Walker’s Family and Friends Say Foul Play Is Only Possibility
No Sign of Missing Radium Man
By Tom Austin
Devoted father. Loving husband. Stockcar racer. West End native. Loyal friend. Little League coach. Great mechanic.
These are the descriptions that are offered up when Ray Walker’s friends are asked about him.
The Radium man has been missing a full week and a half, since last Wednesday, just three days before he failed to attend his daughter Angela’s wedding.
The people who know Ray Walker best say that it is completely out of character for him to miss a family occasion that he had been planning for months with his wife, Sarah. They are convinced that foul play or an accident are the only possible explanations for his disappearance.
Walker was last heard from on Wednesday afternoon, when he called Sarah to say that he had received a call from a stranded motorist and was going to provide service. Walker owns and operates Walker’s Auto Repair business in Radium. A major part of his business is towing stranded vehicles. Triple A has told the Slickrock County Sheriff’s Office that it did not refer the call to Walker. Sheriff Trace Martin said on Thursday that he is pursuing a number of leads, but repeated what he said last week in an interview with the Forum, that missing adults almost always disappear for personal reasons and turn up on their own after they realize the ruckus they have caused. Martin added that he is ruling out a traffic accident in the West End as the cause of Walker’s disappearance, having searched all of the roads by vehicle, including remote jeep roads, with the help of dozens of volunteers, and from the air by helicopter.
“If Ray Walker had run his rig off the road in my county, and most of a few neighboring counties, for that matter, we would have spotted him,” Martin said. “Heck, his truck is painted bright red.”
That leaves foul play as the only possible explanation for Ray’s disappearance, his wife said on Thursday, a week and a day since she last heard from him.
“Anyone who knows Ray knows how much he was looking forward to Angela’s wedding,” Sarah Walker said. “I know that he just would not have missed it unless something real bad happened.” Walker said she did not report the disappearance for a few days simply because she kept expecting her husband to call or walk in the door at any minute.
As she put it, “You don’t know when exactly someone has truly gone missing and when they’re just running late. You wait another hour, and another hour and then suddenly a whole day has gone by, and then you wait another hour.”
Sarah Walker made an appeal to the public to notify the sheriff’s office at 970 355-3333 with any clue, no matter how insignificant it may seem.
“Did anyone see a car stranded out on a highway last Wednesday?” she asked. “If so, that could be the most important clue of all. I am afraid that whoever called Ray may have had criminal intent. What other explanation is there?”
Ray and Sarah Walker have been married for 20 years. They have two children, Angela, 19, and Ray, Jr., 13, and an infant grandson, Angela’s son Tyler. Angela was married to Craig Pellison of Radium last week, at the ceremony her father failed to attend for reasons yet unknown.
Sarah Walker works as a secretary at the Radium School and does the books for Walker’s Auto Repair. She also owns and operates the Bridal Veil Soap Company, selling petroleum-free, all-natural soaps that she makes herself by hand.
Ray Walker was born in Radium in 1967 and has never lived anywhere else, except for a two-year stint in the army. His mother, Elizabeth Walker, a longtime Radium resident, now lives at the Manor Nursing Home in Cortez. His father is deceased.
Walker’s friends, consisting of pretty much the entire population of Radium, and much of the entire West End, for that matter, have gathered at the Maverick Café to talk about his disappearance all week, and to organize search parties.
Tom was at the Maverick rereading his own words, wondering if the plug for Bridal Veil Soap was too blatant and whether Sarah Walker’s ambitions for her business were realistic so that she could afford to quit working at the school, when Dave sat next to him. It was lunchtime.
“Nice story,” Dave said, dropping his copy of the Forum on the table. “Course, like usual, you’re missing the main point.”
In the five years they had been friends, Dave had never before offered a single criticism of a story in the Forum.
“What did I miss? And what do you mean, ‘Like usual’?”
Tom was offended. He’d already fielded compliments from readers who said they were glad he explained why Ray’s disappearance was so disturbing: because it was so out of character and therefore inexplicable. He had anticipated the same from Dave, the familiar small-talk, even if the subject was bigger than usual.
“Aww, I guess it don’t matter.”
“Right,” Tom said sarcastically. “It don’t matter. You say I get my facts wrong, usually, but it don’t matter. Oh, and by the way, Dave, I bought a quart of milk the other day at the Merc, and it was curdled. In fact, and I’ve gotta be honest with you, your milk is usually sour.”
They sat silently, chewing their burgers, each searching for the few words he would utter next.
“You know, you are still pretty new around here,” Dave said.
“Always will be,” Tom said, and then he pointedly shifted gears: “You picking the Broncos over the Giants on Sunday?”
“Prolly not,” Dave said. “Giants are looking too good.”
“There’s absolutely no evidence it has anything to do with meth,” Tom said after another long pause. “Just because you said it might, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I know. I don’t even think that anymore. That was just trash talk because I was so worried.”
Another five minutes of glum silence.
“I can only report what people tell me,” Tom said.
“I spose.”
“If you know something you’re not telling me, you can’t expect me to put it in the paper,” Tom said. “His wife couldn’t tell me much except that Ray is the kindest man she’s ever known. And Sheriff Martin and Billy Pederson aren’t saying much. If they know anything, that is. What the hell do you want me to do? I’m not some goddamn detective or investigative reporter. I run a small-town community paper.”
Dave was finished with his lunch and pushed his chair back.
“Maybe this don’t matter neither,” he said. “But maybe you’d like to know.”
“Don’t bother telling me something I can’t use,” Tom said, cutting him off. “I mean it. It’s not like I’m gonna be the one who solves the mystery of what happened to Ray and if it’s gonna piss you off again if you tell me something I can’t print then just don’t tell it to me in the first place and you can save us both the trouble.”
“Yeah, well,” Dave said. “It’s awright. You don’t need to print it. It’s just a fact you might find interesting. And I don’t know why it bugs me so much that you got it wrong except that it was not right. Ray’s father isn’t dead, like you wrote.
“Ray is Dick DeRichter’s bastard son.”