After the call ended, I studied the senior section of The Log once more, thumbing through it a page at a time, studying the earnest faces pictured there as well as the captions underneath each photo. Somewhere along the way, I remembered something about my mother and me. During eighth grade I fell in with some of the tough kids at school—a gang of five boys, all of them seemingly determined to go in the wrong direction. Somehow my mother got wind of it, probably through the principal. That summer she kept me on very short boundaries. When I asked her why, she told me, “Birds of a feather flock together, and I don’t want you hanging out with those guys.”
When it came time for my freshman year at Ballard High School, she told me, “Okay, there’s football, basketball, or track—pick one.” I was tall and scrawny, so naturally I chose basketball. Eventually I became reasonably proficient at it and moved on to the varsity squad during my sophomore year. As a result I ended up in a completely different social milieu from that gang of young toughs.
As for my eighth-grade pals? Two of them never graduated from high school and went to work on family fishing boats in Seattle. One of the boats sank, and my former friend’s name along with those of his father, two brothers, and a cousin are all engraved on the memorial at Seattle’s Fishermen’s Terminal. As for the other one? He took his fishing money and opened a small used-car dealership that eventually morphed into two large new-car dealerships.
Of the three of us who did graduate, one got drafted right out of high school. His name is engraved in black granite at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. The second one went to prison in his early twenties on a vehicular-manslaughter charge after killing two people, an elderly couple, while he was driving drunk. I have no idea what became of him after that. As for number three? That would be yours truly, who ended up in law enforcement as a homicide cop. I may not be a police officer anymore, not officially, but that’s how I still think of myself—as a cop.
Suddenly all those innocent-looking young faces in the yearbook took on a whole new meaning. I flipped back through the pages again, studying the captions more carefully this time, looking for the kids who might have been shoved aside, bullied, or dissed. I ignored the people who were student-body or class officers. I ignored the valedictorian and salutatorian. Ditto for the guys who played varsity sports or were in the National Honor Society. Instead I went searching for guys like Chris who had nothing at all in their captions—no honors, sports, or club affiliations whatsoever. If Chris Danielson had been a nobody—an outsider—chances are his best friends would have been cut from the same cloth.
I ended up with a list of seven names and immediately sent that off to Todd. Take a look at these guys, I told him in a text. Any current contact information would be greatly appreciated.
Then I made a call to the non-emergency number at Homer PD. After speaking to a clerk in the records department, I learned that the information Jared had come up with earlier was absolutely true. Christopher Danielson might have disappeared off the face of the earth sometime in the spring of 2006, but no official missing-persons report was ever filed. The poor kid had vanished into thin air, and no one had given a tinker’s damn.
I might have been years late to the party, but I cared now, and so did Jared. Together we would find out what had happened to that younger brother of his, or as my mother would have said, we’d both know the reason why.
Chapter 7
While I waited to see what, if anything, Todd Hatcher might turn up, I showered, dressed, and then puttered around the house for a bit—putting out the trash, emptying the dishwasher, starting a load of clothes. In my old age, I seem to have become quite accomplished in the househusband department. Then, as a reward for doing the chores, I sat down in front of the fireplace to work my crosswords. I was coming to the end of those when Todd called back.
“Guess what?” he said. “Your missing person has a son.”
I was floored. “He does?”
“Yup, Christopher James Danielson,” Todd replied. “According to the state of Alaska’s Department of Public Health, he was born December twelfth, 2006, to one Danitza Annette Adams and Christopher Anthony Danielson.”
That was a showstopper.
“Does that mean that Chris and Danitza are living happily ever after somewhere in Alaska?”
“I doubt the happily-ever-after part,” Todd said. “I’m unable to locate any marriage or divorce records for Danitza Adams and Christopher Danielson. My guess is the child was born out of wedlock after Chris did his disappearing act. I did find marriage records for Danitza Adams and a guy named Gregory Howard Miller. They were married by a judge in Anchorage on June seventeenth, 2011. Gregory died in March of 2013. His cause of death is listed as accidental drowning.”
I was making notes as we went along, but it seemed pretty clear that in order to gather any information on Christopher my best source would be the mother of his child.
“Any idea about where I can get in touch with this Danitza? Miller’s her last name now?”
“That’s correct—Danitza Miller. She lives on Wiley Loop Road in Anchorage and works as an ER nurse for Anchorage General Hospital.”
“Address and phone number?”
Todd read them off to me. Once I wrote them down, he continued.
“Danitza Miller was born in Homer, Alaska, on March fourteenth, 1989, to Roger and Eileen Adams.”
“Did you say 1989? That would make her a year younger than Chris. They probably attended high school together.”
To confirm my suspicions, I reached around and picked up my copy of The Log. This time I turned my attention to the pages devoted to the junior class, and there she was in the very first photo at that top of the page. Danitza Adams’s head shot revealed a cute blonde with a pixie haircut and a winning smile, but a 1989 birth date meant that most likely she had been only sixteen at the time she gave birth to her son. So what we were dealing with was a sixteen-year-old unwed mother with a boyfriend who most likely hadn’t bothered to hang around long enough to do the right thing once he knocked her up. If that were the case, it’s no wonder that when Chris headed out for parts unknown, he hadn’t bothered to leave a forwarding address. Had I been in his shoes, I probably wouldn’t have either. I would have been too ashamed to show my face.
That was my first thought. It took a moment for me to remind myself that considering the existence of my own out-of-wedlock daughter, Naomi Dale, I was being a judgmental hypocrite.
“Did Danitza graduate from high school?”
“Nope,” Todd replied. “According to her college transcripts, she first earned a GED. Then, in 2008, she enrolled in the School of Nursing at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, where she graduated with honors four years later.”
That was a surprising outcome. For a single mother raising a little kid on her own to graduate from anything in four years was commendable. To do so with honors? That was downright remarkable.
“She must be pretty smart,” I said.
“Agreed,” Todd replied.