“You never stop, do you?”
“He might have used the same burial ground, since he got away with it before,” I say.
Olsen lets out a long sigh, relenting. “Only if he doesn’t mind linking the two cases together.”
“Except nobody is looking for Dylan here,” I reply.
“You’re good at this,” he whispers, and I turn to look at him then, stretched out in my bed, the sheet bunched carelessly at his waist. There’s another cloud of black ink on the outside of one shoulder, and another across the plane of his left pectoral. I reach forward, running my fingers over his chest, over the remnant of that past life. I wonder what’s there, underneath that layer of blackness. A swastika, maybe. I wonder if he can feel it still, the horrid shape of it pulsing beneath the newer layer of ink. He runs his fingers up my ribs, over the lizard tattoo, making me shiver.
“Did you ever see the Jane Doe that I thought was my sister?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “When her husband came to identify her.”
Her husband, I remember. She had a husband. She was not Maggie.
“And she had a tattoo like mine?” I ask, because this is the thing that has always made it difficult to accept. Because it should have been Maggie. Because too much fit for it not to have been my sister.
He levers up on his elbow, leaning closer to consider my ribs in the dark, one hand on my hip.
“No,” he whispers, shaking his head. “She had a dragon. In navy blue.”
“Not a lizard?”
He shakes his head again.
I think of how cruel life is sometimes. How a simple sentence, She has a blue lizard tattoo on her thigh, mistaking the word “dragon” for “lizard,” sent me reeling from skepticism into certainty. That moment at the bistro, based on nothing but my own misguided hope that the question of my sister would be answered, was the beginning of the end of the life I had. All because of one silly word.
* * *
* * *
OLSEN LEAVES EARLY in the morning. I wonder if he feels the way that I do, that there’s urgency now, in Dylan’s case. That this thread must be caught and held fast, before another chance for answers is lost. Still, he pauses to kiss me before he leaves, a lingering kiss that almost has me working again at the buttons on his uniform. Perhaps trying to make up for his early departure. Perhaps trying to make me miss him.
I don’t mind that he leaves without a word. It’s easier this way, to be alone again in my bed, the sheets cooling beside me, the morning light strengthening its reach through my window blinds. I don’t miss him. I never miss anyone who leaves me by choice.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
I spend the rest of the day waiting for news about the case. Waiting to hear from Olsen. There is definitely something wrong with me; amid a potential murder investigation, I’m waiting for a guy to call. It’s a juvenile feeling, like waiting for the boy you like to ask you to prom. Letting yourself care too much about anything.
I go to the park with Andrea and Olive to distract myself and don’t mention Olsen’s appearance at the benefit dinner, or what transpired at my apartment afterward. I try not to check my phone more often than normal and remind myself that I spent the past year fucking my way through this city and never expected any of those men to call me the next day. Then I get shitfaced alone in my apartment that night, my phone dark and silent on my coffee table.
I wake Monday morning to the sound of a sharp rapping on my front door. Jarring enough to already send a surge of adrenaline through me, my sleep-addled brain trying to make sense of it—is this an emergency? Is someone trying to get in? I drag myself from my bed to the source of the sound, put the chain on, and open the door.
“Martha Reese?” A man’s voice filters through the gap between the door and its frame. A cop, in uniform, I can see that much.
“Yes?”
“Detective Hardy would like you to come with us to the station. Answer some questions.”
His voice is more of a demand than a request.
“Detective Hardy?” I reply, wondering if this is all some sort of mistake. I don’t think I’ve met a detective by that name. “Am—am I under arrest?” I ask, stammering. Trying to remember what cops have the right to do, under these circumstances.
“No,” the cop replies, one hand resting on his belt. I eye the gun holstered at his side. I’ve never really been around guns, so the presence of one on my doorstep is unnerving. The density of its destructive power, right there in front of me. “But we do need you to answer some questions about an ongoing investigation.”
“What investigation?” I ask, reluctant to do much more than shut my door and call Andrea to figure out how to handle this.
“The disappearance of Dylan Jacobs,” the cop replies. And that’s enough. My skin crackles, like I’ve touched something electric. They found him. Olsen found him.
“Just let me get changed,” I reply quickly, and retreat back into my apartment to throw on some jeans.
* * *
* * *
THE COPS LEAD me down the main hallway of the Twenty-Fourth District police station, to the interview room at the end of the hall. The same one I sat in twenty years ago, looking through mug books with Detective Richards.
I lock eyes with Olsen as I enter, on reflex alone. An older woman in a gray pantsuit stands beside him. She motions for me to sit at the table and then sits down across from me. Immediately, I wonder if I’ve made a mistake in coming here, in not calling Andrea to alert her that I’m being questioned by police. This feels like an interrogation, like they’ve brought me in to get something out of me.
I wonder if Andrea was right, if the source of Olsen’s interest in me was a desire for information and nothing more. I assumed I’d disproved that theory Saturday night, when he was so eager in the back of that car, when I led him up to my apartment. But now I wonder again if this man—who is so accustomed to pretending to be someone else—is even more ruthless than I expected. I wonder if the details of our night together are now the fodder of some investigative report, hidden by a euphemism, perhaps. Subject was personally forthcoming. Or Subject turned out to be an easy mark.
“You know Detective Olsen,” says the other detective, who has a peppering of dark freckles on her nose and a tight-slicked bun at the back of her head. I try to detect any specific tone in the word “know” that would imply just how we know each other. But she is like a slab of glass. So smooth, I only see my own paranoia reflected back at me. “I’m Detective Dana Hardy. We appreciate you coming in.”
“You’re with Missing Persons?” I ask before she can start with the questions.
She pauses, her lips pursed. “Homicide.”
“Is Dylan Jacobs dead?” I ask, directing my question more to Olsen than to her. But he’s not looking at me, not directly. Feeling guilty, perhaps. “You found his body?”
Detective Hardy shifts in her seat, turns to look at Olsen. I see him, almost imperceptibly, shake his head.
“What makes you think Dylan Jacobs is dead?” Detective Hardy asks. As if this rudimentary information is at all important, as if Olsen has not already brought her up to speed on what I’ve been doing. My little investigation. I wonder if they’re planning to arrest me for interfering with theirs.
“They wouldn’t have someone from Homicide on the case unless his body had been found.”
“And what exactly is your connection to Dylan Jacobs?”
“During the course of my research into Sarah Ketchum’s murder, I found out that Dylan Jacobs, her former roommate, had gone missing from Milwaukee a couple of months ago.” I try for professionalism. As if I’m a true journalist, powerful in some noble way. Able to retaliate when threatened.
“This research is for your podcast?”
“Yes,” I reply.
“Why were you loo
king into Sarah Ketchum’s murder, when her killer is already behind bars?” Hardy asks with a sort of feigned confusion. We’re playing a game here. Talking around the things we all know to be true.
“Because I believe the wrong man was convicted for her murder,” I reply. “So it made sense to me, after Dylan disappeared, that the man who actually killed Sarah might have gone after him. To keep Dylan from giving any new details about the case.”
“And you think his body was dumped in LaBagh Woods?”
I lean forward in my seat, both of my palms flat on the metal table. Clammy, suddenly.
“You found him in the woods?” Jesus, I think. Leave it to my grandmother to pull the answer out of thin air.
“Is this your email address, Marti?” Olsen asks, leaning forward and sliding a sheet of paper toward me. It’s a printout of an email, with the address at the top highlighted: MReese90@gmail .com.
“No,” I reply. “I’m Marti dot Reese at Gmail.” I scan the email. It’s to Dylan Jacobs, dated April 28 of this year. Asking if he can meet to discuss the second season of Jane Doe. My name is typed at the bottom. Gooseflesh spreads in a wave, from the base of my skull and down my limbs. Something harsh and metallic spills across my tongue.
Because I didn’t reach out to Dylan until well into July.
“What is this?” I ask. I think of the calls. Someone out there, wanting to scare me. Wanting me to know he’s thinking of me. I try to remember when the calls began. Maybe it was April. Maybe before that, even.
“Apparently someone called in a tip to the Milwaukee police. Said Dylan’s disappearance might be connected to his testimony in the Ketchum case. Milwaukee was kind enough to reach out, and we got a warrant for Dylan’s email,” Hardy replies. “And guess what we found? This appears to be an email from you, Marti. Sent only a few days before he was reported missing. Asking to meet.”
“I never sent this,” I say. “I didn’t even know Dylan existed until . . .” I think about the timeline of my investigation. “After the APA awards.” I finally meet Olsen’s eyes. There’s something searching in his expression, like he’s trying to figure out if he’s gotten me wrong. If I’m secretly dangerous.
I think of the nightmare, of waking in the dark and clawing for his face. What must I seem to him? A feral thing, perhaps. A girl raised on pain, capable of anything.
“If you have access to his work email, then you know I tried reaching out to him just a couple of weeks ago,” I say. “Plus, it was my producer who called in that tip. We wanted to notify the Milwaukee police that the cases might be connected.”
“Why not call the CPD?” Hardy asks.
“Because he went missing from Milwaukee,” I reply, throwing her own feigned confusion back at her. Fuck professionalism. If she wants to play dumb, then so can I.
“When did you start investigating Sarah Ketchum’s murder?” Hardy asks.
“Tell me you don’t think I had anything to do with this,” I reply, ignoring her question. Trying to make them see how ludicrous this all is, because that is the only way they will see the danger in it.
“What year were you born, Marti?” Olsen asks. Quiet, almost regretful.
“Nineteen ninety.”
“So this email, MReese90.” Hardy reads it out slowly. “It’s got the right year, at least.”
“Yeah. My birth date is right there on my Wikipedia page,” I reply. “And anyway, you can trace the email, right? Find out that it didn’t come from me?”
“See, that’s the funny thing. The email address was created, and the email was sent, from the John Merlo branch of the Chicago Public Library,” Hardy replies. “So there’s no way to know who did or didn’t send it. Isn’t that funny?”
“Hilarious.” I can tell my tone rankles her a bit.
“You know,” she says, “the best thing you can do to help yourself is to tell us the truth. Because you’re all tangled up in this mess, and stonewalling isn’t going to get us anywhere. Help us help you, Marti.”
Her concern sounds genuine, for a moment. But I know too much about cops to believe that she’s telling the truth. I know how this works. For Colin, for so many other people railroaded through police interrogations. The cops aren’t interested in finding out the truth. The fact that they pitted evidence in Colin’s case is proof of that. They’re interested in making arrests. Closing cases.
I wonder if Olsen is here because they think it will make me more likely to cooperate. If they do, it’s a miscalculation. Having him here only makes me angry, a flush of heat in my chest, as if I’ve inhaled campfire smoke.
“I think I need an attorney,” I reply.
Hardy pushes her chair back from the table, scraping it across the tile floor. She folds her arms across her narrow chest. “You really want to play it that way, Marti?”
“Let me get this straight,” I say, the anger building within me, a swell of it, difficult to choke back. “You’re really so devoted to the idea that Colin McCarty killed Sarah Ketchum that instead of treating these cases as connected—and admitting that there’s a man out there who’s responsible for the deaths of two people—you’re willing to believe that I drove up to Milwaukee and somehow managed to kill Dylan Jacobs?”
“What made you think he would be in LaBagh Woods?” Hardy asks. Setting a trap, I know. I look at Olsen, my jaw tight. Traitor.
“That’s where Sarah was found,” I reply.
“But, like you said, Dylan went missing from Milwaukee,” she says. “That’s quite a stretch, to assume that a man who went missing seven years later, from another city, would happen to show up in the same place Sarah Ketchum’s body was found.”
“It didn’t seem like a stretch to me,” I reply, even though I know I shouldn’t. Not without an attorney.
“But according to Dylan’s former colleague Greg Orloff, you’ve known for more than a week that Dylan was missing. So what made you suddenly land on LaBagh Woods?”
“I guess it was women’s intuition,” I say, parroting her earnestness back to her.
“Yours?”
“My grandmother’s.”
“So,” Hardy says, clearly enjoying this part, “your grandmother is helping you investigate the case?”
“No.”
“Then how did she intuit that Dylan was in the woods, exactly?” Hardy asks.
“You’d have to ask her,” I reply.
Hardy smiles, too pleased with herself. “Maybe I will. Maybe she can explain it to me.”
“Am I free to go?” I ask, my answering smile crimped and aching.
“Of course, Marti,” Hardy replies, as if she’s explaining a simple concept to a child. “You aren’t under arrest. You’re free to leave at any time.”
I get up, every bone in my body wrapped tight with rage, to the point where even leaving the interview room, moving down the hall, feels like a strain. I walk past the chair where I waited as a child for news of my sister. Where, twenty years ago, I chewed down the metal eraser end of a number two pencil and used it to scratch Maggie’s name into the chair’s smooth plastic sheen. I pass it now, the gouges worn smooth and faint with time.
How dare they, I think. How dare they.
* * *
* * *
AS SOON AS I’m out of the station, my first call is to Andrea.
“The CPD thinks I’m involved with Dylan Jacobs’s disappearance.”
“What are you talking about?” she asks. I can hear the trilling banter of children in the background and know that she’s probably at the playground on Ashland and Foster, where she and Olive go most mornings when it’s sunny out. I imagine Olive in the wood chips, the Cubs hat I bought her askew on her head. The normalcy of it seems completely incongruous with how I’ve spent the past hour.
“The tip you called into Milwaukee. Apparently it helped the CPD get a warrant for Dylan�
��s email.”
“Okay.”
“He has an email from someone claiming to be me, asking Dylan to meet. Just a few days before he went missing.”
There’s nothing on the other end of the line besides the windy static of the outdoors and the far-off wail of a child.
“I think he’s dead,” I say. “I think the CPD found him here, and they think I’m involved somehow.”
Still, there’s only silence. Silence, and the sound of my pulse in my ears. Fast.
“Andrea?”
“I’m here,” she says. “Where do you think they found him?”
“LaBagh Woods. I bet you anything they found him where they found Sarah.”
“Jesus,” Andrea hisses. “Hold on, let me check the news.” It takes only a moment. “Fuck,” she says. “They’ve recovered the body of an as-yet-unidentified man from the woods, early this morning. A possible drug overdose.”
“Oh god.” The world pitches beneath me slightly. I steady myself on one of the trees in the police station’s courtyard, its trunk tied with a blue ribbon that’s smooth beneath my sweating palm. “The lawyer I talked to at his firm said they found pills in his apartment.”
“When was it that you were supposed to have sent this email to him?”
“April,” I reply. “Late April, I think.”
“We weren’t investigating Dylan then,” she replies. “We weren’t even investigating Sarah yet then.”
“So what does that mean?” I ask.
“It means someone heard the podcast and knew that we might start investigating the connection between Sarah and Maggie,” Andrea says, her voice projecting poorly maintained calm. “And used you to tie up the last loose end in Sarah’s case.”
“Dylan.”
“Right,” Andrea says.
“But why make it look like a drug overdose if you’re still going to leave him in LaBagh Woods?”
The Lost Girls Page 20
