Synaptic Snaps, Crackles & Pops

Clyde who? [30 DBC entry]

30DBC November 4 Prompt: We've all heard of people who mysteriously 'go missing'. Tonight, write about a person who 'goes missing'. Someone that you read about in the newspaper or online, but nobody seems to know them, or remember them.


Detective Sergeant Roger Murdoch was about as frustrated as he could ever remember being. He and his partner, Detective Marvin Wiggins, had made the initial response to a missing persons report. They had interviewed the apartment complex manager, and then had him escort them on a quick walk-through of the missing man's apartment.

Clyde Bannerman lived in Apartment 3-C. The manager, a Mr. Norman Waltchuk, had come to demand payment of that month's rent, as it was now the 6th. According to Waltchuk, Bannerman normally paid online by the 3rd of the month and, when the payment didn't show in the bank account, Waltchuk had considered checking with the tenant, as per his usual procedure. He'd waited, though, he'd said, because he'd seen a message on the complex's message board, asking if anyone would be interested in a small sectional sofa. "I figured he was a little short and was working on getting the rest of the money." When he didn't get a response to his knocking, he'd used his master key to enter the apartment. He'd initially thought Bannerman might be asleep or drunk or something, because he could hear the TV in the living room. He'd looked in all the rooms and, when Bannerman was nowhere to be seen, he'd called the police.

The walk-through had not yielded any firm clues. There were dishes in the sink, food in the fridge, the TV was playing, there were clothes in the closet, etc., but no Bannerman, and no signs of a struggle. There were also no pictures they could use to help identify the man. According to Waltchuk, Bannerman never came to the office, and the surveillance video there overwrote itself after 30 days anyway. Waltchuk said he'd only been on the job for eight months, hired on after his predecessor "had a heart attack and died right behind the office counter." A quick door-to-door canvas had established the fact that nobody seemed to have ever seen the guy. Indeed, except for the online payments and the message board item—items which could have been posted from anywhere—there was no actual evidence that this Bannerman guy had actually even lived there. Well, the techs would sweep the place for prints, he thought as he headed back out into the hallway. That ought to get a hit –

Murdoch stopped short, having almost run into a serious-looking man in a serious-looking suit. He barely caught a glimpse of a shiny badge bearing the Seal of the United States over a 5-point star, before it disappeared back into the man's jacket pocket.

"Detective Murdoch, I'm with the U.S. Marshals Service. We need to talk."