Captivated: A Colter Shaw Short Story

Finally, Shaw believed he had enough to get started. Matthews rose, shook Shaw’s hand, more warmly than when they’d met. He began to speak, but emotion again intruded and he inhaled deeply, a hedge against tears. “Please. Help me, if you can.” He hurried out the door, climbed into the sleek black Mercedes, and a moment later the car sped out of view.

Colter Shaw had driven to Indianapolis in his thirty-foot Cambria Winnebago camper, in which he’d clocked 132,000 miles in the past year and half. He didn’t care for hotels and he hated to fly. The camper was perfect for both transportation and as living quarters. The boatlike vehicle, however, was cumbersome for tooling about town during an investigation itself, and his get-around wheels—a Yamaha YZ450FX dirt bike—made a questionable impression on offerors and disinclined potential interviewees from agreeing to talk to him.

Avis and Hertz were the solution and on jobs he rented a lot of unassuming sedans. Rearview cameras, satellite radios, good mileage. He’d also found people tended to trust you when you showed up in a Ford Escape or a Kia.

After leaving the restaurant, he found a trailer court with inexpensive hookups and clean showers, then he Ubered to a nearby Avis, where he collected a Toyota sedan.

He returned to the court and parked beside the Winnebago. In the RV he printed out the emails of material Matthews had promised to send: a list of Fontaine’s family members, friends, acquaintances and coworkers; galleries where her work was on display and/or for sale; and Matthews’s own phone and travel records around the time that his wife disappeared, the days before and after. The man hadn’t been offended that Shaw considered him a suspect, which was standard operating procedure on a missing spouse job; several times husbands had offered substantial rewards, to flag their innocence, when they themselves had dispatched their wives.

Shaw then called his own private investigator. Mack—an exception to the caveat about the limitations on permissible PI behavior—would conduct criminal background and weapons records checks on both principals in the job. Some of this information wasn’t in the public domain but Mack was unique in the world of private investigation: what was unavailable to most was rarely unavailable to Mack.

Shaw himself followed up on Matthews’s whereabouts on the days around the time Fontaine disappeared, after the workshop in Schaumburg. The records tentatively confirmed that Matthews was in Indianapolis on those days. And while that wasn’t conclusive, for the time being he ebbed as a suspect.

Shaw turned again to the entries in his notebook.

Date: August 30

Offeror: Ronald Matthews, 52, resident of Indiana, 2094 Shady Grove Lane, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Missing individual: Evelyn Maude Fontaine, 29, resident of Indiana, wife of 13 months.

• EF: Employed part-time as professor of sketching and painting technique, Indiana Concord College for the Arts, Indianapolis. Fine artist

• EF has passport but no overseas contacts; out-of-country travel unlikely.

• EF’s sister is in Dayton, Ohio, but the two are not close. Sister claims EF has not contacted her re disappearance.

• EF’s funds: unknown. She sells paintings occasionally, though doesn’t make much. Some income from teaching. RM gives her money but less in the past year, owing to financial difficulties. Probably not a large amount saved up.

• Website/Facebook/Twitter: minimal personal posting. Mostly about her paintings, links to galleries that carry her work. No internet activity since disappearance.

• No ransom demands. For-profit abduction unlikely, owing to RM’s company’s financial difficulties.

• EF and RM, former members of Charter Lane Country Club, 10334 Hunter Grove Road, Indianapolis. Quit two months ago to save money.

• EF and RM, members of Fitness Plus Health Club, 494 Akron Avenue West, Indianapolis.

• RM married previously, divorced ten years ago. Ended amicably. Ex lives in San Diego. They haven’t been in touch for several years.

• EF never married previously. Lived with three different men over the course of ten years, each for about eighteen to twenty-four months. Amicable breakups.

• No reports of stalkers.

• EF owns late-model Jeep Cherokee, gold. Indiana license HNC877.

• No known extramarital affairs on the part of either EF or RM.

• Weapon in house: Glock 9mm. Accounted for. EF did not take with her. (Mack will verify weapons status.) RM has Concealed Carry Permit.

• EF—no criminal history. (Mack will verify.)

• RM—no criminal history, no domestic abuse complaints. (Mack will verify.)

• Credit cards in EF’s own name, RM has no access to recent purchase data.

• Was at Artists in the Prairie retreat August 1–3, Schaumburg, IL. Organizer confirms she attended and left after last lecture. No knowledge of where she went.

• EF’s phone out of service.

• EF—no history of emotional/mental problems. No self-harm/suicidal incidents.

• No other serious reward seekers have approached RM.

• RM states he was in Indianapolis day before, day of, and day after EF’s disappearance. Records tentatively confirm.

• RM to provide list of EF’s friends and acquaintances, as well as galleries EF has connection to.

Has supplied.

Shaw put the notebook aside to take Mack’s call. The PI reported that that, yes, Matthews had a concealed carry permit, and only one weapon was registered in his name, the Glock he told Shaw about. Fontaine had no concealed carry or weapons registered to her.

Matthews had a clean record and no domestic abuse complaints or restraining orders against him, as he’d reported.

Evelyn Fontaine had no adult run-ins with the law but did have two juvie incidents, shoplifting, at ages fourteen and fifteen. The first was dismissed after the owner of the art store involved withdrew the complaint. The second went forward but was knocked down to supervised release after she told the prosecutor she’d stolen the paints and brushes to do paintings to sell at street fairs to supplement the family’s income; her father, an alcoholic and drug abuser, in and out of trouble with the law, could never hold down a job.

Shaw recalled Matthews frowning, offended, at the question of whether his wife had ever been arrested. Given that the incidents were fifteen years old and trivial, Shaw decided he had no reason to tell him.

Shaw worked his way from the camper’s narrow banquette, then boiled water and brewed a cup of Santa Bárbara, Honduras, coffee, added a splash of milk and sat back down. He sipped the coffee slowly, considering strategic choices in his search for Evelyn Fontaine.

When Colter Shaw was four years old his father abruptly moved his wife and three children from the San Francisco area to an enclave in the wilds of eastern California. The alternative upbringing that ensued offered some advantages for the boy. The homeschooling—by parents who’d been respected professors at a prestigious university—gave him a fine education without the dreaded routine and confinement of the classroom. The scenery was spectacular. The endless work required to survive on the thousand rugged acres guaranteed that Colter’s restlessness remained at bay.

The flight to the Compound, as it was named by Ashton and Mary Shaw, was more complicated than your typical NPR-subscribing urban couple’s shucking off of society. An aura of threat motivated the move—a threat that might have been real or might have been a hatchling of Ashton’s brilliant but paranoid mind. Years later Shaw realized that the man was essentially an off-the-grid survivalist, less cranked than most but constantly suspicious of outsiders, and a drillmaster when teaching the children how to protect themselves in all circumstances.