Mortal Danger

and 4:00 a.m. “I picked up a couple of bags of sunflower seeds and put them on the counter. I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone. Then this black guy came out from the back room and said the store was closed. I saw that the till was open and empty, so I left the seeds on the counter and walked out.”
    If Laura Baylis had been in the rear of the store—andshe certainly must have been—she was either too frightened to call for help, or bound and gagged—or unconscious. In the worst case scenario, she might have been dead. And yet detectives hadn’t found one drop of blood in the place, not one indication of a struggle.
    The robbery detectives wondered again if there was another side to Laura’s personality. Was it possible that she’d been in cahoots with the man in the fatigue jacket?
    No. They agreed that was impossible. She and Jack had been too happy, and all her acquaintances said she saw no one but him. She always went straight home from work.
    Where was she?
    Laura Baylis’s picture appeared in all local papers, as did the picture of the unknown man in the cap and jacket. If someone out there knew more about the baffling case, no one called the police.
    Jerry Trettevik and Larry Stewart went door-to-door in the area, trying to find someone who had seen something else that night, and they came up empty-handed.
    Holter and his detectives tracked down the real Julie Costello in Missouri. She admitted that she given Laura Baylis some ID but said she hadn’t heard from her since she’d left Kansas City.
    Julie Costello said that Laura Baylis had a pattern of leaving cities precipitately—telling her friends and employers all kinds of stories about why she had to go. She had told Julie that she could never stay long enough in one spot before she worried that immigration authorities would check on her.
    Julie knew very little about Laura’s background, onlythat she spoke with an English accent and that she had relatives in England.
    Back in Seattle, Laura remained missing. The probe into her vanishing continued. Calls poured in from people who thought they recognized the man in the pictures.
    Each name mentioned was checked out and eliminated.
     
    Jack Atkins told Larry Stewart that if Laura had any friends in America whom she might contact, it would be a young man in Minneapolis. He had been a good friend of hers. Jack gave them Ben Calkins’s* address and phone number, which he’d found in Laura’s papers. Ben was living in a fraternity house. Stewart phoned the fraternity and found that Ben was currently in England and had been for several months. Next, he called Ben’s family and spoke to his parents in Minnesota.
    After Stewart explained the situation, Ben’s mother said, “Yes, we know Laura, but Ben’s lost track of her. She left some of her papers here. Would that help?”
    It certainly was more than the detectives from the Robbery Unit had found so far. The woman mailed Laura’s passport (in her real name) and various other documents to Stewart.
    Her birth certificate indicated that Laura Anne Baylis had been born November 30, 1955. She had emigrated from Suffolk, England, to Canada in 1976. Her Canadian passport was valid until 1982, but it didn’t allow her to cross U.S. borders or work in the United States.
    Trettevik and Stewart asked an official of the Immigration and Naturalization Service for assistance in contacting Laura Baylis’s parents. Special Agent Anthony Provenzo contacted offices in London and asked that the parents of the missing girl call the Seattle Police Department.
    A short time later, the Seattle detectives received a call from Mrs. Bessie Baylis. The distraught mother confirmed what the detectives had feared: She had no idea where her daughter was, had had no word at all from her since Laura’s last letter on September 15. At that time, her daughter had been happy and contented with her life in America.
    “She didn’t mention anything about planning to leave Seattle or Jack.”
    Laura Baylis’s family was extremely concerned. They promised to do whatever they could to help in the mystery that continued to grow. Mrs. Baylis said she would look for any medical or dental records that might help to identify Laura. She knew that the American detectives meant if her body was found , but they were as kind as they could be and didn’t spell it out. They even said that Laura might be suffering from amnesia, or that she might be headed for England.
    Spokane