Bill Pronzini: The Vanished

‘Yes. They were very nice, but they said there wasn’t much they could do and not to expect anything if he didn’t… come back of his own volition.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I pulled the desk pad and pencil in front of me and wrote her name and a few other things down. ‘You don’t have any idea where your fiancé might be?’

‘No, none. I think something may have happened to Roy, an accident, amnesia… I don’t know. I’ve been so worried, and this morning I just couldn’t stand the waiting, the inactivity , and that’s why I came to you. I called up my attorney and he gave me your name; he said you were very reliable.’

‘I hope I am, Miss Kavanaugh,’ I said. ‘Suppose you tell me something about Roy Sands?’

‘Well, he’s a master sergeant in the Army,’ she said. ‘I mean, he was. He’s been in the service for twenty years, you see, and that makes him eligible for retirement with a nice pension and he chose to leave the service instead of re-enlisting when his tour came up just before Christmas. I met him at a U.S.O. dance here in San Francisco about two years ago; he was stationed at the Presidio at the time. He asked me out and then we started going together and we fell in love. After we were sure marriage was what we wanted, we made all sorts of plans and Roy bought me this ring’-she displayed the diamond engagement band with a kind of awkward pride-’and we opened the joint bank accounts just before he left for Germany.’

‘When was that?’ I asked.

‘Eleven months ago.’

‘Last February?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘And he’s been in Germany since then?’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘At Larson Barracks, in Kitzingen.’

‘When did he return to the States?’

‘The eighteenth of last month.’

‘To San Francisco for his discharge?’

‘Yes. We were to spend Christmas and New Year’s together.’

‘But you never saw him after his return, is that right?’

‘Yes. I mean, no, I didn’t see him.’

I told myself: You weren’t such a unique holiday case, guy; the world is full of lonely people. I said, ‘Are you sure he did return to San Francisco?’

‘Oh yes,’ Elaine answered. ‘He was supposed to call me after he had arrived and gotten settled and everything, and when he didn’t by Sunday night, I contacted the Presidio. They said he had come in on the flight from Germany, but no one seemed to know where he went afterward. I talked to two of Roy’s friends, men who had been with him in Kitzingen and who had come over on the plane with him, and they didn’t know where he’d gone either.’

‘What did they say about his frame of mind?’

A pair of thin horizontal lines, like furrows in a meadow of snow, appeared on her forehead. ‘Frame of mind?’

‘Did these friends mention if he seemed happy, sad, apprehensive, nervous?’

‘They said he talked about me, and about our marriage.’ Her voice had a slight tremor in it now. ‘They said I shouldn’t worry, everything would be all right, but I don’t know. I can’t help feeling…’

I said, ‘Did you write to one another regularly while he was overseas?’

She gave herself a small shake. ‘Yes, we were in close correspondence the entire time.’ She took the engagement ring between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand and rotated it from side to side, caressing it in a way that told me she was not aware of what she was doing. ‘I wrote to him at least twice a week, and he wrote to me three or four times a month; men aren’t as ardent letter-writers as women, of course.’

‘He gave no indication in his letters of anything being wrong?’

‘Nothing at all.’

I wrote some more things on the pad. ‘Do you know where he’s from, originally?’

‘Kansas,’ she said. ‘Topeka.’

‘Would he still have family there?’

‘Oh no, Roy is an orphan. He has no family.’

‘Well, what about friends or acquaintances?’

‘You mean where he might be staying for some reason?’

‘Yes.’

‘The only friends he has are in the service,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t possibly know all of them, but he was stationed here in California for about three years before he was sent to Germany and he probably knew a lot of fellows who came and went.’

I drank some of my coffee and looked at the package of cigarettes and looked away from it and said, ‘Is there anything else you can tell me that might help, Miss Kavanaugh? There’s not really much here, so far.’

‘Well, there are the wires.’

‘Wires?’

‘Yes, telegrams. Three days after he arrived in San Francisco-the twenty-first of December-Roy wired money to three different friends who had been with him on the return flight from Germany.’

‘For what reason?’

‘He’d lost it to them playing poker.’

‘How much money was involved?’

‘About a hundred dollars, I think.’

‘He paid off everyone he’d lost to in the game?’

‘Yes, there were only four of them playing.’

‘Where were the wires sent from?’

‘Eugene, Oregon.’

‘Do you have any idea why your fiancé would be in Eugene?’

‘No, none at all-none.’

‘And you didn’t receive any word from Oregon yourself?’

‘No, and I don’t understand that at all. Why would Roy send money paying off gambling debts to his friends, but nothing whatsoever to the woman he loves, the woman he’s going to marry?’

I had no answer for that. I said, ‘How did you find out about the wires?’

‘From Chuck Hendryx. He’s one of Roy’s friends, the first one I talked with when I came to San Francisco. I knew him slightly from before; Roy introduced us, and we’d been over to Chuck’s home in Marin County a couple of times before he and Roy left.’

‘Is this Hendryx still in the Army, or was he discharged too?’

‘He’s a full career man, with twenty-three years in now,’ Elaine said. ‘He came home for the holidays, to be with his wife and family. They don’t like to travel, and so they stay here in California most of the year.’

‘Is he still home, do you know?’

‘Yes. He’ll be here until the end of January.’

‘Do you have his address?’

‘Forty-eight Pinewood Lane, Fairfax.’

‘You mentioned talking to another of your fiancé’s friends,’ I said. ‘Who would that be?’

‘Doug Rosmond.’

‘Was he one of the men who got a wire from Oregon?’

She nodded. ‘He’s home on leave also, staying with his sister Cheryl here in San Francisco. Would you want his address too?’

‘Please.’

She opened her bag and took out a thin address book and read me a location well out in the Parkside District, on Vicente near Ocean Beach. I wrote it down on the pad.

‘You said money was wired to three friends, Miss Kavanaugh. Can you tell me the name of the third?’

‘A man named Gilmartin, I think.’

‘Gil Martin?’

‘No, Gilmartin-one word. I can’t recall his first name.’

‘You didn’t talk with him, then?’

‘No, but Chuck did. He didn’t know anything that would help, either.’

I rubbed the pencil eraser across the bridge of my nose. ‘Did you check with the authorities in Eugene?’

‘No. The Missing Persons people here told me they would do that.’

‘They apparently learned nothing, or you would have been notified by now.’

‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Is there anything further you can tell me, anything at all?’

‘I’ve thought and thought, and there’s just nothing.’ She met my eyes directly now, and hers seemed huge and imploring behind her glasses. ‘You do believe me that Roy hasn’t just… run off somewhere, don’t you? I mean, you agree that the circumstances are very strange surrounding his disappearance?’