And his investigation only confirmed an old axiom he believed in, you never know what you’re going to find.
He’d started with the Department of Motor Vehicles. The only real paper trail he had. When you apply for a driver’s license you are required to provide proof of a birth date and social security number and, if you have a valid driver’s license from another state, the driving portion of the test can be waived.
Travis spent the last two years of his FBI career on loan to Homeland Security and he spent a lot of time interfacing with DMVs all across the country. Valid driver’s licenses were prized possessions for illegal aliens and potential terrorists so tough new measures were instituted to make the licenses themselves much harder to forge.
And he became quite friendly with Deputy Director Warren Welch of the California Department of Transportation. He called Warren who called his friend, Joyce, who called her sister-in-law, Bella, and got Syd’s application file pulled. Elapsed time from Travis’s first call to Warren’s call back with the goods, eighteen minutes.
Syd Curtis’s Social Security Number was 492-43-7490. The number alone told Travis something. The first three numbers of a Social Security Number are determined by the ZIP code of the mailing address of the application. And these three numbers, 492, indicated a Missouri address. That was confirmed by the birth certificate, issued by Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The birth certificate listed the birth mother as Amanda Curtis and the father as Todd Curtis.
The date of birth matched her LAPD application. But on the application she’s claimed to be from Riverside, California. Now it was certainly possible that she was born in Kansas City and her parents moved to Riverside, but since she lied about attending Arlington High School, there was a good chance she’d never moved at all.
Judging by her age, Travis figured Syd had to be in high school ten to fifteen years ago. Syd was a very uncommon name so he was hoping to get lucky. He accessed the Kansas City School District database and searched for Syd Curtis. There were three students named Syd Curtis in the district but two were male. The only female, Syd Curtis, attended Lincoln High School but dropped out her junior year.
Her home address was 1876 Tracy Avenue. He checked the tax records. The property was owned in joint tenancy by Amanda and Jay Stevens, M.D.
A wrinkle. The last name was Stevens, not Curtis. If the mother divorced and remarried, that would explain the different last name, or there was a chance the Curtis family moved. Maybe they moved Syd’s junior year, which would mean she actually transferred, not dropped out.
Travis logged into the Missouri Vital Records marriage certificate database for the name Jay Stevens in Kansas City. Travis had to set broad parameters; Syd’s mother could have remarried as early as the year Syd was born until last year. That’s twenty-seven years and he was afraid he’d get too many hits. But only thirty matches came up and it took Travis less than a minute to find the only Jay Stevens that married an Amanda Curtis. They were married on June 3, 1986.
So the Stevens still lived in the same house. Good.
Next Travis Googled Jay Stevens + Kansas City, Missouri. There were a few hits about a boy named Jay Stevens who was the star of his little league team, but then a slew of hits from the Kansas City Star about Dr. Jay Stevens. More specifically about his tragic death when he fell asleep in his car after closing the garage door, but left the engine running.
The police ruled the death an accident. Dr. Stevens was an emergency room physician and kept very long hours. His tearful wife told officers it wasn’t the first time he’d fallen asleep in the garage, but it was the first time he’d forgotten to turn off the car.
Travis found the date of the accident,
The same year Syd dropped out of school.
Interesting.
On a hunch Travis ran Syd Curtis’s name through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website and got a hit. Syd Curtis was reported missing by her mother, Amanda, on February 18, 2001. There was also a picture of a cute sixteen-year-old red head, undoubtedly Syd Curtis.
So Travis had a few questions. Syd left home just one week after her stepfather died. Why?
Syd Curtis is alive and well in Los Angeles but is still listed as missing on the database. Why?
Does Syd’s mother even know she’s alive? And if not, why?
One way to find out, Travis thought. He used the FBI’s Reverse Directory to input 1876 Tracy Avenue and get the home’s phone number. He dialed, heard the ring, then a tentative, “Hello?”
“Yes, hello, my name is Don Wofford, I’m a writer for the Kansas City Star and I’m doing a Sunday feature on runaway kids.” Travis decided it wasn’t his place to tell Amanda Stevens that her daughter was alive. At least, not yet. And he replaced his natural Texas twang with a flat Midwestern accent.
There was a long pause, then, “And why, exactly, would you be calling me?” She pronounced her words very carefully but Travis could tell she’d been drinking.
“I’ll be honest with you, Mrs. Stevens. I was in school with Syd, and we were friends. I remember that terrible accident, when Dr. Stevens was killed, and I remember how upset Syd was. A bunch of us tried to be there for her, but I guess we let her down, because just a few days later…” He trailed off, letting her fill in the obvious blanks. “Did you ever hear from her, Mrs. Stevens? Do you know where she is now?”
A long pause, Travis was afraid she’d hang up, but then, finally he heard, “No.” Amanda Stevens’ voice was brittle, she was fighting back tears. “I never heard from Syd. To be honest, I wasn’t that worried at first; I was sure she’d get scared or run out of money and come running home. Every time the phone rang, I was sure it would be Syd. But the days stretched to weeks, then months, then… Did anyone at school ever hear from her? A phone call, an email?”
“No ma’am. It was like she dropped off the face of the earth.”
“I think about her all the time, you know. Wondering how she is. What she looks like. Praying that she’s even alive.” The tears were flowing now. “If God would just give me a second chance with Syd, I would do things so differently.”
She blames herself, Travis thought. Interesting. “That’s actually the point of my piece,” Travis said. “How parents handle the child’s disappearance. How much blame the parents place on themselves; what, if anything, they think they could have done to keep their child home.”
“I could have listened more,” Amanda Stevens said. “I could have chosen better.”
“Chosen better, I don’t understand.”
“My husband was a… demanding man. He was an emergency room doctor, under enormous stress, kept terrible hours. Syd’s real father deserted us and it was real hard on Syd and me until Dr. Jay came along. Real hard.” Travis could hear ice rattle as she took a drink of something. “I couldn’t risk losing Jay. No matter what…” she trailed off, leaving the phrase unfinished. Then she hurriedly added, “It was best for both of us.”
But the unfinished phrase stuck with Travis. No matter what…
No matter what he did to her, Travis wondered. Travis knew better than to come right out and ask, so he tread carefully. “So you chose Jay over Syd?”
A long silent pause then, “Yes.” And then the dam broke. Amanda Stevens was sobbing now, years of guilt and shame pouring out of her. “She tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen. Couldn’t afford to listen. You understand that, don’t you? If Jay had gone to jail, what would we have done?”