4
Forms, there are always many forms for these situations. The desk officer helped with the Fiche descriptive outil profil by asking Theo the questions and filling in the boxes. After the preliminaries and general description of the missing person, she moved on with the rest of the form.
“State of health? Any ongoing medical conditions?”
“She’s fine. Fit. Nothing wrong with her. That’s an odd question.”
“You would be surprised. Many missing persons cases, it’s the elderly. Alzheimer’s, dementia, they wander off from home and get themselves quickly disoriented, and there’s no bread crumb trail to follow. Their poor families find out, or the neighbor hears the cat crying through the night, they come to us to help find them. That’s a tough one.” The sergeant looked down at the form and translated the next question. “Does she go to any medical specialist or have regular treatments? Therapy?”
“No,” Theo said. “How many missing persons do you have?”
“I know of a dozen or so, outstanding, but, as I say, most are the old ones who are lost. Or runaways. Bad scene at home. Abuse. Maybe drugs. Does she take any drugs?”
Theo shook his head. Once upon a time, she had confessed to experimenting with an old boyfriend, but that was ancient history.
“When children are involved, we look at the parents. Sometimes they are split up, and Mom or Dad kidnaps the child from the other. Of course, she is no child, but perhaps a friend has heard from her? Can you give me a list of her contacts?”
Taking out his phone, he scrambled through his own lists for mutual friends, knowing that hers were different—and in her phone, wherever that may be. As he wrote them down, he asked if the missing were usually found.
“In many of the other kinds of cases, the missing aren’t missing at all, just gone for a time. Run off with a lover for the weekend. Or on a bender. Gambling. The old folks wandering away. But unless something happened to them, they turn up fairly quickly.”
“Is that why the police won’t start looking until twenty-four hours have passed?”
“Mr. Harper”—she laughed—“you watch too many American police shows. No, we decide how to proceed on a case-by-case basis. If it seems a medical emergency, a matter of life and death, we start right away. If a minor is involved, of course, we spring to action. A likely affaire de coeur, perhaps we wait a bit. Do you think your wife might be having an affair?”
He hesitated with an answer, unsure as to whether or not to share his suspicion about Reance. It was only that, only a feeling and not based on any evidence. In fact, until this afternoon he had known of the man only by reputation. And Kay had been the same as always, or at least since they had come to Québec. He had no reason to doubt her. “No,” he said at last.
“You’re sure? Do you have a list of places she frequents?”
“Just home and the theater mostly. Some days we get a bite to eat in Old Town or go window-shopping, but no place she haunts. A jog along the boardwalk. But nothing frequent, unless of course you mean the same shop windows she stops at each time we pass by.”
“We’ll skip ahead to the final section, then. Where she last was before her disappearance and the circumstances.”
Theo told her the story that he had been told. The restaurant after the circus, drinks until two, Kay heading away alone from the group on her way home. Before that, she had been in the show, of course—there were hundreds of witnesses—and before that, they had been alone together in the apartment.
“And that is the last time you saw her, Mr. Harper?”
“The last time.”
She did not miss a beat, perhaps because she was not looking at his face. “And we’ll need a photograph of her. Recent.”
“I don’t have a photograph. Only what’s on my phone.”
“You can e-mail or text it to me, Mr. Harper. That’s even better, and I can get it out to our officers to be on the lookout for her. In the meantime, you should go to the American consulate, if you please, tomorrow. We’ll share this information with the QPP, the provincial police. Of course, we’ll call you at once if we hear anything. That’s all for now, unless you have any more questions for me?”
Standing to leave, he could not resist the fear in his heart. “But what about the other missing people? How many are never found?”
She lifted her gaze from the form and looked him straight in the eye. “This is Canada, Mr. Harper, not the US. There are about five or six hundred homicides annually for the whole country. Of course, there are accidents and so forth, but there’s no reason to suspect foul play, no need to worry about murder.”
He flinched at the word. Beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead, and he wondered how the police station had grown so hot, so suddenly. “What do I do now?”