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.
Never assume you’re safe. Never leave yourself vulnerable. Never assume someone is coming to your aid. Never be without access to a weapon. And never assume someone is unarmed.
Shaw and his older brother, Russell, referred to their father as the King of Never.
One survival tactic, according to Ashton Shaw, was the science of percentages:
Never approach a task, or assess a threat, without calculating the odds.
The chance of falling through inch-thick ice on a lake in February? Eight percent. The low number meant that carrying a waterproof survival pack was important, but wearing a confining wet suit under your hiking gear was unnecessary.
The odds of getting lost at night on a trail you’ve hiked once before? Fifteen percent. Carry compass, maps, matches, and rations for two days, but not for two weeks.
The odds you’ll outrun a mountain lion? Two percent. The odds you can fight that same mountain lion successfully? Sixty percent. (Or, as Colter’s younger sister, Dorion, pointed out with perfect logic, “It’d be close to a hundred, you carry your .45 with you.”)
The percentages you assign dictate your course of action. Shaw now picked odds as to Evelyn Fontaine’s fate.
Matthews kidnapped/murdered her: one percent.
Matthews hired someone to kidnap/murder her: two percent.
Foul play by a third party, independent of Matthews: seven percent.
Fontaine fled for her own safety because Matthews was a closet domestic abuser: ten percent.
Fontaine, unhappy in a relationship that was stifling both her psyche and her career, left Matthews to live on her own: fifty percent. She didn’t have the resource or income to make this likely.
Fontaine, unhappy in the relationship, left Matthews for a lover: eighty percent. This percentage was higher than the one above because she seemed to prefer to being in relationships, as opposed to being alone, having lived with three men before Matthews. She would also need a second source of income.
Fontaine, unhappy in the relationship, left Matthews for a lover involved in the art world: eighty-five percent. Shaw felt it was clear that things were not going smoothly with a businessman who loved her but was uninterested in her passion. He also assessed it would be a lover of means, not a starving artist like herself.
Based on his analysis, Shaw decided he wouldn’t pursue, for the moment, leads at the couple’s former health club or country club or with neighbors in the posh community where they lived, where Fontaine might have met someone who became a stalker or lover. He’d concentrate on the college where she’d taught, the galleries she was connected to and the few acquaintances in the Indianapolis art scene whose names Ron Matthews could provide.
He triple-locked the Winnebago. (Shaw had received plenty of rewards for helping relocate various fugitives and felons to austere residences for lengthy periods of time; several of these relocated parties had announced “rewards” of their own — on his head. Accordingly, he took security seriously.) Then he piloted the Toyota to downtown Indianapolis to start his search at the college.
Indiana Concord College of the Arts was a typical urban schooclass="underline" architecture blandly nineteen seventies, four stories high, constructed of aluminum and pale yellow Sheetrock, which was grazed and marred thanks to a meager budget for maintenance. The smell was acrid, presumably paints and sibling substances like turpentine, linseed oil and cleansers, as well as darkroom developer, fixer and stop bath solution.