Sorting out possible tips from well-intended messages of support is time-consuming, and every word from soft-spoken Bret testifies to his exhaustion.
“But what I’m kind of dreading,” he admits offhandedly, “is the day the reporters don’t call.”
The McCanns’ planned journey was one that Lyle could probably have captained in his sleep. He spent most of his working life as a long-haul trucker, and the roads leading over the Rockies to the coast were his bread and butter;
he had an archaeologist’s knowledge of the year-to-year changes along the Yellowhead Trail.
Lyle and Marie Ann, who have lived in St. Albert since 1964, intended to meet daughter Trudy Holder at the airport in Abbotsford, B.C., on July 10.
No one thought there was a need to keep tabs on the independent, healthy pair while they were in transit. But
the McCanns are meticulous and considerate, so their daughter immediately sensed trouble when they missed their rendezvous. The children—Trudy, Bret, and Lance, who inherited his father’s St. Albert-based trucking business about a decade ago—made a call and discovered that Lyle and Marie Ann had also
failed to make a planned stopover with older friends in Kelowna the previous day.
....an
RCMP officer was able to retrieve the registration card.
.... More than mere time was lost as a result of the error; the removal of the vehicle (rv) from the clearing also
compromised a possible crime scene.
Area residents concurred with the police’s evaluation of Vader, painting a complex picture of a hard-working, intelligent kid from a good family who had gone on to become a successful drilling consultant. With the downturn in the Alberta oil patch, Vader was forced to sell his equipment and had become an ominous, short-tempered presence haunting the hotel bar in Niton Junction. When the police held a Friday night community meeting in MacKay to discuss the hunt for Vader and to share information,
Vader’s own father, according to the
Edmonton Journal, warned attendees that
“if you tried to corner [my son] out here, you would be dead.” But this proved false: when the police located Vader at a rural residence near Niton Junction on Monday, RCMP and Edmonton Police Service tactical units swooped in, arresting him and another individual
without incident.
Unless Vader has answers, the vigil will continue for the McCann family. The police, though suspecting the worst, have not specified why they want to question Vader. There have been no confirmed sightings of Lyle and Marie Ann since July 3, and no physical trace of them was found in either vehicle. “We’re trying to focus on the chance that my parents are somewhere out there, maybe in the bush,” says Bret. “My dad is in his late seventies but he’s very vigorous. He’s getting a bit frail, but just a couple weeks ago he was here cutting down trees in my yard.
He’s resourceful. If he’s out there, I’m confident he can take care of Mom.”
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/07/26/searching-for-answers/
