Taken?

--Day 9--

He began Tuesday morning in good spirits, as the weather was typical for a June day, bright and with only a few clouds in the sky. The drive to Grand Marais was uneventful, save for a few deer that decided to cross the road just in front of his car as he approached Lutsen. He managed to stop in time and watch the skittish animals bound across the highway. It was no wonder there were so many remains of less fortunate deer along the highway.

His journey south, back to Duluth, was tiring but uneventful. No one he spoke with recognized either of the pictures on his poster, and he had visited every business located along the highway. In some of the towns along the route he had ventured off the highway a short distance and stopped at any businesses he found. He must have spoken to 200 of the pedestrians he met, but no one could offer him any hope. He managed to cover most of Two Harbors before 6 p.m., when he decided to head back to Duluth. He would finish the job in the morning.

He hadn't received any phone calls on his cell phone all day, but as he entered Duluth he got one from a cashier at the Superamerica station in Two Harbors. She said she recognized Katy by the streak in her hair, and thought she had served her perhaps a week before. This report excited Rob as the time frame matched with the day that Katy had vanished. Rob turned his car around and headed back to Two Harbors to speak to the girl who called. He had been very tired as he neared his home, but this new possible sighting reawakened him.

In slightly more than half an hour Rob was walking into the Superamerica station. There were three girls working in the cashier's area, and he quickly found the one who had called his cell phone. When the girl had a minute to spare she joined Rob to recount her memory of the events from the previous week.

"Do you think it could have been Tuesday, June 10, that you may have seen her," Rob asked.

"Well, it could have been. Let me check my schedule to see if I was here that day." The girl took her purse from under the counter and searched through it for a short while before pulling out a sheet of paper. She looked it over before turning to Rob and saying, "It probably was Tuesday. I'm sure it was early in the day because she came to pay for a cappuccino, and I remember we were selling a lot of them right then. That always happens in the morning."

"She was with a guy, but I remember her hair, with the streak. My hair is about the same color as hers, and I was thinking about how mine would look with a streak like that," the girl said. She took another long look at the poster Rob held and said, "It was definitely her, though. I remember her very clearly."

Rob got quite excited and quickly asked, "Was she OK? Did she look like there was anything wrong with her? You said there was a man with her. Can you tell me what he looked like?"

The girl thought about what she was going to say for a minute, and then replied, "I don't remember that there was any problem with her. Nothing I can recall like that at all. I remember the guy sort of had her by the arm, not a tight grip, just that his arm was sort of around hers. I don't remember much about him except that he was maybe a little bit shorter than you and had dark hair."

"Could it have been black hair? Do you remember anything about his face of all? What about their car. Did you see their car?" Rob was still obviously excited by what the girl had to say, and could hardly get his words out quickly enough.

"Well, as far as I remember it was dark, maybe black. I don't remember what his face looked like. I'm sure he didn't have any weird marks on his face or anything like that, because I probably would remember that. She was doing the buying and paying, so I didn't really have any reason to look at him. I didn't notice what kind of car they had. I can't even say they had a car," the girl replied.

Rob looked around the cashier's counter and noticed a couple of surveillance cameras mounted from the ceiling and trained on the entrance and exit doors of the station. He asked the girl, "Do you know if the cameras record on tape? Would the station have tapes from last week?"

"Gee, I don't know about the tapes. The manager is the only one that would know about that stuff. I guess we could call him at home, and you could ask him about it."

"Can you give me the number? I'll call him on my cell phone and find out." Rob was anxious to call the manager, and punched in the number as the cashier read it to him. When he got the manager on the phone he asked him about the security tapes, but was very disappointed to find out that they recorded on a 24 hour loop, and there was no record from a week before. He thanked the man and hung up his phone.

There wasn't really very much more that he could ask the cashier so Rob thanked her for her help, and once again drove back to Duluth. He was happy to have confirmation that Katy looked to be in good condition, but what really had him thinking was the description the cashier had given him of the man with her. It sounded very much as though the man who was with Katy could be the same one who had possibly been with Erin at Grand Portage. It was all very circumstantial, but Rob intended to speak with Detective Maki in the morning, to see what he could make of it. He was deep in thought throughout the entire drive home.

It was approaching 9 p.m. when Rob drove through the takeout line at a burger restaurant and picked up another quick meal for his supper. He was too tired to think about cooking his own meal at home, and opted for the convenience of fast food for the second night in a row.

Rob called it an early night, and tried to get a good night's sleep. He spent the first couple of hours, though, wondering about the ramifications of what he was beginning to believe about Erin's and Katy's abduction. If, as it seemed, the same person had been responsible for both of their disappearances, what exactly did that imply. Try as he might, Rob couldn't really see what the point of that would have been. He eventually dropped off into a fitful sleep, awakening at his usual time in the morning.

--Day 10--

As he sat with his coffee the next morning he happened to glance around the kitchen, and noticed that it would soon need a good cleaning. He would have to do that this week he decided, before it got to be a real problem. After making that decision he got himself ready to go back on the road, and complete the distribution of posters between Duluth and Two Harbors. There were hardly any places to stop along the busier main highway, so he decided to take the scenic route there and the main highway back. With his mind made up about what his agenda would be for the day, Rob left home just after eight o'clock in the morning. It was already June 18, well into the fourth month since Erin had disappeared, and the eighth day since Katy went missing.

There were many places to stop along the scenic route to Two Harbors. It took him almost two hours to make the 25 mile drive, and no one that he spoke with along the way claimed to have seen either of his missing family members. He stopped to pick up a coffee for the trip back to Duluth and by 11 a.m. he was back in the city. He now felt that he had well covered the route north from Duluth, and he could only hope the tentative sightings of Erin and Katy were correct, and that he was really searching in the proper direction. His worst fear that was that those sightings were in error, and he had totally wasted his time for the last few days.

Once he was back in the city he headed straight to the police station, hoping to be able to talk to Detective Maki. As usual the detective was busy at his desk when Rob entered the third floor offices. This time he saw Rob as he entered, and motioned him over to his desk. As Rob sat down in the offered chair, Detective Maki said, "It seems you have been busy. I've had two phone calls yesterday and today, from police forces north of here asking me about your posters."

"At least someone is noticing them," Rob said. "Actually I shouldn't say that, as I've had another good lead because of them. Last night I spent some time in Two Harbors, speaking with a cashier at the Superamerica station, who apparently saw Katy on the morning of the day she disappeared. The girl was emphatic about her identification, and I really believe she did see Katy. The most interesting thing though, is that her vague description of the man who accompanied Katy fits the description I was given by the security guard in Grand Portage, who said she thought she'd seen Erin accompanied by a man."

"So you're saying that it appears that both of them were taken by the same person?" The detective assumed a thoughtful pose after having said this.

"It certainly seems that way, but it is very circumstantial. If either of these two women is mistaken then I might be making a big mistake by believing that to be a fact. I guess one other reason why I'm here this morning is to see what you think of the theory, and what you would do under these circumstances," Rob said.

"It really is very hard to suggest something in a situation like this," Detective Maki said. "I guess you almost have to work on the assumption being correct, until it is disproved by something else that you find out. It has seemed logical that, since the circumstances of their departure from your home are the same, the same person may be involved."

"That's basically what I think," Rob said, agreeing with the detective. "I'm still going to place my posters in the areas that I haven't yet covered both south and west of Duluth. I hate to spend the time doing that if they really were taken north, but I feel I just have to do it."

"Before I forget, the technicians did manage to get the full sets of fingerprints, for both your wife and daughter, from the items you brought in. That allowed them to account for all of the remaining fingerprints that they brought in from your home or took from your cars. It doesn't appear that there were any prints from another party in the home." Detective Maki looked at Rob after finishing this statement.

"I hope this doesn't mean that you're going to begin suspecting me again. It could be very simply that whoever was there either wore gloves or simply didn't touch anything." Rob could feel his anger beginning to simmer, and hoped that the detective wouldn't get back to that theory of what had happened.

"I'm sorry if I gave you that impression," Detective Maki hurriedly said. "I do have to keep an open mind, but I don't really believe that at this time. In order to believe that you're involved means that you also have someone else helping you, someone who would've gone to Grand Marais on your behalf to make a phone call with your daughter's cell phone. There simply isn't any evidence to show that that happened, and when we checked on your friends, we found none who believed that you could be involved in such a thing. Besides their faith in you, all of them were able to convince us they could not have gone to Grand Marais on your behalf."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. You've been a big help, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to help you in your job of finding my wife and daughter." Rob took a look at his watch, and said, "I'm going to have to go now though, as I have a 1 o'clock appointment that I have to keep. Please give me a call if you hear anything new as a result of my posters. I'll be starting to work at distributing them to the south next, possibly even later this afternoon."

"On your way out why don't you stop at the forensics office downstairs and pick up your items, the ones you brought in yesterday. They're done with them now, and if you don't pick them up they may get misplaced. I'm sure your wife and daughter will be upset if you lose their possessions," Detective Maki said.

"OK, I'll do that. I just have to grab a quick bite to eat before I go to my appointment." Rob stopped and picked up his wife's plate and his daughter's two CDs before he left the building. He still had time to stop for a proper lunch before his appointment with Dr. Baker, so he went to the Perkins' Restaurant and had a healthy meal. It was a good change from the fast food he had been eating.

He arrived at Dr. Baker's right on time, and was immediately escorted into her office. He described hurriedly the events of the last couple of days, especially the sighting of his daughter in Two Harbors the morning she had been taken. He told her how the cashier had described the man who accompanied Katy in the same way that the security guard in Grand Marais had described the man she saw accompanying Erin back in March. He told the Dr. how much he wanted to be able to believe that the same man had taken both of his loved ones, as it gave him hope that he would be able to get them both back, once the man was located.

"Tell me Doctor, can you give me any insight into understanding why someone would take both my wife and my daughter this way? It's the part of this whole thing that really has me confused. Why would anyone do that?" Rob was looking expectantly at Dr. Baker, hoping she would be able to supply some type of rational explanation to him.

"It's very hard to say what's going on in someone's mind in a situation like this. It's possible that this is someone who is trying to punish you personally by taking away your loved ones. It could also be someone who is obsessed by either one or both of them. Did either one of them ever mention someone paying them too much attention, or an abnormal amount of attention?"

Rob thought about it carefully and answered, "Neither one of them ever mentioned anything like that. I'm sure they both would have said something if they had noticed a problem developing, or saw someone who was paying them an unusual amount of attention."

Once again, his appointment ended before he expected it would, although the allotted time had passed. Once again he was left with something to think about, trying to imagine someone he knew who could have done this to punish him. It was the only viable possibility that came up in their conversation, but he just couldn't think of anyone who would punish his wife and daughter to get at him. He didn't think he had any real enemies at all, let alone somebody who could do something like this.

Since Rob had enough time to get a little bit more work done distributing his posters, he headed up Highway 53 west from Duluth. He decided to work his way west for an hour and then turn around and work his way back. By the time he had done this he had covered about 20 miles, and stopped at every business on both sides of Highway. When he got back to Duluth he headed home, confident that he had done all he could for the day. He decided to make himself a nice supper, and was able to find enough fresh vegetables that he ended up with a very good meal. He knew he would have to make it the grocery store soon though, because he was running out of supplies.

After he ate and cleared up the dishes that had resulted from his meal, he decided that he would start to clean the house. He was able to get the kitchen completed before he was forced to stop his efforts, as it was time to go to his handgun course. He arrived at the Edgewater Motel 15 minutes before the start of the course, and was able to get himself a seat just before it started.

The course was basic common sense and when it ended at 10 p.m. Rob realized that if the next two nights were as straightforward as tonight had been, it would be no problem to pass it. The only part that could present him with any problems would be the practical portion at the gun range, as it had been quite a few years since he had actually fired a weapon. He would have to wait until Friday night to find out about that part of the course.

Rob arrived home too late to be able to really do any other things on his list, so after checking his voice mail and confirming that there were no messages on the recorder, he poured himself a small drink and decided to catch up on his newspaper and the TV news. He was relieved once again to not find nor hear of any unexplained deaths in the area. Before he headed to bed for the night he took out his group of family pictures from the end table beside his chair and looked at them all. As he headed to the bedroom he had to wipe tears from both eyes, as once again reviewing the pictures had been a somber experience.  

--Day 11--

On Thursday morning after he had his coffee he headed out Highway 53 to the west of Duluth again. This time he spent four hours working his way to the west before turning around and returning to Duluth, visiting the business locations on that side of the highway as he made his way back. When he got back to Duluth he stopped at the supermarket and replenished the groceries that he would need for the next two weeks. By the time he was done it was supper time, and he headed home to make himself a good meal for the second night in a row.

Once again he repeated his routine from the night before, this time cleaning the living room in the time he had before he was forced to quit so that he could arrive at his course on time. Once again he found the course to be relatively simple and when he left at 10 p.m. he was quite confident that the written exam would be easy for him to complete. Once again he caught up on the news before calling it a night.  

--Day 12--

Before he left on his poster distributing trip the next morning, this time south along I35, he decided to catch up on some laundry and also to clean the laundry room before he left. He was getting quite tired of the job of visiting so many businesses, speaking to so many people and putting up his posters. He had not met anyone lately who claimed to have seen either of his missing family members, and he was really beginning to feel like he was wasting his time distributing the posters to the west and south. He believed he should be going back up to the north, to the Grand Marais area to do his searching. It was the only area that seemed to offer him hope. He vowed to get back there as soon as he could.

There were many more towns and major intersections to cover along this part of the highway and he decided not to venture very far from I35 itself. He felt that if he began to stray away from the highway it would take him forever to put up the posters. There had to be a limit to what he could expect to accomplish this way, and this was his limit. He made it as far as Hinckley by early afternoon, and according to his list he had covered the majority of the intersections with businesses. After visiting the businesses closest to the interstate at the Hinckley exit, he headed back in the direction of Duluth. Along the way he covered those intersections and businesses that he had not been to on his way south.

He was exhausted when he made it back home. Tonight's supper was fairly simple, and he decided to simply rest in the time he had left before having to go to the gun range. By the time he had to leave for the eight o'clock class he was feeling much better, more rested and alert. He arrived at the range with time to spare.

The practical portion of his course turned out to be quite straightforward as well. By 10 o'clock he felt quite confident handling a handgun, and had no worries about completing the course successfully. He arrived home feeling as though he had accomplished a lot over the course of the week, and decided to relax with a drink as he read the paper. Since he had no need for an early start in the morning, having distributed his posters over the primary areas he wanted to cover, he poured himself a second drink and leaned back to think about all that had transpired during the week.