by Allen Eskens
“You should have called,” Charlotte said when she answered the door. “I’d have made cookies or something.”
It was by design that Lila hadn’t called. It was the best way to keep the visit short.
Charlotte backed into the house with Lila in tow. “You should’ve brought Joe. I haven’t seen him since Christmas. I wish you’d bring him around more often. I have some lemon bars left over from canasta. You want a lemon bar?”
“No, Mom.”
“It’s so good to see you.” Charlotte sat on a couch and pointed to the love seat with her eyes as if to direct Lila to sit, but Lila stayed on her feet, causing Charlotte’s cheek to twitch ever so slightly.
“I happened to be in the neighborhood,” Lila said, knowing that her mother would appreciate the lie. “Thought I’d stop by and say hi.”
“You look healthy.”
That was Charlotte’s preferred compliment for Lila. It came from the heart but had its roots in a time when Lila didn’t look healthy—a time when the overdose and the cutting had turned Charlotte’s daughter into a tattered scarecrow of a girl.
“I can’t stay long, though.” Something Lila said to her mother on most of her visits. “I was hoping—”
“Are you sure you don’t want a lemon bar?” she said. “I have more than I can eat.”
“I’m sure, but I was hoping to take a look—”
“You can take some home for Joe. He loves my lemon bars. I think he ate a whole plate full at Christmas?”
“Remember that metal box I used to keep in my sock drawer, the one with my high school stuff in it?”
A tinge of worry materialized in the lines around Charlotte’s eyes. “What do you want with that?”
“I need to look at something. I know you took it out of my room.”
“I haven’t seen you in months.”
“It’s important, Mom.”
“What could be important about a bunch of old pictures?”
“I’m trying to figure some stuff out.”
“Stuff?”
“I want to look at those pictures.”
“Oh, honey, are you sure that’s wise? I mean…” Charlotte didn’t finish her thought; she didn’t need to. Lila knew what followed. I mean, won’t that make you gloomy again? Won’t that take you back to those days when you tried to kill yourself?
“Can you please tell me where it is?”
Charlotte knotted her hands together. “I put it in my bedroom…for safekeeping.”
Lila headed toward the steps. “Where?”
“The closet, but…shouldn’t you let sleeping dogs lie?”
Lila paused to look at Charlotte. She pictured her mother writing the letter to Dr. Roberts, and forging Lila’s signature. The image summoned an army of harsh words and made her cheeks get hot, but Lila held her tongue. She shook her head, and walked upstairs in silence.
Lila found her box in the closet, shoved beneath a winter quilt. She pulled it free and took it to her old bedroom. The key to the box was where she’d left it, taped behind the back side of her sock drawer.
Among the relics, Lila had kept four decks of wallet-size photos bound together by rubber bands, one stack for each year of high school. She pulled the band off her senior photos and started flipping through the faces, searching for a memory that might not even exist. She turned each picture over to read the inscriptions on the back, their sentiments starting with phrases like Hey wild thing, or To my favorite party girl, or Remember that crazy night we…
About halfway through the deck, Lila had to pause. She had never noticed it before, but not one of her classmates offered a sentiment that ran deeper than the swill in the bottom of a shot glass.
She returned to her task, her mood much heavier than before, and when she came to Sean Daniels’s picture, she read his inscription: Every dog has its day. Quirky was how she’d described Sean to Detective Vang, but this seemed to blow past quirky and land in the area of full-blown creepy. Lila put his photo into her pocket to show Niki.
Then she came to Sylvie’s senior picture, a remarkable shot that caught her friend in a beautiful light. Sylvie stood waist-deep in a calm lake, the water so still that it captured her reflection on its surface. Sylvie’s hair danced off her shoulders, and her eyes burned like flames behind her smoky eye shadow.
Lila turned the picture over and read: To my friend.
Sylvie’s freshman picture looked up at Lila from the top of another stack, and Lila pulled it free to read the inscription on the back.
You are my sister
My deepest soul
My best friend
You make me whole.
I love you forever.
Lila put the two pictures side by side. How had Lila gone from being Sylvie’s deepest soul to barely being her friend in four short years? It occurred to her that maybe her mother had been right about letting sleeping dogs lie.
In the bottom of the box Lila found a stack of pictures of her and Sylvie that she’d collected over the years, spanning from when they were children splashing in a plastic pool in Sylvie’s backyard to the time right before the fall of their friendship. Lila began slowly going through them, the memories bringing tears to her eyes.
Deep in the stack, Lila came upon a picture taken the fall of their senior year. Lila had forgotten about it, but now recalled the day when Sylvie invited her to play Frisbee golf with John and some of his friends. In the picture, Lila and Sylvie sat on a picnic table, talking. In the background, John chatted with a guy whose face Lila recognized, but whose name escaped her. He didn’t go to their school, but he and John had some connection—relatives, maybe.
Something about the man’s smile caught Lila’s attention. She studied his face and then closed her eyes to try to remember. She could see him standing in a doorway, pointing at her. He had a beer in his hand and a sharp grin that gave his face an elfish quality. She remembered body odor and a sense that she disliked the man. Had he been at the party in Uptown?
Lila turned the picture over and read Sylvie’s handwritten notes: Me, Lila, John, and Silas. Silas. Lila closed her eyes and repeated the name, trying to conjure something, but the only thing that came to her was the word jackass. Silas Jackass. She could hear John calling him by that name. She looked at the picture again and it came to her. Silas Jackson—John’s cousin. She’d only met him a couple times and had always been less than impressed. Did he have a lisp? She tried to remember if she had ever heard him speak, but got nothing.
She put that picture in her pocket and locked the box shut before returning it to its rightful place in her sock drawer, the key tucked once again into its hiding place.
Downstairs, Charlotte was waiting for Lila, holding a plate of lemon bars on her lap. She looked at her daughter with a smile that begged to start the visit over. But all Lila could think about was that her mother had lied to Dr. Roberts and ended Lila’s sessions. And now she wanted to eat lemon bars and pretend that none of that had happened—as if it didn’t matter.
A powerful anger churned in Lila’s gut, kicking to get out. Lila stopped at the bottom of the steps, her eyes fixed on her mother, who tapped the edge of the plate with a nervous finger.
“I used to make these for your father,” Charlotte said. “To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of lemon bars. I don’t know why I still make them. So…if you want one.”
The sadness in her mother’s eyes hobbled Lila’s anger. Lila wanted to have it out with Charlotte, but the woman seemed so small and weak, a wounded deer barely able to look into the eyes of the wolf. Lila couldn’t do it. So she left, saying nothing.
Chapter 38
Niki and Matty met with Detective Tony Voss in an interview room of the Homicide unit to go over the Chloe Ludlow case. He had been the lead investigator when it went cold.
Voss placed his box of evidence on the table. “You think your boy might be good for Ludlow?”
“There’s a pattern,” Matty said. “White female, fu
lly clothed, no defensive wounds, no ligature marks, but evidence of a sexual assault. COD is drowning, river water in the lungs and GHB in their systems—how are we doing so far?”
“Batting a thousand,” Voss said.
“Our boy’s a photographer,” Niki said. “Ring any bells?”
“A big one. Ludlow was an aspiring model, last seen getting into an older black SUV outside of her apartment. She told her roommate the guy was a photographer who offered to do some headshots on the cheap.”
“Did the roommate have a name for the photographer?” Niki asked.
“No. And we checked Chloe’s phone records, but the number she’d called was a burner. Cell towers had it moving all around the metro, so we figured he kept the phone off and only returned her calls while driving, so we couldn’t trace it to a house.”
“What about the SUV? Anything more specific than black?”
“Not according to my notes. I got the feeling the roommate didn’t like Chloe all that much. We didn’t rule her out as a suspect, but the photographer made more sense.”
“What’s her name—the roommate?”
Tony dug through the file and pulled out a report. “Alice Kempker. A kindergarten teacher at the time. They became roommates when Ludlow answered an ad, and by the time she went missing, the two were at each other’s throats. Kempker stayed at her boyfriend’s house that night, so it’s possible Chloe came home after the photo shoot. Her body wasn’t found right away.”
“Did you get any surveillance footage of the SUV?”
“No cameras at the apartment. We looked around the neighborhood, but didn’t find anything. Does your guy drive a black SUV?”
“An ’eighty-six Bronco—black,” Niki said. “But we haven’t been able to locate it.”
“Are we talkin’ serial killer?” Tony asked.
“We have four possible victims,” Niki said. She thought about saying five, adding Lila’s name to the list, but the connection remained far too remote. “Same MO and all with a nexus to a photographer named Gavin Spencer.”
“He’s an awkward guy,” Matty said, “a loner with a bad speech impediment. Probably uses his camera as a way to interact with people—women in particular.”
Niki added, “He’s independently wealthy, so we think he uses the photography business to scout victims. Once he chooses a girl, he figures out her habits. Then, when the opportunity presents itself, he drugs her, assaults her, and drowns her in the river.”
Matty said, “He covers his tracks like nothing I’ve ever seen. We think he puts them in the river off Nicollet Island—lets them float over the falls. He uses the falls like…Excuse the analogy, but he uses the falls like the agitator of a washing machine—lets it hammer away the evidence.”
Tony tapped the lid of the box. “We weren’t even sure she was murdered,” he said. “She drowned, so we couldn’t rule out an accident or suicide.”
“But we have Gavin Spencer now,” Matty said. “Virginia Mercotti hired him for her brother’s marriage proposal, and Spencer took a picture of Eleanora Abrams at a party two days before she turned up dead.”
“And get this,” Niki said. “Spencer went to homecoming with Eleanora Abrams when they were freshmen in high school. Things got ugly.” Niki slid a police report across the table to Voss. “Abrams ignored Spencer all night. They went home separately, but not before Gavin’s mother threw a cup of hot coffee on the girl.”
Voss leaned back in his seat and read the report, whistling when he came to the part about the hot coffee. “This guy’s a piece of work—so is his mother.”
“Did the name Gavin Spencer come up anywhere in your investigation?”
“No, and we grilled the roommate pretty hard. She just happened to look out the window when Chloe got into the vehicle—that’s the only reason we know it was a black SUV.”
“What about a speech impediment?” Niki asked. “Spencer has a bad lisp.”
Voss churned through the pages of his report. “No mention of it, but Kempker never met the photographer or heard him speak.”
Niki shook her head. “It’s him. I know it is.”
The three detectives sat in silence for a few seconds before Voss spoke. “Did you know that Ted Bundy was the top suspect for multiple murders in Utah and Washington while he was killing women in Colorado? They knew he’d done it. Had a ton of circumstantial evidence, but nothing that got them to court.”
“Like we got here,” Matty said.
“Exactly.”
Niki said, “We can put him with Eleanora and Virginia within days of their abductions, but not on the actual day. We can tie a black SUV to both Chloe and Sadie Vauk, but can’t prove that it’s Spencer’s vehicle. Sadie puts him in her salon chair right before her memory goes blank, but to get a guilty verdict, the jury has to believe a woman with no memory.”
“Lots of smoke,” Voss said, “but no fire.”
“We’re so damned close,” Niki said. “I feel like we’re trying to open one of those Chinese puzzle boxes. If we could look at it the right way, we’d see the answer.”
“I wish I had more to give you,” Voss said. “But the file was thin from the get-go.”
Niki stared at the picture of Chloe Ludlow, young, beautiful, but with intelligent eyes that added depth to her features. Niki put the three faces side by side in her mind.
Matty and Tony continued talking, but Niki shut their conversation out. Something was wrong—missing. She couldn’t put a finger on it, so she lined up their fact patterns in her head, carefully running down the list, checking off where they matched up—and where they didn’t.
“Chloe’s MO doesn’t fit,” she said.
The men stopped talking and looked at Niki.
“Her modus operandi is missing a step.” She paused to give Matty an opportunity to see the flaw.
When he didn’t say anything, she continued as though the pause had been for her to organize her own thoughts. “Mercotti and Abrams both met Gavin Spencer several days before they were abducted. For Sadie Vauk it had been twenty-four hours. In each case, though, he used that time to stalk them. Chloe Ludlow went missing after climbing into that black SUV, but where was the first meeting? When did Spencer make her a target? If he plans his abductions, then he and Chloe would have met before he kidnapped her.”
Niki jabbed a finger at Chloe’s picture. “We know his MO. Maybe we can work backwards and put them together before her death. We might get lucky.”
Then Niki turned to Tony. “Any problems if I go have a chat with Ms. Kempker?”
“I think you should,” Tony said.
Chapter 39
Lila spent the drive home searching her memory for Silas Jackson and finding the cupboard all but bare. She dug deep and kept coming back only to an image of him standing in a doorway, pointing at her. She couldn’t shake the belief that that image came from the party in Uptown. But surely if he had a lisp, she would have remembered it by now.
Lila walked into her apartment to find Joe in the kitchen, a pot full of water on the stove in front of him.
“About time,” he said. “I’ve been holding up dinner.” On the counter nearby lay a brown paper wrapper, unfolded, with four king crab legs inside. “Thought I’d make something special.”
“Okay,” Lila mused. “It’s not my birthday…so, what’s up?”
“Can’t a guy make an incredibly expensive meal for his girl without there being some hidden agenda?”
“Yeah, but you’re Joe Talbert, so out with it.”
Joe shrugged and smiled. “Fine, but someday I’m gonna make crab legs just to confuse you.”
“I’m listening.”
Joe took a beat, and then said, “They want me to go to North Dakota to cover that pipeline story.”
Lila hadn’t expected that to be Joe’s answer. He’d mentioned the possibility, but she’d let it fall off her radar. “So this meal is a peace offering?”
“I was thinking distraction, but peac
e offering works too.”
“When do they want you to go?”
“In the morning. The protest is heating up. There’ve been some skirmishes already, so—”
“So, that’s your cue to go?”
“They don’t harm reporters. They need us to get their message out to the world. That’s the point of a protest.”
“Still…”
“I made biscuits.”
“Well, in that case…” The words came with a pout.
“It’s a big story, Lila, and no one else is covering it—not nationally, at least. I could really make a name for myself.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Few days—maybe a week—I don’t know.”
Lila then noticed the suitcase pulled from the hall closet. “You’ve already made up your mind?”
“I thought the crab legs made that clear?”
Lila didn’t smile. The timing seemed all wrong, but Joe had no way of knowing that. She had kept him in the dark about so many things.
He must have sensed her reticence because he stopped joking. “I’m only getting this assignment because Liz is out on maternity leave. I’m the new guy, remember? This is a great opportunity. I’ll stay home if—”
“No. I want you to go. It’s not like you’re going to the Antarctic—it’s North Dakota. Just…be careful.”
“Absolutely.” Joe pulled her into his arms and gave her a kiss. “I’ll do my story and get back here as soon as I can.”
“Do me a favor, though?” Lila said.
“Anything.”
She looked deep into his eyes and said, “Make sure you set the timer on those crab legs. You overcooked them last time.” She pulled back, gave him a wink, and walked out of the kitchen, picking a pile of mail off the countertop.
She flipped through the mail on her way to the bedroom and came across a letter from the Minnesota Board of Law Examiners. The results of the bar exam weren’t due for another month at least. Confused, she unsealed the envelope with her fingernail and read.
