I remember being twelve years old, aware that my father no longer slept and instead spent his nights watching the tree line out our back window, as if Maggie were simply lost out there. Apt to turn up some night, stumbling and gaunt and dehydrated, twigs in her hair. Her feet bloodied with blisters from those years of wandering that span of trees, our shortcut home from school. I remember listening to him shuffle to the bathroom and back, praying—actually asking God—for some new girl to go missing. If only to give us some clue as to what had happened to Maggie. That was a lesson I learned, at twelve. That I am the sort to offer up another girl’s life in exchange for the answer to a question.
“We’ve got a hair in Sarah’s shower drain,” Andrea continues, laying out the case as it stands, “indicating that someone was showering in her bathroom. Probably in the week before her death. So we potentially have a third party in the apartment, who sees Dylan as a threat. Enough of a threat that the killer goes after him now to keep him quiet.”
“Which means that Dylan knew him, at least a little, right?” I say. “Even if Dylan didn’t make the connection when the hair was found in the shower, the killer still assumes Dylan could identify him.”
“So he’s met the killer, at the very least,” Andrea says, nodding.
“You know, Sarah’s father potentially links all three of them,” I offer. We’ve been trying to track down Walter Ketchum since we took on the case, with little success. His last known address was in rural Colorado, and the last familial connection he had in Chicago was severed when Sarah’s mother died of lupus two years ago. “I mean, he likely met Dylan at some point, right? And he lived two streets away from us when we were kids. You can see his old house from Maggie’s bedroom window.”
“I thought he had an alibi,” Andrea says, already wary.
“A golf trip,” I reply. “But do we know it’s solid? What if the CPD ignored something there too?”
“I’m not saying it isn’t compelling,” Andrea says, placating me but clearly too weary to hide it well. “But let’s try and focus on the evidence we have first, before we start exploring the things that may or may not be missing, okay?”
“Fine,” I say, as if the word is sharp on my tongue. A blade, spat out, as Andrea pulls her recorder out of her bag.
“I don’t think we should wait to get any of this on tape. Tell me again what you told me on the phone.”
She presses the record button and sets it down between us, waiting for me to comply. For a moment, I’m obstinate. Glaring at her, unwilling to acquiesce too easily to her directives, as the numbers on the recorder’s digital face begin to climb. Because it’s not enough, for me, to exonerate Colin. Or to solve Dylan’s disappearance. I need the connection. I need Sarah’s proximity to my childhood home to be more than just coincidence.
Andrea raises an eyebrow at me.
It takes no time at all for me to crumble under the first sign of her impatience. Still the ignored daughter. The lonely little sister, always wanting approval. I silently curse my own frailty as I begin to recount the whole story for the podcast, from the top. And in no time at all, I’m reminded, again, what a good producer Andrea is. She has a knack for asking just the right questions to keep me from glossing over details or veering off track. It’s easy to assume that a listener will have enough information to jump to the conclusions I do, but Andrea always slows me down, makes me explain my thinking, prompts me to reiterate who key players are and which details are important. By the time Andrea shuts off the recorder, any lingering anger within me is gone.
“Here’s a question,” I say as Andrea shuffles through the paper around us, clearly trying to keep everything in some semblance of order. “Should we be telling the CPD about Dylan’s disappearance?”
She glances up at me. “You think they don’t know?”
“I think it’s amazing sometimes how little police departments share information,” I reply, remembering the jurisdictional struggles between Sutcliffe Heights and Rogers Park over Maggie’s case. “Especially when enough time has elapsed. Milwaukee might be aware that he’s related to a Chicago case, but Chicago might not know he’s missing.”
Andrea clasps her hands and then holds them against her mouth, and I know she’s about to say something she thinks is terrible.
“Would it be wrong of us to wait on that?” she says. “I mean, do we have a moral obligation to share information with the CPD?”
I know what she’s thinking, that it would be a boon to the podcast if this is a link we can investigate on our own. And I understand the impulse—after all, Dylan has already been gone for months. Any linkage between Dylan’s disappearance and Sarah Ketchum’s murder might not even be taken seriously by the CPD, especially since they all believe Sarah’s killer is locked up in prison right now. Still, something pulls at me. A desire to do whatever is necessary to help Dylan. Wherever he is. If he’s still alive.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s call the tip line in Milwaukee and tell them about his link to Sarah’s case. If they want to share information with the CPD, they can. But I want to make sure the people who are looking for him know that there’s a broader context here.”
“All right,” Andrea says. “I’ll call it in when I get home.”
“So you know what all of this means?” I ask. “If these cases are linked, then Colin is definitely innocent. So all we need to do is prove the linkage, and he’s in the clear.”
“I know,” Andrea says, her words slow, deliberate. “But we need to be careful, Marti. You know? We were just here. Jumping to conclusions, the both of us. Seeing patterns because we needed them to be there. And the fallout from that was . . . it was too much.”
“The fallout,” I repeat, though I know what she means. My little drop off the deep end. “It wasn’t because we got it wrong, Andrea. Is that what you think?”
“If I’m being honest, I think it was probably a mistake,” Andrea replied, hands in her lap, fingers tense hooks, winding around each other. “Investigating the Jane Doe. I don’t care how popular the podcast is. I never would have suggested it if I thought this might happen.” She gives a little wave, the motion of her hand encapsulating me, this apartment. The state of my life. My recycling bin, full of glass. The baby I didn’t have.
I take her hand, interlace her fingers with mine.
“I would have fallen apart if it turned out to be Maggie too,” I reply. “And even if we’d never recorded a word. At least now I feel like I’m trying. Like I haven’t just abandoned her.”
“And what if we never find her?” Andrea asks, her voice thin. More possibilities she doesn’t want to say at full volume, lest she tempt fate. That knife, ever dangling above our heads, ready to drop without warning. “What if you never find out the truth?”
It’s the question that has dogged me since I was eight years old. Not just the mystery of Maggie but of how I could possibly build a life on that unanswered question. A foundation of sand. I did it once, and it took nothing at all to bring it down.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “Maybe I just do this. Maybe I just keep looking.”
“That’s what I was afraid you’d say,” Andrea replies.
My phone lights up, an unfamiliar number.
“I should get this,” I say, glancing up at Andrea. “Someone beat the shit out of Colin yesterday, and Ava told me she’d call.”
Andrea hesitates, then gives me a little nod of acquiescence. A promise that she won’t be pissed at me for breaking up our little therapy session with a phone call. I stand and answer it.
“I had to bribe Silvia for your number,” the man on the other end of the line says. “So you owe me a pack of Marlboro Lights and a caramel Frappuccino.” The voice has that same even tone I heard for the first time in the Rogers Park police station. Habitually deadpan, with a slight rasp. My skin prickles as it did last night, when I was close enough
to whisper in his ear.
“You know she gouged you, right?” I say as Andrea watches me. “Usually she spills her guts for just the coffee.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind for next time,” he says.
“So, what can I do for you, Detective?” I ask, growing warm under Andrea’s gaze. I get up from the couch and walk to the kitchen. She follows me, conspicuously trying to listen in on Olsen’s end of the conversation.
“You left so quickly last night, I didn’t get a chance to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
Now Andrea is in full-on French mime mode, making gestures of exaggerated, mute urgency as I swat her away, trying very hard to keep Olsen from hearing any of the rustling movement that is happening on this side of the line. I finally duck into the bathroom and shut the door behind me, with Andrea on the other side of it.
“I got Detective Richards’s email,” he says. “And all I had to do was promise my buddy that you would go out to dinner with him.”
I go still for a moment.
“Tell me you’re kidding. Or I’m hanging up and moving to a different country.”
I think I can hear the sly grin in his voice as he replies. “Yeah . . . ,” he says. “But I’m not sure I want to unleash you on the man while he’s enjoying his retirement.”
“Can you reach out to him for me, then?” I ask, jumping at the opening. “He’ll remember me. Just ask if he’s willing to talk, off the record.”
“Why do you think I’m inclined to do you any favors?” Olsen asks, and this time, I know he’s flirting. I can always tell when a man is making a chess move he thinks will ultimately get him laid.
“Aren’t you?” I counter.
“All right,” he says, his voice faux stern, now that he’s relenting. “But if I get you a meeting with him, you’re buying me dinner.”
“Fine,” I reply. “I’ll even wear my Sunday best.”
“Let’s not get crazy now,” he says.
* * *
* * *
ANDREA IS WAITING in the doorway to the kitchen when I emerge, a hand on her hip.
“And what exactly were you doing last night?” she asks in her very best headmistress tone.
“None of your business, Mom,” I say, dropping my phone onto the coffee table and sitting back down on the floor.
“Is this something we need to talk about?”
“What?” I ask.
“Your sudden affinity for cops.”
“I went to a bar to show Olsen the case file. See what he said.”
“And?”
“He was a bit evasive,” I concede, deciding to leave out any reference to my confrontation with Jimmy and his wandering hands. “But I think he’s a good contact to have in the CPD.”
“You know he might be keeping you close so he can keep tabs on the investigation?”
“I know.” The thought did occur to me. Olsen worked undercover, after all. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for him to engage in a bit of mild flirtation to get me to reveal my cards. “I didn’t tell him about Dylan. I haven’t told him anything that isn’t already public knowledge. And he’s reaching out to Detective Richards for me.”
“How very helpful of him,” she replies.
“I’m very charming, Andrea,” I say, ignoring her sarcasm. “Sometimes men just want to help me.”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” Andrea replies. She motions to the papers strewn around my living room floor. “So what do we do next?”
“Call in the tip to Milwaukee. I’m going to reach out to a woman I know from this true-crime message board,” I reply, an idea forming. “She’s had a lot of luck crowdsourcing information about missing persons cases. Maybe she’ll be able to help with Dylan.”
“I’ll reach out to Ava, see if she can give me a list of the people Dylan invited to Sarah’s surprise party,” she replies. “It might be a good place to start, in terms of men both Sarah and Dylan would have known.” She pauses and then pulls her hair into a thick ponytail at the nape of her neck. “Do you think this guy—the killer—knows Milwaukee all that well?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just, it’s a pretty big risk. To travel to a city you don’t know to kill someone.” Her voice is decisive, like she’s simply stating a fact. “Especially after all those years.”
“I guess,” I reply.
“So the only reason to do it would be if someone started digging around in an old case. And the victim was a loose end that needed to be tied up.” She shakes her head, all humor gone from her face. In its place is a look of something like anguish. “Did we get this guy killed, Marti?”
“We don’t know he’s dead,” I reply, because it’s a mantra I live by. They’re not dead. Nothing is certain until we find them.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
When I first started lurking on true-crime forums, while I was still married to Eric, I wasn’t really looking for help with Maggie’s case. I didn’t hold out much hope that a decades-old disappearance—one that happened in the nascent days of the internet and without much evidence to speak of—could be solved by the amorphous congregation of amateur sleuths who made up CrimeSolversOnline.
Instead, I was looking for the people there. The ones who, like me, could not let themselves stop. Who could not simply grieve the losses they—or others—had felt. Who were driven to do something to shift the balance of their lives back to a sense of purpose or justice or good. I wanted to feel like the churning energy of my own grief could be put to use.
Of course they already knew about Maggie. The case was famous enough, a pretty, blond sixteen-year-old walking home through a shortcut in the woods. An eyewitness in her little sister, precocious and potentially unreliable. Secrets the two sisters had hidden from their parents uncovered in the investigation. When I first visited CSO, I spent a lot of time reading what was written about me on those message boards. How the local police had largely discounted my story as a potential cover for Maggie’s simply running away, while the CSO members believed me to be credible. They seemed to recognize that teenage girls don’t simply run off for nothing. Not in a world like ours, where even the youngest of adolescents can feel the press of eyes around her and understand the danger there. The people in the forum seemed to know that a girl needs a reason, most of the time, before she runs.
I never told them who I was, not until Jane Doe aired. And even then, there were skeptics, or some people who thought I had been disingenuous in not revealing who I was sooner. But mostly, they seemed to understand. We were all hiding something of ourselves there, each of us with our own reasons to spend hours a day unknotting the threads of other people’s crimes. To try, always in vain, to undo the harm that left us guilty for living so unscathed.
ARMY8070 was one of the first people on the forum whom I spoke to at length about Maggie. She spends most of her days on CSO after quitting her job to move home and care for her ailing father. The rumor among the other CrimeSolvers is that before that, she was army JAG. Whatever the case, she’s known as the high priestess of crowdsourcing, because she’s so adept at using paid social media advertising to generate information on cold cases. From what I’ve seen of her on the forum, she’s also kind. Her messages rarely contain any qualifiers or opinions—she seems almost impatient with wild speculation. She is a woman who lives and breathes facts, and she is the one I turn to for help with Dylan Jacobs’s disappearance.
I can set up a targeted advertising campaign on social media, ARMY8070 says when I message her on the forum. It’ll probably cost you a couple hundred, depending on how many users you want to reach. But I can pinpoint it by location, so people who live within a four-block radius of your missing man will see it.
I’m not even really sure what I’m looking for, I reply. Strange cars? Strange men? Anything strange?<
br />
Let’s try something more general, she says. Name, photo, location, potential time of disappearance. A number people can contact with information. Are you prepared to offer a reward?
I’ll have to get back to you on that, I reply. Maybe our production company can come up with something. I know I can’t. Last time I checked I had a bank balance of $340.
If you send me the info, I can put something together tonight after Pops is asleep, she replies.
Thanks, I reply. I owe you one.
Let’s just find him, ARMY8070 types before signing off.
* * *
* * *
AVA CALLS AS I’m heating up a can of soup for dinner. It’s more of an afterthought, as I’ve spent the past hour compiling everything I know about Dylan Jacobs and sending it to ARMY8070. I’ve been eating like I’m in college again, meaning most of my calories are coming from vodka and foods that only need to be microwaved. I make a mental note to buy some fruit next week, if only to prevent the possibility of scurvy.
I debate, in the moment before I answer the phone, whether I should mention my discovery about Dylan to Ava. But I can hear the tears in her voice when she speaks, and I decide that the last thing she can afford right now is hope that may come to nothing.
“His attorney got in to see him in the infirmary,” she says. “He’s in rough shape. One eye’s so swollen, he can’t see out of it. They fractured his eye socket.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry,” I say. “Did his lawyer have any idea why this happened now?”
Ava gives a bitter little laugh. “It’s prison, Marti,” she says. “There doesn’t have to be a reason for things to get violent in there. It just happens.”
I understand her point, but still, it seems like an excessive amount of violence, if unprovoked. I imagine the hours I’ve spent in the boxing gym, or grappling on the mats at Bucktown Jiu-Jitsu, and still cannot fathom the amount of force it would take to break a bone in someone’s face upon impact.
The Lost Girls Page 17
