record of what case the deputy could have been investigating, and at no point in their investigation into his disappearance had there been any witness who indicated that Mike Gardner was working on a criminal case during his own time.
A search of the park did not turn up anything.
Guess they didn’t drag the lake.
In the same case file was the report that the sheriff had provided the county court on June 11, 2001, which restated basically the same information. The sheriff had no clues and no suspects. Everyone loved Michael Gardner, and they believed he wouldn’t simply take off. There were no transactions on his credits cards or any type of activity to indicate that he was alive.
On June 17, 2001, Michael Gardner was declared dead.
A front-page article appeared in The Review , for which Jan Martin MacMillan was the editor. The article included a picture of Mike Gardner in his police portrait. Ruggedly handsome would be the right description. Red curly hair and blue eyes. A broad chin and shoulders. Cameron was struck with how much he resembled Hunter.
That must be why I thought Hunter looked familiar last night. … No, it can’t be. I hadn’t seen any pictures of Mike Gardner until now. But Hunter looked … With a sigh, she pushed the idea from her mind. Hunter and Mike must just look like someone I used to know. But who? It’s going to bug me until I can put my finger on it. Who else do they remind me of? Her head pounding, Cameron gently rubbed her bruised forehead. You’re losing it, Cam.
Squinting against her headache, she continued to read the various statements in the online file.
Mike had never actually been on the force long enough to make enemies, nor did he have enough experience in investigation to be a threat. No wonder he asked for Joshua’s help.
Cameron went onto the Internet to do a search of Michael Gardner’s name and a further background check, only to find the background of the average boy next-door. He was born in the hospital in East Liverpool, Ohio—the same one where Joshua had been born. She noted that their birthdates were one week apart.
Suddenly remembering that Hunter had mentioned adoption, Cameron tried to dig further for the names of the parents on Gardner’s birth records and found nothing. Striking out, she looked in the search engine for anything, but only came up with the marriage announcement for Belle Gardner, widow of Michael Gardner, to Royce Fontaine. The announcement said that the couple met while both were working at Remington Pharmaceuticals in Pittsburgh, where Belle was an office manager and Royce was a vice president in charge of research.
With a sigh that came from intense thought and exhaustion, Cameron got up from the desk and moved over to the sofa to stretch out with the laptop perched on her bent knees. Welcoming the move that made his mistress more accessible, Irving perched behind her head on the arm of the sofa.
Cameron went on to dig deeper into cold case murders in the surrounding area of Hancock County that involved possible prostitutes that Mike Gardner could have been investigating.
Irving’s purr bounced in the back of her head and then to the front. She felt like it was bouncing off the back of her eyeballs. She closed her eyes and felt herself drifting off to sleep on the melody of her cat’s purr.
With broad shoulders and curly red hair, he was a ruggedly handsome man.
While Cameron studied the picture, his mother was recounting the same story that she had been telling every detective who had inherited the case over the last forty years. “My son did not commit suicide.”
Cameron put down the photograph and looked at the police report from 1966. There wasn’t much. Douglas O’Reilly was a student at West Point. He had graduated from high school the year before and was on summer break when his car was found in Raccoon Creek. At first, it had been assumed that he had missed a turn and driven off the road, rolling end over
A search of the park did not turn up anything.
Guess they didn’t drag the lake.
In the same case file was the report that the sheriff had provided the county court on June 11, 2001, which restated basically the same information. The sheriff had no clues and no suspects. Everyone loved Michael Gardner, and they believed he wouldn’t simply take off. There were no transactions on his credits cards or any type of activity to indicate that he was alive.
On June 17, 2001, Michael Gardner was declared dead.
A front-page article appeared in The Review , for which Jan Martin MacMillan was the editor. The article included a picture of Mike Gardner in his police portrait. Ruggedly handsome would be the right description. Red curly hair and blue eyes. A broad chin and shoulders. Cameron was struck with how much he resembled Hunter.
That must be why I thought Hunter looked familiar last night. … No, it can’t be. I hadn’t seen any pictures of Mike Gardner until now. But Hunter looked … With a sigh, she pushed the idea from her mind. Hunter and Mike must just look like someone I used to know. But who? It’s going to bug me until I can put my finger on it. Who else do they remind me of? Her head pounding, Cameron gently rubbed her bruised forehead. You’re losing it, Cam.
Squinting against her headache, she continued to read the various statements in the online file.
Mike had never actually been on the force long enough to make enemies, nor did he have enough experience in investigation to be a threat. No wonder he asked for Joshua’s help.
Cameron went onto the Internet to do a search of Michael Gardner’s name and a further background check, only to find the background of the average boy next-door. He was born in the hospital in East Liverpool, Ohio—the same one where Joshua had been born. She noted that their birthdates were one week apart.
Suddenly remembering that Hunter had mentioned adoption, Cameron tried to dig further for the names of the parents on Gardner’s birth records and found nothing. Striking out, she looked in the search engine for anything, but only came up with the marriage announcement for Belle Gardner, widow of Michael Gardner, to Royce Fontaine. The announcement said that the couple met while both were working at Remington Pharmaceuticals in Pittsburgh, where Belle was an office manager and Royce was a vice president in charge of research.
With a sigh that came from intense thought and exhaustion, Cameron got up from the desk and moved over to the sofa to stretch out with the laptop perched on her bent knees. Welcoming the move that made his mistress more accessible, Irving perched behind her head on the arm of the sofa.
Cameron went on to dig deeper into cold case murders in the surrounding area of Hancock County that involved possible prostitutes that Mike Gardner could have been investigating.
Irving’s purr bounced in the back of her head and then to the front. She felt like it was bouncing off the back of her eyeballs. She closed her eyes and felt herself drifting off to sleep on the melody of her cat’s purr.
With broad shoulders and curly red hair, he was a ruggedly handsome man.
While Cameron studied the picture, his mother was recounting the same story that she had been telling every detective who had inherited the case over the last forty years. “My son did not commit suicide.”
Cameron put down the photograph and looked at the police report from 1966. There wasn’t much. Douglas O’Reilly was a student at West Point. He had graduated from high school the year before and was on summer break when his car was found in Raccoon Creek. At first, it had been assumed that he had missed a turn and driven off the road, rolling end over
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