Chapter 40

Oak Ridge, TN – Tuesday, May 31th, 1983 – 9:15 AM

Richard was sitting on the jumbled, slightly-too-pink bedspread of Doreen’s absent daughter, looking at the bizarre combination of rock posters, pictures of kittens, Garfield the Cat merchandise and Precious Moments figurines that populated her room, when Doreen started pounding on the door.

“Richard! Richard! He’s gone! He’s gone! Oh my god! Oh my god! He’s gone!”

Richard Mathers stood up with a start, feeling just a few short steps away from a heart attack.
“Hang on, hang on,” he said, searching for his pants. He was in nothing but his boxer shorts and undershirt, and didn’t particularly want Doreen barging in on him half-dressed.

What he wanted, however, wasn’t going to figure into the picture. There was a click and the knob turned and Doreen barged in, anyway.

Her hair was a mess and she was still in her nightgown. She had no makeup on and her face was white. Her eyes were wide and rimmed with tears. “He’s gone! He was doing something. He was involved in something, and now he ran away. He’s run away! Oh my god, oh my god. With that girl. They were both doing something for that terrible old man and he’s run away oh my god!”

“Hold on, just hold on,” Richard said, grabbing his pants and trying to pull them on with as much grace, and privacy, as he could manage. “Jon ran away? What—how do you know he just isn’t out? Or he didn’t—you know, sleep over at Megan’s house?”

“I know!” she practically sobbed, throwing a crumpled piece of paper and a bundle of hundred dollar bills in Richard’s face. “He left a note! There’s money! Oh my god, oh my god.”

Richard looked down and the bundle of cash. It looked like it was all twenties, all new, and there was a thin, unmarked paper band around them. There had to be a hundred bills there, at least. That would be $2000 dollars. At a minimum. Oh my God, indeed.

“Read the note! The note!”

Richard took the crumpled and now apparently tear-stained note and smoothed it out, reading the short, precise sentences written in Jon’s neatly penned cursive script.

Dear Mom,

Megan and I have run away. I can’t tell you why, but there are good reasons, and I want you to know that we will be safe. I will try to get in contact with you somehow, but I don’t know when or how as yet.

I am sorry to do this to you and I wish there was another way. Please be safe, and please be careful. Please understand I am doing what I have to, for the good of everybody.

Thank you for everything. I miss you already. I will always love you.

Love, Jon

PS: I have included $3000. Don’t spend it all in one place.

Richard whistled. “Damn. Three-thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money. Where the hell did he get that kind of money?”

“Running drugs,” Doreen said. “Running drugs for that terrible old man. Or maybe Megan. Megan and her family. Or maybe he was selling government secrets and Jon was his courier. Oh god, oh god. Oh god.” Whatever had been holding Doreen Edmonds up seemed to crumple underneath the weight of everything, and she collapsed on the floor, weeping. “You told me it was no big deal,” she said between sobs. “You told me it was going to be okay. You lied. Why did you lie to me?”

“We’re going to find out what happened to them,” Richard said. “And we’re going to find your kid. But first things first, we need to call the police.”

It was not a terribly productive call. As it wasn’t a kidnapping, and no immediate crime had been committed, Doreen was welcome to come down and fill out a missing persons report, but nothing would happen on it for forty-eight hours.

“Forty-eight hours?” Doreen asked, chewing on her thumbnail. “You’re sure? Is there anything else we can do?”

Richard sighed. How, exactly, had he gotten himself involved in this? What he should have said was: Well, what I can do is leave and check into a hotel. Bye. What he said instead was: “Do you have that girl—Megan—do you have her parent’s phone number?”

Doreen nodded, and a few minutes later Richard Mather’s found himself inexplicably talking to Jackie Kincaid and Larry Carter.

“I want to talk to that woman!” the man was demanding. “I don’t know who you are, mister, but you put her on the phone now.” It was loud enough that Doreen clearly heard, but she shook her head no vigorously.

“Larry, don’t,” Jackie’s voice pleaded from the phone. “This isn’t her fault.”

“No, it’s the fault of her goddamned kid. That kid shows up out of nowhere—I’ve seen him over here maybe, what, once all year?—and suddenly they are both running away to Mexico.”

“It’s not Mexico, Larry—”

“Mexico?” Richard asked. “How do you know they are running off to Mexico?”

“She had books on Mexico, maps out—hell, she drew a great big red line on it from Knoxville to Nuevo Laredo—”

“Larry, Carla said it was Canada—”

“Carla?” Larry spat. Literally. Richard could hear the spittle on the phone. “Carla? How do you know she’s not on in on this? She says they’re really going to Canada but does she have a single shred of evidence? No. And who told us to look for Carla everywhere but where she actually was the other night? Megan! That’s just tit-for-tat. They’re probably half-way to Guadalajara right now.”

“Why does—did you say Carla? Why does she think Megan and Jon would be headed to Canada?”

“Because she’s a lying teenage girl who has never showed me the respect I deserve—“
“Now, Larry—”

“—and because she has a history of lying. If it’ll make things harder on us, if it’ll throw the family in turmoil, then you bet she’d lie about it. You bet.”

“Mexico?” Doreen asked, now gnawing on her pinky. “Canada? He’s never even been out of the country.”

Richard smiled at her, and squeeze her arm reassuringly. Doreen used that as an opening to lean into him, her face suddenly next to his, listening to the phone while her admittedly generous bosom pressed firmly against his arm. Richard sighed. How’d he get himself into these things?
Plus side, his mind consoled him. Heard from Julie recently? Well, that was true. All this mess was keeping him sufficiently distracted, and he hadn’t heard his own personal Julie nag him for hours.

“Hello? Are you there, Mister—Mister Whatever-Your-Name-Is?”
“Mathers,” Richard said. “Richard Mathers.”

“Look, Mr. Mathers, we know this has to be this Edmonds kid’s fault, somehow, and I will get to the bottom of it. I’m late for work as it is, but I can promise you, if they haven’t turned up by tonight you’ll be hearing from our lawyers.”

Richard wasn’t exactly sure what to say to that. Lawyers? To do what, exactly? And his daughter was missing, but he was late for work? Odd priorities, Richard thought.
“Mr. Mathers, I apologize for my husband, he’s just very upset about all this.”

Yeah, he sounds real broken up., Richard thought. I’m betting that all this is to him is an excuse to swing his tiny little pecker around like he’s actually got a full-size big-boy pee-pee. He had to stifle a laugh at this thought. “Ah, I’m understand,” he mumbled back.

“But, look—”

“I’ve got to go to work, I’m already late,” Larry Carter repeated, in case anybody have previously missed the great sacrifices he was making on behalf of his ungrateful brat of a disobedient daughter. “But I promise you, if they don’t show up by tonight—”

They aren’t showing up by tonight, Richard thought. But he said, “Well, let’s just hope they will. Now, Jackie, you were saying?”

“I’ve got to go work,” Larry said. “I’m already late.”

“Then get off the fucking phone and go to work, goddammit,” Jackie snapped. “You’re not being any fucking help, so get off my goddamned telephone!”

“Jacks,” Larry replied. “You know how important the kids are to me. But—”

“You know, maybe I don’t need to be here for this conversation,” Richard interjected. “I’ve got someone else to call, if that’s all right—“
“Larry, get off the phone or I’m going to stop pretending I didn’t read the part of Megan’s note where she talked about your porn stash behind the furnace. Like I didn’t already know about it.”
There was a long pause. “Jacks,” Larry began again.

“I’m serious. As a heart attack.”

Larry sighed. Apparently this was some kind of code-speak between the two of them, because the phone clicked, and Larry was gone.

“Your daughter left a note as well?”

“You could say that,” Jackie sighed. “It’s been tough. My first husband—Megan’s father—was not the best guy. He left a huge mess, tried to kidnap our daughters, ended up going to jail—“
“Um, ah—you think your first husband had something to do with this?”

“No, I’m just—I’m just saying the note she left would need some explaining. She’s, you know, ‘acting out’, like they say. Tried to tell everybody’s deep, dark secrets, to burn all her bridges with us, to have us at each other’s throats—which is one of the reason’s I believe Carla. They aren’t going to Mexico. She said she saw a map and a book on how to travel through Canada for ten dollars a day or something. She said there was a big red circle around Winnipeg.”

“Winnipeg? So why does your husband think it’s Mexico?”

“Because she left a map showing a route to Mexico, through Texas, and books on Mexico—but if she was going to be going to Mexico, really, wouldn’t she have taken the map with her? Anyway, they took Carla’s car, which had Carla throwing a tantrum like a two year old. And Megan tattled on where Carla keeps her—keeps something she shouldn’t have, let’s say, and we had to punish her, because now she knew we knew and, yes, we can overlook some things, but when it’s out in the open we have a responsibility, you know, as parents—”

“So your daughter—Carla—she saw the map with the route to Winnipeg before Megan and Jon left, correct?”

“My, you ask a lot of questions. You said you were a reporter, is that right? I can tell. But, yes, Carla had seen the map before they left. Last night, or yesterday afternoon, I believe. She was being the surly older sibling. Going through her little sisters things, claiming Megan had stolen some bracelets from her or something, which I really don’t believe. But I do believe Carla saw what she said she saw. But I don’t know that gives us much to go on.”

“Gives us something. Only so many likely routes to Canada from Oak Ridge, after all. They took your oldest daughter’s car, did you say? Did you report that to the police?”

“Yes, and I explained the situation, and they said they would get right on it, but I’m not sure how serious they were. But, before you ask, I told them I thought they might be heading north, up to Canada. Carala thought they might be going to St. Louis and Minneapolis, but she couldn’t exactly remember. But I told them that, too.”

“You did the right thing,” Richard said. “I have someone I’m going to call in a minute that might be able to help me, so I will need to go—but I have a few more questions that might be important.”

“Um, all right.”

“Did Megan or Jon, when you met him, every mention Dr. Donald Bernhard?”

“I—no, not that I recall.”

“Did they give you any indication before, or in the note your daughter left, that they might be running from something or somebody? That they might have been in trouble?”

“No,” Jackie Kincaid replied slowly. “Why, do you think they are doing this because they are in some kind of trouble? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

It’s complicated, Richard thought. “I don’t know any details right now,” he said. “But I’m going to find out. I have a call I need to make.”

“Well, all right,” Jackie replied hesitantly. “Do you think it’s just—just a joke? Or they’ll just get tired of it, and come back?”

“I don’t know,” Richard replied. “I think they’re both a little old to do something like this without being serious about it.”

“Oh,” she mumbled. “Okay. I hope they’re safe. I just hope they’re safe.”

“Me too,” Richard agreed. “But, if I’m going to do anything else to help, I’ve got a call I need to make. If I find out anything more, I’ll be sure to call you, all right?”

Jackie Kincaid sighed. “Yes, all right. Thank you, Mr. Mathers. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” Richard said, and hung up the phone.

Doreen continue to lean into him, even has he put down the phone. “I’m so scared for him, Richard,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to him. I just don’t.”

Richard had nothing to say to that. He found both the physical and emotional intimacy Doreen was so casually sharing with him uncomfortable, but at least she wasn’t putting the moves on him. Still, he felt this whole situation was both not his business and a few levels above his pay grade. Old government researchers committing espionage was one thing, disappearing children and terrified mothers and talking with the other kid’s parents—that was something else again. Maybe it had something to do with the story, maybe it didn’t, but all that Richard knew was that this was more than he had bargained for, and more of an investment of emotion and time than he had for anything. He did not have the time or the mental reserves to devote to some desperate woman he had dated ten years ago and her wayward son, and his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s whacky parents. That bathroom full of sex paraphernalia and Doreen’s musk of Eau De Desperate had been bad enough. This whole situation was something else again, and way, way more than he had bargained for. He had had a great interview with Tsukishiro Yukito. He probably had 80% of his story right there. Why not just say so sad, too bad, sorry, and get the Hell out of Dodge? It was not like Doreen and he had ever been close, even for the month they had dated, back in prehistoric times. This was not his problem, he couldn’t help, he had plenty of things to do for his own future, so it was time to leave. Time to just say goodbye and leave.
Instead, Richard picked up the phone, and dialed Deborah Enos.

“Debi, help me out,” he said when she answered. “I’ve got a friend, and her fourteen year old son has gone missing, almost certainly a runaway. I’ve made some calls but I’m pretty sure you can do more damage than I can. If you could call the state police or the Tennessee Bureau of the FBI or anything to get them actively out and looking for this kid instead of sloughing it off as another no-big-deal teenage runaway, I’d appreciate it.”

“This your friend with the kid you went to talk to? He ran away?” Debi asked. Debi was always sharp. She would help, but she was sharp, and she was always a journalist. She’d want her questions answered before anything. “The boy who knew the doctor who died, is that right?”
Richard nodded at the phone. “Yes, that’s the one.”

“Did he know anything? Do you think you spooked him?”

Richard glanced at Doreen, then switched ears so the receiver was further away from her. “No, no, I don’t think so. There’s a new girlfriend involved. I think hormones are probably playing a bigger part than—than anything else.”

“Awfully coincidental,” Deborah said. “Did you find anything else out?”

“Plenty,” Richard said, think perhaps he could satisfy Debi in one quick, easy swoop. “Plenty of stuff for a solid story. I’m going to be hammering out a big chunk of it, the minute we can get Doreen’s kid back home safe.” In fact, he planned to start hammering it out the minute he could get a few minutes alone, but didn’t think putting it that way in front of Doreen would be a good idea.

“Great!” Debi replied. She sounded delighted. “I can help you out. My friend, Tom, over at the Post can help, too. One or two calls from us, about an hour apart, should light more than enough fire to get them to put a priority on your—your situation. His name is Jonathan Edmonds, right? Middle name?”

Richard looked at Doreen. “I’ve got a friend whose going to help. We’ll get some action, and soon. What’s Jon’s middle name?”

“Russell,” Doreen said, smiling, but now white as a sheet. God, he hoped she wasn’t about to have a heart attack or a stroke or some sudden medical condition that roped him into this mess further. Maybe he would got to Hell for thinking it, but becoming any more engaged in Doreen’s Edmonds life than he already was would be a disaster. Hell, it already was a disaster, and he was depending on Debi to pull him out of the fire. If she could get someone, anyone, to take a serious interest in the case early on, so that maybe they would show up at the house and start asking questions, he could disappear himself from this giant, but almost certainly irrelevant, mess. Leave Doreen in the capable hands of the Tennessee State Police for the FBI.
Honestly, even if didn’t have any sort of story to write at all, he’d want out of this particular clusterfuck as rapidly as humanly possible.

Richard passed on height, weight, and sketched out a basic description of Jon and what he had been wearing—ratty t-shirt, ratty jeans, ratty sneakers—when they had last seen him. Then, everything that Doreen knew about Megan Kincaid, including the make and model of Carla Kincaid’s car.

“I’ll start some fires burning,” Debi said, as chipper as a chipmunk. Chipper as a chipmunk? Why’d he always think that when he was talking to Debi? “I’m good that. What’s your number there?”

Richard told her, said goodbye, then hung the phone. Doreen looked at him, biting her lip. “When do you think we’ll here something?” she asked.

“Soon, if I know Debi,” he reassured her. “She’s good at this kind of thing. A few well placed calls from a few big DC newspapers, and I think we’ll see the authorities take a much more active interest in your case.”

She sighed, then collapsed on the couch. “Thank God for you, Richard,” she mumbled, closing her eyes, again making Richard worry that Doreen was just going to compound his problems by requiring some sort of immediate medical attention. She exhaled slowly. “So, this Debi. Do you go to church with her, or do you know her from—from your work? Or—”

Richard was spared from having to answer that question by a knock at the front. Before Richard could take more than two steps, Doreen had leapt from the sofa and bolted for the door, grabbing the knob and looking out through the peephole. “Maybe it’s Jon!” she shouted. “Ah—um.”

Richard joined her at the door. “Not Jon, I’m guessing.”

“No,” Doreen said slowly. “It’s, like three—no, four guys. I think it’s the police, maybe?” The bell rang, and four loud wraps on the doors, very insistent. “You look. You think it’s the police?”

Richard looked. Four close-cropped hair cuts, two mustaches, three pairs of dark sunglasses, dark sportcoats with shoulder holsters apparent under most of them. Non-uniformed State Police or FBI, Richard was pretty sure. “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “I’m letting them in.”

“Doreen Edmonds?” a deep voice shouted through the door. “Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. We’d like to talk to you about your son.”

Richard unbolted and opened the door while Doreen stepped back. “That was awfully quick,” she mumbled.

“Yeah,” Richard replied, though there was no doubt that these agents being here had nothing to do with anything Debi had managed to accomplish in the past minute-and-a-half.

Richard opened door and the first agent, the one with salt-and-pepper black hair busy holding up his badge, looked directly at him, eyes narrowing.

“And who the hell are you?”