The Lost Girls

by Jessica Chiarella

  “I’m sorry.” I choke the words out. “I am, I’m so sorry.” My face is wet, and I realize that two solitary tears have trailed their way down my cheeks. There’s a click on the other end of the line.

  When I look up, Andrea is standing in the hallway, watching me.

  * * *

  * * *

  TED IS BEING held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago, awaiting trial. He’s been held without bail on the recommendation of the state’s attorney, as his considerable financial resources and powerful connections in Chicago’s business world make him a flight risk. So I have to do nothing but take the Brown Line south to Harold Washington Library and walk a few blocks—past the “Hotel Men Only” sign that Maggie pointed out to me on one of our early adventures into the city, the place where Harrison Ford’s character stayed in The Fugitive—in order to visit with him.

  I probably wouldn’t even consider it, visiting Ted, except for the fact that I opened my mailbox last week to discover an envelope with the MCC’s return address, containing a half-completed visitor information form. Ted had clearly filled out the inmate section—written in perfect, boilerplate penmanship—and left the rest for me to complete. Even before my conversation with Marco, I was intrigued by what Ted might have to say to me, so I finished the form and mailed it back. Yesterday morning, after I’d gotten home from Andrea’s apartment and taken a long, sobering shower, I got a voicemail that I’d been approved for a visit.

  The MCC is a strange building, a triangular high-rise made of sandy-colored stone. Its windows are long vertical slits, and from a block or two away, you can see the fencing surrounding the rooftop yard. I remember passing by it countless times when I was younger and thinking nothing of it—just an awkward piece of city architecture amid all the beautiful Chicago buildings that populate the South Loop and Printer’s Row. Old printing houses with huge, heavy windows. Dearborn Station’s clock tower overlooking all of it. It was only later, when I was older, that I realized the tower only a few blocks away was a jail.

  Still, I know what to expect, from my visit downstate with Colin, when I arrive. My purse is screened, and I’m brought into a large communal room, where I sit at a low metal table. Ted enters through a door at the opposite side of the room and scans the space for me before approaching.

  “That was fast,” he says as he sits down on the other side of the table. He looks strange in his orange prison uniform. Diminished, somehow, without his expensive shirts and his well-tailored trousers.

  “I didn’t see the point in wasting any time,” I reply. “Colin is supposed to be released today.”

  Ted winces a bit, his jaw so tight the muscle bulges at his ear. “Well, score one for justice then, right?” he says, his voice strained with viciousness. He sits back in his chair, a poor imitation of Colin’s jailhouse swagger. He’s not cut out for this, and it shows. “I can’t talk about my case,” he says. “So I’m not really sure why you’re here.”

  “You sent me the form,” I reply. “I thought you wanted me to come.”

  “Right. I guess I never thought you actually would,” Ted says, and then gives a little smile, which could also be a grimace. “I guess I just imagined all the things I might say to you if you ever did.”

  “Well, here’s your chance,” I reply.

  “You’re so certain of your own righteousness,” he says. “Believe me, I know how that feels. I lived that, for a long time.”

  “Ted, I’m not certain of anything anymore,” I reply. I feel so small here. So wrung out. I want someone to tell me the truth. I want to believe someone when they promise that they’re being honest. I lean forward, both of my palms flat on the table between us. “Ted. Please. Did you kill her?”

  “I barely even knew Sarah Ketchum. Of course I didn’t kill her.”

  “I’m not talking about Sarah,” I reply.

  He looks at me blankly for a moment and then breaks into a quick, unironic laugh. When I say nothing, Ted shuts his eyes. Presses a hand over his mouth.

  “You’re out of your mind, you know that?” he says through his fingers. And then he’s leaning toward me as well, his eyes open and fixed on mine. Fevered eyes, like someone delirious with heat. Pupils wide. “I didn’t kill your goddamn sister. I didn’t kill anyone. This is all insane. I didn’t kill Dylan Jacobs or Sarah Ketchum.”

  “Then who did, Ted?” I ask.

  “You wouldn’t believe me, even if I told you the truth,” he replies, spitting the words at me as if his mouth were full of venom. Still such a handsome man. I wonder how someone like him will fare here, behind bars. The world of rules he’s spent a lifetime leveraging to his benefit has no place here. All his rules are gone now.

  “If Colin killed Sarah, then who killed Dylan?” I ask, and I can tell he’s a bit surprised. That I’m willing to entertain the possibility.

  “You’re a smart girl,” he says. “It’s why I sent you that form. Stop being so obtuse for one goddamn minute, and you’ll figure it out.” He pushes back his chair and stands, heading back out the door through which he came. And I’m left there, sitting alone in a correctional facility’s visitation room, with my heart in my mouth.

  * * *

  * * *

  I ARRIVE HOME from the MCC just in time to receive a text from Ava. A selfie, of her and Colin, both grinning and squinting against the sunlight. Outside, somewhere. So, it’s happened. Colin McCarty is out of prison.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  Ava sits down in Andrea’s back bedroom, on the chair I usually occupy at Andrea’s little studio setup. We’ve both agreed that Andrea should do this interview. She’s more objective. She’s not as close with Ava, outside the podcast, never been to her home. Never met Ted.

  I don’t tell Andrea that I can’t stand the idea of interviewing Ava now. I have no way of discerning whether she’s telling the truth. About Colin. About where Walter Ketchum lived. And I don’t think I can pretend any longer that I trust her.

  “Thanks for joining us today,” Andrea says once she’s turned on the recording setup.

  Ava puts on her set of headphones and leans over her mic. “I’m glad to be here. Though I wish it could be under better circumstances.”

  “Right,” Andrea says. “This has to have been a very difficult time for you.”

  “Well, the past seven years have been difficult,” Ava replies. “So this, everything that’s happened now . . . I’m sure it sounds strange, but there’s a part of me that’s extremely relieved that something has finally changed. And grateful too. To finally know who my husband was. When I asked the two of you to investigate this case, I don’t think I ever dreamed it would so fundamentally change my life. In large ways and small.” Ava glances in my direction, and I give her an encouraging smile. To cover everything that’s roiling inside me. To cover the fact that I know she’s a liar.

  “Let’s talk about some of those large ways,” Andrea says. “Since we began recording for this podcast, two significant changes have happened in your life. The first: your brother, Colin, has been exonerated for the murder of Sarah Ketchum and has since been released from prison. And the second: your husband, Ted, has been arrested and charged with the murders of both Sarah Ketchum and Dylan Jacobs. Can you tell us, if you can, what this series of events has been like to live through?”

  “Well, I think the order of the events has been an important element to it,” Ava replies, and I can already hear the warm tones of her voice as if through playback. What she’ll sound like to our listeners. How measured and accomplished and articulate.

  “Ted’s arrest was sort of the first domino to fall, in all of this,” she continues. “Which was shocking, and devastating, of course. But as soon as the evidence against him began to stack up—the hair found in Sarah Ketchum’s shower drain, the fact that his car was parked outside of Dylan Jacobs’s apartment the
night he disappeared, traces of his blood on a pair of nail clippers in Ted’s travel case—his involvement in both killings became difficult to refute.”

  “Let’s pause for a minute on that last piece of evidence you mentioned,” Andrea says, glancing toward me. I raise my eyebrows. This is news to me too. “Dylan’s blood was found on a pair of nail clippers?”

  “Yes. According to the discovery the police turned over to our attorney, it was discovered in a Dopp kit Ted brings with him while traveling.”

  “So, what is the theory on how the blood got there?” Andrea asks.

  “The police think he might have clipped his nails after he killed him,” Ava replies. “To prevent DNA evidence from being found underneath them.”

  “That’s . . . ,” Andrea says.

  “Horrifying,” Ava replies. “Yes. So, for me, it became about coming to terms with that as quickly as possible, so that I could then shift my focus to getting my brother released from prison.”

  “And what did that process—coming to terms with what your husband had done—what did that look like?” Andrea asks.

  Ava blinks. “Well, it involved me breaking just about every dish and plate and glass in my house,” she replies. “If there was something breakable and on hand at the moment, you’d better believe I broke it.”

  I can hear the amusement in her voice, the strain of her own embarrassed self-deprecation.

  “But, you know, there’s something about being in emergency medicine,” Ava continues. “You see life-and-death situations all the time. You see the things that people do to each other, up close. And it makes you realize that most of the time life turns on a dime. It makes you realize how fragile everything is.”

  “The way that smashing dishes makes everything feel fragile,” Andrea says.

  “Right,” Ava replies, though she’s curiously solemn now, all the levity draining out of her. “I think it makes you less surprised by the terrible things, when they happen. Because you see it so often happening to other people. You start to think, Why not me too?”

  I watch her as she speaks, watch her charisma, how thoroughly charmed Andrea is by her. I’ve been charmed by her too. I’ve taken her words as truth. I have counted her as a friend, even.

  And I wonder, how dangerous a game have I been playing? I wonder who went to the John Merlo branch of the Chicago Public Library and registered an email address using my name. I wonder who reached out to Dylan Jacobs, drove the Tesla to Milwaukee. Who called me twenty-seven times in the past four months and never said a word.

  It all makes so much more sense, if it was Ava. After all, what was the likelihood that Dylan would have gotten into a car with Ted after arranging to meet me? But Ava, with her charm. Ava, the doctor, who promised, above all things, to do no harm.

  I watch her animatedly talking with Andrea, and I realize that Ava could probably talk a person into anything.

  * * *

  * * *

  “I’M ONLY DOING this because it’s possible I owe you,” Olsen says when he calls me a few days later. It’s a welcome distraction. I’ve been turning everything over in my mind, twisting the possibilities around like wire, every coil tightening my breath, making my heart beat harder. Until I can’t tell what is real, until I can’t think through the haze of the vodka and the terrible images I’ve conjured. Ava, pulling up in front of Dylan Jacobs’s apartment in her husband’s Tesla. Colin, wrapping his hands around Sarah Ketchum’s throat. Ted, at sixteen, beckoning to my sister through the open window of a silver sedan. My sister, telling me to run. All of it feels possible. All of it feels as real to me as a memory.

  “Doing what?” I ask Olsen, cracking the ice from my tray and refilling my tumbler. Three ice cubes, then vodka. Hoping Olsen can’t hear the pop of the ice when the vodka hits it, the way the cubes clink against the side of the glass. It’s only noon, after all.

  “Getting you a sit-down with my predecessor,” he replies.

  I set down the glass. “Detective Richards?” I ask. “When?”

  “Are you free this afternoon?” he replies.

  “Yes. Where?”

  “I’ll pick you up at two,” he says. With half excitement, half regret, I pour my glass of vodka down the sink.

  * * *

  * * *

  DETECTIVE RICHARDS SITS on an ancient-looking tweed couch, in the front room of his little Edison Park bungalow. He’s older than I remember him, even though I must have last seen him only a couple of years ago. There’s more gray in his hair and in his mustache. He wears the same sort of polo he used to wear on the job—in navy and gray and dark browns. But the one he’s wearing today looks worn in the shoulders, a bit loose in the seams. It’s a strange feeling, to be in this man’s home. To see the mustard-colored easy chair in the corner, the dusty upright piano, the cluster of half-empty water glasses left forgotten on the kitchen counter. It reminds me that there was so much I never knew about this man. The one who was so good at keeping in touch with my mother, in the years since Maggie went missing. Who always took my calls or sat down with me when I arrived, usually unannounced, at the Rogers Park police station, demanding updates.

  I can see Olsen through the picture window, in the slice of light between its lace curtains. Leaning against his car, smoking a cigarette, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do before. Must be a habit he picked back up, a holdover from his years undercover. The more I get to know him, the more I wonder how much remains of those days, besides the blacked-out tattoos and a distinct air of violence. Even now, his slouch makes him look more like a loiterer than a police detective. I refused to let him come into the house with me. A condition of my forgiveness, I told him, that I be allowed to see Detective Richards alone.

  “How is he doing?” Detective Richards asks, motioning in the direction of my gaze. A wasp that’s forgotten how to fly spins and flops and buzzes at the base of the picture window. There are two glasses of overly sweet iced tea between us.

  “Well, he doesn’t have your bedside manner,” I reply. “Or your courtesy. You heard about the Jane Doe last year?”

  “Sure. I read the Trib review of your show,” Detective Richards replies. He says it without affect, like he’s not about to compliment or reprimand me. Then again, this man has known me since I was eight years old. He was the one who called my mother the night my father got drunk and wrapped his car around a tree, went through the windshield, and died almost instantly. I don’t think this man will ever judge me for the things I do with my grief, in the search for my sister. It’s the thing I’ve always liked best—appreciated most—about him.

  “Well, it took him almost a week to call me,” I reply. “Karen in the ME’s office tipped me off right away. This guy only picked up the phone when he needed a DNA sample.”

  “He was devoted to doing things by the book, from what I saw,” Detective Richards said. “But still, there are worse detectives to have on your sister’s case.”

  “Yeah,” I reply, thinking of Olsen’s drinking buddies at McGinty’s that night. “So I have some questions.”

  “About your sister?”

  “No, about Sarah Ketchum’s case.” I pull out the case file, set it on the glass-topped coffee table between us. Pull out the two separate evidence lists, the one with the erased notation about the hair in Sarah’s drain, and the one without it.

  “The Ketchum case?” Detective Richards asks, leaning forward, surveying the documents. “I heard on the news that her killer was released from prison.” He rubs a spot on his forehead, his skin reddening beneath his touch. “Don’t tell me you were a part of that, were you?”

  “I was helping his sister,” I reply. “Helping her investigate some inconsistencies in the case.”

  “God,” Detective Richards says, an utterance of exhaustion, as I point to the Wite-Out smudge on the photocopy of the evidence page. His eyes are glass
y, red. With age, I hope. I pray, desperately, that this man is not about to cry.

  I know what I’m doing. I know he probably thinks I’m being disloyal, in this moment. To him, to the years he spent searching for my sister. I cannot help but feel some shame, hard and sour in the pit of my stomach, in coming here just to accuse him of misconduct. After I’ve undone all his work in putting Colin away. Still, I have waited too long to leave here without answers.

  “There was a notation here, that a hair was found in Sarah Ketchum’s drain. Were you aware of it at the time?” I ask.

  He considers me, the silver wire of his brows furrowing. “On the record?”

  “I’m not really a journalist,” I reply. “But if you want, I can promise not to mention you, or anything you tell me, on the podcast.” I just need to know, I want to tell him. Fuck the podcast. This is for me.

  “Well then, I’ll tell you what I told that young man out there,” Detective Richards says, motioning toward Olsen. “I can count on one hand the number of cases I’ve worked where I’ve been certain. Usually”—he moves his hands in front of him in concentric circles, as if he’s waxing on and off simultaneously—“you’re fumbling in the dark. And you might find your way to the person, or you might not. On those, you let the jury decide, because it’s not your job. But only three or four times have I known for sure, just by looking someone in the eyes, that they’re guilty.”

  He pauses, takes a sip of his iced tea. I watch the small tremor in his hands as he does.

  “And one of those times,” he continues, “was Colin McCarty.”

  “You were certain that he killed Sarah Ketchum,” I say, my chest tight. I think about losing my breath on that L car, sinking to the floor. I try to take a deep breath without making it obvious to Detective Richards.