Chapter 25
Officer Dave Fenton hit the door frame outside Chief Henderson’s office with the flat of his hand in a military knock. The Chief looked up and saw who it was, so instead of just calling “Enter” or something, he got up from behind his desk and met him at the door.
“Hey, Dave. Come on in. What can I do for you today?”
“If you’ve got a couple minutes, I wanted to talk about my brother’s killer.”
“What about her?”
Fenton said, “It’s been six weeks now. We had mug shots, prints, the police report, and all the usual information.
As soon as we found out that she had run to avoid prosecution, we sent the package everywhere.
Nothing’s happening. A sixteen-year-old girl from a family that doesn’t show signs of having ever had any money, just vanished from sight in the middle of summer and nobody anywhere in the country has come across her in six weeks.
Usually with a fugitive like that, they have to hitchhike to get anywhere, and beg for money and food.
When they leave in the summer most of them don’t even have a jacket.
They turn up as runaways in a big city, or they get picked up on misdemeanor theft or prostitution. ”
“I’ve assigned the detective work to McEvoy. Do you think he’s not doing his job?”
“I’d hesitate to imply anything like that about Paul.
But I don’t think he’s been able to find a way to bring the case to people’s attention, to make this case stand out among the thousands that happen every day.
I’ve even thought that what we’re expecting him to do is just too hard.
When there’s a big search for a female and the whole law enforcement community gets involved, it’s because it’s a woman who’s the victim.
We’ve been sending out this picture of a sixteen-year-old girl who’s a killer.
Nobody sees her as a threat to anybody, so they’re probably throwing our bulletins away or giving them a permanent place at the bottom of the stack. ”
“You could be right.”
“It’s the numbers. Not just criminals, but anybody who’s disappeared.
I just looked up the statistics from the Justice Department’s National Missing and Endangered Persons System.
Six hundred thirty thousand people get reported missing each year.
Ninety thousand are never found. Forty-eight percent are women.
It’s hard to make anybody you’re looking for stand out. ”
“I don’t see what we can—”
“I just came here because I know I should tell you what I’m going to do.”
“What exactly is that, Dave?”
“The first thing is, I’m going to offer a reward for information. I’ve got nearly fifty thousand dollars to contribute to it, and I’m going to set up a GoFundMe page to bring that number up, maybe even double it.”
The Chief said, “I don’t know what to say about that.
I know you’re desperate to get this done, but it takes an honest cop a long time to save fifty grand.
And if you take some time to look into the cases behind some of those big statistics, you’ll see that a lot of them have rewards offered already.
Big rewards, and they’re years old. You’re also forgetting that rewards don’t just motivate witnesses.
They also attract crackpots or liars looking for a big payday. That can bog down an investigation.”
“I’ve been at a loss. This is something I can do, and still be a cop.”
“There’s nothing illegal about what you’re planning. In your place I might consider the same thing.” He paused. “I hope somebody would talk me out of it.”
“I don’t want to tell you I haven’t been doing anything else.
I’ve mostly been trying to think of things that haven’t been investigated yet, trying to find ways to pick up a lead.
I know it’s not going to be a huge reward, but the people who will be most likely to run into her are other teenagers.
It’s a hell of a lot of money for a teenager.
It turns out Clare Markham is an Indian.
At first we assumed she was Cherokee, because there are so many more of them around here than any other group. I found out she’s a Seneca.”
“So what?”
“History. Hardly any of the tribes in Oklahoma started out here. They were forced here by the government in the 1830s. Most of them were from the Southeast. The Senecas’ home country was the western part of New York State.
The ones sent here were just a small splinter group who had spread into Ohio.
There are three reservations in New York that are still inhabited, and one in Canada.
We looked for relatives the girl might have gone to live with, and didn’t notice any.
What I realized is, there are something like ten thousand of them, at least eight thousand registered with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. ”
“I’ve got to say that’s good thinking, but what we need is something small enough to wrap our arms around.
Our little police force can’t send enough officers to another state to investigate ten thousand, or eight thousand, or even eighty people.
Particularly people we don’t even suspect had anything to do with a crime. ”
“I know that, Chief,” Fenton said. “That’s the other thing I needed to tell you. I’m planning on taking my vacation time in a month or so. Wednesday, August 20, through Wednesday, September 10.”
“Have you cleared the dates with Sergeant Cochran?”
“Yes. Everybody else will be back by then.”
“Okay, then,” the Chief said. “You’re good to go, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Fenton said. “And thanks for talking to me. I’d better get back out there. The kids will be getting out of school soon.” Fenton left the office and walked off down the hall.
Chief Henderson leaned both elbows on his desk, clasped his hands in front of his chin, and watched him go.
He remembered Dave Fenton from the days when he had been Patrolman Henderson and Dave had been a high school kid.
He had been one of those kids everybody knew was going to grow up to be a solid citizen.
He was a good student and an athlete who played football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball in the spring, but he was kind of quiet and thoughtful too.
He never had a big head or lorded it over anybody, never got in trouble.
He had enlisted when he graduated, served in Afghanistan, came home, used the GI bill to get a degree, and joined the police force.
Henderson had assumed he would go into something that would pay better than this, but everybody had been glad to have him.
Henderson took a deep breath and blew it out.
The thing that never seemed to come up was the actual case.
Gerry Fenton had not been much like his older brother.
He’d stolen his first car for a joyride at fourteen, gotten off because he was underage and drunk, beat some other kid up a few months later but his family paid the other kid to drop the charges, took another car, got caught with enough meth to warrant a charge of selling it, but the first weight was declared inaccurate, and the corrected weight turned out to be low enough so the charge was just possession.
By the time he reached eighteen he’d committed a couple of other felonies that should have stuck but didn’t.
The other things that Henderson was bothered about were stories that had never become police business.
There had been two or three girls over time who were rumored to have had things to say against Gerry.
That hadn’t slowed down the DA’s eagerness to prosecute a murder case that might get him some recognition, and knowing the little that Henderson did wouldn’t get the charges dropped.
He watched Dave Fenton go out the double doors that opened onto the parking lot, and couldn’t identify his feeling, except anxiety for the whole set of circumstances.
He didn’t know if the girl was guilty or not.
What he did know was that the most fearsome instrument that law enforcement had was a competent cop who was positive that what he was doing was right.
Dave was determined to find that girl. He was in the research and planning stage right now, and in a month, he would hunt her down.