Disclaimer: I still don't own them, but hey, if they want to come over and
play, I'm not gonna stop 'em.
Thank you very much to everyone's kind words and encouragement. Wow. What a supportive bunch you people are! MapleStreet is amazing. And, by the way, I didn't know that fanfiction.net blocked R rated stories, either. I picked R because of the nature of the content as opposed to actual graphic content. And I didn't want anyone reading the story who would be upset by the idea of Murray's sexual preferences. Did I rate it too strongly? Anyways, enough chatting. Here's the next chapter. The story's almost done...
What's Needed Chapter 4
Vivian had spent the morning trying to track down Nancy Thatcher. Not getting an answer at her home number, she'd phoned Nancy's place of employment. After speaking to several people, someone had finally been kind enough to tell her that Nancy had left work the previous Friday for a two month leave of absence. No one there knew where she had planned to go. Hanging up, Vivian had immediately started to phone Monica and Rebecca to see if they could tell her anything. She'd still been trying to get through to them when Jack and Samantha left for their flight to Boston.
A phonecall mid flight to Vivian armed the two agents with the information that Nancy was probably not in the city and that no one, including Rebecca and Monica, knew where she'd gone.
When their plane touched down, Jack and Samantha had gone straight to Nancy's home address, which took them to an older greystone building on a quiet, tree-lined street. Using the key the superintendent of the building obligingly provided them, they had let themselves in. Samantha had stood in the entryway a moment to get a feel for the place. From what she could see of the livingroom, Nancy obviously liked and could afford good quality antiques - or stunning replicas. She trailed her fingers over the top of a glass-fronted barrister's bookcase standing against a wall leading to the living area. "Nice," she said, looking around appreciatively.
Jack glanced at her sideways. "I thought you were more a Danish teak sort of person."
Samantha shook her head. "I've got that because it was on sale and went with the stuff I brought from home. This is nice. It looks like a home," she said, walking further into the room. She liked the warm cafe au lait colour of the walls and the dark colours of the upholstry. Gleaming mahogany side tables held framed pictures and candles and colourful nicknacks. California blinds lent a pleasant, modern feel to the otherwise traditional look of the room.
Jack watched as she stood in the middle of the room. He'd heard the the wistfulness in her voice and felt a slight shimmer of surprise. He'd always thought Sam's place comfortable and welcoming. He hadn't minded the light colours of the walls and the smooth lines of the modern furniture she'd decorated with, but had to admit to a sense of satisfaction that her taste in decor ran closer to his own. Shaking his head at the foolishness of thinking it mattered, he stepped into the room behind her.
After a quick preliminary tour of the apartment, Jack assigned the bedroom to Samantha, taking the kitchen and livingroom himself. Stepping onto the tiled floor of the small eat-in cooking area, he opened the refrigerator door. It was empty of perishables. A note on the kitchen counter beside the sink requested someone to please remember to water the plant in the bathroom. Nancy had ended the note with a smiley face and the word 'thanks' printed in big letters.
Turning to go into the livingroom, he heard a knock on the apartment door. Glancing towards the bedroom, he moved to answer it himself. Opening the door, he was immediately confronted by a tall, attractive woman of about thirty-five. Her thick, chestnut-brown hair was pulled back from her face, and everything from the colour in her cheeks to the way she stood told him she was ready for a fight.
"Can I help you?" she asked in a demanding tone, her dark green eyes narrowed suspiciously.
Jack felt a strange sense of role reversal. "I'm the one answering the door, shouldn't that be my line?" he asked.
"If you belonged here, yeah, but you don't. What are you doing here? Mr. Blake," she said, referring to the superintendant of the building, "says you need to take a look around. How do I know you're not stealing anything?"
Jack blinked. She must have called the building superintendant when she heard them enter the apartment. Hearing Samantha move up behind him, he turned slightly to reveal her presence. "We're with the FBI," he said, drawing out his identification. "I'm Special Agent Jack Malone, and this is Special Agent Samantha Spade. We're trying to locate Nancy Thatcher. I don't suppose you know where she is?"
The woman eyed his badge carefully, then said grudgingly, "Blake said you were FBI. I figured there was a chance he was hallucinating." In response to his question, she answered, "She's on vacation."
"I don't suppose you know for how long?"
The woman frowned, as though Jack were asking far too many questions. "She's on sort of a leave of absence, I think. She'll be gone a couple months, anyway. I'm keeping an eye on the place while she's away."
"And doing an excellent job of it," Jack said dryly. "May I ask who you are?"
She looked at him sternly. "I'm Dana Webster. My husband and I live next door," she said, waving vaguely to her left. "No matter what Blake said, I figured I'd better check on things. Why are you looking for Nancy, and why are you in her apartment? Don't you need a warrent or something? I know Blake wouldn't think to ask to see anything." Her tone told them all they needed to know about what she thought of poor Mr. Blake.
As it happened, Mr. Blake had been very obliging and had asked no questions once he'd been shown their FBI identification. Not exactly what he should have done, but it had certainly made it easier for them. "We're here legally," Jack assured her, hoping she didn't ask to see their warrent. "When we find her, we're hoping Nancy can provide information about a young girl who's gone missing."
The woman frowned, "Young girl?"
Samantha stepped closer to Jack and said, "Yes. Someone she used to visit when she travelled to New York-"
The woman's face cleared. "Oh, you mean Shelly. Something's happened to Shelly?" Her face clouded over again. "Nancy will be devastated. She thinks the world of that kid."
Jack opened the door wider. "Would you mind coming in and answering a few questions, then? Perhaps you can tell us where Nancy is staying."
Now that it appeared her friend's apartment was not being burgled and that Nancy herself was not in trouble of some sort, Dana relaxed a bit. Accepting Jack's invitation, she took a long legged step into the apartment. Shaking her head regretfully, she told him, "No, I'm sorry. She said she was just going to travel around, clear her head a bit. She hasn't said much, but I think maybe work's been stressful for her lately; she hasn't been herself. Anyway, she said that she was just going to play it by ear and go where the spirit moved her."
"She do that often?" Jack asked, following Dana into the livingroom and watching as the woman sat down in one of the comfortable, deep-cushioned chairs that sat opposite the sofa. "Does she often just take up and leave with no destination in mind?"
"No, not really," the woman answered. "As I said, she hasn't been herself lately. She's had things on her mind. She's really a very methodical person, very detailed. Any time she's gone before I've had phone numbers, locations, dates, you name it. This time, nothing. My guess was that she didn't want work to be able to track her down and bother her. They usually do that a few times when she goes away. She said she wasn't even going to take her cell phone. That way, she figured she'd get a real break."
Samantha nodded. Nancy's cell phone sat on her bedside table in its recharger.
"Does she have family she might have told where she was going?" Jack asked, sitting on the edge of the sofa beside Samantha.
Dana shook her head. "Her father died when she was in her teens, and her mother passed away about a year ago. She's an only child. I don't think she has anyone else. You can try work, maybe. And the people down at the women's shelter on Spears where she volunteers. Someone there might know something." "No boyfriend, close girlfriend?"
Dana responded with a shake of her head. "No boyfriend for a while now. I think she'd decided to lay off romance for a bit after the last bozo let her down bad. Her best friend lives in Florida somewhere. I don't remember her name."
After several more questions that got them little information, they thanked the woman for her help and guided her to the door.
"If you wouldn't mind calling us if she contacts you?" Samantha asked, giving her a card.
Dana took it and nodded. Before leaving she told Samantha, "Make sure he locks up okay."
Samantha smiled and promised she would.
While Samantha was seeing Dana Webster out, Jack flipped open his cell phone and called Vivian. "Nancy Thatcher has dropped out of sight. I want to find her. Check the airlines and the border. Have Danny take some time to check her credit cards and look at her bank records. Tell Martin to keep concentrating on the Jungs case. Has anything turned up there?" He listened for a few moments as Vivian filled him in. "Okay, then. Tell him to phone me after he's talked to the gas station attendant. Samantha and I are heading for a women's shelter where Nancy volunteered. She may have said something about where she was going to someone there." After asking Vivian to change their return flight to the latest one possible, he hung up.
They finished searching the apartment and Nancy's computer, finding little of use except a receipt for rent paid in advance that confirmed what they already knew: Nancy didn't plan to be back for two months. When they left, Jack checked the door to make sure it had locked behind them and then suggested they grab something to eat. . .
* * * . . They stepped into the first small diner they came across. The place claimed to have been in business since 1934, and Jack strongly suspected that the tables, linoleum, and dirt in the corners were all original. There was seventy years of built up cigarette smoke on the walls, and you could barely see the pictures hung on them for the grime on the glass that protected them from the grease that coated their frames. He looked around, loving the place immediately. The food was bound to be great here. Slumping back in the cracked seat of the booth they had selected, he pushed his legs straight out in front of him and asked, "What the hell's going on? Everyone connected to this case disappears."
"Don't take it so personal. It's what keeps us in business, Jack."
He relaxed a little more and smiled. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. It'd be sad to miss out on all the adventure.
"And the travel to exotic places," smiled Samantha, glancing around at their surroundings.
"And the company," he said, catching her eyes with his.
She held his gaze and nodded slightly. "And the company," she echoed, warmly.
When a waitress appeared out of nowhere and asked if they'd like a menu, they both looked up in a slightly dazed manner. Recovering quickly, they both ordered the day's special. Once that was done, Samantha left the quicksand of their earlier conversation and said, "Technically, Nancy hasn't disappeared. She's just on vacation - one that she had planned for several weeks by the looks of it. She may have made herself hard to find on purpose, but that wasn't to spite you, Jack. It was so she could spend some mindless time with no deadlines, no structure. Think about it: she was stressed, didn't want to be bothered by work, so she didn't tell anyone what she planned. She was hardly likely to have expected the FBI to come knocking at her door asking questions about a missing girl while she was away."
"You're trying to be reasonable," Jack said in a disgruntled tone. "Don't be reasonable. I don't feel like reasonable. i want to find Nancy Thatcher and find out what she knows."
She smiled at him fondly. "There has to be something we're missing. Perhaps I should have been the one to interview the mother," she suggested.
Jack shook his head. "That was for Danny and Martin this time around, and they've done a good job. They don't think finding out about the affair would have made her run, and I tend to agree. Her father making a pass at her definitely might, though. The problem is, she's been gone more than forty-eight hours, and we haven't heard anything or picked up any leads that look promising. That's not a good sign."
"So we keep looking for Nancy."
"Yup. 'Aunt Nancy' may know something. It's all we've got at the moment." He looked at her in silence, caught a fleeting glimpse of something in her expression, and waited. When she didn't speak, he asked in a low tone, "What is it, Sam?"
Keeping her eyes lowered, she put her hands on the table in front of her while she quickly mulled the thought that had occurred to her around in her brain. With Jack waiting patiently, she thought a while longer, then said slowly, "Now that we know what we know about Murray, what if he did abuse Rebecca? And what if Nancy knew about it?"
Jack saw where she was going immediately. "You think Nancy Thatcher sized up the situation and decided Shelly needed to be taken out of it."
"I'm considering the possibility. And if that is so, there's a good chance Shelly went willingly - we've heard more than once about how well she and Nancy got along." She began to speak more quickly as she gained confidence in her idea. "If Murray made some sort of advance, Nancy might have been the adult Shelly chose to tell. And she may have been only too glad to leave. It would help explain why no one noticed her being picked up. They may have arranged something. There certainly wouldn't have been a stuggle."
"I know all the reasons why the victim might not go to the police, but if you're right, why wouldn't Nancy?"
Samantha shrugged and moved her hands expressively. "What did she have to tell them? That Shelly's reaching the age her father finds most sexually attractive? That as far as she knows, he abused his sister? What proof does she have? Shelly wouldn't be likely to say anything, and Rebecca won't even admit it even now - not even to help save her niece."
"So she takes her friend's kid? Why wouldn't she say something to Monica?"
"Maybe she tried. I don't know. I just have a feeling..."
"And if your scenario is right, how long does the think she can get away with it?"
"We can ask her when we find her."
Jack nodded. If this played out the way Sam saw it, it was likely that when they found Nancy, they'd find Shelly, safe and sound. He mulled the idea over in his head and found he liked it. Finally, his day held a little hope. How hard, after all, could it be to find the office manager of an investment company travelling with a twelve year old?
End Chapter 4
Thank you very much to everyone's kind words and encouragement. Wow. What a supportive bunch you people are! MapleStreet is amazing. And, by the way, I didn't know that fanfiction.net blocked R rated stories, either. I picked R because of the nature of the content as opposed to actual graphic content. And I didn't want anyone reading the story who would be upset by the idea of Murray's sexual preferences. Did I rate it too strongly? Anyways, enough chatting. Here's the next chapter. The story's almost done...
What's Needed Chapter 4
Vivian had spent the morning trying to track down Nancy Thatcher. Not getting an answer at her home number, she'd phoned Nancy's place of employment. After speaking to several people, someone had finally been kind enough to tell her that Nancy had left work the previous Friday for a two month leave of absence. No one there knew where she had planned to go. Hanging up, Vivian had immediately started to phone Monica and Rebecca to see if they could tell her anything. She'd still been trying to get through to them when Jack and Samantha left for their flight to Boston.
A phonecall mid flight to Vivian armed the two agents with the information that Nancy was probably not in the city and that no one, including Rebecca and Monica, knew where she'd gone.
When their plane touched down, Jack and Samantha had gone straight to Nancy's home address, which took them to an older greystone building on a quiet, tree-lined street. Using the key the superintendent of the building obligingly provided them, they had let themselves in. Samantha had stood in the entryway a moment to get a feel for the place. From what she could see of the livingroom, Nancy obviously liked and could afford good quality antiques - or stunning replicas. She trailed her fingers over the top of a glass-fronted barrister's bookcase standing against a wall leading to the living area. "Nice," she said, looking around appreciatively.
Jack glanced at her sideways. "I thought you were more a Danish teak sort of person."
Samantha shook her head. "I've got that because it was on sale and went with the stuff I brought from home. This is nice. It looks like a home," she said, walking further into the room. She liked the warm cafe au lait colour of the walls and the dark colours of the upholstry. Gleaming mahogany side tables held framed pictures and candles and colourful nicknacks. California blinds lent a pleasant, modern feel to the otherwise traditional look of the room.
Jack watched as she stood in the middle of the room. He'd heard the the wistfulness in her voice and felt a slight shimmer of surprise. He'd always thought Sam's place comfortable and welcoming. He hadn't minded the light colours of the walls and the smooth lines of the modern furniture she'd decorated with, but had to admit to a sense of satisfaction that her taste in decor ran closer to his own. Shaking his head at the foolishness of thinking it mattered, he stepped into the room behind her.
After a quick preliminary tour of the apartment, Jack assigned the bedroom to Samantha, taking the kitchen and livingroom himself. Stepping onto the tiled floor of the small eat-in cooking area, he opened the refrigerator door. It was empty of perishables. A note on the kitchen counter beside the sink requested someone to please remember to water the plant in the bathroom. Nancy had ended the note with a smiley face and the word 'thanks' printed in big letters.
Turning to go into the livingroom, he heard a knock on the apartment door. Glancing towards the bedroom, he moved to answer it himself. Opening the door, he was immediately confronted by a tall, attractive woman of about thirty-five. Her thick, chestnut-brown hair was pulled back from her face, and everything from the colour in her cheeks to the way she stood told him she was ready for a fight.
"Can I help you?" she asked in a demanding tone, her dark green eyes narrowed suspiciously.
Jack felt a strange sense of role reversal. "I'm the one answering the door, shouldn't that be my line?" he asked.
"If you belonged here, yeah, but you don't. What are you doing here? Mr. Blake," she said, referring to the superintendant of the building, "says you need to take a look around. How do I know you're not stealing anything?"
Jack blinked. She must have called the building superintendant when she heard them enter the apartment. Hearing Samantha move up behind him, he turned slightly to reveal her presence. "We're with the FBI," he said, drawing out his identification. "I'm Special Agent Jack Malone, and this is Special Agent Samantha Spade. We're trying to locate Nancy Thatcher. I don't suppose you know where she is?"
The woman eyed his badge carefully, then said grudgingly, "Blake said you were FBI. I figured there was a chance he was hallucinating." In response to his question, she answered, "She's on vacation."
"I don't suppose you know for how long?"
The woman frowned, as though Jack were asking far too many questions. "She's on sort of a leave of absence, I think. She'll be gone a couple months, anyway. I'm keeping an eye on the place while she's away."
"And doing an excellent job of it," Jack said dryly. "May I ask who you are?"
She looked at him sternly. "I'm Dana Webster. My husband and I live next door," she said, waving vaguely to her left. "No matter what Blake said, I figured I'd better check on things. Why are you looking for Nancy, and why are you in her apartment? Don't you need a warrent or something? I know Blake wouldn't think to ask to see anything." Her tone told them all they needed to know about what she thought of poor Mr. Blake.
As it happened, Mr. Blake had been very obliging and had asked no questions once he'd been shown their FBI identification. Not exactly what he should have done, but it had certainly made it easier for them. "We're here legally," Jack assured her, hoping she didn't ask to see their warrent. "When we find her, we're hoping Nancy can provide information about a young girl who's gone missing."
The woman frowned, "Young girl?"
Samantha stepped closer to Jack and said, "Yes. Someone she used to visit when she travelled to New York-"
The woman's face cleared. "Oh, you mean Shelly. Something's happened to Shelly?" Her face clouded over again. "Nancy will be devastated. She thinks the world of that kid."
Jack opened the door wider. "Would you mind coming in and answering a few questions, then? Perhaps you can tell us where Nancy is staying."
Now that it appeared her friend's apartment was not being burgled and that Nancy herself was not in trouble of some sort, Dana relaxed a bit. Accepting Jack's invitation, she took a long legged step into the apartment. Shaking her head regretfully, she told him, "No, I'm sorry. She said she was just going to travel around, clear her head a bit. She hasn't said much, but I think maybe work's been stressful for her lately; she hasn't been herself. Anyway, she said that she was just going to play it by ear and go where the spirit moved her."
"She do that often?" Jack asked, following Dana into the livingroom and watching as the woman sat down in one of the comfortable, deep-cushioned chairs that sat opposite the sofa. "Does she often just take up and leave with no destination in mind?"
"No, not really," the woman answered. "As I said, she hasn't been herself lately. She's had things on her mind. She's really a very methodical person, very detailed. Any time she's gone before I've had phone numbers, locations, dates, you name it. This time, nothing. My guess was that she didn't want work to be able to track her down and bother her. They usually do that a few times when she goes away. She said she wasn't even going to take her cell phone. That way, she figured she'd get a real break."
Samantha nodded. Nancy's cell phone sat on her bedside table in its recharger.
"Does she have family she might have told where she was going?" Jack asked, sitting on the edge of the sofa beside Samantha.
Dana shook her head. "Her father died when she was in her teens, and her mother passed away about a year ago. She's an only child. I don't think she has anyone else. You can try work, maybe. And the people down at the women's shelter on Spears where she volunteers. Someone there might know something." "No boyfriend, close girlfriend?"
Dana responded with a shake of her head. "No boyfriend for a while now. I think she'd decided to lay off romance for a bit after the last bozo let her down bad. Her best friend lives in Florida somewhere. I don't remember her name."
After several more questions that got them little information, they thanked the woman for her help and guided her to the door.
"If you wouldn't mind calling us if she contacts you?" Samantha asked, giving her a card.
Dana took it and nodded. Before leaving she told Samantha, "Make sure he locks up okay."
Samantha smiled and promised she would.
While Samantha was seeing Dana Webster out, Jack flipped open his cell phone and called Vivian. "Nancy Thatcher has dropped out of sight. I want to find her. Check the airlines and the border. Have Danny take some time to check her credit cards and look at her bank records. Tell Martin to keep concentrating on the Jungs case. Has anything turned up there?" He listened for a few moments as Vivian filled him in. "Okay, then. Tell him to phone me after he's talked to the gas station attendant. Samantha and I are heading for a women's shelter where Nancy volunteered. She may have said something about where she was going to someone there." After asking Vivian to change their return flight to the latest one possible, he hung up.
They finished searching the apartment and Nancy's computer, finding little of use except a receipt for rent paid in advance that confirmed what they already knew: Nancy didn't plan to be back for two months. When they left, Jack checked the door to make sure it had locked behind them and then suggested they grab something to eat. . .
* * * . . They stepped into the first small diner they came across. The place claimed to have been in business since 1934, and Jack strongly suspected that the tables, linoleum, and dirt in the corners were all original. There was seventy years of built up cigarette smoke on the walls, and you could barely see the pictures hung on them for the grime on the glass that protected them from the grease that coated their frames. He looked around, loving the place immediately. The food was bound to be great here. Slumping back in the cracked seat of the booth they had selected, he pushed his legs straight out in front of him and asked, "What the hell's going on? Everyone connected to this case disappears."
"Don't take it so personal. It's what keeps us in business, Jack."
He relaxed a little more and smiled. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. It'd be sad to miss out on all the adventure.
"And the travel to exotic places," smiled Samantha, glancing around at their surroundings.
"And the company," he said, catching her eyes with his.
She held his gaze and nodded slightly. "And the company," she echoed, warmly.
When a waitress appeared out of nowhere and asked if they'd like a menu, they both looked up in a slightly dazed manner. Recovering quickly, they both ordered the day's special. Once that was done, Samantha left the quicksand of their earlier conversation and said, "Technically, Nancy hasn't disappeared. She's just on vacation - one that she had planned for several weeks by the looks of it. She may have made herself hard to find on purpose, but that wasn't to spite you, Jack. It was so she could spend some mindless time with no deadlines, no structure. Think about it: she was stressed, didn't want to be bothered by work, so she didn't tell anyone what she planned. She was hardly likely to have expected the FBI to come knocking at her door asking questions about a missing girl while she was away."
"You're trying to be reasonable," Jack said in a disgruntled tone. "Don't be reasonable. I don't feel like reasonable. i want to find Nancy Thatcher and find out what she knows."
She smiled at him fondly. "There has to be something we're missing. Perhaps I should have been the one to interview the mother," she suggested.
Jack shook his head. "That was for Danny and Martin this time around, and they've done a good job. They don't think finding out about the affair would have made her run, and I tend to agree. Her father making a pass at her definitely might, though. The problem is, she's been gone more than forty-eight hours, and we haven't heard anything or picked up any leads that look promising. That's not a good sign."
"So we keep looking for Nancy."
"Yup. 'Aunt Nancy' may know something. It's all we've got at the moment." He looked at her in silence, caught a fleeting glimpse of something in her expression, and waited. When she didn't speak, he asked in a low tone, "What is it, Sam?"
Keeping her eyes lowered, she put her hands on the table in front of her while she quickly mulled the thought that had occurred to her around in her brain. With Jack waiting patiently, she thought a while longer, then said slowly, "Now that we know what we know about Murray, what if he did abuse Rebecca? And what if Nancy knew about it?"
Jack saw where she was going immediately. "You think Nancy Thatcher sized up the situation and decided Shelly needed to be taken out of it."
"I'm considering the possibility. And if that is so, there's a good chance Shelly went willingly - we've heard more than once about how well she and Nancy got along." She began to speak more quickly as she gained confidence in her idea. "If Murray made some sort of advance, Nancy might have been the adult Shelly chose to tell. And she may have been only too glad to leave. It would help explain why no one noticed her being picked up. They may have arranged something. There certainly wouldn't have been a stuggle."
"I know all the reasons why the victim might not go to the police, but if you're right, why wouldn't Nancy?"
Samantha shrugged and moved her hands expressively. "What did she have to tell them? That Shelly's reaching the age her father finds most sexually attractive? That as far as she knows, he abused his sister? What proof does she have? Shelly wouldn't be likely to say anything, and Rebecca won't even admit it even now - not even to help save her niece."
"So she takes her friend's kid? Why wouldn't she say something to Monica?"
"Maybe she tried. I don't know. I just have a feeling..."
"And if your scenario is right, how long does the think she can get away with it?"
"We can ask her when we find her."
Jack nodded. If this played out the way Sam saw it, it was likely that when they found Nancy, they'd find Shelly, safe and sound. He mulled the idea over in his head and found he liked it. Finally, his day held a little hope. How hard, after all, could it be to find the office manager of an investment company travelling with a twelve year old?
End Chapter 4