The Bad Sister

by Kevin O'Brien

  “You’re being nice,” he said with a sad smile. “Hell, you don’t have to say anything. Just because I’m throwing myself a pity party here, it doesn’t mean you have to RSVP—”

  “I’m not just being nice, Alden,” she admitted. “From the moment I met you, I thought you were cute.”

  “Rachel said you were hung up on some guy named Riley at Northwestern.”

  She let out a jaded laugh. “That was a smartphone summer romance. I never even got to meet him. We were supposed to go out last Saturday, and he didn’t follow up. He didn’t even bother calling to cancel.”

  “God, what a douchebag. I hope you weren’t too upset. I mean, hell, it’s his loss.”

  Hannah smiled. “I was thinking the exact same thing.”

  They walked past the chrysanthemum garden next door to the bungalow. It was a bit neglected, wild and full of weeds. The statue of St. Ursula looked a little sad.

  It dawned on Hannah that they were both getting misinformation from Rachel about their respective love lives. Was Rachel intentionally trying to keep them apart?

  As they turned up the walkway to the bungalow’s front door, Alden brushed his shoulder against hers. “So, you aren’t seeing anybody or anything like that?”

  Hannah felt a lovely breathlessness. “No. And I—I really meant what I said earlier.”

  At the front door, her hand trembled slightly as she took her keys out of her purse. She kept waiting for him to ask her out. Or maybe this was already their first date. The two of them would have the bungalow to themselves for the next hour.

  She unlocked the door, opened it, and saw someone lumbering down the stairs—toward them. Hannah gasped and shrank back. She’d expected to walk into an empty house. Then she realized it was Rachel’s cleaning woman, Alma, dragging a big laundry bag behind her down the steps.

  Alden laughed at the way Hannah had jumped. The two of them stepped inside. Hannah still had a hand over her heart.

  “Do you need any help with that, Alma?” Alden asked.

  “I’m perfectly capable,” she grumbled, plopping down the laundry bag at the bottom of the stairs. Alma was wearing her usual kitten sweatshirt and the clunky crucifix necklace. She always had an angry, wild look in her pale blue eyes. “The package is for Rachel,” she said, nodding toward the small FedEx box on the coffee table. “They left it on the front stoop, and I brought it in.”

  “Thanks,” Hannah said. “We’ll see that she gets it.”

  Alma headed into the kitchen, where she’d left some cleaning supplies on the counter. She put them away in the broom closet in the corner. “I’m going to have a talk with Rachel,” Alma said. “I’m cleaning up after three girls in that bathroom upstairs. It’s three times the work. I need to be paid extra.”

  Standing in the middle of the living room, Hannah turned to Alden and gave him a secret I’m-in-trouble grimace.

  He started to crack up. With a hand over his mouth, he turned away.

  Alma quickly wiped off the counter and then headed for the front door. She stopped and grabbed the laundry bag. “Tell Rachel I’ll have all this cleaned and pressed by Saturday. Lance might bring it by. I’m not sure yet.”

  Alden still had his head turned away. His shoulders were shaking.

  “I’ll tell her,” Hannah said, stifling a giggle. She followed Alma to the door. “Thank you!” she called. Then she shut the door after her, bent over, and started laughing.

  “God, she scares the shit out of me!” Alden declared.

  Catching her breath, Hannah staggered into the living room and plopped down on the sofa. “I think her son, Lance, is even scarier. Or maybe it’s a draw.”

  Alden sat down next to her. He picked up the FedEx box. “I wonder what little bauble Rachel ordered for herself. Or maybe it’s something from Daddy—a diamond tennis bracelet or pearl earrings...” He looked at the address label. “Seattle, Washington.”

  “Oh God,” Hannah murmured. Suddenly, everything got serious. “That must be the DNA kit from my dad’s doctor’s office—for the paternity test.”

  Neither of them said anything. Alden set the package back on the coffee table. “Well, that’s a real buzz-kill.”

  Hannah got to her feet. “Be right back,” she said, heading toward her bedroom.

  She needed to check herself in the mirror—and maybe grab a breath mint from the tin on top of her dresser while she was at it. If she was going to be alone here with Alden, she wanted to look and smell her best.

  She reached the doorway and abruptly stopped. Two dresser drawers were open—the drawers where Eden kept her clothes. For a moment, Hannah thought Alma might have been in their bedroom. Then she spotted the note on Eden’s bed. The piece of paper had been torn out of a spiral notebook, and the handwriting was unmistakably Eden’s:

  Dear Sis,

  Looks like I missed you. I swung by to pick up some things. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I just needed to get away & I’m not ready to come back yet. Tell the folks not to worry. I’ll be in touch. OK? Take Care.

  XXX – Me

  With the note in her hand, Hannah stood between the two beds. She wondered if Eden had shown up while Alma was here. But, no, Alma would have said something. Eden must have come by sometime earlier—in the morning.

  Hannah went to the closet and saw some empty hangers on Eden’s side. She glanced over at Eden’s desk and noticed that the top drawer wasn’t closed all the way.

  There was absolutely no reason to doubt the authenticity of the note. And yet Hannah wasn’t completely satisfied.

  Still holding on to the note, Hannah wandered back into the living room.

  Alden was on the sofa, studying his phone. He glanced up at her. “Guess who just texted me. Your mystery man masseur has confirmed my appointment for six-thirty tomorrow.”

  Hannah sat down and handed him the note. “And guess who came by today.”

  He read it and then turned to her. “So, your sister’s okay. Does this mean we’re calling off the massage and the misdemeanor thing?”

  Hannah shrugged. “I’m not sure. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll stop worrying completely until I talk face-to-face with Eden and she tells me that she’s fine.” She took the note from him. “I guess this means everything’s okay, but I still feel a little weird about it. I don’t know why.”

  “So are we still on with this scheme tomorrow or not?”

  “Let’s call Ellie and find out what she thinks,” Hannah said.

  She frowned at Eden’s note and then folded it up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Thursday, September 17, 1:04 P.M.

  Chicago

  The girl was lying with her eyes open and the right side of her face pressed against a pool of blood on the wood floor. Dressed in panties that appeared too big for her and a bra, she was curled up almost in a fetal position. It looked as if she’d been crammed into the tiny, claustrophobic shack that had been her prison for the previous two weeks.

  A red ink stamp was in the bottom corner of the eight-by-ten black-and-white photo:

  DO NOT DUPLICATE

  Property of the Chicago Tribune

  Ellie turned over the picture and read the caption, typed on a yellowing label and stuck on the back:

  9/27/70—The body of CRYSTAL JUNEAU, 18, in a backyard shed at the residence of BERNICE WHEELER and LYLE DUNCAN WHEELER at 756 Corliss Road, Rural Route 11, Waukegan, IL

  Ellie knew that Lyle had slashed Crystal’s throat. An uncontrollable morbid curiosity made her eyes instinctively go to the dead girl’s neck, but Crystal’s shoulder was hunched up, covering Lyle’s handiwork. For that, Ellie was grateful.

  She studied the crude, inhumane accommodations in Crystal’s little prison: a rumpled sleeping bag stained with blood, a Bible, and some open tins of cat food. Ellie couldn’t help wondering if Eden O’Rourke was currently surviving under similar conditions.

  Hannah had phoned last night to say that Eden must have been by the
bungalow yesterday while no one was home. She’d collected some clothes. Hannah knew her half-sister kept a journal, and it was missing from Eden’s desk. On the bed was a note, in Eden’s handwriting, saying she was fine but not yet ready to come back to school.

  Hannah had already told her parents about the note. Though they’d expressed some lingering concern, they’d seemed relieved, too. All of it was quite typical of Eden.

  Considering this new development, Hannah had wondered if Ellie still wanted to investigate Nick Jensen’s apartment tonight.

  Ellie had no intention of canceling their plans—as long as Alden was all right keeping the pretense of his six-thirty appointment tonight. There was so much more Ellie wanted to tell Hannah, but she didn’t want to worry her even more.

  It was Hannah who had first noticed the similarities between recent events and the Immaculate Conception Killer’s timeline. But perhaps she didn’t know or she’d forgotten that Lyle Duncan Wheeler had forced Crystal Juneau to write her sister a note, saying she was fine and just needed to get away for a while. Everyone had believed the note—until the murders started. Ellie knew only because she’d been reading so much about the murders. But she had kept mum about it.

  Until she got a look inside Nick Jensen’s apartment, Ellie didn’t want to say anything that would cause Hannah or her parents any undue panic.

  Hannah didn’t even know about Ellie’s friendship with Diana Mackie. So much of tonight’s prospective investigation was propelled by Diana’s mysterious suicide. No one except the police had any idea about Ellie’s connection to the case. Her name didn’t come up in any of the news releases about Diana’s death. In fact, there was very little written about her death at all. The university must have seen to that. It would have looked bad for the school.

  The social media buzz among the students regarding Diana was vague and unspectacular. There were tweets about a “suicide by hanging,” but people weren’t sure exactly where it had happened or why. One tweet had Diana hanging herself in the church, and another had her swinging from a tree in the arboretum. No one seemed to know that she’d been found in the grotto. And only a few people seemed to really care.

  Diana’s family was having a very private funeral for her in Eau Claire. No local memorial was being planned.

  Ellie felt like she was the only one who gave a damn. That was why after her Thursday class had gotten out at eleven, she’d driven to her old digs, the Chicago Tribune offices in the Tribune Tower. Now, she was at a desk in the staff room of the newspaper’s library and archives. She was a longtime acquaintance of the head librarian, Jim Mitchell, who had always reminded her of Morgan Freeman. He knew everything that went on at the newspaper and had an encyclopedic knowledge of Chicago history. Jim had given her free rein to pore over the newspaper’s files on the 1970 Immaculate Conception murders.

  Ellie had tried online to find crime scene photos of Greta Mae Louden’s murder. She’d wanted to compare them with what she’d seen in the grotto on Monday night. All she’d uncovered online was one blurry black-and-white shot of Greta’s body at a distance—a vague, faceless shape in the wooded ravine by the campus library. It could have been a mannequin.

  Ellie knew the newspaper would have plenty of photographs in their archives, including photos too grisly for newspaper publication. And here was the proof in this shot of Crystal Juneau’s corpse. Next in the thick pile of photos was a shot of the dilapidated shed in the Wheelers’ yard. The little shed sat beside a thorny-looking shrub in the mostly dirt yard. A dead tree and a ramshackle house stood in the background.

  Then there was a picture of Crystal on the slab in the morgue. It was a close-up of her droopy, splotchy face—with her mouth slightly open. Someone had closed her eyes. The mortal wound on her throat looked like a black smile.

  Wincing, Ellie forced herself to keep going through the collection of documents and photos. She found one of a chubby blond girl lying on a blood-strewn, tiled bathroom floor. Her head was near the toilet, which had one of those rug-like covers on the lid. The summer nightgown she wore was hiked up over her matching panties to reveal slash marks on her torso. The photo was too graphic for Ellie, and she quickly turned it over. The typed label on the back read:

  9/27/70—The body of APRIL HUNNICUTT, 19, in the upstairs bathroom of her dorm residence: Bungalow 18, St. Agnes Village, Blessed Heart of Mary College, Delmar, IL

  The very next photo was of a partially dressed body amid a pile of leaves under a bridge. It was taken at a distance, but Ellie could see the girl’s blouse was open, and from the waist down, she had on only a pair of pantyhose and one shoe. Her face was discolored and dark compared to her pale body. Ellie flipped over the photograph:

  9/20/70—20-year-old JANE MARIE EGGERT, strangled, body discovered under Sycamore Way Bridge, Delmar, IL

  “I think some of these photos might be out of order,” Ellie called to Jim. He was on the other side of the room, at his desk, eating a Milky Way and typing on his computer keyboard.

  He barely glanced up from his work. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “You can blame Mike McGoldrick. He was the last one to go through that file.”

  “What for?” Ellie asked. “Did he give you a reason?”

  Jim sat back and finally looked at her. “He wanted to do a feature story on the fiftieth anniversary of the murders. He even scheduled interviews with the families of some of the victims. Then he tried to get in to see a nun at a rest home run by the archdiocese. She was close to two of the girls who died. The archdiocese got wind of what Mike was doing, and they put the kibosh on the whole project. Suddenly none of the victims’ families would talk to Mike. Apparently, the university didn’t want to see that old nasty business dredged up again. I mean, they changed their name from Blessed Heart of Mary to Our Lady of the Cove hoping to distance themselves from what happened there, hoping people would forget. Anyway, Mike wasn’t a happy camper for a few days after that. Want part of my Milky Way?”

  Staring wide-eyed at him, Ellie shook her head. “No, thanks.”

  “So I hope you were on the level with me earlier when you said you were just curious,” Jim said, “because if you plan to write anything about those killings, you’re going to run into a lot of interference, Ellie.”

  With a sigh, she nodded at him. “Thanks, Jim.”

  She went back to the pile of photos in front of her. Each one was gruesome or disturbing or just plain heartbreaking. Some she couldn’t look at for more than a second. In others she studied every detail for clues—even though she wasn’t sure what she was looking for.

  Among the collection, she found a police composite sketch of the Immaculate Conception Killer before he’d been identified as Lyle Duncan Wheeler. The drawing was based on a witness’s description of a “non-student” in his mid-twenties seen outside the library walking with Greta Mae Louden on the night she was killed. It showed a cold, cruel-looking stranger with shaggy, light brown hair, glasses, and a thick mustache. The sketch didn’t look much like the photo of Wheeler, taken when he was being escorted to a police car in handcuffs— with his short, dark hair, a wide smile, and demonic, staring eyes that reminded Ellie of Charles Manson.

  She also came across a clear photo of the note Crystal Juneau had been forced to write to her sister, assuring her that she was fine. The penmanship was perfect. Ellie imagined Crystal’s grade school nuns must have taught her cursive very well. Ellie furtively took a photo of the note with her phone, in case she needed to show it to Hannah later. Jim didn’t seem to notice.

  A few photos farther down in the stack, Ellie found what she was looking for.

  It was a shot of Greta Mae Louden’s corpse sprawled among the leaves and dirt in the ravine by the campus library. Her face was slightly turned away, but the wavy, pale-colored hair looked so much like Diana’s. She wore a cardigan, a shirt with a Peter Pan collar, a kilt skirt, and knee socks. A purse and some books were scattered on the ground beside the body.

  Ellie
had brought a magnifying glass with her. She’d known she might need it.

  The same way she already knew the title of one of the books by Greta Mae’s corpse.

  Ellie held the magnifying glass over the photograph and focused on the cover to Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe.

  * * *

  Ellie glanced at the dashboard clock: 5:17 P.M.

  She was passing Bahai Temple, the majestic shrine on the lake in Wilmette. She’d always thought it looked like an old-fashioned citrus juicer. No matter how many times she’d driven by, she had to admire it. Ellie also considered the temple as a milepost whenever she drove back from Chicago on Lake Shore Drive to Sheridan Road. It usually meant she had about an hour until she was home—if traffic was decent.

  That didn’t give her much time to get ready for tonight’s break-in operation. She’d have to drive directly to Nick Jensen’s apartment in Highland Park. She could brief Alden and Hannah over the phone. They didn’t really have to do anything except watch Alden’s dorm for Nick’s arrival, and then call to let her know once Nick headed back to his car.

  Ellie told herself this undertaking tonight wouldn’t be too risky or challenging—not if the key was where Nick had left it Tuesday night. Still, she had an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach. She felt a bit woozy, too. Of course, looking at all those horrific photos at the newspaper’s library hadn’t helped.

  Ellie kept her window open, and the cool breeze off the lake seemed to help.

  She hadn’t intended to take so long looking through the files. In addition to the photographs, she’d also studied several articles on the Immaculate Conception killings and taken notes.

  At one point, she’d waited until Jim left the room for a few minutes. Then she used her phone’s camera to take a picture of the crime scene photo of Greta Mae Louden’s body in the ravine. Ellie tried for a second shot while holding the magnifying glass over the image of the book. It took her a few tries before she got it so that the title, Look Homeward, Angel, was at least partially readable.