The Last Night (The Last Series Book 2)

by Harvey Church

  Watching the screen, Ethan saw an image of Raleigh pop up. Her face was blotchy and slightly swollen, her right nostril outlined in dry blood, her left eyebrow split open. Just a small cut, but the swelling over her eye left little doubt that she’d either been in a physical altercation or, more likely, beaten. Ethan didn’t recall ever seeing that photo, even at the peak of Raleigh’s disappearance when he was behind bars and unsure what was going to happen next. If the police had been operating with that image of Raleigh at the forefront of their motivations for arresting, it made sense why they’d locked him up.

  “The police report says you beat her pretty bad, Ethan.” Klein’s finger swiped to the next photo. “You, Ethan.”

  Ethan blinked back the emotion. In the second photo, Raleigh’s right eye was bruised. Her lower lip was split, bruised and swollen, and its inflated size reminded him of whenever she would eat apples and some other fruit. Apparently, she had an allergy to sorbitol, the chemical in apples that made them sweet, but the allergic swelling never caused the skin to crack open or bruise like in the photo.

  Jeez, Raleigh, what kind of trouble did you get yourself into?

  “It gets worse,” Klein promised, swiping again. The next photo was an image of a man. This one had big, wide eyes as if he’d been caught on camera by surprise, a bit of growth on his face. His hair was messy. He wasn’t surprised, though; based on the image, it was clear to Ethan that this man with the wide eyes was posing for a police mug shot. Yet the name on the board listed this man’s name as Vernon, Ethan. “You didn’t know this, but the police report on that last beating had this image filed with it. That’s what got the charges thrown out. Once the District Attorney saw the image they had of you and then went back through Raleigh’s file and found this one, it was clear none of those so-called assault allegations would stand up.”

  Ethan ran his hands down the length of his face, feeling awfully ill all of a sudden.

  “I’ll tell you, Ethan, it was something of a mess, the disorganization that went on at the Nineteenth back in those days.”

  Ethan nodded, studying the unrecognizable man’s face in the photo before Klein could swipe to the next image.

  “You don’t recognize him?”

  “Should I?”

  Klein shrugged and moved his attention back down to the phone. Ethan followed the agent’s stare and saw another image, this one of a blunt object with blood and hair attached to its end, sealed in what was obviously an evidence bag. Gasping, Ethan glanced up at Klein.

  “It’s a priest,” Klein explained.

  “A ‘priest?’”

  “Yes, that’s the name of the baton that fishermen use to kill the fish they snag.”

  Trying another glance at the object, Ethan found he had to look away. It was too graphic, especially after seeing the images of Raleigh having been beaten. The conclusion that this priest had Raleigh’s hair and blood on it was an easy one to make. “A priest?”

  Klein nodded. “And it was recovered from the garage behind your house, Ethan.”

  Frowning, Ethan pointed out that he wasn’t a fisherman. “That was one hobby I never got into.” Truth was, Ethan hated the idea of squeezing a worm onto a sharp hook, forget about having to work at freeing that hook from a wild fish’s mouth.

  “It’s a sport,” Klein remarked, swiping across the screen and revealing an image of Raleigh’s hand, the whites of her fingernails red with blood.

  Ethan recognized his wife’s hands. Wasn’t hard; he’d dreamed of holding them every day for the past seven and a half years. “What’s this one?” he asked Klein, aware that his voice came out with a pained cracking.

  “Evidence of a struggle.”

  “I don’t understand, Agent Klein.” He gulped back the dry lump in his throat and frowned, as if that might help him avoid the emotions boiling behind his eyes and up his throat.

  Klein began to swipe the image away when Sally delivered their plates. Steam rose from the scrambled eggs and the sausage seemed to emit the aroma of, as Klein had promised, Monet for the taste buds.

  “I’m not even hungry,” Ethan said, shaking his head at the plate once Sally wished them bon apetit. All he could think about was the images on Klein’s phone, the evidence of what had happened to his wife without his knowing. “Like I said, I had breakfast this morning—”

  Grinning, Klein stared down at the plate with wide eyes. “Give it a shot, Ethan. One bite, and you’ll be hooked. Cocaine for the taste buds,” he added, as if he’d forgotten that he’d previously referred to it as art.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Agent Klein hadn’t been kidding. After his first bite, Ethan was hooked. He finished the sausage before taking his first breath, and then he looked up to find Klein with a knowing smirk on his face, shaking his head at him. The federal agent made a motion that seemed to tell him to slow down.

  By the time Ethan finished with his scrambled eggs and started on the hash browns, he’d nearly managed to get past the sick feeling he’d experienced when seeing the graphic photographs on Klein’s phone. It had been a lot to take in, and the disturbing imagery would likely haunt him for months, or until he finally had answers that would lead him to Raleigh.

  She was in trouble, wasn’t she?

  Mindlessly, he forked more of that greasy breakfast food into his mouth.

  Klein finished with his plate first and started on his grapefruit juice, retrieving his phone once again. Instead of flashing more images while Ethan ate—thankfully, he didn’t—Klein kept the screen turned so that only he could see what was on it. It was possible, Ethan realized, that the federal agent was working on another case that didn’t involve Raleigh.

  “You mentioned that Lisa Hyatt didn’t have an alibi for her husband on the night that Raleigh disappeared,” Klein said, tapping away on his phone. He seemed in a much better mood after his late-day greasy breakfast. “How about you?”

  “I was looking for her,” Ethan said, his mouth full.

  “No, not the day she disappeared.” Shaking his head, Klein waved the phone. “How about the days that Raleigh reported these assaults?”

  After swallowing the food in his mouth, Ethan grabbed a paper napkin from the retro, stainless steel dispenser and wiped his fingers and mouth dry of grease. He fished his own phone out of his pocket and waved it Klein, just like the agent had done a few seconds prior. “Easy. Everything’s in my calendar.”

  Klein seemed doubtful, so he rhymed off the first date, almost eight years in the past. Even though most calendars cleared themselves out to save on precious digital storage space, Ethan had disabled that feature. With the police having already arrested him once, he knew just how crooked the system could be, how they could play with your head if you didn’t provide quick answers. He wouldn’t let that happen again.

  Plus, the insurance company had come back to him multiple times, asking about dates. Rather than have to go home and figure out, only to call the insurance company back and wait on hold for half an hour, he’d been able to answer their questions from the comfort of his cubicle at Exact Data.

  And, lastly, keeping those dates active on his phone allowed him, while waiting for appointments or sitting with nothing else to do, to try and reconstruct the days and months before and after her disappearance. The reality was that he should not have to consult the calendar at all; he’d rehashed that past so many times, every minute should be scarred in his memory.

  Except when Ethan pressed down on the button to activate his phone, all he saw was a blank calendar. The dates had nothing entered in them, not for the current month, nor for the month that Klein had just rhymed off. Every entry was blank.

  “Everything okay?” Klein asked him.

  Shaking his head, Ethan showed him the phone. “Something’s not right. It’s like my calendar has been wiped clean.”

  The federal agent raised an eyebrow. “Now they’ve hijacked your calendar, huh?” Almost as if he expected Ethan to suggest that yet anot
her conspiracy was at play.

  “It’s all gone,” Ethan said, feeling both nervous and afraid at the same time. Because maybe Klein had made a good point.

  “Let me take a peek.” When Klein took the phone from him, the agent took a couple of quick swipes and then grunted. He handed the phone back to Ethan. “I think it’s the Martians this time, Ethan.”

  Staring down at the screen, Ethan shook his head. “I’m glad you find humor in this, but my whole life was in that phone. Reminds me how you’ve dealt with Raleigh’s disappearance.”

  “Ethan, relax.” Klein didn’t like the tone, or the insinuation. “It says right at the top of your screen that there’s no SIM card detected.”

  Ethan glanced at the top of his phone’s screen and in incredibly small print next to the crack in the corner, he saw the words “No SIM.” He felt the color rush to his cheeks as the embarrassment settled in. After offering a weak apology, Ethan explained, “After showing you Raleigh’s phone, I must not have switch the SIM card back to mine.”

  Klein nodded, finishing up his grapefruit juice before grabbing his own phone. “Let’s get back to the dates.”

  Unsure how he’d be able to remember dates from over seven and a half years ago—possibly even longer, Ethan wasn’t quite sure how far back some of those evidence photos went—he gave a hesitant nod.

  Just as Klein repeated that first date, Sally came to collect their plates. And that was when Ethan asked if he could borrow one of the many pens in the waitress’s apron. She placed a Bic pen on the table before walking away.

  Grabbing another paper napkin, Ethan wrote down the date, and a few others that Klein rhymed off.

  “I’ll look into these once I get home and switch the SIM card back,” Ethan explained.

  Klein didn’t seem to care, so he listed three others. One of them was in early March, a month before Raleigh had gotten into that ambulance.

  “What photo does that date belong to?” Ethan asked.

  After a hesitation that came across as a second thought, Klein turned the phone’s screen around and showed him the photo.

  It was the one where Raleigh’s face was bruised. Ethan didn’t remember seeing her all banged up like that; in his memory, his wife was a poster child of perfection and beauty. The image on Klein’s phone, while clearly Raleigh, didn’t support that memory. In that image, she was indeed a battered wife. Even her cheekbones seemed sharper, her eyes lacked life.

  She bruised quickly, though. And badly. Ethan remembered that now, some odd condition that he would look up once he got home, a reason for at least one of the prescription bottles in their medicine cabinet. Was it the platelet count that caused her to bruise? Or the pills themselves? He couldn’t remember.

  “Just about ready?” Klein said, snapping Ethan back to reality.

  “Of course,” he said, but he’d been answering the question in his head, still thinking about the picture, the pills, the condition.

  Klein rose out of the booth and waved the cash in his hands toward Sally, who standing behind the counter and refilling her other customers’ coffee cups. Once she acknowledged Klein’s gesture, the federal agent placed the cash on the table, and Ethan followed him out to the Ford Taurus.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  As soon as Klein dropped him off and drove away, Ethan hurried up the walkway, through the small gate, and up to his front door. He still had the napkin from the diner, a handful of dates scratched into its surface with blue ink from Sally’s Bic pen. He was curious now. He didn’t quite understand how Raleigh had managed to hide her problems from him; she’d clearly been beaten, badly in some instances. Ethan couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t noticed.

  In the kitchen, he went straight to Raleigh’s phone, still plugged into wall, regaining its charge. When he tapped on the home button, he saw that he’d missed two calls.

  Nobody calls me.

  Because his SIM card was in her phone, the call would have gone to his number, not Raleigh’s old, now-defunct number.

  Someone is trying to reach me. Not Raleigh.

  Accessing his wife’s old phone, he navigated to the green button with the telephone handset in its center. At the bottom, he tapped on the “Recents” menu. A few calls made up the list before him, but it was the top listing that interested him most.

  Unknown caller (2).

  The call beneath that listed Second City Financial, and then Jaguar Chicago North, and a series of others. There was one other Unknown a little farther down, either Phil (with his private number) or a telemarketer.

  Chalking up that day’s two unknown callers to telemarketers, Ethan navigated to the calendar when the phone itself started vibrating and a shrill, old-fashioned rotary phone ringtone blasted out.

  Although there was clearly a phone call coming in, the screen hadn’t changed. He didn’t see the caller information, or the two round buttons at the bottom of the screen, one of them green to answer and the other red to ignore the call.

  Instead, a bubble lowered itself from the top part of the screen.

  jAppe – incoming call.

  Although Ethan hadn’t installed jAppe on his current phone, he knew it was a secure messaging application. He and Raleigh had used it, along with a handful of their closest friends. jAppe had been the WhatsApp or Kik or Snapchat of its day. Instead of dialing a number, you clicked on a “friend’s” profile pic. You either texted via the message box, video-called, or voice called, and you could add others to those chats.

  While the phone continued its deafening ring, Ethan noticed that the caller’s profile pic was a dollar sign. No other information was available.

  At last, the ringing stopped. Still staring at the phone, Ethan couldn’t help but wonder what was going on. Was a rapper trying to reach him?

  And then a message from the jAppe application appeared. It was short and to the point.

  Answer the fucking call, Ethan.

  Phil? It had to be Phil, Ethan’s crassest, boldest, and craziest friend. Even though he and Phil texted through their phone’s traditional text messaging service these days, Ethan knew of nobody else who would text him with that tone.

  When the phone started ringing again, Ethan didn’t hesitate. He clicked on the drop-down bubble and then clicked the “Answer” button.

  “Hey, Phil,” Ethan said into the phone.

  Silence. It sounded like long distance, too, but Ethan quickly dismissed it as white noise from the old, outdated messenger application.

  “Phil, you there? Why don’t you just call the house, I’m home now.”

  After a few heavy breaths that Ethan dismissed as Phil’s immaturity, an unfamiliar voice finally spoke up. “Ethan.”

  Definitely not Phil. The voice cracked, leathery but not refined like Klein’s. Leathery, the evil kind. The silence made it worse, and Ethan could think of saying was, “Hello.”

  More silence, and Ethan’s mouth went dry. Just as his lips parted, the evil voice on the other end spoke up again. “You’ve got questions. About that night. About your wife. Your dead wife.”

  Despite the sandbox-dryness to his voice, Ethan experienced a fight-or-flight reaction to the caller’s comment about “that night.” With the adrenaline thrashing through his body, he gripped the countertop with his free hand to keep it busy. “Who is this?” Ethan could hear the tightness in his voice, the high-pitched mixture of rage and emotion. Of combat. Because this person clearly had some kind of insight into the night Raleigh had been taken from him.

  A light chuckle came from the other end, and part of Ethan felt relieved that this call had been nothing more than a joke, a prank call. That part about his “dead wife” had certainly stirred some deep-rooted emotion in him, but the chuckle meant it was all just a bad joke.

  Or it had better be a joke.

  But after the third or fourth straight second of mild laughter, Ethan realized that the caller’s response wasn’t the sign of a sick prank. Instead, it was the sign of a sick mind.<
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  “Who. Is. This.” Ethan could barely breathe. His heart pounded so hard and fast that he heard nothing else. To be extra safe, he sat down on one of the stools, making sure to lean slightly forward in case he fainted from the rush of emotion.

  “Tomorrow,” the male voice on the other end said, drawing the word out in a way that seemed to blow gooseflesh up the length of Ethan’s arm, the one holding the phone, all the way to his shoulder. “John Hancock. Observation deck. Noon.”

  He had questions, but when he opened his mouth to ask them, all that came out was, “Wha- . . . wha-?”

  “We’ll put an end to this, Ethan.” More silence, more breathing. It felt like an eternity of waiting. “Once and for all.”

  More “wha- . . . wha- . . .” from Ethan, primitive sounds that couldn’t form the words he wanted to speak before his surprise jAppe caller finally disconnected.

  All he wanted to know was, where is she?

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  With his mind still reeling from the strange and disturbing call, Ethan stared at the phone in his shaking hands. Raleigh’s phone. Her jAppe. Which meant the evil, sick-minded Unknown Caller still had access to Raleigh’s jAppe.

  He’s either a friend or a contact.

  But Ethan knew everyone on Raleigh’s list.

  How did this sick freak access Raleigh’s jAppe? And how does he know my phone number?

  More than once, Ethan considered calling Special Agent Klein and informing him of the strange call and requesting that he escort him to the John Hancock. Tomorrow. Noon. Observatory. He knew he’d forget if he didn’t—

  The calendar.

  Noticing the handwritten dates on the paper napkin from the diner, Ethan remembered that he’d been in the process of accessing the calendar app so that he could scroll back eight years to see what he’d been up to on the dates that Klein had given him. Dates when the Chicago Police Department had taken photos of his badly beaten wife, photos that had led to his arrest once she’d gone missing with that ambulance, based on an incorrect assumption that he had been the one to hurt her.