“What are you having?” he asks.
“Old Style,” I reply. I pull out my phone and pretend to be reading my texts. On one of the TVs mounted above the bar, the Cubs’ pitcher hits the batter on the leg. A chorus of groans and curses swells around me.
“I told you this guy can’t fucking close,” the cop next to me says over his shoulder, in the direction of his buddies. “You watching this?” he asks me, motioning to the screen. He’s drunk, I can tell.
“I’m waiting for a friend,” I reply, my phone still open in front of me.
“Not a Cubs fan?”
“Not really.” My voice is quiet. I’m wearing a denim jacket over a jersey sundress, and I make a show of pulling my jacket tighter around me. Hoping one of the cops at the table will notice my discomfort and come collect their friend. Hoping it will draw Olsen’s attention enough that he’ll recognize me.
“So where’s this friend of yours? Making you wait,” the cop says. The bartender sets his beer down on the bar in front of him.
“He’s on his way,” I reply.
“Oh, he,” the cop says. “Your boyfriend?”
“No,” I say, quieter still. There’s always been something about meekness that attracts this sort of man. The kind who thinks he can badger his way into a woman’s good graces, or at least into her bed.
“No? You don’t have a boyfriend?” He’s got his hand on the back of my chair now, a far more intimate pose than the situation warrants. He smells sharply of sweet cologne and sweat. I hear one of his buddies call to him from the table.
“I’m sorry,” I say, motioning to my phone. “I kind of want to be by myself.”
The cop leans back a bit, letting out a huff.
“Oh, I see,” he says.
“No offense,” I say quickly, because I know my indifference will only hurt his ego further.
“No, of course not,” he says, his tone full of sarcasm. I can tell he’s about to explain a few things to me. “You know, this is a neighborhood place. People generally come here to be friendly. To be social with their neighbors.”
“I’m just here to meet someone,” I say. I can feel the bartender watching us now, keeping tabs. He’s a nice-looking middle-aged man, the kind of guy who lasts at a place like this because everyone likes him.
“Yeah, well, is it too much to ask for you to be a little friendly in the meantime?” the cop asks, and then the hand is back on my chair. “Here, how about I buy you a drink?”
“I don’t want a drink,” I say, a bit more forcefully. This has gone on long enough.
“Wow, okay,” the cop says, louder still. “You are some piece of work, aren’t you? A guy tries to be friendly, and you treat him like he’s a regular fucking creep, huh?”
Out of my peripheral vision, I see the bartender motion to someone at the table behind us. And then Detective Olsen is suddenly between me and his friend, a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Hey, Jimmy, how about you come back and watch the rest of the game with us?” Olsen says.
“Oh, now I’m the asshole here?” the cop says, clearly not so drunk that he can’t tell he’s being handled. “I’m just making conversation. Friendly conversation. And she acts like I’m assaulting her or something. Girls today—you can’t even talk to them without being accused of something.”
“Come on,” Olsen says to the cop, and glances at me, perhaps for the first time. This time, I can feel that pulse of recognition when he looks at me. Like static in the air. “Come on, man. I’ll settle up your tab.” It’s clear from his tone that he’s not asking. It’s a relief when the older cop relents, shoving away from the bar and trudging back into the surly embrace of the rest of his friends. I wonder why exactly Detective Olsen inspires this sort of deference from a guy who has clearly been on the job much longer. Though, when I glance between Olsen and the rest of the cops at the table, Olsen’s the one I’d bet on in a fight. The others look like they’re in various stages of middle-aged decline. Up close, Olsen’s leanness betrays wiry muscle. The look of a fighter, the promise of tightly coiled power.
“Thank you,” I say, letting the self-conscious hunch in my shoulders relax. Because, no matter how good I’ve become at defending myself, I’ll admit it’s still not a great idea to bait a drunk guy at a bar when he’s got friends. You never know whether the man who appears at his shoulder will be there to try to calm him down or to back him up.
Detective Olsen is quiet, signaling the bartender.
“I’m closing out for Jimmy,” he says when the bartender approaches. He hands over a small stack of bills.
“Can I close out too?” I ask.
“I’ve got you covered,” Olsen says, motioning to the bartender, who gives a little nod.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I say, but the older man is already heading to the register on the other side of the bar.
“Old Style here is two fifty. It’s the very least I can do.” His words are friendly but his tone is flat. I know his type, calm and militaristic. Handsome enough to be noticed, even if he says nothing. His silence its own kind of control. Without even a glance, he drops a few bucks on the bar and returns to his friends.
His indifference stings a little, actually. And my aim for the night—talking to Olsen about Sarah’s case file—seems to have already failed. I do want another drink, but I’d feel silly staying here now that he’s paid my tab. So I head to the bathroom, pee, and splash water on my face, trying to kill the last of my buzz before my bike ride home.
It’s when I come out of the bathroom, pass the table of cops, that I feel it. A hand—a paw, really—grabs the left cheek of my ass and gives it a good squeeze, shocking me through the thin fabric of my dress. I go blank with heat. A rush of rage. A hum in my ears.
I move without thinking. Well, mostly without thinking. There’s a voice in the back of my head shouting, Cop! Table of cops!, which is basically all that stops me from grabbing the nearest beer bottle and breaking it over his head. Instead I turn on him, grabbing his arm and putting my weight into his shoulder, tipping him off his barstool. He goes down like a bag of cement, wholly unready for a fight, connecting hard with the sticky floor of the bar. The impact knocks the breath out of him and I can hear the wheeze of air escape his gullet. He gasps as I pin his wrist and plant a knee in his stomach.
There’s shouting around me. The cops are on their feet, and the bartender looks like he’s considering an ill-advised vault over the bar. I sense one of the other cops moving for me on my right, a bald man who probably outweighs me by a hundred pounds, and mentally prepare myself to get slammed up against the bar’s brick wall and handcuffed. But Olsen intervenes, blocking his friend’s path, a hand on his chest.
“You are committing a felony right now,” Jimmy’s would-be savior is shouting.
“Easy,” Olsen says, shoving the other cop back. “Everybody just calm the fuck down, okay?”
Another of the cops is gleefully holding out his phone, filming the whole thing. Olsen turns to me, one hand still outstretched to the cop he was holding back, who fumes red down to his collar.
“Would you mind getting off my friend there?” Olsen asks, as if I’ve accidentally stepped on Jimmy’s foot instead of putting him on the ground. But there’s something endearing in Olsen’s politeness, so I give Jimmy a little extra jab with my knee and then let go of his arm.
“Were you just going to let him grab me like that?” I ask as I straighten up.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Olsen replies. “Want to file a report?”
“No,” I say. The last thing I need is a police report with my name on it, to be involved in an internal investigation of a CPD officer for a bar fight. “But maybe you should keep a tighter leash on your friends.” Olsen gives one grim nod of acknowledgment as the other cop brushes past him and begins trying to haul Jimmy off the
floor. You’d think I kneecapped the guy, for the fuss he makes getting up.
“Bro,” says the guy who’s filming, to Jimmy. “How does it feel to be taken down by Tinker Bell?”
“Fucking bitch,” Jimmy says, straightening up, he and his counterpart both glowering at me.
“Do you want me to let her kick the shit out of you?” Olsen asks. He grabs Jimmy’s jacket off the back of his chair and throws it at him, hard. “Go home, Jim.”
“Who made you king shit, Olsen?” Jimmy’s buddy says. All righteous bravado, the kind I’ve seen before a hundred times. Full of the misplaced certainty of a man who believes he’s never wrong because he carries a badge. “She’s lucky she’s not in handcuffs right now.”
“Sure,” Olsen says. “Three drunk cops arresting a girl for acting in self-defense. I’m sure your captain would be thrilled at that, especially when she gets a lawyer and sues the department for sexual battery.”
“Her word against ours,” Jimmy says, crossing his overly tanned arms, clearly bolstered by his friend’s confidence. A macho contact high.
“Until they find out who she is,” Olsen replies.
“What?” Jimmy’s friend says. “Who the fuck is she?”
“She’s Maggie Reese’s little sister,” he replies. The name is enough. Between the notoriety of the case and my mother’s continued philanthropic efforts, Maggie is still well-known in Chicago’s criminal justice circles. And now, because of the podcast, so am I.
“Fuck, are you serious?” Jimmy’s friend says under his breath, turning wary eyes toward me. I raise one eyebrow, a challenge. “All right, all right,” he says. “Fine. We’re going.” He herds Jimmy out of the bar, under the disapproving gaze of the bartender. I know what they must be thinking. If I get a lawyer, or go to the press, or even just post about this on Facebook, I have enough of a platform right now to ruin Jimmy’s career. All of their careers, maybe. I’m almost angry enough to do it.
But picking a fight with the CPD, no matter how sleazy some of the men in their ranks prove to be, does me no good in my investigation. No matter how the echo of his hand through my dress sends a surge of disgust into me, makes me bite hard on my tongue to focus the new tide of rage. Honestly, I’m a little afraid I’ll cry if I remain here any longer. It’s the part of me that is always eight years old, always wants to kick and sob whenever I’m hurt. So I turn and grab my jacket, ready to head for the door, and then Olsen is at my side.
“Hold up a sec,” he says.
“What, am I under arrest?” The words come out like a challenge, but my eyes are wet, adrenaline receding. Opening a pit, shame washing in. I blink fast, trying to hide it.
“No,” Olsen replies. “I was hoping I could buy you another drink. Make up for Jimmy being a bastard. Again.”
“I’m not sure a drink is going to cut it,” I reply.
“So what would?” Olsen asks. It’s strange, to feel the sudden pull of his attention, to be the object of his interest, when only a few minutes ago I held none of it.
“Answer some questions about the Ketchum case,” I say. “We’ll call it even.”
He smiles, shaking his head. A genuine smile, the first I’ve ever seen from him. “You never stop, do you?” he asks. Stupid girl, I think. Because there’s no way I’m leaving now.
“No,” I reply, and wonder what I’m getting into when he motions for another round from the bartender.
* * *
* * *
“HOW OLD WERE you in 1998, Detective?” I ask as I finish my first glass of whiskey.
“Twelve years old,” Olsen replies. “Junior high.”
“Let me guess,” I say. “Spent the summer playing Little League in some suburb?”
“Not quite. More like setting my parents’ garage on fire in Canaryville.” Olsen is actually not bad company, now that he’s speaking in complete sentences. The change is stark, when just a few minutes ago I was doing my best to get his attention, all meek and grateful in my lip gloss and floral dress. Batting my eyelashes, waiting to be saved. Eric’s girl, all over again. But it seems I’ve underestimated Olsen as much as he’s underestimated me. Because here I am now, suddenly sharp edged and formidable. A girl capable of anything. And now I have his attention.
“That doesn’t sound very upstanding,” I reply.
“Well, I took the long road to upstanding.”
“So what are you doing watching a Cubs game if you’re from Canaryville?”
“Rooting for them to lose, of course,” he says. “Living on the North Side is good practice for being undercover.”
“Is that something you have to do a lot in Rogers Park?” I ask, needling him a bit as I sip my drink.
“Not lately. But before I was here, I was on a joint task force with the FBI. Working on a white nationalist group downstate.”
“Oh, so actually undercover?” I imagine it. Living as someone else, completely, even for a little while. The small measures I take—giving men Maggie’s name, dressing up as a goth at Club Rush—are nothing compared to the immersion of being undercover. It seems a dangerous thing to think about for too long.
“Nothing as salacious as the stuff on TV,” he replies. “I didn’t develop a meth habit or anything. Mostly, I worked construction with these guys, hung out with them on weekends. The FBI wanted someone local—you say the right things about the old neighborhood, and suddenly you’re in the fold.”
“Did they make you shave your head?” I ask.
“Different kind of group,” he replies, rolling up the sleeve on his right arm, just to the elbow. “They were more into ink.” He has a large dark stain on the inside of his arm, a tattoo that’s been blacked out.
“Jesus,” I reply. “What was it?”
“Eighty-eight,” he replies.
“Eighty-eight?”
“The eighth letter of the alphabet, H. Meaning . . .”
“Heil Hitler?” I ask, whispering to keep the bartender from hearing. Though somehow as I do it, whispering it seems even worse.
He gives one solemn nod.
“That’s intense.”
“Did you hear about that synagogue in Skokie that was firebombed last year?”
“No.”
“So, there you go,” he says, rolling his sleeve back down.
“They were planning to firebomb a synagogue?” I ask. But I can see it now, in the way he carries himself, something that could be a simmering viciousness beneath the surface. I can see the way he must have behaved while he was undercover, so potentially dangerous he would be seen as a trusted comrade to the sorts of people who firebombed houses of worship. I wonder how much of it is authentic and how much of it is lingering habit.
“Among other things,” he replies.
“So was it hard to go back to your normal life after that?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Olsen replies. “I’ll let you know when it happens.”
The bartender brings us two more whiskeys, collecting our empty glasses. He gives me a wise smile, as if he’s somehow orchestrated this, a matchmaker proud of his work.
“So what about you?” Olsen asks. “Where exactly did you learn to flatten a guy twice your size?”
I give a demure little shrug. “Well, Detective, I heard about child sex trafficking at a pretty young age. You grow up with that in the back of your mind, you develop some interesting hobbies.”
“Krav Maga?” he asks.
“Brazilian jiu-jitsu,” I reply.
“Not easy.”
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s kind of a ballast, I guess. To make me feel like I have some control, out in the world.”
“How long have you been doing it?”
“I took a self-defense course in college that kind of kicked it off. But honestly, I should have started a lot sooner. I put myself in a lot of d
angerous situations as a kid, after Maggie. I think I probably used up all my luck back then.”
“Like what?” Olsen asks.
I try not to think much about my teenage years. Made up of typical rebellions—drugs and boys and skipping school. And then the atypical. Stealing into Chicago and walking through its back alleys. Its bus stations and motels. Looking at the faces of the women I found there, trying to recognize my sister. I think of it now and can’t imagine how I came through it unscathed.
“Like trying to find my sister,” I say, unsure of how much I should reveal to this man. The feeling of stepping out onto ice, slowly. As if I can force gravity to ease its hold, if I’m careful enough. “Or trying to prove that it wasn’t Maggie’s fault that she went missing.”
“Why did you think it was her fault?” Olsen asks, chewing a shard of ice from his glass. I watch the muscles of his jaw work, the shadow of stubble there.
“I’m not sure the police ever really believed me, that a man took her. It seemed like they were looking for something she did wrong. A reason she’d leave. Or a reason she’d be taken, instead of all the other girls. Instead of me.”
“If it means anything, Detective Richards believed you,” Olsen replies.
“Really?”
Olsen nods. “He gave me his notes on the case when he retired. He seemed to think you were their best lead.”
“Well, the cops from Sutcliffe Heights made it seem like the only reason a girl from our town would go missing was if she deserved it, somehow.”
“How old were you?” he asks.
“Eight.”
I think I see something, like a wince maybe, under his eyes.
“And I worshipped my sister,” I say. “I thought she was perfect. So I spent a lot of years trying to do all the things that would prove them wrong. Like, if I could be reckless and still be here, then it meant it couldn’t have been her fault.”
“So how long did it take to finally prove them wrong?” Olsen asks.
I think of last summer. The men I followed into hotel rooms, into the bathrooms at bars, into their apartments. No matter that I was married, that the crucible of my wild days should already have ended.
The Lost Girls Page 15
