Near retirement New York cop Jim Lennox sets out to trace Amy Chalmers, missing on an American trip fifteen years previously.

The sun was having a tough time piercing the thick clouds covering Bordville, a sprawling town on the eastern edge of Pennsylvania. It was uncommonly cold for late April with dropping afternoon temperature crystallising the fallen snow. It crackled and scrunched underfoot as Dorothy Chalmers, mid-fifties, once exquisitely beautiful, parked the Buick in her garage, pulled down the door and locked it.

     Snow was falling again. She shivered, gathered two bulging shopping bags and using a key entered home by the front door. A small bell tinkled in the hall. She tugged off leather boots and placed them in an oak shoe rack. The grandfather clock, standing in a corner next a clothes stand, whirred, hesitated, clicked ominously and then chimed four o'clock. The peals seemed oddly out of tune. She walked into the kitchen and glanced at the glass thermometer hanging on the wall. It read twenty degrees centigrade. Her fingers were cold. She was usually chill when shopping at the local arcade these early spring days but today she was finding the outside temperature particularly sharp.

     She checked the calender pinned to the wall. 23 April 1975. She sighed and said aloud, "It's nearly fifteen years since Amy left for Seattle with Johnny Benson." She recalled Amy's last words. "We'll go to North Dakota, ma, then right across to Washington State. We'll do what we did last year, 1959, and send a postcard from each place we stay at. We expect to reach Seattle late June and stay with Johnny's friends again."

     Dorothy Chalmers and husband Adam harboured no qualms about the 1960 trip for Johnny and Amy travelled a similar route in 1959 and arrived home safely. However, after Amy started her 1960 journey the postcards stopped coming after Croft, North Dakota, and Amy and Johnny had not returned home.

     After storing the groceries, Mrs Chalmers made a pot of aromatic Brazilian coffee, reflecting yet again about Amy. After receiving Amy's last postcard from Croft, she and Adam waited six weeks before checking with the Benson family if they had heard from their son. They had not heard. Both couples left it another three weeks before reporting the couple as missing to the Bordville police department.

     An initial search yielded nothing and the local police chief laid it on the line: We have checked interstate and especially with North Dakota and with Seattle for information of the young couple. We have found nothing to act on. Maybe they have chosen to live elsewhere. People do that - just go missing. I'm sorry, but right now there is nothing more we can do, but I do wish you had alerted us earlier.

     Dorothy Chalmers recalled the following weeks of anxiety and tension stretching herself and Adam almost to breaking point. Nine weeks without news had become three months, three months swelled into six months, and then into a year. Beyond that year, with the Bensons having relocated to family in Arizona, Mr and Mrs Chalmers checked again with the Bordville police department. Mrs Chalmers remembered that day - for Detective Alan Parker had interviewed them and he concluded there was no fresh evidence upon which to act.

     "Then what can we do?" Mrs Chalmers had asked.
 

     Parker, soon to be attached to the New York police department, recommended local private detective and former police officer Steve Hawkins. Maybe he could help them.
 
     The following day after making an appointment with Hawkins by telephone, the Chalmers couple found themselves in his small, uncomfortable office with its minimal unpolished furniture. Hawkins listened to them and said, "I will search for Amy but America is a mighty big country and if you can't point to the right area then I don't know where to look. Also, I charge a fee." Mr Chalmers gave Hawkins the postcards Amy had sent home - including the ones from 1959. Hawkins nodded. "I charge fifty dollars a day - that includes expenses, but I can't guarantee to locate her. Maybe you should wait: Amy might come back."

     "We have waited a year already, Mr Hawkins," Mrs Chalmers remembered saying. "We want to know what has happened to her and we are willing to secure your services for two weeks."

     Hawkins asked for payment in advance. Dorothy Chalmers did not blink an eyelid as she wrote a seven hundred dollar cheque.

     On that same afternoon, Steve Hawkins, having ensured his wife would be looked after by her sister, began his investigation by first telephoning the Benson family in Arizona on the chance they might have news of their son. There was nothing. Hawkins checked with friends of Amy and Johnny and found that difficult for many of those friends had moved away from Bordville. Friends he did trace could give no hint to where Amy and Johnny might be, and all of them believed the couple would not walk out on their families.

     The next day, Hawkins travelled the specific route the young couple had taken in 1959 and 1960. The stopovers were almost the same. The enquiries lead him to Croft, a settlement in North Dakota close to the Montana state line. This had taken him two weeks. He baulked at driving further west but his conscience urged him to visit Levin, a small town two hundred miles into Montana. He drew a blank on the Great Plains, came back to Bordville and gave the Chalmers couple what information he had. He admitted to them it did not amount to much and did not charge extra for the two days visiting Levin...

     Mrs Chalmers carried the strongly scented coffee into the lounge and sat on the black leather sofa. It was cold to her touch. She glanced at the photographs in the room. Most of them showed Amy. the picture she looked at last was husband Adam.
     Adam had never been the same man after Amy disappeared: had taken the loss of his daughter very badly, and shed thirty pounds of weight from a frame that was already lightweight. On May 15 1973, Adam Chalmers passed away exactly thirteen years after Amy had left home.
 
     Mrs Chalmers went to a window and looked out at heavy falling snow and watched the flakes drift in the breeze and pile up against the conservatory door. She returned to the sofa. What could she do to find Amy? Had she done enough? Maybe it was expecting too much that Amy could be found now. but - wait! There was one other thing she could do, something  she had not done since Adam had died and that was to open Amy's locked bedroom door. Amy had always locked her bedroom door, whether she was in it or not. Her parents had thought nothing of it - if their only child wanted privacy, then that was okay with them.

     Mrs Chalmers thought about that door. She had seldom entered Amy's bedroom since Amy had not returned, for it seemed a violation of Amy's memory to have done so. She finished the coffee and sought a key to Amy's bedroom, found one in her own jewellery box and pushed it into Amy's bedroom door lock, turned the key and pushed the door open. It squealed on rusted hinges. She smelled stale air. Dust covered the furniture. With difficulty, she opened one window several inches. Glass screeched against ice. Snow lay deep on the sill and large flakes drifted onto the window glass.

     She straightened the blue curtains. Sky blue was Amy's favourite colour.  She went to the bed and touched the dust-covered pillows. There were framed photographs on the walls. The bedside cabinet alarm clock had stopped at three-thirty. Upon opening the cabinet top drawer she came across jewellery she had bought Amy, a pair of golden earrings, two 18-carat gold bracelets and an 18-carat gold ring with a large emerald set in twisted gold leaf. At the bottom of the drawer lay photographs, the bottom two were 12 inches by 10 inches portraits without frames, one of Johnny and one of Amy. She had not seen these two portraits before.

     Amy's portrait seemed to stare up at her mother, saying, 'please help find me, ma.'  Dorothy Chalmers closed the window, and taking both portraits sat with them in the lounge until the sun had set and the streetlights were shining brightly through the mauve lounge curtains. She did not move until the hall timepiece chimed ten o'clock.

     She got up, determined. It was time to search for Amy  again. She would push for a new investigation in the morning without contacting the Benson family, for they had said they would inform the Chalmers couple if they received news.


                                                    April 24
 
     Very little surprised private detective Steve Hawkins, but when he answered the jangling telephone on his office desk at ten o'clock in the morning and said, "Hi, Steve Hawkins here," he did not expect to hear Dorothy Chalmers on the line.

     "You may remember me, Mr Hawkins, I'm Mrs Chalmers. I saw you about my daughter Amy who left home in 1960 and did not return. You searched for her the following year but found nothing."

     "I remember," Hawkins said, somewhat taken aback. "That sure is a long ways back. So what can I do for you?"

     "I want you to search for Amy again."

     Hawkins stared at the telephone. "Did I hear you right?"

     "You did."

     Hawkins looked out the window at snowflakes stacking high against the glass panes. This early spring was seeing a surge of cold air and along with it, huge snowflakes. Hawkins hated snow. At sixty-one years old, he did not relish travelling far these days because of a stiff back, and from Bordville to Montana was one hell of a trip. "I don't see how searching for her again would get us anywhere Mrs 
Chalmers, not now - it's so long since she left Bordville."

     "I'll pay you whatever you ask, Mr Hawkins. I just want to know what has happened to her."

     Apart from a bad back, Hawkins also had an invalid wife. He shook his head. Amy's trail was colder than the ice on his office windows. "I can't help you, Mrs
Chalmers but I can put you on to someone who can. Do you remember detective Alan Parker at the Bordville police HQ?"

     "Yes, I do recall him."

     "Right," Hawkins said, sitting at his desk and doodling on a writing pad. "Alan is now a lieutenant in New York: works a Reinvestigation unit - they deal with cold cases. You know, robbery, fraud, abduction, missing persons - things like that. Have words with the lieutenant and see what he has to say. Will that help?"

     "I don't know." Her voice sounded weak and listless.

     "I'll give you Mr Parker's telephone number," said Hawkins, and did so, then added, "It's up to you whether you contact him or not. I wish you luck." He replaced the telephone on its cradle and stared into space. He remembered Amy Chalmers. A beautiful girl, quiet, unassuming, lovely figure, and blond hair that glinted burnished gold when the sun caught it at the right angle. He tapped absent-minded on the desk top with the middle finger of his right hand. Amy Chalmers was long gone. It would be tough finding her after fifteen years.

                                                  *****

     Police lieutenant Alan Parker, about to leave his New York office for lunch, stopped when his desk phone rang. He picked it up, said hello. A telephonist said, "A Mrs Chalmers is calling from Bordville, Pennsylvania, lieutenant. She is asking specifically for you."

     "Okay Mildred, put her through."

     The line crackled and a soft voice said, "Lieutenant Parker?"

     "It is, ma'am. How can I help?"

     "I'm Dorothy Chalmers. It's about my daughter Amy."

     Parker scowled at the paperwork on his desk. Amy? Why did that name suddenly nip his conscience? He sat again behind his desk and gazed through the windows at the New York skyline and at the sun struggling to find a way through a hovering mist. A spark of memory came to him from way back. Was this the Mrs Dorothy Chalmers? He asked her to refresh his memory.

     "I can sure do that, lieutenant. You are Alan Parker, a former detective of Bordville, Pennsylvania?"

     "That's right, ma'am."

     "My husband and I spoke to you in Bordville in 1961 about the disappearance of our daughter Amy in 1960."

     Parker relaxed in his hardback chair, remembering the Chalmers couple calling at the Bordville precinct with troubled faces and agitation. He frowned at the swift passage of time. Was it really as far back as 1961? "I remember," he said. "Your daughter was travelling with Johnny Benson. Amy sent you a postcard from each place she stayed or stopped at when she was away from home. In '60 the postcards stopped coming. You waited several weeks before reporting this to us at Bordville."

     "We did. We explained the situation to you but none of you did anything."

     "We had little chance locating her or Johnny," Parker protested mildly, "because we had nothing to go on."

     "We brought you the postcards she sent home. You were able to check each place from where she had posted a card. and.."

     "We tracked them positively to North Dakota in '60," Parker cut in. "There were no sightings or postcards from them after that. We contacted all the stops they had made in '59 but that did not help either. We checked hospitals; we checked the Prison Service. We found nothing. I then suggested you contact the Steve Hawkins Detective Agency in Bordville which I believe you did."

     "That's right, lieutenant. In 1961 Mr Hawkins travelled as far as Levin, Montana but found no trace of them. I telephoned him again this morning and asked if he would renew the search. He refused, politely, saying it would be much harder to find her now."

     "Hawkins is sure right."

     "Maybe he is right, lieutenant, but I won't give up hope. My husband died two years ago. They say his death was natural causes but I know that Amy not being with us broke his will to live. I am alone now. I awake every morning wanting to find her in the house. Mr Hawkins gave me your phone number. He says you are in charge of a department that solves old cases. Couldn't you try again to find Amy?"

     Parker considered his options for several moments, then said, "Why do you think we can find her now when we couldn't find her then?"

     Mrs Chalmers hesitated. "I have not been in Amy's bedroom for two years. I searched drawers and cupboards and came across two photographs I had not seen before - one of her and one of Johnny. According to dates stamped on the back of each photo, they were taken in 1959. There is a place mark but I can't decipher it."

     "Okay," Parker said, scribbling furiously on a notepad in front of him. "You have established Amy and Johnny were in North Dakota in 1959 and in 1960. However, you cannot tell us where they travelled after Levin, Montana in '60. Hawkins tried to find them and came up with nothing. He is an experienced cop, Mrs Chalmers. If he couldn't find them - then nobody else can."

     "You could try again. Will you help me?"

     "I don't have Amy on record therefore she is not a case for me to investigate."

     "Then open a file on her. Do it now - please."

     Parker looked again at the skyline of towering buildings. The sun was forcing a beam through a break in heavy cloud. He admired this woman for not giving in. There was one more question he needed to ask: "Mrs Chalmers, why do you search for Amy when surely you know she can't be found?"

     "Do you have children of your own, Mr Parker?"

     "Yes, two daughters. One is eight the other is twelve."

     "Now you know why I want to trace Amy, lieutenant."

     "Okay, I see what you mean. I will send along an officer to discuss Amy with you. Shall we say the day after tomorrow - around three o'clock?"

     "That will be fine, Mr Parker."

     "One thing I must stress, give this officer what information you have - including the latest photos you discovered - and he will decide whether or not to proceed. I can't promise you more than that."

     "Does your officer have a name?"

     Parker smiled wryly. He had just the man for such a wild goose chase. "Yes, Jim Lennox."

     "I look forward to seeing him, Mr Parker. Thank you."

     Mrs Chalmers hung up and wiped a tear from her jaw.


     Parker returned to his office after lunch of sausage and sauerkraut, washed down with ginger beer and checked with Captain Jeavons that assigning Jim Lennox to find the Chalmers girl was the right thing to do. Jeavons, speaking in hushed tones by phone from his upstairs office agreed. "Alan, you may send Lennox to the ends of the earth with my blessing. With good luck and the Lord Above on our side, Lennox will disappear - never to return, so set up the file on this Amy whoever she is and get Lennox from under our feet."

     Parker hung up, and thus sanctioned, called Lennox to the office.

     Lennox, huge, middle forties, came in and sat on the chair Parker indicated. Parker did a quick mental check: Lennox would retire from the force exactly six weeks from today. Parker pondered Lennox' long slide downhill after the death of his wife from cancer three years earlier. The man had become introverted, difficult to work with, but Lennox had an excellent record tracing missing persons, yet, when Parker outlined the Chalmers case, Lennox did not like the feel of it and said, "A gal and her guy are missing fifteen years and Steve Hawkins cannot find them? I know Hawkins - he's a good cop. Maybe this trip will not work for me."

     "Take over where Hawkins left off, Jim. Go see him and get what you can, then visit the Chalmers woman. I've said you'll see her in Bordville the day after tomorrow, around three o'clock. That gives you time to clear your desk."

     "Clear my desk? I'll be chasing shadows."

     "Do it," Parker said tersely, scribbling the Chalmers, the Hawkins addresses and their telephone numbers on a paper sheet. "Use your discretion on this one, Jim. You have six weeks to retirement. Take all of that time if you have to - but go easy on the expense account."
     
                                         End Of Chapter One.