Mid-West Campaign
Session Eighty-Seven

Monday, 9 August 2001

McPike receives a telephone call from Special Agent Sebastian Malkin, who is being assigned to the team on a case-by-case basis to cover for Agent Munroe's absence. Malkin arrives on the site at 3:00pm and is introduced to Clint Stone and Elise Steiger for the first time. Malkin dislikes the heat, and is carrying a vaporiser to moisten his skin. The agents then settle down to interview Dr Pines.

Pines says that he didn't know Alton very well, even though he knew him better than anyone else on the site (with the possible exception of Callaghan). His only real relationship with the missing professor came from the social dinners that Pines's wife organised. Pines is able to reveal that Alton admitted to being a Thespian in his youth, that he smoke and drank (but not to excess), suffered from insomnia and that Pines last saw Alton two days before the latter's disappearance.

The agents thank Pines for his help. There seems little more they can discover from Alton's colleagues, and decide to turn their attention to searching Alton's house. But first, there are a few things they can find out from the military police records. All the staff on the site checked monthly for radiation and have full physicals every six months. The agents check that Alton's last physical was in August 2000 and there was nothing found to be wrong with him. However, the physical is not invasive enough to have detected brain bug possession. The agents also check Alton's bank account records. There has been absolutely no activity in the account since the disappearance. Alton paid for a trip to Los Angeles two weeks before the disappearance (which he returned from). This equates to the tickets that Callaghan saw. Alton didn't stay in a hotel while in Los Angeles which increases speculation that he had a girl. He did hire a car, and the agents make notes of all the filling stations he visited.

The military police have already turned over Alton's house, but the agents are happy to do it again. Alton's house is identical to all the others in the row, except that the grass is yellow and wilting (no one has been intensively irrigating it). Inside, McPike checks the post. There is only one personal letter; it is from Alton's ex-wife demanding alimony payments and was dated a few weeks after the disappearance. The answer phone tape has been removed. McPike notes that Alton subscribes to Scientific American, but there is from the National Rifle Association. This casts grave doubt on Alton's hunting credentials.

The agents search the place. Stone accidentally opens the fridge, that contains a comprehensive collection of rotting food. Meat left in this heat for ten months is beyond rank, and the agents beat a hasty retreat to the car to get gas masks. The smell has a very different effect on Malkin, who can't stop himself from opening the friend and start wolfing down the rotten chicken and decomposing mince. His colleagues are utterly disgusted, and Malkin eventually pulls himself together to help in the search.

The house has obviously been searched before. The computer is missing, for example. The agents note that Alton seems to have recently bought a large amount of new clothes. They also notice that some of the fundamentals are missing. No toothbrush, no toothpaste; a gap in the wardrobe; something (probably a suitcase) removed from the loft. Where-ever Alton went, he went willingly.

According to Alton's file he has to children. His son (20) is studying law in Toronto, while his daughter (15) still lives at home with his ex-wife. Alton has another home in Toronto, so he could have gone there. But if Malkin has gone on the lam, what is he using as a source of cash? Is he taking it from his $50m work budget? And where is his car? If he flew to Los Angeles, he would have to have left it in the car park at as Vegas airport. They will need to check that in person.

By 7:00pm the agents are exhausted and had to a near-by motel. The air conditioning doesn't work in Elise's room and she has a sticky night.

Tuesday, 10 August 2001

In the morning the agents phone Guthman and ask for a copy of purchasing accounts of the W-Bosun team. Guthman says he will email it to McPike, but it will be censored for reasons of national security. The agents get a map of the Los Angeles area and stick pins in all the locations where he stopped for gas. The furthest he filled up was Victorville, about eighty miles from LA. Malkin becomes obsessed with the nearby Callico Ghost Town and thinks that it must somehow be involved. Stone is quicker to point out that all of Alton's stops are on the I-15, that is surrounded by no less than three US military bases.

The agents head to Las Vegas to see if they can find Alton's car. Elise and Malkin turn back half-way because Elise forgot to check the shoes at Alton's house for any peculiar mud or dust. She finds nothing, but the trip gives Malkin another opportunity to raid Alton's fridge, so it isn't a total loss. Elise is becoming increasingly worried about Malkin and decides to keep an eye on him.

The agents don't find the car at the airport. While booking flights to LA, McPike makes some calls to chase up Alton's phone records. He makes calls to several numbers in Los Angels - mostly universities such as Berkley, CalTech, UCLA, USF and so on. He also has placed a number of calls to the Long Beach Youth Hostel, which gives the agents their first leave. They check the bill for calls of greater duration than 30 minutes (assuming these will be personal calls). All calls of this duration are made to a particular cell phone (progress!). Unfortunately, the cell was on a pay-as-you-go tariff so it is impossible to trace the owner. The cell hasn't been used for many months and the number has been discontinued. While it was active, calls were made from around the same area that Alton visited filling stations. The agents put out an APB on Alton's car.

At 2:00pm the agents arrive at the Long Beach Youth Hostel. Malkin and Stone stay in the car while McPike and Steiger go in. McPike is mistaken for a vagrant trying to get a room. He soon sets things straight. The receptionist vaguely recognises the picture of Alton, but says they need to talk to William who will be starting his shift soon.

While waiting for William, McPike makes a series of calls to the other numbers from Alton's phone record. The number at CalTech gets him through to Professor William Jenson. He knew Jenson from Toronto, and last heard from him in March 2000. He said that he was closer to Charles "Chuck" Hayles, doctor of philosophy at UCLA, and Zebediah "Zed" Armstrong, professor of history at UCLA. Jenson doubts that Alton could have worked a gun to save his life. He doesn't know anything about a woman in Alton's life, but recalls him mentioning a "Mary" once or twice.

Next up is the University of San Francisco. The number here is the central switchboard, and after speaking to supervisor Tucker the agents are transferred to Doctor Star. Star says that he has never met Alton. They conversed by phone on the possibility on doing some lectures on the nature of dark matter together. Nothing ever came of it.

There is no record of who Alton called in Sacramento, so McPike calls UCLA. First he speaks to Zebediah Armstrong. It seems that Zed, Chuck and "Reggie" Alton were quite close, and McPike has stumbled on the closest thing Alton had to friends. However, Zed hasn't seen Alton since March 2000. He says Alton seemed more excitable than usual. He liked to allude to all the "top secret" things he was doing in Nevada, but never actually say anything. Zed says that Alton liked to prove that he was more successful than his companions. As far as a woman was concerned, Alton was tight-lipped about this, but had mentioned a girl called Maria on a couple of occasions. McPike cannot get through to Chuck but Margaret at the history department, promises to convey the message.

McPike and Stone go and talk to William - McPike is again mistaken for a vagrant. Looking at Alton's picture, William recognises the "creepy guy" who picked up a girl from the hostel last year. The girl's name was Maria. The agents are excited that they seem to be making progress. Williams has a photo of the girl, but it's not of her face. He takes down a picture of the girl's backside. Her name was Maria Fuentez and she was winner of the Rear of the Year competition. She was a student at the local teaching hospital run by the UCLA.

The agents quickly head to this hospital. They discover that she was a student at the hospital two years ago. She spent last year working at the site in Compton. She has no listed next of kin, and the contact telephone number is the same pay-as-you-go cell phone that Alton kept calling. The Compton hospital confirms that Maria was there last year, however, she left back in September 2000 to go on a touring holiday of the south-eastern United States. No-one knows where she is now. The agents get address and go to speak to Maria's ex-landlord.

The landlord recognises the photo of Alton. He says that Alton came to pick Maria up. It seems that after disappearing from Nevada, Alton drove to Los Angeles and collected Maria. It also seemed that Alton knew he was coming, as Maria gave her colleagues notice of her departure. However, the agents do not know what relationship existed between Maria and the Professor.

Malkin believes that Maria is the Alton's daughter. Maria is half-Mexican and was raised in a number of orphanages and foster homes in the LA area. The best the agents can do at present is to compare the blood types of the pair, but the results are inconclusive. The agents put out an APB on Maria's car. They then check her bank records. She withdrew $200 from her account on the day she vanished, but the account has not subsequently been touched.

The agents seem to be coming to the end of road in terms of leads. McPike telephones Alton's house in Toronto pretending to be from the Reader's Digest. The phone is answered by Alton's son, Richard, who confirms that his father is missing. McPike then calls Alton's ex-wife, Louise. She has remarried and is now Louise Pickman. She doesn't like to dredge up the past and is unwilling to spend long on the phone with McPike. She says that it is "not beyond the bounds of reason" that Maria is Alton's daughter. However, they did not divorce because he was unfaithful; there was simply no love left in the marriage.

The agents are not sure how to proceed. Maria's background seems remarkably thin. She was a foundling and doesn't even have a birth certificate. They put in calls to all the hospitals in area to check all unidentified Jane and John Does.

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