believe. She decided to use the public lot adjacent to the Police station to sit and have some of her lunch in the car. As she sat eating, she reviewed in her mind again her look around Chris’ office “cubicle”. Something definitely was nagging her about it but it just sort of dangled there, just out of the reach of the fingers of thought in the back of her mind.
She thought about all of the things that happened the past couple of days and tried to put them in the right sequence. She wished she had made a few notes so she wouldn’t seem as if she was just some dizzy dingbat babbling on about her lost brother. She left a message early Tuesday at his place on his machine. Wednesday, not much happened. In fact nothing really happened, she simply wondered why he hadn’t returned her call. At some point she sent the e-mail of her invitation to lunch. Let’s see, was that Wednesday or Thursday. It probably didn’t matter.
Thursday, she found out he called in – no, make that e-mailed in – the fact that he had the flu. Now that was odd, a sick person bothering to email when they could just pick up the phone.
Thursday night, she went to his place and let herself in. She didn’t go poking around in any of his stuff looking for clues because at that point she didn’t really consider him missing. She just felt there would be some obvious explanation.
Then she was followed.
That made things different. They followed her and when she lost them, they searched for her to try to pick up the trail again. Whoever “they” were. Was it someone else trying to find him? That might mean that he wanted to be missing.
Then it hit her. The thing that was nagging at the back of her mind. His phone! While it was not exactly the same as hers, it did have a message waiting indicator light which turns to blinking when a person has voice mail messages waiting. She recalled visiting his cubicle and she could picture his phone in her mind. His message waiting light was definitely not blinking. It was definitely off.
That would mean that he must have listened to his messages. That would mean that he must have received her messages. She knew that voice mail messages could be retrieved and listened to from anywhere, so he must have phoned in and picked up his messages. The logical conclusion then would be that he wanted to be missing. By going to the police, she might make it worse for him. For all she knew, the police might already be looking for him. She wondered why he didn’t retrieve his messages from his answering machine at home? It was an old hand-me-down of a machine. More nostalgia than anything else with cell phones and on-line voice mail services. The model of machine he owned likely did not have such a feature to retrieve messages remotely. It probably meant that he knew enough to stay away from his place, especially in light of the fact that she was followed. Likely by someone trying to find out where he was.
Now she felt a little relief. He was probably OK physically. However, he was, apparently, in some sort of trouble. What could she do? Not much. Call mom again? Perhaps talk things over with Will. Forget the police for now. She decided to head back to the office.
She got back around three o’clock and set her mind to accomplishing at least a few of her tasks to keep up with the amount of work that seemed to be piling up. She decided to have a frank discussion with Will about what was going on with Chris. She knew that if she called his phone his pit-bull secretary would answer and try to fend off her call. He was likely not in his office anyway, so she accessed her voice mail and made the menu selection to create a new message. She recorded, “Will, it’s Mara. I need to ask a personal favor. I have to talk to you about Chris. I’ve thought quite a bit about what might have happened to him and I need to talk it over with you to see if you have any ideas... Thanks, Bye.”
She entered his extension as the intended recipient and sent the message. She knew he read his e-mail messages rather infrequently and his secretary had access to them. But voice mail he would listen to today, so hopefully he would respond soon.
The end of the day approached with staggering slowness in spite of how busy she was keeping herself. Her mind kept drifting with worry to what might have become of him. At 4:38, the sound of her phone startled her back to reality. She noted from the Call-ID display that it was Will. She picked up the phone and answered, “Hello, this is Mara.” She decided not to act like she knew it was him just in case it was really his secretary calling back using his phone.
“Hi Mara!” came the familiar voice. “I just wanted to get back to you about your brother.”
“Thanks, you don’t realize how distracted and jittery the whole thing’s making me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry too much, I’m sure there’s some sort of explanation. I have to see one of our Agency reps later tonight over a dinner meeting, but if you want, we could get together over a drink and discuss the whole thing.”
She wanted to talk to someone, just to hear herself if anything. But she didn’t want to start anything romantic. She wanted to be sure he understood their relationship was staying where it was: simply friends. Apparently he detected her hesitation and piped in, “Just couple of drinks where we can talk about Chris… nothing more. OK?”
She agreed and they decided to meet at a nearby familiar upscale establishment where people from Viiradium often stopped. If anyone saw her with him, she thought she could make sure their relationship looked strictly professional: Diligent subordinate going over issues with a senior manager over casual drinks after work.
On her way there, she collected he thoughts and put all the events in the right sequence. Her main theory was that he was in some sort of trouble. This from the fact that she was followed from his place, and even though he was missing, was still receiving his voice mail messages.
As she entered the establishment, she immediately caught sight of him. Evidently he too had just arrived as he was hanging his coat on one of the scattered
coat hooks that accompanied many of the booths. She joined him at a booth and they ordered drinks, his a sweet Southern Comfort Manhattan and hers an exotic non-alcoholic frozen juice sort of thing.
After a bit of small talk about how well the company was doing, their drinks arrived. She began to relate her story to him. Some of the details were a review of what she told him that morning, others were new updates like the message wait indicator on his phone being off when she knew that at least she had left him messages. She concluded with her thought that he was missing because he was in some sort of trouble and intentionally disappeared.
Will responded with, “Wow, that’s quite an idea. What kind of trouble could he possibly be into that would cause him to want to disappear? Would he be in trouble with gambling debts or drugs?”
She replied without hesitation, “In spite of the rebellion of his younger years, Chris has always valued his intelligence. He turned out to be sort of a reformed, neo-geek computer professional with a side order of complex math thrown in. He was never one to do drugs. He saw the folly of gambling because the very definition of ‘gamble’ means your statistical probability of winning are impracticably slim. The only trouble he ever found was a bit of ‘educational’ computer hacking with his campus buddies in school”
“Well, what do you think might have caused him to disappear then?”
“I don’t know. I was wondering if he was working on anything at work that might have spelled trouble for him?”
With a startled look Will responded, “At Viiradium!? You mean like some sort of corporate espionage or something?”
“I don’t know. I’m simply grasping at ideas. I was hoping you might have some thoughts. I just can’t simply wait around and wonder.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I can do. I don’t know about his personal life. Perhaps it’s some sort of a love triangle or something. Trying to avoid the wrath of an estranged ex-husband – I don’t know. That’s something you will have to check into. What I will do is find out exactly what he was working on at Viiradium. I’ll determine if anything might be sensitive or especially worthy of any of our competitors interests. But I suspect that nothing out of the ordinary will turn up. You, on the other hand, need to check into the personal side. Talk to your mom again. Maybe he was seeing someone. Who knows, maybe he’s trying to avoid creditors. Those are things you’ll need to check into.”
She thought about what he was saying and what he offered. It seemed reasonable. After all, she supposed there could be many different reasons why a person might want to lay low for a while. It made her feel comfortable that he would check into the work side of things – find out what Chris was doing, if anything he was working on could be sensitive.
She agreed, “OK. That sounds alright. I’ll see what I can find out about his personal side while you check into his projects at the office. I really appreciate it Will. It certainly is better than sitting around doing nothing. The whole thing has me rather worried. Thanks a lot for being willing to listen and to help me out. I owe you one!” She thought she better stop before he decided to take advantage of her gratitude.
“No problem. As soon as I hear anything, I’ll let you know. Likewise, if you find out where he’s gone to, drop me a message or something.”
After a moment’s silence, he made an offer of another drink. She politely declined and began making indication she was ready to go. He gave her an appreciative look and reached out and took her hand. She felt a little apprehensive because she knew anything they had in the past was over. But at the same time his familiar, gentle caress was a happy reminder of the good, if brief, time they did spend together.
“I know you’re a little wound up about this. Don’t worry” he assured her “Things will work out fine.”
She thanked him again and got up to retrieve her coat. He stood and lifted her coat from the nearby hook and offered gentlemanly assistance. She turned and left him to pay the bill for the drinks. At the door she looked back and noticed him watching her. She gave a little wave, which he returned as she exited through the door.