VIABLE by R. A. Hakok Page B

Carl Gant?’
    ‘No. I never got his name.’
    Silence again.
    She heard her flight being called, and told the sheriff that she had to go.
    ‘Of course. Well, thank you for the call Doctor Stone. You have a safe trip now.’
     

 
    13
     
     
     
     
    ITWASAFTER seven when Lars made it back to Hawthorne. It had been a long day and he was keen to get home to Ellie but he had to stop by the office first. He didn’t know what to make of Alison Stone’s claim that she had met Gant. He was convinced that Gant’s blood had something to do with his abduction however. He had called Connie from the car and asked her to search NCIC for anything connected with the hh blood type. Minutes after he arrived he was sitting behind his desk staring at three printouts she had left for him.
    The first was for Shilpa Desai, a fifteen-year old high school student who had gone missing from Rockport, Massachusetts in 1965. There was little other than personal details and the fact that she possessed a rare blood group. The database indicated that she had never been found.
    The second report was for Cindy Rowe, a primary school teacher from Pleasant Grove, Utah who had been reported missing a decade later. Her body had never been recovered but the entry had been amended to reflect the fact that a man named Joseph Brandt had been charged with and convicted of her murder.
    The final printout was for Robin Taft. Taft had been reported missing in 1981, and, like Shilpa Desai, had never been found. There was something familiar about Taft, some half-remembered detail that made Lars think he knew the name. But after a few minutes it had not come to him and with a sigh he pushed the button on the computer that normally lay dormant on his desk, waiting while the hard drive went through a series of muted clicks and the screen on his desk came to life.
    He started with Robin Taft, convinced that he should somehow recognize the name. An internet search revealed three articles.
    The first was a brief report of a car accident Taft had been involved in on a stretch of I-79 just past Hurricane, Utah in the summer of 1975.
    The other articles were longer.
    The second was an appeal two days later from the man’s uncle, Byron Sedgwick Taft, the governor of Utah, for donors to come forward for his nephew. The article explained that the young man had an exceptionally rare blood type and needed a transfusion from a compatible donor before he could undergo surgery necessary to save his life.
    The third article, a week later, reported that after an emotional television appeal by the governor a schoolteacher had come forward and donated blood. Robin Taft had undergone surgery and was now expected to make a full recovery.
    So that was it – that was where he must have heard of Robin Taft. Byron Taft had been an important man; he remembered the press coverage at the time. It really didn’t help to explain why six years later the man had gone missing though. He typed Cindy Rowe’s name into the search field and hit ‘Enter’.
    Again there were only three articles.
    The first, a short piece in the Daily Herald about how a local schoolteacher had responded to an appeal from the governor of Utah for a donation of a rare blood type that his nephew desperately needed following his involvement in a car accident.
    The second article was from the Salt Lake Tribune , ten days later. It described how a man had been arrested in connection with the disappearance of a young schoolteacher and mother of two from Pleasant Grove who had been missing for a week. Joseph Brandt, from Bluffdale, worked as a driver for a car service that Mrs. Rowe had used on the day of her disappearance and was believed to be the last person to have seen her alive. The police wouldn’t comment further, although sources close to the investigation had revealed that traces of what was believed to be Mrs. Rowe’s blood had been found on the back seat of the car he had been driving on the day she had gone