The voice on the phone was frantic, bewildered and sad. I fancied I could hear the woman throwing her arms up in despair and frustration. It had been two weeks, and she still was unable to find her sister.

People disappear in a variety of ways. Some jump on a bus for nowhere, and they land across the country, content with their isolation. Others hit the skids and end up drinking wine beneath bridges with comrades whose names they never learn. People take up with questionable companions or just stay inside the safety of their homes, phone off the hook.

Then there are those who get gobbled up by the federal prison system.

I heard horror stories a few weeks ago after cops swept up the latest suspects in the never-ending trade of crack cocaine. These were federal agents armed with warrants. When you get taken in on charges against the government, things get murky.

One woman called because she heard her son had been arrested. She had no idea what he was accused of or where he was. She could not find him, and the voices of jailers were far from friendly.

She found him at last at the Cumberland County Jail in a pod inhabited exclusively by federal prisoners. He was facing decades in prison.

You have to believe the woman had hoped her son had been arrested for something less dramatic. Shoplifting at Wal-Mart. Poaching deer out in some town she’d never heard of. Drunk driving on the back roads, maybe, or throwing bottles through windows.

Now decades loomed, not months or years.

The next woman to call was searching for her kid sister. This woman had not heard from her sibling in a long time. But word was out on the street that the younger woman had gone down in the crack raid and gone down hard. It was all over the newspaper. It was on the television news, and the community was talking about it.

“She’s my sister. I want to make sure she’s OK,” this caller said. “She must be afraid and she must feel all alone.”

Problem was, it had been two weeks since the crack sweep and the woman still did not know where her sister was being held. It was like an episode of “The X-Files,” in which police and government officials say nothing but glare back through mirrored glasses.

“Nobody will tell me anything. I’ve been through the phone book, the police departments and all over the Internet.”

She called drug agents and prosecutors near and far. Some of them had been there when the news of the crack sweep was announced to the press at the end of the day. But when it came time for answers about the whereabouts of this one young lady, the answers were not so easy.

“Nobody seems to know anything because it was, quote, ‘a federal task force,'” the woman said. “It’s incredible. I call someone and they say they have no idea who I am. They can’t tell me a thing. I can’t find her just to see if she’s OK, to see if she needs anything.”

So, her sister is missing, and she has no idea where to look. And she’s tried just about everyone: local cops, local drug agents, the feds who conducted the raid. The jail, the courts, and everyone in between – no help whatsoever.

It’s like a bad movie on the Lifetime Channel. But instead of wringing her hands and sobbing, the woman began her own investigation. First stop: downtown Lewiston, where the drug raid was centered.

“People think I’m crazy. They think I’m nuts. I’ve been going door to door with a picture of my sister. ‘Do you know her? Do you know anything about her?'”

Of course nobody knows her. Not when you’re questioning people who want to distance themselves from a federal investigation. The woman who called had had little luck on the streets. She found leads in downtown Lewiston and others that pointed to neighborhoods in Auburn. But no one really knew a thing. Not really. Not that they wanted to share.

“I’m at a dead-end street,” the woman said.

Others know where their loved ones are. I’ve heard of suspects getting bailed from jail and then making quick tracks to their supplier. A little rock and some heroin to smooth the road. Out on bail and medicating sweetly.

When you’re on your way down, I suppose, it’s hard to tell exactly where the bottom is. You have to wonder if you’d rather have your drug-addicted loved one lost in the labyrinth of the federal system, or free on bail and back on the streets.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.

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