“Yeah, well, thanks. What have we got here?” He followed Stan into the living room. A man and a woman sat on the couch talking to one of the officers.
“This is Tom and Maggie Borman. She claims something happened to her brother and his family.” Stan consulted his black book, “A Karl and Debra Stevens and their three girls. Mrs. Borman, this is Detective Robert Collins. Would you tell him what you told me?”
Maggie Borman wore a beige sweater over a plaid shirt and pleated brown skirt. Her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled into a French roll at the back of her head. She was in her late forties; her brows were furrowed over her brown eyes.
She wrung her hands as she talked. “I called yesterday afternoon to talk to Debra, but they weren’t home. I kept calling until almost midnight. When I got up this morning, I tried again, but there was still no answer. We came over here and because I have a key for emergencies, we went in to check. I didn’t find anything missing or any reason they wouldn’t have come home last night.” Her voice broke, and she began to cry.
“Was the lock forced?” Robert asked Stan.
“No, and we couldn’t find any of the windows forced open either. Everything is locked up tight.”
“Can you give me their names, ages, and descriptions?” he turned to the woman.
“Karl Stevens is my brother; he is fifty-four. Debra, his wife, is forty-eight. Kelly is fourteen; Darla is twelve, and Sara is ten years old.” Tom spoke the names while Maggie filled in the ages.
“Do you have any idea what they might have been wearing?” Robert asked.
“No, I can only guess. I know that Debra would have been wearing a dress, and the girls were probably wearing pedal pushers, shirts, and maybe either a sweater or a jacket.”
“Is there anyone they might have gone to visit? Someone they spent the night with? There has been some snow up the Columbia River Gorge.” Robert directed the questions, while Stan stood to one side looking at his notepad and adding any details he hadn’t thought to ask.
Maggie shook her head. “They would have called me,” she muttered into her handkerchief.
When Maggie could not continue, Robert left them in Stan’s care and walked through the house. He watched a team of men search for any clues. The house was clean, but the Sunday paper lay on the side table, as if Mr. Stevens had just put the sections down after reading them. The comic pages had been divided, and some were on the floor while others were folded on the coffee table.
The kitchen had been used, for breakfast dishes soaked in oily water.
He opened the fridge, but there was no roast waiting to be put in the oven. His mom liked to have a roast cooking when they came home after church. He took a deep breath, remembering the smell that greeted the family as they all trooped through the door after the church service. This family either ate before going to church or didn’t go that Sunday. What would cause this family to skip church?
Taking a quick look in the bedrooms upstairs, he saw the parent’s bedroom. No clothes lying around; the items on the vanity were lined up on the runner. A quick check in the closet revealed no suitcases; he’d check the hall closet later. The next door down the short hall had the name “Kelly” written on a card tacked to the door. Inside, there wasn’t anything out of place—too neat for a teenager. He stepped inside. The bed had perfect hospital corners, the books so neat they were aligned by height. With his pen, he hooked the desk drawer and pulled it open. All the pens and pencils were in neat rows, small to large, sharpened to a point.
He looked for any notes she might have left, but the notepad was blank. He would have the guys bag it and bring it to him at the office, along with her schoolbag.
All the drawers held her clothes neatly folded in vertical stacks. Robert opened the closet door to see dresses, blouses, and skirts hanging in even spaces. She must have been obsessive about her room, which wasn’t normal in his book. He had no sisters, but he did have a brother who would sleep in and on his clothes. He backed out of the door, taking one more look at the dresser, small desk, bed, and night table with a single lamp.
Two cards with “Sara” and “Darla” printed on them were stuck to the next door. The beds were made, but not as neatly as Kelly’s. A wicker basket of folded clothes sat on each bed, ready to be put away. A bookshelf held books and games stuffed haphazardly on the shelves, some of the pieces falling out of the half-closed boxes. Schoolbags in this room peeked out from under the beds, nothing out of the ordinary.
He opened the last door in the hallway and found a stairway to the attic. A door at the top was closed but it opened when he turned the knob. A bedroom. He sniffed. A boy’s room. Perhaps a boarder? A single bed with a quilt over it, a short dresser, a chair, and an empty closet. He turned and went down the stairs.
Back on the main floor, he made a note that there was no sign of a struggle and no note left on the pad near the phone or on the refrigerator, where most people would leave one if they were going out of town.
In the basement, he touched the sawdust furnace. Still warm, even though the fire was out. It must have been going for quite a while before the fire died from lack of fuel. Robert judged it to have been out about four or five hours.
In the living room, the Christmas tree was decorated, a Santa suit lay neatly over a chair, and a bag of candy canes lay right next to it. A few Christmas decorations adorned the windows. Probably done by the girls, he thought. It was December 7, 1958, and Christmas was just around the corner. Not a time for a family to go missing. The Bormans remained on the couch, watching the officers.
“Mrs. Borman, who else might have a key to the house?”
“No one that I know of, but anyone could get in, the back door is never locked.”
Robert frowned; he turned and walked back to the kitchen. Maggie stood and followed him. He stood looking at the lock, a standard, turn knob with a button-slide, locking mechanism. Maggie reached past him toward the knob. Robert pushed her hand down, intercepting her reach.
“What!?” Maggie gasped.
“Fingerprints. If this door is normally unlocked, someone locked it. We will need to fingerprint the lock. We’ll need your prints to disqualify you, and we’ll have the others in the house. Anyone different, we will need to question them. I’m sorry I startled you.”
“That’s okay.”
He met Stan on the porch.
“What do you think?” Stan asked.
“Mrs. Borman said they never went anywhere overnight that they didn’t notify her first. It’s possible this might be the exception. Let’s question the neighbors and see what comes up.”
“I have a team already on it, though we are shorthanded if you want to help out.”
“Always ready to help, after all, this could be my department—homicide.”
Robert talked to the occupants in the house next to the Stevens and one person across the street. None had seen anything that morning or the day before. One family had been gone all day, and the other had sick children and hadn’t been outside.
“Hey, Robert, the chief wants you in his office right away.” Deputy Nate’s grin almost wrapped around his head as he made the announcement.
Robert ground his teeth and nodded at the young man. The kid must have his ear on the phone every moment.
At the office of Chief Arnold Gilmore, better known as Arnie, he rapped his knuckles firmly and waited for an answer.
“Come in,” the gruff voice called out.
Robert opened the door, but the chief was on the phone. The man waved him to a seat across from him and finished his conversation.
“Good to see you, Collins. What are you working on right now?” Chief Gilmore had a balding, round head with a few wisps of white hair that grew near his left ear and were pasted across the top of his head almost to his right ear. He had a barrel of a chest and a stomach that overshot his belt buckle if he had one on. He wore wide suspenders that crossed over at his shoulder blades.