Taken?

"Detective Maki, I may have some news about my daughter. I located a waitress in a restaurant here in Grand Marais who thinks she saw Katy at around 4 p.m. the day she disappeared. She believes Katy was a passenger in a brown car, but she doesn't know the make and she didn't see the driver. I'm going to be looking around here for her until I either find her or there's nowhere else left to look," said Rob.

"So you're up there in Grand Marais looking for her? Is there some reason you don't want to let the police do the looking?" Detective Maki stopped speaking, waiting for Rob to answer his questions.

"I just felt I had to do something myself and this seemed like the most logical thing for me to do. I'm going to be getting some of the posters I had printed sent up later today and I'll be putting them up all over town. Someone else here may have seen her."

"Perhaps it's good that you called me this morning. I got the reports back from the investigators who checked out your home and they didn't have anything at all to show for their efforts. They found no blood or other signs of any violence or trauma. Both of your cars checked out as well. We still have some fingerprints to work with, but without having samples of your wife's or your daughter's fingerprints it will be difficult to do much."

"Well, you know you can ask me for anything at all, and I'll be happy to provide it. You have my cell phone number and if you need to reach me just call at any time. If I happen to be out of cell phone range your message will go to my voice mail, and I'll call you back as soon as I can," said Rob.

"Don't worry, I'll call you if anything at all comes up or if there are any questions that we need answers to," said Maki. "I'm beginning to believe that what you told me is the truth, and perhaps your efforts up there in Grand Marais are not such a bad idea after all. The police up in that area are spread pretty thin, and likely won't have a lot of manpower to devote to a search for your daughter."

Rob thanked the detective for his vote of confidence and told him that he would call Duluth at least once a day. When he ended the call Rob felt a lot more at ease. He had almost dreaded the phone call to Maki, assuming he would be accused again of having had something to do with his daughter's mysterious disappearance.

Rob's first stop after leaving the restaurant was at a Holiday Gas Bar, where he filled up his car and showed Katy's picture to the attendant. From there he drove to the Department of Natural Resources office to find out what types of maps they had for the area. He discovered they had some very good ones, maps that showed all of the side roads and resource access roads throughout northeastern Minnesota. He purchased a full set of them and was now prepared to start on his quest.

Before getting on the road he phoned the printing office in Duluth and made arrangements with them to send his shipment of posters to him at his motel. They were instructed to pay for expedited service and add the cost to his bill, as he needed to get those posters as quickly as possible, so that he could begin distributing them. The printers advised him that he could expect his posters just after 2 p.m.

Since he didn't expect to receive his posters from Duluth until after lunch, he didn't want to begin by visiting businesses that he would have to return to later with a poster. Instead he decided to drive down every street throughout Grand Marais to inquire of any pedestrians whether they had seen Katy, and also to keep a lookout for any brown cars he may come across.

His driving took him down every residential street in Grand Marais, and took until just after lunch time to complete. He stopped and spoke with the several dozen people that he came across as he drove, but none recognized Katy. Whenever he located a brown car he noted the address and the car's plate number.

It was time for lunch so Rob headed to the Angry Trout Cafe. He knew that he was going to have to eat some proper meals, not just fast food, if he intended to keep himself in shape and maintain his health. He enjoyed a soup and salad with a small piece of homemade pie for dessert. Before leaving the restaurant he once again showed his daughter's picture, again to no avail. He had just over an hour to spend before the posters arrived, and he used the time to update his notes and mark on the map the streets that he had covered in the morning.

While he was in the process of completing the sorting and rewriting of his now scrambled notes, he received a return call from Officer Aikman in Duluth. She told him that once again their morning meeting had included a lot of emphasis on Katy's disappearance. Detective Maki advised the assembled officers that her father was no longer being considered the primary suspect in her disappearance. The detective was now focusing his attention on the search for an unknown person who had taken Katy, and told them that he had attended at Katy's school and spoken with many of her classmates. The students had convinced him that she was not the type of student to miss exams or take off from home on a whim.

Rob thanked Officer Aikman for her information, and explained to her what he was doing in Grand Marais. She wished him luck and agreed to call him the next day to let him know what was really happening in Duluth.

By the time he was off the phone with her it was time to return to the motel to see whether his posters had arrived as promised. As he pulled up outside of the office the brown UPS truck was just leaving. When he entered the office he could see a box sitting on the counter and headed for it immediately. The clerk at the desk recognized him and told him his package had arrived, so Rob picked up the box and headed for his car. He was anxious to begin distributing some of the posters so that if anyone else had seen Katy in Grand Marais they would know who to contact.

His first stop was at the office of the Grand Marais police, where he left sufficient of the posters that each of their officers would be given one. From there he visited the State Police depot where he again left a number of his posters. The officers he spoke with at both locations did not recognized Katy, and he could only hope that having one of his posters would help them to recognize Katy or Erin if they should come across one of them in their travels.

He spent the rest of the afternoon visiting each of the businesses and public offices around Grand Marais, seeking, and usually obtaining, their permission to tack a poster on their wall or bulletin board. In some of the high traffic locations he was allowed to tape the poster to a window. By the end of the afternoon he had put up over a hundred of the posters, but not one of them had generated a lead from the people he encountered while he made his rounds.

That evening Rob was enjoying a quiet supper when his cell phone rang. It was the first of four separate calls that Rob received over the course of the evening that purported to be from people who had just seen Katy while they traveled about the Grand Marais area. Each of the calls required several minutes of his time before he was able to prove to himself that the people he was speaking with were mistaken. Three of the callers stated that the girl they had seen did not have the blond streak in her hair, and the fourth described a girl who was clearly much younger than Katy.

The first call generated a lot of excitement in Rob, building hope that was soon dashed. With each of the subsequent phone calls he was able to keep himself from getting as excited as he had for the first one, but each left him feeling discouraged as he hung up the phone. He hoped that this wasn't going to be the pattern for every day, and that soon he would receive a call that would actually give him a good lead, something that he could pass on to the police.

The first call had disturbed his meal and left him to complete the cold food on his plate. The second and third calls took him away from his work in the motel room as he prepared his notes for that day and his schedule for the following one. The final call arrived just as he was about to fall asleep for the night, and left him lying there wondering just how many calls he would receive that would be of such little use.  

--Day 5--

Friday morning Rob awoke to the sound of pouring rain. He hadn't thought to check the weather before he retired the night before so he immediately turned on the television and selected the Weather Channel to see what the forecast for the day was going to be. He was not happy to see that it was predicted that there would be rain for the entire day, with some periods of very heavy rain. He had intended to cover some of the outlying country roads today, but heavy rain would make it difficult to do that. He felt he would have to change his plan of attack for today.

He had an early breakfast during which he created a new list of activities for the day. By 8:30 he was in his room again and on his cell phone to Detective Maki. When he reached the detective he said, "Hello Detective Maki, it's Rob Walsh. I have a list of car license numbers and addresses that I've made here in Grand Marais and I'm wondering if you can't check them out somehow to see if any of these people may be a possible suspect. All of the cars are a shade of brown. There are 10 of them, so I hope this isn't too much to check."

Detective Maki took a long moment before he replied, "Do you suppose that you could fax that to me? If I start writing down a long list of numbers and addresses I'm sure there's a good chance that I will make at least one error in transcribing them. It's easy for me to check on a license number, and the information will provide an address that I can compare to the ones you give me. We can easily do a check on whether these car owners have any criminal records. You may also want to check with the police there in Grand Marais about this. They know the locals."

"That's a good idea. I'll take this list to the office here at the motel and fax it to you. Have you received any phone calls from the posters I've been putting up? I've had four here in Grand Marais but none of them seem to be of any help. It was apparent that in each case the person had been in error when they identified Katy."

"No one has called the Duluth police about a reported sighting up there. We have had a couple of calls from the notices on the TV and radio stations but none of them have panned out. One was credible enough that we actually sent out a car to check it out, but it ended up as nothing. The State police would automatically advise us of any calls they received, and so far they have apparently had none. If anything actually helpful should come in we will advise you," said Detective Maki.

Rob thanked the detective and hung up the call. He was pleased that there didn't seem to be any suggestion by the detective that Rob had somehow been involved in his daughter's disappearance. That was a step forward he felt, and he hoped that it would signal the end of Detective Maki's suspicions of him. Rob took his sheet of numbers and addresses down to the motel office, and using the fax number for the Duluth police that was printed on Officer Aikman's card; he had the fax sent to Detective Maki.

After he returned to his room Rob called Officer Aikman's answering machine and left her a message that she needn't call him unless something came up that she felt he would not have already been advised of. He was beginning to realize that expecting the officer to keep him posted on the details of the police department investigation was totally unfair to her. It was nice enough that she had volunteered the information that she felt Rob was being honest about what had happened. He didn't want to continue asking her for information, but instead would save her kind offer of assistance until he really needed it.

Rob spent the next hour phoning family and friends to let them know what he had been doing for the last two days since Katy's disappearance. Nobody had heard anything from her and none of them was able to offer any further advice to him on how to handle the situation. After he was finished with the last call Rob promised himself that he would keep in touch with all of these people on a very regular basis, as it was obvious that they were as concerned as he was about the situation.

Several had asked him if there was any assistance that he needed and several of the family members offered to help with the cost of the search he was making. He thanked them all and did arrange with his brother-in-law, Jim Randall, the only one of the relatives who lived in Duluth, to pick up the remaining posters from the printer's office. He also asked Jim to begin distributing posters around the Duluth area, concentrating on busy gas stations, restaurants and shopping malls. Rob hoped that if his brother-in-law could cover Duluth then he would try to distribute posters to the surrounding area.

When he was finished his phone calls Rob drove over to the Grand Marais Police Department to share his list of brown automobiles with them. Most of the addresses were familiar to the officer at the front desk and by using a city directory he was able to identify the majority of the car owners. None were recognized as being of past interest to the local police. He promised Rob that the department would do all they could to check out the possibility that one of these people on the list was involved with Katy's disappearance. It was all that Rob could really hope for.

After he was done at the Grand Marais Police Department Rob visited the State police office to see if they had heard anything since he had visited their office the day before. Unfortunately there was no news at all. By this time it was mid morning and the rain had picked up in intensity. There was no one walking around Grand Marais at all, due to the severity of the storm, and there was not really much point in Rob continuing his search until after the weather had improved. He returned to his motel room and continued working on his list of things to do and people to contact.

By mid afternoon the rain had eased off, so Rob once again hit the road to continue distributing his posters. Since he had covered all of the town of Grand Marais he decided to continue along the highway north as far as the Canadian border. There were only a few places along the way where he could put up his posters so by the end of the afternoon he had arrived at the border. All of the places he had stopped agreed to have his posters displayed.

As he began the return drive to Grand Marais he realized that he hadn't visited Grand Portage, so he turned off the highway and made his way through the village. He found a store and a marina still open, and was able to place posters at both of them. Just prior to getting back on the highway he found he was at the Grand Portage Casino and decided to see if he could place his posters there as well.

He visited the main desk of the hotel portion of the complex and was allowed to place one of his posters on the wall beside the check-in desk. From there he went to the restaurant and again was permitted to mount a poster, this one on the wall behind the cash register.

When he entered the Casino portion he could see that it was a busy place, one that would probably give his posters very good exposure if he was allowed to place them. He visited the security desk and asked if there was a manager available that he could speak with. It was not long before the manager arrived and he was given permission to place two of his posters, one outside of their bingo hall, and the other on the wall beside their member's reward booth. It was while he was mounting this second poster that Rob received an unexpected but very much appreciated response.

Just as Rob was placing the last staple in the corner of his poster he heard, "Are you the one looking for the woman in that poster?"

Rob turned around to see that a Casino security guard, a dark-haired native woman, was standing there looking at his poster. "Yes, I am. She's my wife and she's been missing since March from our home in Duluth. Do you recognize her?" He saw that the name tag on her shirt identified her as Abby Lepine.

Ms. Lepine stepped forward and looked at the poster closely, then said, "I think I may. It's been a while but she sort of reminds me of a woman I spoke with here several months ago. She was sitting at a slot machine and she looked to me as though she was sick. I asked her if she was feeling all right, but the man standing behind her told me that she was fine. She never did answer my question herself, and there was just something about her that sort of struck me as strange."

Rob started to get excited about what this woman had just told him and asked, "Can you be sure it was her? Do you know if it was in early March? She went missing on March the fourth. Can you tell me anything about the man that was behind her, Ms. Lepine?"

The guard continued to stare at the poster, and finally said, "Well, I can't say for sure, of course, but as I recall the woman did look remarkably like this one. I can't say for sure when it was, either, but it was possibly that long ago. The man I don't remember much about. I didn't really see his face directly, just from the side. I think he may have been a bit shorter than you, and if I remember correctly, he may have had black hair. I don't know if any of that will help you much."

Rob was still enthused by what Ms. Lepine was telling him. He had noticed the abundance of video surveillance within the Casino so he asked her, "Is it possible the Casino would have surveillance tapes from that long ago? Would they be saved somewhere?"

She pressed the push-to-talk button on her microphone and asked for a supervisor to join her at the member's club booth. In about five minutes Rob and Abby Lepine were joined by a well dressed man carrying a walkie-talkie.

Rob asked him, "Is it possible that you would have surveillance videos from early March? Ms. Lepine has told me that she may have recognized my wife, who is on this poster I've just put up here. If surveillance video is available I would like to have it checked to see if my wife was indeed here. She has been missing since March 4."

The man stepped closer to read Rob's poster, and then said, "I don't believe we will be able to help you with this. Videotape from the Casino floor is not kept for that long. We do have selected videotape of our cashier's cages and internal offices that are kept for sometimes a relatively long time. I'm sorry we can't help you with that." He stepped forward once again to look at the poster. "They are nice looking women, your wife and daughter. I hope that you can find them."

Rob could see that it was not likely that he was going to be able to learn any more at the Casino, so he asked Ms. Lepine if he could give her his name and cell phone number in case she should think of anything else or should ever see the woman again. He knew that his number was on the poster, but was anxious that this woman should have a copy herself, in case the poster was ever taken down. After a final 'thank you' to the helpful security guard, Rob left the Casino for his return drive to the motel in Grand Marais.

During his drive back to Grand Marais Rob thought about the surprising events that had taken place at the Grand Portage Casino. It seemed almost unbelievable that he had found a possible sighting of Erin while mainly he was searching for Katy. It wasn't that he'd given up on finding his wife; it was just so very much unexpected.

One thing was certain in his mind, and that was that it seemed more than a coincidence that this was the third event to tie his missing family members to northern Minnesota. He knew he would have to concentrate his efforts here, at least for now. His energy had been renewed; now he needed to produce some real results. As he arrived in Grand Marais the rain stopped and he could see a large rainbow over Lake Superior. He just hoped Erin and Katy were at the end of it.