“I’m ninety percent sure it was on August tenth,” he said, “though there’s a ten percent chance it was on August ninth, and a zero percent chance it was on August 8.” Accounting for the nine-hour time difference, this indicated that Duncan had most likely phoned around 1:00 A.M. Central European Time on August 11, the night before he was to return to Nuremberg.
According to the RCMP, on August 23, Interpol Ottawa sent a missing person bulletin to Interpol offices all over Europe, which would in turn distribute it to border control and police stations. If Duncan crossed any of Europe’s national frontiers, he would be spotted. If he were put into a coma or killed in an accident, he would eventually be found at a hospital or morgue. If he were thrown into jail, the authorities would identify him as a missing person.
A sports reporter persuaded Lynda to go to the press as well, as it would alert the public to look out for Duncan, and media prominence could galvanize the RCMP and External Affairs to intensify their efforts to find him. And so, on August 23, Lynda gave her first interview to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix.
“It’s just so frustrating being here,” she said. “We feel helpless. We feel we should be there, trying to find him, trying to help him.”
Above all, it was the feeling of helplessness that Lynda couldn’t bear. Whenever confronted with a problem, even an intractable one, she’d always found comfort in doing something. Already as a teenager she’d discovered her desire to take action against misery or injustice. Incensed by the way Canada’s European settlers had treated the Indians, as soon as she reached adulthood, she got a job teaching Inuit children how to read and write on Baffin Island, 1,500 miles north of Montreal.
There, at the local curling club, she met the young pilot Robert MacPherson, who’d lived for years near the Arctic Circle, working for an oil company. He’d also felt a longing to go north, and was fascinated by the Inuit and their lives on the ice. In May of 1965, in a cottage near the shore of ice-bound Frobisher Bay, they conceived Duncan, and shortly thereafter Bob got a job at the Research Council in Saskatoon. That autumn they won a home in a raffle at the Saskatoon Fair, and thenceforth they enjoyed a long period of contentment as they brought up their two children—Duncan and his brother Derrick, who was born two years later.
Theirs was the kind of happiness that can only blossom when a husband and wife are equally grown-up, loving, and respectful. In spite of their modest income, they found it easy to live within their means and to enjoy life’s simple pleasures, such as their daily walks along the Saskatchewan River. For twenty-three years their world seemed familiar, safe, and predictable. Then Duncan disappeared and their terrible trial began.
It would prove to be infinitely longer, stranger, and more frustrating than they could have ever anticipated, and it would erode their faith not only in government institutions, but in human nature itself. Their doubt began with the RCMP and External Affairs, for in spite of these agencies’ assurances that they were doing everything possible to find Duncan, Lynda sensed that they weren’t.
And so, three weeks after their son was last seen, she and Bob decided to try to find him themselves. It was a formidable undertaking, as neither of them had ever been to Europe; nor could they speak a word of German or Italian. They knew the police were better equipped to locate him, but they still felt an irresistible urge to try. Besides, anything was better than sitting around and waiting.
Chapter 2: Searching
They flew to Germany on August 27, carrying in their luggage 2,000 missing person posters. After arriving in Frankfurt and renting a car, they proceeded to retrace Duncan’s movements between his arrival and disappearance. In Nuremberg they spoke with a police officer in charge of missing persons, who told them not to worry.
“Your son is big and strong—nothing can happen to him,” he said. “I’m sure he’s met a beautiful girl and is having a great time.”
“But he hasn’t cashed a traveler’s check since August 7,” Lynda said.
“The girl must be rich as well!”
From the police station they went to the Happy Holidays travel agency, where Duncan had last used a traveler’s check. One of the agents recognized him from his photograph. Checking her records, she confirmed that on August 7, he’d made a 100 Mark deposit for a plane ticket to Glasgow, departing on August 12. He’d planned to return to her office on August 11 to pick it up.
From Nuremberg they drove to Fuessen, where Duncan had stayed with his friend Roger Kortko on the night of August 7. To Roger he’d mentioned his desire to visit Italy—maybe to meet a friend in Bolzano, maybe to do some windsurfing on Lake Garda. He had no definite itinerary; all he knew for sure was that he had to be back in Nuremberg on August 11.
Lynda and Bob studied a map of the route between Fuessen and Lake Garda, and imagined Duncan doing the same a month earlier. Driving south from the German border would take them through the Austrian city of Innsbruck, the capital of Tyrol, and then through the Brenner Pass to Bolzano, the capital of the Italian (formerly Austrian) province of South Tyrol.
It was almost midnight when they arrived in Innsbruck and checked into their hotel, so they couldn’t see the surrounding terrain. When Lynda woke up the next morning and opened the curtains, she was greeted by a stunning view of the city’s alpine backdrop.
“He’s here,” she said out loud. “He would love this place.”
A hypothesis formed in her mind: Duncan had gone for a drive in the mountains around Innsbruck, lost control of his car, and plunged into a wooded ravine that concealed the wreck. This was based entirely on intuition; she had no more objective grounds for believing it than the theory that he’d traveled to Bolzano or Lake Garda, as he’d told Roger he would. And so they decided to start their search in Italy, distributing posters along the way, and then double back if necessary.
A few miles south of Innsbruck, they stopped at the first of many police stations they would visit in the course of their search. The gendarmerie (law enforcement agency in rural districts) station was in the town of Schoenberg, at the entrance to the Stubai Valley. There they were shocked to learn to that, in spite of the Interpol bulletin, the Tyrolean police knew nothing about Duncan. They told the officers about their son’s disappearance and their fear that he might have had a car crash in the mountains around Innsbruck.
The officers were confident that nothing had happened to Duncan in Tyrol. Even in densely wooded areas, a wrecked car would be quickly found, as there were hikers everywhere. An abandoned car would have been noticed and soon reported, because in mountainous areas an abandoned car is considered a strong indicator that its driver has been in a hiking or climbing accident. Nevertheless, the officers said they would distribute a notice about Duncan and his car to all gendarmerie stations in Tyrol.
And so, as Lynda and Bob left the station, they felt confident the Tyrolean police were on top of the case.
Normally Bob would have been captivated by the beauty of the Brenner Pass, with its old castles perched on the flanking mountains, but his preoccupation with finding his son cast a pall on everything. What happened to him? Could he have met a girl so intoxicating that she caused him to forget his family and obligations? Bob didn’t think so. Duncan had had many attractive girlfriends in the past, and his current girlfriend, Tara, was a knockout. No, if he’d met another girl, he would have called and said so. Had he got into a fight with the wrong guy? He never flinched from fighting on the ice, invariably with painful results for his opponents, but Bob knew there were men in the world who were capable of far more than fist-fighting. It was a troubling thought.