Chapter Ten
Lance turned to the whiteboard mounted on the wall. The board was empty, but what would they find when they dug in to the case?
Whatever it was, it was high time he faced the truth.
Morgan offered Sharp the file, but he clearly didn’t need it. He leaned back in his chair and started talking. “We know that Vic left his house at approximately nine p.m. to go to the grocery store. When he hadn’t returned at eleven o’clock, your mother called his closest friends, Stan Adams and Brian Leed, hoping one of them would help. Neither was at home. So she drove the route between the store and house in case Vic’s car had broken down. When she didn’t find him, she drove to PJ’s Sports Bar, where he sometimes hung out with Brian and Stan. She didn’t see Brian or Stan there. No one had seen Vic.”
Restless, Sharp got up and paced in front of the whiteboard. “Jenny called the police a little before midnight. A uniform drove out to the house and took the initial report. Victor had no concerning health conditions or mental limitations. There was no evidence that he was especially at risk, though staying out this late was out of character. The uniform filled out a missing person report and issued a BOLO alert for Victor Kruger and his 1984 Buick Century.”
Sharp stopped pacing and faced the board. Picking up a marker, he began a timeline. “The patrol officer had hoped, reasonably, that Victor had simply stopped somewhere or taken a different route. Maybe his car had broken down. Those were the days before everyone had a cell phone attached to his or her body. People still used cash for transactions. There was no E-ZPass. It wasn’t so unusual for someone to slip off the radar for an evening.”
Sharp used magnets to affix an old photo of Victor Kruger and two other men onto the whiteboard. The three men stood in front of a baseball field. They wore amateur baseball uniforms, with the logo for a local appliance store on their chests. Lance’s heart squeezed as he stared at the wide grin on his father’s face.
“That picture must have been taken at a game.” Lance remembered sitting in the stands watching games. Memories of his dad teaching him to play flickered through his mind like a slideshow. “My dad loved baseball.”
“Who are the other men?” Morgan asked.
Lance pointed to the men in turn. “Brian Leed and Stan Adams, my dad’s best friends.”
After a short pause, Sharp continued. “I took over the case in the morning. The first thing I did was go to the grocery store and view the surveillance tapes. Vic never entered the store that night. His car never pulled into the lot. I made the rounds of gas stations and convenience stores, flashed a picture of Vic around, and checked security videos where available. No sign of him.”
“Normally, an unexplained adult missing person case doesn’t get a ton of manpower. But Mrs. Kruger was highly agitated. My caseload was relatively light, and I thought the disappearance warranted an investigation. Over the next few days, I visited locations Vic frequented. I called hospitals, morgues, police and sheriff stations, checked bus and train stations, the airport. I interviewed his boss, coworkers, and close friends. All the notes are in the file, but everyone agreed that Vic would never have just left his family. The more people I talked to, the more I became convinced that Vic Kruger hadn’t left town on his own. I searched the house and his office. It didn’t appear that he had taken anything with him except his wallet and car keys. I’d investigated people who walked, ran—and were taken—from their families, but in all my twenty-five years on the force, Victor was the only person to actually vanish without a trace. This isn’t the city. People usually return from a trip to the grocery store.”
Lance studied the board, trying to remain objective. So far, none of the case details were shocking. Sharp’s initial investigation had been by the book. But still . . . when the missing person was your dad, seeing his case laid out should have disturbed him.
But Lance felt as distant as he had been in 1994. It hadn’t felt real then either. But then, his mother had used up all the emotions. Mentally, she’d crumbled quickly, leaving Lance to pick up the pieces. His life had felt like reassembling a shattered vase when you didn’t have all the shards. No amount of glue could ever make it whole again. What else could he have done except bury his own reactions?
“So where do we start?” Morgan asked.
Sharp shrugged. “I updated the file and missing person database over the years, but not since I retired. Unfortunately, we don’t have access to the NCIC, but I’ll have to assume that the sheriff will utilize that system to look for like crimes.”
The National Crime Information Center was an FBI database, only available to law enforcement agencies, not private investigators.
“It seems to me that you covered Vic’s disappearance, Sharp.” Morgan scanned the board. “So we should focus on the new piece of information.”
“The dead woman.” Lance got up and went into his office. He returned a minute later with his laptop. “We can start with NamUs. If she was a local and a missing person report was filed, her information should have been entered into the system.”
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System was a Department of Justice database accessible to law enforcement and the general public. It cross-referenced unidentified remains and outstanding missing persons across the country.
Lance tried not to think about the odds of actually finding his father. More than forty thousand sets of remains were unidentified in the United States, scattered in a patchwork of over two thousand coroner’s and medical examiner’s offices across the country. Even with his father’s DNA on file, it was possible his body had been found years ago. NamUs didn’t exist until 2009. Vic Kruger’s remains could be sitting in a vault anywhere in the country, or they could have been buried or cremated long ago without being identified.
Focus on the task.
Lance typed. “In NamUs, there are 236 females missing in the state of New York.”
Sharp leaned on the board and crossed his arms. “They’ll be listed in order of date last seen. Start with July through September 1994. Then we’ll whittle the list down by region.”
“Four women were reported missing at that time.” Lance scrolled. “Two were local girls. Laura Dennis, from Albany, was twenty-two years old when she disappeared. She was last seen August 1, 1994. Mary Fox went missing from Grey’s Hollow. Her description says she was sixty-four inches tall and weighed one hundred fifteen pounds.”
“Local girl, close enough in height to Frank’s estimate for the skeleton,” Sharp said.
Lance continued. “She was reported missing August 25, but the file notes say she was last seen a week or two before. Though she lived with her mother and stepfather, her mother wasn’t sure of the exact date she’d left. They’d had an argument, and it wasn’t unusual for Mary to stay with a friend for a few days.”
“No one reported her missing for two weeks.” Morgan made notes on her legal pad. “That’s horrible.”
“Who’s listed as the investigating agency?” Sharp asked.
“Randolph County Sheriff’s Department,” Lance said.
“King wasn’t the sheriff in 1994.” Morgan’s chair squeaked as she shifted back and crossed her legs.
“No.” Sharp shook his head. “Bob O’Reilly was the sheriff back then. He dropped dead of a massive heart attack on the job in 2001. King was the chief deputy. He ran for office, won, and has been sheriff ever since.”
“Let me pull up the case report,” Lance said. “I’ll print Mary’s photo.”
The printer hummed and spit out a sheet of paper. Sharp retrieved it and fastened it to the board. Mary had brown eyes and shoulder-length brown hair.
Sharp pointed to the picture. “Does she look familiar, Lance?”
Lance shook his head. “No.”
Sharp wrote Mary’s name above the picture. “Lance, why don’t you call Frank? If finding her was this easy for us, then he probably already has her name.”
Sharp went back to pacing, as if physical movement jogged his brain.
The ME didn’t answer. Lance left a message then set down his phone.
“While we wait, we should conduct a thorough review of the file and make a list of people to locate and interview.” Sharp returned to the board. “Morgan, I want your eyes on this whole file. You’re the one starting fresh with no preexisting opinions.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to copy the file for my grandfather as well,” Morgan said. “He has decades of experience and nothing but time on his hands.”
“I’d appreciate that.” Sharp started a new column entitled Interviews. Underneath, he listed Stan Adams and Brian Leed. “Vic worked for UpState Insurance. The company went bankrupt in 2012. His boss’s name was Phil Dryer. Phil was a real company man and stayed with the firm for his whole career. His last known address is in the file. There was also a secretary, Dorothy Finch. She was sixty years old in 1994 and retired when the firm closed. The last time I checked, she was living in a nursing home.”
Lance worked on his laptop. “Stan and Brian still live in town. Their addresses haven’t changed in the last five years. I found an obituary for Dorothy Finch. Phil Dryer no longer lives at that address.”
Under Find, Sharp wrote Phil Dryer.
As always, Morgan was making her own notes. “What else did Vic do? He must have had hobbies, other acquaintances. Were he and Jenny socially active back then?”
“Stan and Brian were the full extent of Vic’s social life,” Sharp said. “They played baseball and hung out at PJ’s.”
“Is that the same PJ’s that’s on Fletcher Avenue?” Morgan asked.
“That’s the one.” Sharp nodded. “It’s still in business. Still owned by the same family.”
Morgan turned to Lance. “What do you remember of your dad’s friends?”
“Not much,” Lance said. “Stan was single back then. Brian’s wife’s name was Natalie. Their kids were younger than me. Two were in diapers the last time I saw them.” Lance shook his head, his mouth flattening as he remembered the sheer, stark loneliness after his dad went missing. “They didn’t come around after my dad disappeared.”
Sharp took a deep breath. “There were some things we’ve never talked about. At the time, you were just a boy. You had enough to cope with, and I didn’t want to burden you. But now, if you really want to dig in to your dad’s disappearance, you’ll need to prepare yourself for the less pleasant details.”
Lance straightened. His gaze met Sharp’s briefly before he nodded. “I knew you kept things from me. Maybe I didn’t want to hear the truth if there was no real chance of finding out what happened to him. But now there is, and it’s time.”
Over the years, he’d actively avoided learning more about the case. It was almost as if he knew the facts would change his memories of his childhood. No doubt he’d painted the period before his father vanished with a rose-colored brush. Understandable, since the years afterward had been hell.
“All right.” Sharp took a deep breath. “Your father’s friends, Stan and Brian, told me that Victor had been concerned about his wife’s mental health. She had already begun exhibiting signs of anxiety and depression. She was still teaching at the community college but was struggling. They also said that your dad’s company was having financial problems. He was worried about getting laid off. On top of all that, your mom’s spending was getting out of control.”
Lance digested the information. Bits of memory moved and clicked into place like a Rubik’s Cube. “So his disappearance didn’t cause her illness.”
“It didn’t,” Sharp agreed. “But it sent her into a rapid downward spiral.”
Given that information, the Krugers’ marriage hadn’t been the episode of Leave It to Beaver that Lance had always believed. Now that he thought about it, this version made more sense.
“Stan and Brian said Vic was unhappy,” Sharp said. “He didn’t know what to do about Jenny’s problems. He was drinking too much.”
Lance turned toward the board, away from Sharp. He’d always known he didn’t have the full scoop. But none of this explained how a young woman had ended up in the trunk of his dad’s car.
“Let’s divvy up our tasks,” Sharp said. “I’ll search online records and the Social Security Death Master File for Vic’s old boss, Phil Dryer. I can also make a few calls and see if there are any good rumors floating around about the case.” Sharp knew everyone in local law enforcement who’d been on the job more than five years. “We need fresh background checks on everyone involved, and we obviously can’t ask Jenny to do them for us.”
“I’ll take care of those. I’m not as fast as my mom, but I can get the job done,” Lance said.
“Someone needs to go down to the county clerk’s office and check vital records. We need to find out if Phil is still alive. If he is, I want to talk to him. Maybe now that he no longer works for UpState Insurance, he’ll be more willing to share information than he was back then. I’d really like to know how precarious Vic’s job really was. Phil would never give me a straight answer about the financial health of the company.”
“Aren’t vital records available online?” Morgan asked. “If he died, the county will have a death certificate on file.”
“In Randolph County, you can request them online, but you might not receive them for a week or a month . . . or ever,” Sharp said.
Morgan nodded. “I have to go to the courthouse to file a discovery motion for a DUI case I’m working on. It’s Esposito’s case, and the DA’s office has been slow to send me information.”
“What a jerk.” Sharp shook his head. “Lance, go with Morgan to the courthouse. You can check vital records while she’s filing her motion. I don’t want her alone until her stalker is brought in.”