Different strokes for different folks,
And so on, and so on, and scooby, dooby, dooby
Everyday People
Written by Sly Stone, performed by Sly & and The Family Stone

CHAPTER 3

Detective John Mathews had been working in the Atlanta Police Department’s Missing Persons Bureau for seven years. Originally, it was just a temporary assignment after he got his detective’s shield. All of the slots in homicide, where he originally requested to be assigned, were filled. As a result, Detective Mathews was relegated to the waiting list, biding his time in MP.

The temporary assignment grew into a permanent posting, partly due to circumstance, but mostly due to the results he got when other detectives on the squad hit a brick wall on a case.

Mathews was born and raised in a suburb outside Atlanta before the city’s explosive growth in the eighties. After a stint in the United States Air Force as a helicopter mechanic, he was promoted to the position of crew chief, left the service and, with his education benefit, attended the police academy. After six years on the force as a patrolman he passed the detectives exam and received his shield. Atlanta had grown as the business hub of the South. Its growth opened up a lot of new slots at all levels of the department.

Detective Mathews was sitting at his desk shooting the breeze with a couple of the other detectives, waiting for some paperwork to get upstairs from processing, when Lieutenant Batterman, the head of Missing Persons, shouted for him to come into his office.

“Close the door and grab a seat, John,” said the lieutenant.

“What’s up, chief?” John asked.

“We’ve been asked to look into a missing person case over at Steddman College.”

“Someone snatch a girl from over there? Or is this a case of someone shacking up with someone else and one of the someones has a connected parent?” Mathews asked warily. He’d had his share of false alarms and pissed-off parents not caring for the mate their son or daughter had chosen. Instead of dealing with the situation themselves, they used the police, mostly in hopes of stressing the relationship to the breaking point.

The lieutenant let out an explosive breath and glared at John. “What makes you think this is another political thing?”

“Well, you don’t generally have us close the door when you call one of us in here. It’s not as if no one knows something’s up when you drag us in here and close the door,” Mathews replied.

“All right, I’m busted. It is something like that, but not political this time.”

“What do you mean, Lieutenant?”

“This case didn’t come to me through the usual channels. I got a call from some Fed who wants us to do a quiet background check on the missing girl. He wants us to see whether or not she may have taken off with some guy and forgot to let anyone know where she was going. So your task is to do your usual sniffing around. Find out everything you can and report to this guy here,” Batterman finished, handing John a telephone message slip.

“I’m guessing he doesn’t want the usual case notes made available to the rest of the squad? I’m probably not supposed to mention the FBI angle, am I?”

“Until further notice, that’s about the size of it. I’ll square it with the chief, but no one is to know you’re working the case for the Feds, got it?”

Looking at the area code of the telephone number, John asked, “How do I expense this?”

“Just bring me all the receipts and vouchers and I’ll take care of everything. Oh, by the way, keep track of your overtime. I’m going to bill it back to the Feds first chance I get. And one more thing, if you find anything snaky that you think I should know about, call me, day or night. I want to know what these guys are really looking for.”

John got out of his chair, memorized the number, dropped the message slip on the lieutenant’s desk and left the office. As usual, as soon as he opened the door there was a sudden flurry of activity, as everyone in the room tried to look busy. Without the lieutenant shouting, no one had a clue as to why John was in there, or what, if any, consequences the conference might mean for him.

John avoided eye contact with the others as he made his way to his desk. He sat down and began to plan out the logistics of tracking a case without using the normal department resources. Sitting across from him was his friend, and sometimes partner, Jason Pickering. Pickering had made detective the year after Mathews. Early on they were picked to partner on about half of the cases that came their way. They were acknowledged as the best zebra partnership (Jason black, John white) in the department. Their diversity seemed to bring something extra to the table in solving the cases assigned to them, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

“Anything you want to tell me?” Pickering asked in a quiet voice that didn’t carry past their desks.

“Nothing special,” John replied. “The lieutenant dragged me in to go over my expenses for the last two weeks.”

John wasn’t ready to let on about the assignment yet. He knew he would tell Jason eventually; no cop goes into a questionable situation without backup, at least no good cop.

“He was pissed I had put in for reimbursement for dinner twice last week at Arnelli’s and told me to date on my own dime.”

“Fine, don’t tell me,” said Pickering.

John stood up and started to pull on his jacket.

“Where’re you headed for lunch?” Pickering asked. “You want company?”

“Nah, I gotta go to the bank and head over to the garage. My grill lights don’t blink anymore when I hit the button, they just stay on. The lieutenant doesn’t want me to run over some citizen who can’t see my unit’s in hot pursuit.” Besides, John thought, I can’t call this Fed with you hanging around.

“Sure. Maybe tomorrow then.”

“No problem,” said John, on his way out.

When he got into his unit in the parking lot, John pulled out his mobile phone
and dialed the number the lieutenant gave him.

After one ring a woman answered, “2112, how may I direct your call please?”

“Mr. Samuels, please.” he replied.

“One moment, I’ll connect you.”

“Bob Samuels speaking, how may I help you?”

“This is Detective John Mathews of the Atlanta Police Department, Lieutenant Batterman gave me your number.”

“Yes, detective, thank you for returning the call. I would like to meet with you as soon as possible to go over how you can help us with an investigation. Would it be possible for me to meet you first thing in the morning?”

“Yes, that’d be fine. I was told to give you my full cooperation. Could you give me a hint of what this is about?”

Samuels answered, “If it’s all the same to you I would like to save the details until we meet. I can tell you that it is a missing persons case and it calls for a certain amount of discretion. According to Lieutenant Batterman you come very highly regarded and frankly, your record is above reproach.”

“If there’s some question about . . .” began John, getting a little pissed.

“No, no, no,” interrupted Samuels. “Nothing of the sort. What I was trying to say, badly I see, was that with your experience I hope you’ll understand if I am reluctant to discuss this case over the phone. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.”

John cooled rapidly. “No problem. I’m just not used to being kept in the dark. Of course I’m curious about the circumstances of the case and why the secrecy.”

“I promise, you’ll have all the facts, and probably all the answers to your questions in the morning. Where do you want to get together, and may I suggest someplace where we won’t run into anyone you know? It wouldn’t help for us to be seen together. Tongues wag.”

“Do you know the Atlanta area very well?” John asked, recalling the DC area code he’d dialed.

“Not too well. Give me directions from the airport, I’ll be flying in around six forty-five in the morning.”

John gave him directions to a small restaurant about fifteen minutes from the airport, confirmed the time and gave Samuels his mobile phone number. Once he ended the call, John decided to get some lunch and head back to the office. If I’m going to be working on a case for the Feds, he thought, I should probably put in as many appearances at the office as possible. Once back at the office, John finished off the day routinely, cleared his desk, checked out and went home.

The next morning John arrived at the restaurant about a half hour early, ordered coffee and began to read the paper. About fi ve minutes after seven a voice asked, “Detective Mathews?”

John dropped the paper, nodded, getting ready to get up.

“No, don’t get up. I’m Special Agent Samuels, but I’d rather not stand on ceremony if it’s all the same to you. Just call me Bob.”

“Call me John,” John replied, “So, to what do we owe getting into such a quiet investigation with the Feds?” John said when Agent Samuels was settled in with a cup of coffee set in front of him.

“What started out as a series of missing persons cases scattered around the country has grown into a multidisciplinary task force investigation of a disturbing trend . . .” Samuels started.

“Before we go any further, is this the real story, or the smoke blown up my asshole story that I’ll read about a few years from now in some exposé?” John asked with a smile.

“Okay, maybe we deserve that. The FBI has an unenviable record of lying to fellow officers and using them without regard to professionalism. But hear me out before you make up your mind. If you think I’m blowing smoke up your ass, I’ll say no more and go away. However, I’ll bet that after you get the whole story I’m going to have to kneecap you to keep you out of this investigation. Deal?”

Looking at the agent’s grin, John replied, “Deal. So what’s the story?”

“Over the past thirty or so years there’s been an unusual trend that has just this year been identified,” Samuels began. “The trend was masked by the sheer number of missing persons every year in this country. Even if someone had noticed it, probably nothing could have been done about it until recently. Buried in the numbers was a group of people who, after their disappearance, were never found or associated with any crime. These people couldn’t be accounted for using any normal criminal profile. The group of missing stood out only when an extremely deep analysis of all national cases was conducted by computer.

“There was a demographic similarity to this group, a sameness that really jumped out at us when we understood what we were looking at.

“We found that a significant number of African American students, professionals, and intellectual types had disappeared in the last thirty-five or so years. In the beginning everyone assumed that most of the cases were the result of the KKK or other white supremacist activity here in the South. Up until now no one ever placed a high enough priority on finding a bunch of missing blacks, especially with little chance of identifying the perps, or convicting anyone without any evidence. Right or wrong, that’s the way it was. Now everything’s different. Washington’s scared shitless someone will independently discover the numbers, do the math, and make a big fuss over the government’s lack of concern over this many unsolved black disappearances.”

“So what makes this case so important, and by the way, who disappeared?” asked John.

“A student over at Steddman College for Women. Her name is Jaylynn Williams and no, she isn’t connected to anyone important. The only reason we got the heads-up before you did is that her boyfriend is a data center analyst in the Atlanta office of the Bureau. He asked one of our locals to look into her disappearance. He wasn’t sure whether or not something had happened to her or if she was just avoiding him. I guess they had some kind of blow-up just before she disappeared.”

“Is he a suspect?” John asked. “It’s not unusual, we’ve seen it before. Something triggers a fight, some domestic thing that gets blown out of proportion and someone ends up dead. The survivor drops the body off somewhere and calls in a missing person report to throw off suspicion.”

“And that’s where you come in. Instead of us running the investigation and raising a red flag locally, we would like you to be the lead investigator in this case, even run it through your department. But as a courtesy to us, you can keep me up-to-date on the investigation on a day-to-day basis. Maybe even give me a call if something significant comes up before you have to make your regular reports.

“In return, I will give you all the assistance I can. Any resource the Bureau has will be at your disposal, confidentially though. You see, this will be one of the first times we will have been in on one of the profile-fitting disappearances we identified in the trend. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to find some point of departure from past efforts that will lead us to a cause.” Agent Samuels paused for a second and then asked, “Do you have any questions?”

“Who’s going to be looking over my shoulder, you?” inquired John.

“If you want. I’m on sort of detached duty until further notice. I’m not going to insist on a ride-around, nor am I going to be hanging out at the station crowding your investigation. Your record shows that you’re self-motivated and work best under minimal supervision. I’m not in the habit of fixing things that ain’t broke, if you know what I mean.”

“I appreciate it, but I wasn’t worried about that. What I wanted to know was, how do you want me to keep you up to date, and how often?”

Samuels thought about it for a minute and then asked, “Do you have a computer at home, and an e-mail account?”

“Sure, and I actually know how to use it,” John answered.

“What I can do is set up an account on the local Bureau host and a private storage area for any files you would like to keep online. I’ll keep up with the investigation there. Also here’s my personal mobile phone number, it’s on all the time. Call me whenever you have anything you can’t wait to let me know, or if there’s something you need only I can get for you.”

Jotting down a note on the back of his business card, Samuels added, “Here’s the web address of our host, it doesn’t appear on any search page. Before you log on I’ll have to e-mail you a plug-in for your web browser that will ensure both ends of the connection are secure. What browser do you use?”

“I’m a Mozilla man myself. I stay away from that other stuff.”

Samuels let out a huge laugh. “Great, just install the security plug-in I’ll be sending you tonight. What’s your e-mail address?”

“Here,” said John, handing Samuels one of his cards. “I wrote my personal one on the back.”

“I’ll set up your account this afternoon. Your username will be your full name with no space and your password will be your high school I.D. number. Remember it?” Samuels asked with a smirk on his face.

“Touché, you prick, I guess my name didn’t really just come up for this investigation, did it?” laughed John.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective Mathews!” replied Samuels with an innocent look on his face.

“Fine, just for that I’m not going to warn you about the food here,” said John.

“Look, if it’s okay with you I think I’ll get started with the preliminary groundwork on the Williams woman. Do you have anything on her you can give me?”

“Meet me in front of the Bureau around lunch time and I’ll give you whatever we’ve been able to gather so far.”

“How close do you have to keep the bigger investigation?” asked John. “Can I see anything on the demographics and particulars of people the computer spits out? It may give me some hint on what to look for.”

“I’m not sure how much they’ll let me give you. Even though Washington wants local blue to run the investigation, they still doesn’t trust anyone outside the Bureau. Hell, the right hand still doesn’t know what the left hand is doing most of the time. Let me see what I can shake loose. I promise, you won’t be treated like a mushroom.”

“Kept in the dark and fed shit!” they both said at the same time.

“Fair enough,” laughed John, “I’ll roll by your office about twelve-fifteen. By the way, how much of this can I tell my boss?”

“I ask that you confine what you tell him to the cover story of someone who knows someone wants special attention given to this case. It’ll keep everyone satisfied if nothing high-profile comes out of your investigation. I personally don’t want the trend data getting out to the press, I can’t see how it would do anything other than drive those responsible for these disappearances further underground.” Samuels then added, “Seriously, I really do want to find out what happened to these people. Just once, I’d like to catch someone in the act.”

“Good enough, see you this afternoon.” Getting to his feet, John asked, “Do you need a ride anywhere?”

“Nope, the office had a car waiting for me at the airport. I drove here on my own. Besides, how can I judge the quality of your personal taste without having breakfast here? I’ll catch up with you later.”

On his way back to the station, John prioritized how he was going to run the investigation. He was relieved that he wouldn’t have to conceal any aspect of the investigation from Lieutenant Batterman, he could play that part straight. The lieutenant already knew about the Fed’s interest in the case. All John had to do was report to him just like any other case, at least until something really sensitive turned up, then he’d have to clear everything with Samuels before making any substantive report.

As soon as he got upstairs, John went to the lieutenant’s office, conspicuously leaving the door open as he sat down.


“Well, what do you want?” Batterman asked.

“I met with that Fed, Samuels, this morning,” said John.

“And?” the lieutenant prompted.

“It’s pretty much like you thought. Someone has a hardon for this girl’s disappearance, he wouldn’t say who, but it definitely sounds like either her parents or the boy’s parents are connected to someone who wants special attention paid to her disappearance but doesn’t want any unfavorable publicity. So, I’m going to give it the VIP treatment. High-profile service, low-profile exposure.”

“Fine. Anything else I should know?” the lieutenant asked.

“Not that I can see. I’ll let you know if this one looks like its going to be a problem.”

“Great. Now get the hell out of my office and go earn your keep,” Batterman growled, dismissing John with a wave.

At noon, when John rolled up in front of the FBI’s offi ce building, he was surprised to see Samuels in a jogging suit with a gym bag thrown over his shoulder.

As he pulled to the curb, Samuels casually walked over, opened the door and climbed in.

“Nice duds,” John remarked. “Casual Tuesday?”

“Not really,” Samuels replied. “I’m supposed to be sniffing around a little myself. I’m heading over to the boyfriend’s gym to ask around about his habits and friends. Here’s a copy of all we have on the two of them. Oh, and a little background on her folks. Nothing out of the ordinary. Both sets of parents work, no record of unusual behavior on them or her. Her grades are almost perfect, and she’s some kind of science major, botany I think. I also included a short summary of the whole list of missing persons cases in the back of the file there.”

“Seems pretty normal. With her being at Steddman I assume she’s black. I mean otherwise she wouldn’t fit your profile, right?”

“Yeah, it’s almost too perfect, the fit I mean. If it weren’t for the fact that the distribution is almost equally spread between men and women we’d be looking for a serial killer/rapist. One distinction that stands out in the computer analysis is that all of the suspected victims are very well educated, almost too well educated.”

“What did the computer pull up for a total number of disappearances that fit the profile?” John asked.

“Over eighteen hundred.”

“Eighteen hundred! How the hell did that many fall under the radar with you guys? You keep the national data, someone should have seen this before now. What the hell have you been doing for the last twenty years?” John said in indignant dismay.

“Look, I told you, up until now no one put any sort of importance on the slight bump in the numbers of black folks mostly in the South. You know as well as I do what J. Edgar’s priorities were, and that culture isn’t entirely gone from the Bureau. Besides being a freak in a dress, he hated blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, and homosexuals outside his own cadre. Hell, he hated nearly everybody. You think that kind of thing doesn’t trickle down to every man in the Bureau?

“Why do you think they assigned an almost translucent white guy to this investigation? It’s not because I’m some kind of supercop. It’s because I do my job and I keep my mouth shut. No black in the Bureau is in on this for fear that they’d go to the press and spill the beans about how this country still treats African Americans like second-class citizens.

“I hate the fact that we’re more afraid of this seeing the light of day than the fact that somewhere, somehow, we’ve got someone, or someones, who’s been snatching folks off the street or out of their homes without a trace for years.

“Look at you,” Samuels continued, “you’ve been teamed with a black partner more times than not according to your jacket. How would you feel if he disappeared and no one really gave a shit? Oh, I don’t mean your department, I’m sure you would leave no stone unturned getting to the bottom of a crime against a cop, any department would when one of their own’s involved. But, in the case of a civilian, who’s going to lead the charge? The Bureau has only just now identified the problem. Up until now it’s been easy to pass off the isolated cases to relatives and friends as racially motivated.

“When you get online you’ll see that I included all of the raw data in the mainframe, all the names of the ones we think belong to this group. When you get a chance to look closely, you’ll see that over half of them aren’t even from the South, and fourteen of them disappeared overseas. Take a look at the file and give me a call tonight. I left a card in there with the local number where I’m staying. Can you drop me a few blocks from the Paramount Gym? Know where it is?”

“Yeah, they’ve got amateur boxing there a couple nights a week.”

“Thanks. Oh, and by the way, I’d appreciate it if you would try to report to me face-to-face or online, I hate the phone. I know it’s a pain in the ass, just mark it down to a Fed’s paranoia. Hey, is that Duncan Avenue up ahead? Let me off here, I don’t want to roll up in front in an unmarked squad.”

John pulled over and stopped just short of the corner.

Samuels got out, telling John, “Thanks for the lift,” through the window.

John turned the corner and headed over to his favorite watering hole. Even though it didn’t open until four, he knew the owner would be there cleaning up and getting ready for the after-work crowd.

Parking the squad around the corner from the establishment, John went into the alley to the back door. Walking in, he stopped, unable to see in the dim interior after the bright sunlight outside. Spotting Pete mopping behind the bar, he gave a shout and headed for a seat at the bar.

“How’s tricks, officer, am I behind in my payoff this week?” Pete inquired with a grin, setting a frosty tumbler of iced tea on the table.

“Nah, today I’m representing the Board of Health. You’re going to have to shut down and make about fifty thousand dollars worth of repairs and upgrades if you want to stay in business.”

“Yessah, Mister Inspector man. Yo’all wants me to go and gets massah the money for yous and your friens?” said Pete, falling into his perfect Stepin Fetch it impersonation.

“Get the hell out of here, you reprobate. I just needed to sit somewhere inside to go over some paperwork. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Hell no, John,” replied Pete, flashing a blinding smile through his coffee-colored face. “Just let me know when you want a refill.”

“Sure thing Pete, thanks.”

John open the file and began to go through its contents. On top was Samuels’ note with his address and phone number. Also, scrawled at the bottom, was a line letting him know where raw data was available online and how it could be sorted.

The first sets of information John began to review were the notes on the oldest disappearances. According to the chart, they started as far back as 1967. Nearly forty years ago. He saw that there were barely a handful of cases that far back. Just looking over the dates, and adding up the numbers in his head year by year, it looked like a bell-shaped curve with the peak sometime in the late seventies or early eighties. Things tapered off through the eighties and nineties and looked like they were beginning to pick up again around the turn of the century. Most of the victims were young, between the ages of twenty and thirty-five; some were older, but not many. He saw that a few sets of couples, married, middle class and seemingly solvent, belonged to the group too. Other than their color, nothing seemed to link these people except for the fact that none were ever found, dead or alive, and they all disappeared with no visible signs of foul play and were educated.

From the overall lack of further detail, the FBI must have massaged the numbers and only included cases that had all of the more obvious factors in common. This wasn’t the raw data set, but it did give him a good starting point. Three of the cases in the last ten years were from the Atlanta area. There might still be info online at the department, saving him a trip over to the dead files storage warehouse and drawing undue attention to the investigation. The notes on the current case included Jaylynn Williams’ grades, bank and credit card statements, telephone records and her medical and dental charts. How long was the FBI working on this, he wondered. He was impressed when he saw the date she disappeared: just last week. Awfully quick work. The file on the boyfriend was equally complete, including the report on a preliminary interview conducted over the weekend.

“Boyfriend states he and subject had a disagreement Monday evening over dinner at the subject’s apartment. He further stated he left the apartment at nine-thirty and returned to his place of residence.” The narrative picked up on the next page: “The boyfriend called the next day and left an apology on her voice mail (confirmed) and waited until Wednesday before attempting to visit. Boyfriend states he has no key to Williams’ apartment and was unable to enter. He returned home and left several messages on Williams’ voice mail and then asked for assistance in trying to locate her the following morning upon arriving for work at the Bureau’s data center.” John read on. “No evidence of violence in the girl’s apartment, rug was swept for signs of blood, nothing unusual in either bathroom or kitchen drains, no signs of blood, etc, in Williams’ or the boyfriend’s automobiles.”

“How’s it going?” asked Pete, startling John and breaking his concentration.

“Sorry man, didn’t know you were so deep into it,” he apologized.

“It’s cool,” John replied. “Just trying to absorb a bunch of stuff for a case.”

“New one, or something that’s got you stuck?”

“Nope, a new one, a girl at one of the local schools disappeared.” he said closing the file. Thank God Samuels put it in a plain jacket; all he needed was to have to explain to Pete or anyone what he was doing with an FBI case file.

Pete dropped off a refill of iced tea for John and went back to finish stocking the bar for the afternoon crowd. John hadn’t even noticed he’d drained the first glass while he read. He decided the best way to start off the investigation was to interview the boyfriend and compare what he got against what was in the file. Nothing really stood out, except maybe a question clarifying just how close these two really were.

The file stated they had been dating for about nine months, plenty of time for them to have become intimate. According to the information given, the boyfriend didn’t have a key to her place. He had no priors, just a couple of speeding tickets and a mention in a disturbing the peace complaint from a fraternity bar fight. The file indicated he’d been out of school for just under a year, had gotten his graduate degree in computer sciences, something to do with networking security.

It was two-thirty, too late to head back to the office. Besides, the lieutenant would want some kind of status report regardless of the fact he’d only begun that morning. At least he would be able to cover some ground during the afternoon.

John was looking forward to getting into the FBI mainframe; he had always wanted to lurk around in their systems, but didn’t want to chance getting caught. He was a far cry from being a hacker. Other than some of the techniques he read about in the department files on computer fraud cases, his computer use was strictly mundane—a computer geek he was not.

John gathered up the contents of the file and drained his glass. Getting to his feet, he threw a wave at Pete and shouted, “Catch you later!” on his way out the back door. When he got to the car John decided to take a drive to Steddman College and scope out the lay of the land. Afterwards he might even take a quick drive by Jaylynn Williams’ apartment.

Steddman College for Women was established nearly a hundred years ago in a single-room school house just outside Atlanta. It was the area’s first all-black, women’s college and steadily grew into the thirty-four-acre campus it was today.

Students lived in apartments on and off campus, many working in Atlanta proper and in other nearby suburbs. As he got farther away from the downtown area, John began to relax. The traffic density began to drop off. The surroundings transformed from a sprawling metropolis into more genteel, older neighborhoods.

The entrance to the campus was a traditional, semi-gothic gated driveway, through which visitors could see the administration building which looked more like a wealthy, old-money estate than an all-women’s college turning out some of the most successful graduates in the country.

The slow drive to the administration building gave him ample opportunity to observe that everything seemed outwardly normal. Groundskeepers were trimming trees and, off in the distance, cutting the vast expanse of green lawn. Others were planting or replacing flowers that circled the outside of the administration building. A handful of students were walking between the buildings, sitting under trees talking or studying. Even the weather was conspiring to add its cast to a scene out of a college catalog cover photo. It barely even registered that all of the students in view were black, but now that he thought about it the only white faces he could see were a couple of the groundskeepers.

It was only three-thirty, plenty of time to get someone in administration to help him get started on the investigation, he thought, as he pulled into the parking lot. Getting out of the car, he pulled on his jacket, mostly to conceal the rig of his shoulder holster out of respect for the sensibilities of this quiet campus.

He grabbed his notebook, walked to the administration building and entered the propped-open main doors. Once inside, he walked over to the smiling receptionist sitting behind the counter and pulled out his identification.

“Good afternoon, sir, how may I help you today?” she asked him.

“Hello, I’m Detective John Mathews and I need some assistance with an investigation. Could you direct me to someone who can help me with some information on one of the students here?”

“Yes, detective, that would be Dean Atkins on the second floor. If you like I can call upstairs and have her come down and meet you.”

“No, that won’t be necessary; however if you would check and make sure she’s in and if it would be convenient for her to talk to me now, that would be very helpful.”

The receptionist picked up the phone and dialed. After describing John and his business, she put down the phone and said, “Detective, she will be happy to see you.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“No problem. At the top of the stairs it’s the second door on the left.”

Climbing the broad, curved stairs, John couldn’t help but draw the inevitable comparison between the building’s sweeping staircase and the one in Gone With The Wind. The design of the entire building was one of quiet, understated elegance. Windows were covered with fi ne draperies, chandeliers were made of beautifully cut crystal and at the top of the stairs was a hallway that looked like something out of an older home, lined with doors more suggestive of bedrooms than offices. John walked to the dean’s door and knocked twice before entering. The door opened into a small outer office tastefully appointed with contemporary furnishings, modern office equipment and a young, smiling assistant.

The assistant’s desk held a flat-screen computer display, something John had always wanted for his system at home to help him reclaim some of the precious desktop that never seemed to be large enough to hold all the junk he accumulated. The dean’s assistant stood and came around the desk. “Good afternoon, Detective, Dean Atkins will see you now. May I get you coffee, or some other beverage?”

“Thank you, no. I’m hoping to take only a little of the dean’s time.”

Entering the office, John was pleasantly surprised by the woman standing behind the desk. Dean Atkins appeared to be in her early to mid thirties with classical features; the mahogany brown of her face was a striking counterpoint to a pair of almost sea-green eyes. Her build was slim, athletic and tastefully attired in a deep blue business suit.

Gathering himself together, remembering why he was there in the first place, John walked over to the desk, and pulled out his wallet. “Good afternoon, Dean Atkins,” he said, showing her his identification. “I apologize for dropping in unannounced. My coming here this afternoon was more of a case of fortuitous timing than design.”

“Don’t mention it, Detective, I’m more than happy to help you out.” she replied in a warm contralto. “What kind of information are you seeking, and, if I may ask, what kind of investigation is this?” she added.

“Dean Atkins . . . .” he began.

“Please, my name is Sydney, or Syd. It wouldn’t be a breach in departmental protocol to call me by my name instead of a title, now would it?” she stopped him, an amused twinkle in her eye.

“No ma’am . . . I mean Sydney, it wouldn’t at all. And, if you’d return the favor and call me John, I’d appreciate the same. Anyway, we received a report that one of your students may have gone missing. And even though it may be a lovers’ spat or an unannounced out-of-town visit, I still have to follow up on the case.”

“I understand completely. May I ask why a detective from the city is out here running an investigation? Don’t get me wrong, there won’t be any nonsense about jurisdictional boundaries. I’m just curious.”

John considered just how much to tell her, and then answered, “The initial call was made by the girl’s boyfriend. He reported to the authorities in town and it got assigned to me. There may be a connected parent involved who greased the case to our department, but I really don’t know the particulars.” John continued, “The student is Jaylynn Williams, do you know anything specific about her?”

The dean stood and went over to a file cabinet and pulled out a file. “Not too much, she’s in her third year here, she’s a science major . . . yes, here she is. She’s a biology major working on her degree in the horticultural sciences, hydroponics, forced growth, hybridization and some related topics. Her grades are excellent and there’s nothing here to indicate any past personal problems. Here, take a look, although I ask that you keep the contents confidential.”

“Thank you,” said John as he made a couple of notes on her class schedule, home address and telephone number, even though he had most of the information in the file from Samuels. It would have looked odd had he not taken any notes at all.

“Do you know her personally?” he asked the dean.

“We’ve met, of course,” she replied. “I see all the students in their first year as a matter of course, and occasionally I’m called upon to supervise any student who develops problems with grades or personal problems. I don’t teach any regularly scheduled classes, but I do substitute on occasion and, as Dean of Student Affairs, I monitor and supervise student activities on and off campus. I’m also one of three administrators who are responsible for the college’s community outreach programs.”

“It says here that Ms. Williams is involved in a government grant, what can you tell me about the grant itself?” John asked.

“The grant involves the hydroponic growth of oxygen—and food-bearing plants in low—and no-gravity environments. The obvious applications would be space-based botany, and the development of farming techniques on the moon and other planets. The assumption is that space travelers from earth are not going to be able to carry soil from home into space just to grow plants. The cost of lifting anything into space being as high as it is, bringing along dirt just isn’t cost effective. It’s been discovered that there is a vast supply of water in space in the form of frozen asteroids, on the moon buried under the regolith and more recently on Mars. Water, properly flavored if you will, is going to have to be used as the growth medium in situations where soil containing the proper nutrients is not available.

“The college has received a grant to study the means of accelerating the growth of fruit—and vegetable-bearing plants and maintaining the plants over the long haul. In many cases accelerated growth burns out some plants just as rapidly as they grow and they lose their potency and vitality. It’s no good to have a tomato plant grow, bear fruit in a matter of a few weeks, and then wither and die after the initial burst of life. This is the A part of the grant Ms. Williams was working on. The B part was on the development of algae strains that could be used to produce oxygen and possibly recycle some kinds of liquid waste and produce oxygen, just as they do in nature. She’s been developing a strain to be used in zero gravity over an extended period of time without spoilage.”

“That’s pretty impressive, this level of research being entrusted to an underclassman, or woman in this case. No offense to her gender.” John apologized.

“None taken,” responded Sydney with a laugh. “The English language is up to the task of gender-neutral description, it’s just social inertia that makes us lag behind. We do have faculty supervision over all of the outside funded projects our students work on both here on campus and away. I think there are about fifteen or so projects currently underway, with about thirty more students working across the country on others. Most of them are at institutions like the National Institutes of Health or downtown at the Centers for Disease Control. Two are out in California at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the year as well.”

“Do you know anything about her personal life?” John asked.

“No, I don’t. Let me call her faculty advisor on the project. Do you have the time to wait for a minute?”

“Sure, would you like for me to wait outside?” John offered.

“Not at all. Hang on,” she said, as she picked up the phone.

John got up and began to wander around the office, looking at photos on the wall and the handful of certificates and degrees hanging next to them. This woman obviously had some pretty impressive mental horsepower. Her undergraduate degree was from Steddman, but her master’s degree and Ph.D. were granted in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Somehow John began to feel somewhat lacking in the brains department, but was broken out of his reverie by the dean hanging up the phone.


“Well, her advisor says that she hadn’t noticed anything unusual recently. She did confirm that Ms. Williams has been seeing someone pretty steadily, but there are no complaints on her lab performance or her class work. She also said she hasn’t seen Ms. Williams since Monday of last week.”

“Is that unusual, I mean for her advisor to not have seen her so often?” asked John.

“Probably not. Most faculty advisors see students as little as every other month, some more, some less. We pride ourselves here at Steddman in turning out, what I guess would be described as “well educated ladies of distinction.” This includes promoting self-sufficiency and full accountability for their own actions. I’m not that old myself and I can’t believe just how messed up our culture has become since the early nineteen-seventies.

“Most people my age were raised by parents who either didn’t care about discipline or were afraid to apply any for fear of interference by misguided local authorities who are largely incapable of putting in the time and effort to make an informed determination whether or not children are truly abused or just being appropriately punished for unacceptable behavior. My parents were throwbacks who didn’t have a problem showing me where I had behaved in an inappropriate manner, and their discipline was handed out fairly, and only when necessary.”

“Yeah, but judging from your credentials you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who started out as a problem teenager.”

“Don’t let the degrees fool you,” Sydney said. “My parents blamed me, and my brother, for every grey hair in their heads. I think that’s partly what drew me here in the beginning. All of the students I met while I was checking out the campus seemed to be entirely normal, well adjusted girls. But they seemed to also have a sort of underlying dignity and confidence; it was very compelling to want to belong to a group like that. Going to an all-girls school was a huge drawback, but given the proximity of the city and some of the all-male colleges around the area, I didn’t see coming here as particularly onerous to my social life.

“From my initial impression, Ms. Williams isn’t too terribly different from me in that respect. She dates, she does well in classes and her extracurricular activities are pretty normal. I would be hard pressed to point to anything that stands out as unusual. Would you like to talk with her advisor?” Sydney asked John.

“I don’t think so, I’m sure she would have mentioned anything unusual if it had occurred to her. But if I do, I’ll give you a call fi rst, all right?”

“Thank you, that would be best. Here’s my card, and I added my home number should you need to contact me after hours. And don’t worry, there’s no one else you’ll be disturbing when you call,” she said, smiling warmly.

Getting up, John held out his hand, Sydney rose and met his hand with hers and gave a businesslike shake before conducting him to the door. “By the way,” she added, “do you have time for a quick tour of the campus? I can arrange for one of our guides in student services to take you around, or if you can wait a few minutes I could show you around myself. I have to return a couple of phone calls, but being so near the end of the day, I’d love to get out of the office a little bit early and enjoy the afternoon outside.”

John considered the time and all the things he wanted to get done tonight, and decided that spending more time with Sydney would definitely fall on the plus side of his day. He didn’t entertain any grand illusions. Though he was single, he had no idea what kind of entanglements she might have in her life.  He’d automatically checked out the fact that she wore no marriage ring on her finger when he first came in the door.

“If you have the time, I’d love to take a look at the campus. All I saw coming in is just about the biggest lawn I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” said John.

Sydney laughed, “If you only knew how much money goes into the maintenance of that lawn you’d faint. But the truth of the matter is that the school’s appearance is just as important, at least in the administration’s eyes, as the quality of the classes we teach. It also helps with those who are long-time benefactors, they seem to look at the grounds as an aesthetic oasis in otherwise pedestrian surroundings. You’re welcome to drop your things off in your car and wait for me on the porch. I should only be about ten minutes or so.
 
“See you in a few minutes then,” Sydney said, as she returned to her inner office.

John nodded to the dean’s assistant on his way out and went back outside to his car. Throwing his binder on the front seat, he briefly considered leaving his jacket behind in light of the beautiful day. But he didn’t want to have to suffer the looks he was sure to get wandering around with his shoulder holster visible, and he couldn’t really leave it in the car while on duty. Oh well, he thought, the breeze was pleasant and the late afternoon sun was only warm, not actually beating down hot.

Climbing the stairs back to the porch, John sat down in one of four wicker chairs grouped around a glass-topped table. He made a mental note that if he ever did came back, maybe he could arrange to meet out here instead of in the office.

He then turned his thoughts to the dean. She was obviously smart, maybe even street smart, but John normally thought women who were in the intellectual elite were somewhat out of his league. She had the whole package, brains and looks, and she also seemed to be very comfortable with herself. No airs, no feeling of condescension came from her concerning his being a civil servant. She was definitely a pleasant surprise. Well, a man can dream, he thought.

Moments later she came out on to the porch and asked, “Ready?”

“Sure, where to first?” John asked.

“How about we take the counter-clockwise tour,” she replied. “That’s what we call the standard tour we give prospective students and their parents. It’s a little different from the one we give prospective benefactors and donors. But it provides a better overview of the kind of educational environment we have here at Steddman. The name comes from the order of the tour; if you look at a map of the campus, the principal buildings form a lumpy circle. Starting here, if we follow the path off to the right as you come in the entrance, you would make a large circle and end up coming back off to the left there.”

“I see. Well, lead on, MacDuff,” said John.

“Shakespeare fan?” Sydney asked.

“Who, me? I must have picked it up from a commercial or something,” he said with a grin.

As they began their walk, John took the opportunity to examine Dean Atkins a little more closely. Her spiel was interesting, the delivery natural, as if she was relating information from her own experiences rather than from some canned tour. Her gestures were not overly animated, again with that quiet elegance that seemed to characterize her every move. Her walk barely contained the energy of an athlete. Her shoes were not high heels, but not flats. John didn’t know very much about women’s shoes, but he saw hers as simple and sensible. They brought her height about even with his eyes. All in all, quite a nice little package.

He brought himself back to the here and now and inquired, “Is that the sciences building where Ms. Williams worked?” interrupting her spiel.

“Yes it is, would you like to go inside?” she asked.

“If it’s all right. Maybe I could see her desk, peek into her locker if she has something like that. Does she have her own office?”

“No, the only offices in the life sciences building are for faculty. They’re all upstairs on the top floor,” Sydney replied.

They left the sidewalk paralleling the campus main driveway and crossed the lawn to a side door in the building. Going up the stairs to the double door, John stepped forward and opened the door for Sydney to enter first. “Not locked?” he asked.

“Not this time of day, most of the buildings open at seven in the morning and close around ten at night. The library stays open until midnight, and the student union remains open until one a.m. during the week, and two a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.”

As they walked down the corridor, John dropped his voice and asked, “What about visitors, do they have to check in before running around the campus? Do they have to be escorted after a certain time at night?”

“Well, as much as we would like to treat our girls like ladies, we do require a certain amount of supervision of their gentlemen callers. For the most part male visitors have to check in when they visit any of the girls’ apartments. And overnight visits in the apartments are forbidden. We do have a hospitality house for out-of-town visitors, family members, prospective students and such, but girls who find the rules and regulations too restrictive generally move off campus. We require fi rst year students to live on campus. The school has twenty-four-hour security guards, but they mostly handle lockouts, parking tickets, traffi c control during on-campus events and helping the occasional drunk student home. The security staff are all screened before being hired, the groundskeepers are an outside contractor and the maintenance staff lives mostly off campus. I think an electrician and an engineer stay here around the clock in case of emergencies.”

They turned into a double-doored entryway to the lab and stopped. The fluorescent fixtures hanging from the ceiling cast a bright, yellow-tinted light over ten water-filled tanks lined up in two neat rows along the walls. The tanks looked about three feet deep, each twice as large as two king-sized beds placed side by side. All of the tanks had air bubbling up from underneath the surface, adding cloying humidity to the air. The room’s temperature was somewhere in the mid-eighties; several ceiling fans kept the air moving.

“These are the primary tanks that Jaylynn was using for her project. Off to the left, those are filled with your standard garden-variety vegetables and fruits. If you look closely there isn’t a spoonful of dirt to be found. That slightly rotten smell in the air is coming from the tanks on the right. Those have algae in them and have both CO2 and some kind of organic waste fl owing through. The covers overhead gather the gas that exudes from the algae for analysis. And now that you have reached the extent of my knowledge of what goes on in here, what do you think?”

“Please don’t judge me harshly, but I’m both impressed and surprised,” answered John.

“It’s the girl thing, isn’t it,” laughed Sydney.

“Well yeah. I know better, but old habits die hard,” John replied, laughing himself.

“Okay mister liberated man. Let’s go and let you take a look at her desk.”

Sydney turned and went to a side door. Walking through the door, John saw a room about half the size of the lab, with several desks along the wall. Sitting at one of the desks by the windows was a single student typing away on her computer keyboard.

“Excuse me,” called out Sydney, “Could you tell me which desk is Jaylynn Williams’?”

“Over there, Dean Atkins,” replied the student, looking up at the dean, and pointing to the desk to the left of the door, returning almost immediately to her typing.

“Would you like her to leave the room while you take a look?” asked Sydney.

“No, I just want to see if she has a calendar showing what she was doing last week. Maybe she headed home or had some other trip planned.”

“Let me make a call to the data center, I’ll get her password so you can see her online scheduler. Go ahead and start her computer up, I’ll call them from over here.”

Sydney walked over to the other side of the room, picked up the phone and made the call. Meanwhile, John started looking for a daily planner or personal calendar, opening drawers and sorting through papers. Everything was neatly piled and sorted, but there was no sign of any personal planner, nothing on the hanging calendar from the local Horticultural Society. As a matter of fact it looked like Ms. Williams would be returning any moment; the only thing that even remotely implied she wasn’t right around the corner was that her computer was the only one turned off when they walked into the room. All the others had screen savers running.

Her computer booted up and offered a login prompt for a user name. John looked over to Sydney, still on the phone, and raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

“Hang on, they’re looking it up. Yes. Okay, I got it. Thank you very much,” said Sydney hanging up the phone. She continued, “Her user name is WILLIAMS and her password is BOUNTIFUL in lower-case letters.”

John entered the information and waited for the network connection to be completed. Once logged in, he clicked on the calendar icon, bringing up Jaylynn’s personal planner. He and Sydney both looked at the screen as he scrolled through the previous week’s entries. Just the usual stuff, test dates, one reminder for a report deadline on the algae project, a dinner date notation for Friday, no mention of with whom, and a reminder for a dental appointment that she had for the following week. John printed her schedules for the preceding two months and for the next two before he clicked over to her electronic address book, printing the entire list of about fifty entries of telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

John asked Sydney, “See anything that stands out to you?”

“No, it all looks pretty normal. My guess is her dinner date for last Friday was probably with her boyfriend, you’ll be checking into that if I’m not mistaken.”

“Yeah, I’ll be talking to him in the morning.”

John closed all the open programs and shut the computer down. Turning off the power to the monitor he asked, “Do students have lockers in this building or in the phys. ed. building?”

“No, all lockers over there are unassigned. When the girls use the gym they bring their own lock and grab whatever locker is available. Besides, it would be a little hard to let you into the locker room discreetly right around now, a lot of the girls use the gym in the afternoon. There’s swim team practice too.”

“All right then, I guess I’m done with the official part of my duties. Still have time to finish the tour?” John asked with a grin.

“Why Detective Mathews, you aren’t interested in viewing a little eye candy, are you?” Sydney asked in mock indignation. “You’re not some kind of pervert? My mother always did warn me about the quiet ones.”

“No, it’s nothing like that at all. I just appreciate the company of a good woman.”

“Careful, detective, you just might turn my head. Actually, tonight I have a business dinner that may crowd our tour, but I’m perfectly willing to give you a rain check,” said Sydney.

“I’d like that. Now that I think about it, it wouldn’t hurt for me to hit the road a bit before rush hour begins. I have to head back into the city tonight myself.”

“At least let me walk you back to your car.”

“Deal!” said John.

The two of them left the science building and headed directly across campus toward the back of the administration building instead of following along the road. The late afternoon shadows had begun to lengthen and the air had cooled somewhat from the midday high, making the walk most pleasant.

They ambled back to the administration building parking lot, saying little of consequence, each enjoying the company of someone outside their normal sphere of friends and associates.

After Sydney promised to call John if she should hear anything at all about Jaylynn, and they said their goodbyes, John got into his car and pulled out of the lot. He looked back in the mirror to see Sydney watch him drive away. Food for thought, he wondered, or was he making a mountain out of a molehill? He definitely wanted to find a reason to see Dean Sydney Atkins again.