Читать книгу Missing: The Oregon City Girls - Rick Watson - Страница 11
ОглавлениеFor seventeen years Philip Tennyson has operated a videotape service. He rents cameras, makes copies of tapes and shoots and edits videos. Philip conducts his business from a converted garage-office attached to the small home he shares with his blended family, including his wife Linda, a high-profile Portland private investigator, her twenty-year-old son Jonathan and Philip’s thirteen-year-old son, Damon. Linda works mostly for defense attorneys. She’s earned a reputation for dogged, detailed investigations, especially homicide cases. Since marrying Philip, six years before, she has moved her office to their house, taking over a spare bedroom and two-thirds of the dining room table. The kitchen separates her office from Philip’s equipment-laden video studio.
On January 10, Philip is sitting at his editing bay examining a clip depicting groups of dancing teenage girls. The video office door swings open as his wife Linda O’Neal blows in, cell phone to ear. She’s drenched from a pounding rain and clutches a waterlogged bag of groceries, half covered by a tattered umbrella. She is vigorously defending an issue. “I understand your instructions, but it’s not my fault,” she informs the attorney on the other end of the line, “and I will do it, but I’m telling you, the so-called witness doesn’t know a damn thing.” She hangs up, ponders the case she’s working on a moment and then plasters a kiss on the top of Philip’s head before she blasts on through the tiny editing suite into the adjoining kitchen.
Linda calls out to her husband, “Have you finished my surveillance tape yet?”
He shouts a reply toward the kitchen, “I’ve been working on it, but the guy with the dance team tape wants forty copies at ten bucks a piece. I’m doing your surveillance tape for love, so guess which project comes first?”
While putting the groceries away, Linda hears Philip’s telephone ring repeatedly. “Philip, catch your phone,” she yells.
“I’m right in the middle of an edit. I’ll get it in just a minute.” Finally, he picks up and Linda hears him talking to Maria, his eldest daughter by a previous marriage.
Linda meanders toward the editing cubicle.
“Have you seen my niece, Ashley, in the last day or two?” Maria asks sharply.
“No, we haven’t seen Ashley.” Philip asks, “Why?”
Maria abruptly requests to speak with Linda. Philip shrugs and hands over the phone.
“What’s going on?” Linda asks.
“Ashley didn’t come home from school last night and we’re calling everyone we can think of. So far, no one has seen her.”
Linda reflects for a moment. “Didn’t she drive Damon crazy on some camping trip you guys went on last year?”
“She did pester him a lot, huh? Ashley’s a pistol. She’s got a definite attitude, no arguing there.”
“So what happened, you think she ran off?”
“No, I really don’t think so, Linda. Ashley spent last weekend here with her cousins and we all had a great time. She was fine when we took her home to her mother. She was in a good mood and wouldn’t have run away.”
Linda and Philip hadn’t seen much of his step-grandchild.
“Is she more sophisticated than other twelve-year-olds?” Linda has unconsciously switched into her private investigator’s voice.
“Not really. She’s on the dance team and she’s involved with other activities at school.”
“Do you think she has an older boyfriend?”
“No, Ashley isn’t into boys. After her problems with her father, she isn’t really into the boyfriend thing. Remember she won’t even be thirteen until March 1. Lori called the police yesterday, but the first thing they think is runaway. I’m really getting worried. Can you help?”
“I’ve got a friend who works for Clackamas County. If Ashley is still missing by tomorrow, I’ll get a hold of my friend and see what I can find out. In the meantime, widen the scope of the calls. Call everyone you can think of. She may just be hiding out in plain sight. Don’t worry, we’ll find her. These types of disappearances are really very common, especially with teenagers who are troubled or feel misunderstood. Ninety-five percent of the time the kids turn up.”
Maria seems unconvinced, but thanks Linda for her advice and hangs up.
Philip looks up at his wife. “Yeah, but what happens to that other five percent?”
His brow furrowed, her husband looks apprehensive and Linda suddenly has a gut feeling there may be good reason.
By this time, Viola Valenzuela-Garcia has spent hours interviewing people as she searches for clues to the whereabouts of Ashley, but she’s disappointed. Nothing useful comes forth. Then a call from Gardiner Middle School produces what seems to be a solid lead. Mallori Weaver had approached the vice principal with information she claimed was provided by “Uncle Paul” to the effect that he had actually seen Ashley roaming around a shopping mall. Clackamas Town Center is a large regional mall some four miles from Oregon City. Uncle Paul is Paul Myers, her dad’s closest friend.
Responding to the tip, Detective Valenzuela-Garcia is handing out flyers and continues searching for Ashley while she patrols the main walkways of Clackamas Town Center.1 Earlier in the day she had issued a BOLO, “Be On the Look Out,” alert for white female juvenile, five-feet-five inches, one-hundred-three pounds, brown eyes, long brown hair, date of birth 3/1/89, last seen wearing blue jeans and white sneakers.2
Garcia enters a costume jewelry store and soon begins fingering some garish earrings attached to a central display case. The bespectacled female clerk bids adieu to a departing customer and turns her attention to Garcia. “Sell many of these?” the lady cop asks, holding up a particularly outrageous pair.
The clerk laughs. “Not to anyone over the age of twelve. What can I do for you, officer?”
Garcia hands the clerk a copy of the flyer. “Have you seen this girl? We received a credible tip that she is hanging out in the mall somewhere.”
The clerk stares for a moment at the portrait of a smiling Ashley that dominates the flyer before shaking her head.
Resuming her surveillance of the main walkway, Garcia next stops a young man sporting a Mohawk and a black goatee. She hands him a flyer. “There’s a missing girl and we think she was around the mall today. Please take a look at this picture. Have you seen her?”
“Nope,” he says disinterestedly as he turns and walks away, scuffing the tiled floor with the hobnailed heels of his work boots.
Later, while at a table in the food court, Garcia is munching French fries next to her stack of flyers. She notices a skinny teenager walking near the second floor railing. Her heart pounds as she examines the photo of Ashley on the flyer. She takes a longer look at the girl near the railing who suddenly notices the attention and darts into a passing crowd of teenagers exiting from a nearby movie theatre. Garcia rushes into the group and scans, her head turning quickly from side to side. But it is too late. Whoever the girl was, she is gone. The detective resumes her random interviews, hoping one will ultimately lead to a meaningful clue about the disappearance of Ashley Pond.
Garcia next contacts Ward Weaver at his job site, only a short drive from the mall. Her goal is to unravel more information about the supposed sighting of Ashley by Paul Myers. Ward Weaver cheerfully admits that Paul Myers is indeed his close buddy and further explains that Myers had told him that he had seen Ashley at the mall after her disappearance. Garcia gets Myers’s phone number from Weaver.
Watching him, Garcia finds Weaver’s attitude strangely unaffected by the disappearance of his daughter’s friend. She reports, “While I was there talking with Ward Weaver, he seemed very distracted and his behavior was inappropriate, considering the topic of discussion. I was discussing the fact that Ashley Pond was still missing and rather than seeming concerned or upset, Weaver instead was laughing and being flirtatious as he talked with me. This seemed very incongruous with the fact that Mr. Weaver said he cared for Ashley like his own daughter.”
Once Garcia has Myers on the phone, she describes the efforts surrounding the tip that had supposedly originated from him.
“There must be some misunderstanding, ma’am,” he says. “I told them I had seen the girl at the mall all right, but when I seen her it was before she went missing, not after. Somebody got it all wrong. I talked to my friend Ward just this morning and evidently our conversation was incorrectly communicated to his daughter Mallori, who then must have told the Gardiner Middle School folks. Like a damned rumor getting spread, things get turned around. I hope this puts you straight on the matter.”
