WHO IS ROBERT JACQUES?

William Maloney was watching television in May 1995 when he heard the name. For days, the news had been full of developments in the April 19 Oklahoma City bombing: first, suspect Timothy McVeigh was arrested; then his alleged accomplice Terry Nichols turned himself in. Now the FBI had picked up two men on suspicion of being associates of McVeigh's. Maloney, a real estate agent in the Ozarks, recognized the sound of one of the names--Robert Jacks. But then the drifter's face appeared on the screen. "When I saw him on TV," recalls Maloney, "I knew they had the wrong person."

In fact, after only 18 hours, the FBI released Jacks and his companion Gary Land. However, according to sources close to the Oklahoma City case, the government has been quietly looking for another "Robert Jacks." The FBI has talked with Maloney, and believes he is credible when he says that several months before the bombing, he met McVeigh, Nichols and, most important, a third man, whom the FBI would very much like to question. An investigation for Impact, the TV newsmagazine produced by CNN and TIME, has uncovered not only the mystery of the Oklahoma case's missing man but his sketch as well.

Maloney's close encounter occurred the year before the bombing. In the spring of 1994 he ran an ad offering to sell a piece of property in the Ozark mountains of Missouri. "In the middle of nowhere," it read, "at the end of a rough road, at the bottom of a hollow...there may be a cave." When Maloney got a phone inquiry soon after, he asked if the caller's name was spelled "M-C-V-E-Y." "That's close enough," came the answer. In the fall of the same year, three men drove up to Maloney's office in Cassville, Missouri. One, a man named Tim, mostly stayed in the car, but he came up to the office door once, enough for Maloney to notice the way he smiled. There was the glint of a tooth filling on the right side at the back of his mouth--a detail that matches McVeigh's dental records, FBI sources say. The second visitor in Cassville was apparently Nichols, who used his own name but took little part in the conversations. It was the third man who did almost all the talking. His name was Robert Jacques, pronounced Jacks. "I just go by Jacks," he told Maloney. Joe Lee Davidson, a salesman in Maloney's office who was there when the three men came by, recalls, "He seemed to be the one that was in control and in charge of what was going on."

Maloney did not take his three visitors at face value. He knew from experience that the Ozarks draw many people for reasons other than the appreciation of nature. The area along the Missouri-Arkansas line has been home to privacy seekers ranging from well-armed isolationist groups to prosperous marijuana farmers. Maloney said, "I asked them the question, 'Were they looking for a place to hide,' and they didn't respond to that." The trio left the same day and never came back.

Contacted by Maloney, the FBI sent a sketch artist to render a portrait of Jacques. The drawing shows a muscular young man with a short haircut, full face and dark features. Maloney thinks he was "maybe Indian." Davidson agrees, adding, "maybe a little bit Hawaiian." The FBI has been looking for him for well over a year.