Road Atlas

Roy Maxwell, a 57-year-old banker in a small town in Indiana, went to Wal-Mart one day and disappeared, completely, with no trace; I was part of the investigation of the case, which eventually came to consume me. He had a leading role in the local bank; he was wealthy, and probably had some enemies, due to duties of his position, such as foreclosures, loan rejections, and the like. But there was no sign of foul play; nobody had seen anything suspicious in the parking lot, or anywhere else; he had simply vanished.

His wife Virginia, a housewife heavily involved in local civic affairs, pointed out that he had fallen from a ladder earlier that day, and had not gone to the hospital, because he had received only minor cuts. It was possible, however, that he had internal bleeding, which could have caused amnesia. He had gone to Wal-Mart to get some supplies for a cabinet he was fixing, and if he had forgotten who he was or where he was, he had at least found his way to Wal-Mart. His car was found in the parking lot, empty, unlocked, untouched, no sign of foul play.

Virginia also mentioned two grown daughters, both living in the area, one still in college. Now that both had moved out of the house, it was pretty lonely, but their marriage was fine, she said; he was his usual self, with no reason to hide, run away, or kill himself. Yes, he had enemies at the bank, but that had always been true; why would they get him now? What would they want?

Assuming it was a kidnapping, and that she would receive a ransom note or a call from kidnappers, she had police come to the house, tap the phone, and in general keep her company. But no call was forthcoming. The hours, then days ticked by. We were short of solid leads.

I took his picture around and showed it to Wal-Mart employees. Most recognized him at least vaguely, but nobody had seen him in particular on the Saturday in question, a Saturday in early May. One cashier thought she remembered him talking to someone near the rack with the road maps and atlases, which would have been aisle seven, but many said that the place was full of people who looked like Roy Maxwell, and he could have been everywhere and anywhere, and what would they know? The parking lot guards said that there had been a Winnebago in the lot that day, and several stepvans; nothing suspicious, no fights, no struggles, no obvious use of force. Some Hare Krishna had come by and the manager had run them out, more or less in front of everyone, and they left in a big old Buick. Nobody else that even looked unusual. I told them to save all the old videotape, don't keep recording over it, and I'd look at it after I checked a few things.

At the bank they mentioned a couple of foreclosures that perked up my ears. One was for a farm that had been in the Harris family for many years; the Harrises were an unreliable, some would say volatile, family. I made a mental note of wanting to know where all those Harrises were on the Saturday in question. But if they had killed him, what had they done with him? How was it possible that nobody had seen anything?

Another was for a bar on the edge of town that had been doing badly for years. It was mismanaged, and the owner/manager, one Albert Poodle, was an alcoholic; all this was well-known around town. Foreclosure was certainly the ruin of Albert Poodle, but would he stoop so low as to kill a banker? Or hold him hostage in a smelly bar, without bothering to send a ransom note?

The daughters were interesting, but also provided very little in the way of leads. The older one, Lydia, characterized her parents' marriage as cold, and that woke my ears up a little. She seemed to think that her father had a secret life waiting to get out, possibly a desire to do something besides foreclose on old farms and bars. She bought the amnesia theory, too, though. It was just like him, she said, to fall while working on a cabinet.

The younger one, Alicia, was a little hostile to me, as if I were intruding on her, or poking my nose where it didn't belong. She didn't know how any information she had could be of any use to me whatsoever. I didn't tell her, but in fact she didn't have much that was of any use. Her hostility made me suspicious, but there was little around her that would lead me to believe she was involved in any way; why would she want anything to do with something like this? She seemed to be well-situated for money, not suffering in any way, no sign of worthless drug addicts in the shadows behind her back porch.

Another day slogged by; I had no choice but to go over the old videotapes that the store makes of the cash registers, the aisles and the parking lot. On the aisle seven tape, which I started with, I saw a man looking like Roy Maxwell talking to another man, right in front of the road atlas shelf, as had been mentioned by the sharp-eyed cashier in the interviews several days earlier. The other man could be characterized as tall, gangly, awkward, but friendly. Their conversation seemed normal to me. They eventually went through the register next to each other, and from what I could gather, left the store together, road atlas apparently in the hands of the other man. There was clearly no force involved, but then, I could not prove with certainty that the one man was actually Roy Maxwell, either. It seemed, from what I could gather, though, that he had made it to Wal-Mart, bought what he wanted, and left the store with an unidentified man. An acquaintance, maybe, but not a kidnapper.

The remaining tapes seemed to fall into a pattern of being useless, just an endless line of strangers and bad video, so I started in on the parking lot tapes. And once again, in the middle of one tape, I thought I spotted Roy Maxwell, with a tall, thin man, walking out toward the center of the lot, and standing by a Winnebago-like motor home. Once again, clearly no force in the picture. They were just talking. What happened to either of them was eventually obscured by the Winnebago itself; if they had entered it, I couldn't see it. If the Winnebago had left the lot, I couldn't see that either, as that particular tape ended and wasn't replaced with another in the same position.

In disgust I reviewed my leads, knowing I had very little to report back to Virginia, let alone my superiors; almost nothing to show for several days' work. He had simply vanished into the Wal-Mart parking lot. Four days had gone by; and nobody had heard anything, although there was a national bulletin, and the police had ringed the area several times. I told some clerks to review the Wal-Mart videos: did any others have a picture of the Winnebago? Of the two men entering it? Of the two men leaving the store? I did research on the Harris clan, and Albert Poodle, the alcoholic bar-owner. I prepared to visit the Harrises the following day. Police continued to search the area.

Nerves were frayed, particularly those of Virginia, who felt humiliated, and Alicia, who burst in on me once demanding more action immediately. Various members of the Harris clan had a rap sheet, and many complaints about them; but nothing suggesting they were kidnappers or brazen murderers. Nevertheless, I prepared to visit them, to see what I could find.
By noon, however, a strange message came over the line. $8,000 in traveler's checks had been cashed at a bank in Phoenix, Arizona, by a man claiming to be Roy Maxwell; his signature had matched; unbelievable as it may seem, there was no hold on his account or reason to question its authenticity, so they had given the man the money. This threw the investigation into a frantic mode, as Phoenix police were alerted and sent pictures of the two men. We wanted video from the bank, if they had it; we wanted to know where he had gone with the money. Virginia seemed relieved at the news, not at all worried about the money, as if she knew he carried that much around with him as a matter of course. Police sprung into action nationwide.

One Wal-Mart parking lot video did reveal a license plate, which, when run through the system, brought out the name of a Marvin Planter, address in Mesa, Arizona, near Phoenix. Police rushed over to this man's house, to find a large Winnebago in the driveway which revealed no further clues; it had been cleaned out. This did, from the pictures, appear to be the same Winnebago. Mr. Planter had hired a handyman to drive it from Baltimore to Phoenix. The handyman, one John Buck, had responded to an ad in a Baltimore newspaper and had been hired with good references, but sight unseen; going from Baltimore through Indiana, he would have been only a little off of his path when he had stopped in at the small-town Wal-Mart. He had delivered the Winnebago in good condition, Mr. Planter said. No, he was alone at the time. But here was the kicker: when shown pictures of Roy Maxwell and John Buck together in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Indiana, Planter clearly and unambiguously picked out Roy Maxwell as the man who delivered the Winnebago.

I prepared to fly to Phoenix, putting the Harris investigation in the charge of underlings. Word came from across town that Albert Poodle had committed suicide. I was disturbed by this, but could find out nothing that led the trail to him. There was no note, no mention of a banker, nothing that would lead anyone to believe he was involved in the disappearance. He had no place to go, no relatives, and was despondent. I put underlings in charge of that, also.

In Phoenix the sun glared; cacti I had never seen burst flowers in a public park as I squinted to look around at the bright day. The trail, however, went cold. The bank video did appear to show Roy Maxwell collecting the money- nothing else. He looked healthy. There was nobody at his side with gun in hand. There was no trail of spent money around Phoenix, no Roy Maxwells flying out of Sky Harbor airport, no rental cars heading south for the border. Police everywhere were scouring the area for leads, but had found nothing.

On John Buck, there were a few more leads, but there were at least half a dozen John Bucks spread around Phoenix, and most had been there for some time. John Buck, also, was not a fugitive; he wasn't missing; nobody had reported needing him, missing him or expecting him to come home. It was harder to get police excited about tracking him down, and, I wasn't getting very far myself.

I tried to piece together what I had. Roy Maxwell and John Buck, getting in a Winnebago and driving it cross-country together. Maxwell both delivering the Winnebago, and cashing travelers checks that appeared to be his. Buck and Maxwell both disappearing, presumably with the money. No apparent motive. What about his family, his job? What I wanted to know about amnesia was, how much did you forget? Your wife and daughters? Your job? The fact that you had traveler's checks? Or was memory selective?

I got my answers only in pieces. I was finally removed from the case; hotels in Phoenix were too expensive, and I was getting nowhere. When they finally found Maxwell, it was almost two years later, working at a warehouse in an industrial area of Phoenix, under the name John Buck. I went back to talk to him, as I'd been frustrated about the case during that entire intervening time. He freely admitted driving the Winnebago out west with his friend; he had given Buck part of the money, to buy a sailboat which Buck would then use to sail the Pacific, a lifelong dream. In return, he received Buck's identity, which he used because, frankly, he hadn't wanted to be found, didn't want to go back.

It wasn't that he didn't love his family. He had fallen, he said, and did have amnesia. At first he couldn't remember them at all. But when he did, he didn't have a pressing urge to go back. In fact, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Using his traveler's checks to start over seemed like the best option.

As for Buck, Maxwell described him as a nice guy, equally lost, equally willing to forget everything and start over. He had no particular criminal record, nothing he was escaping back in Baltimore or anywhere else. He had simply befriended Maxwell and given him a ride to Phoenix. Maxwell recounted one episode, a picnic out on the plains of Kansas, where the two of them felt like holding onto the Winnebago, to keep from blowing away in the strong winds. As they stood there, watching various debris fly by and get caught up in a barbed-wire fence, they decided that life was a fleeting thing, a temporary thing, too short to waste spinning one's wheels. I asked him if the warehouse was the answer to his quest, and he said, that's not the point. The point is, going back to where I was, definitely was not the answer. When he heard the names of the Harrises and Albert Poodle, he recognized them vaguely, and said he wasn't sure, but that sounded like exactly what he didn't want anymore. I could tell that, to him, Indiana seemed like a gray and distant past, whereas here, every morning was a clean slate, a new wild cactus sprouting up from the cracks in the warehouse driveway.

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