“It’s like I said,” I reply. “I was trying to get him to give something up. Admit that he had some part in Sarah’s murder.”
“So now you believe Colin did kill her after all?”
“Let’s say that I’m certainly willing to entertain the possibility at this point.”
“So then who killed Dylan Jacobs?” Olsen asks. “Ted Vreeland?”
I wonder how much I can say. I think of Ava’s visit to my hospital room—if it wasn’t just a narcotic fantasy of mine, and I’m still not quite sure of that, either. I wonder if linking Ava to Dylan’s murder would put me in danger. But Olsen, the bastard, is clever enough to put the pieces together himself, even before I have a chance to answer.
“Or was it the sister?” he asks, and I’m glad I’m on a decent amount of pain medication, because the involuntary clench in my jaw would probably be fucking agony otherwise.
“That’s what I was trying to find out,” I say, trying to remember what I said to Colin. What they might hear, if they somehow get clear audio off that broken recorder. “I was trying to goad him into giving something up.”
“But he found the recorder,” Olsen says, not a question.
“Yes.”
“And foiled your plan.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t watch much TV, do you?” Olsen asks, and looks almost amused.
“What do you mean?” I reply, though I know exactly what he means. The plan sounds ridiculous, even to my own ears. The sort of thing that would only work on a TV show, and a bad one at that.
“Colin’s body doesn’t have a mark on him, besides the wound to his arm. It doesn’t look like you fought back at all,” Olsen replies.
“I was drunk,” I reply. “Ask the bartender at Mathilde’s last night. Ask Ava.”
“Your blood alcohol wasn’t that high when you were admitted,” he says. “Believe me, I checked. So I can’t help but wonder if the only reason you would stand there and take a beating like this”—he motions to my face—“is because you expected him to find the recorder. You expected it to make him angry. And you did nothing while he beat the hell out of you, so you’d be justified in killing him. Those are questions I don’t want to have to ask you in my professional capacity.”
“I was drunk,” I repeat. “And afraid. And trying to do the right thing, despite all of that. So I’m sorry if your asshole of a friend was easy to catch off balance in a bar, but that’s nothing like being alone in an apartment with Colin McCarty.” This part, at least, is true. I have never been so afraid for my life. I have never been so close to the edge. When my eyes fill with tears, this time, they’re real. “He nearly killed me.” I look him squarely in the eyes as I say it. “Do you believe that, at least?”
“Yes,” Olsen replies. “About that, I believe you.”
“Then what does the rest of it matter?” I reach out, take his hand. Because despite it all, I still want him to hold me. It’s what I’ve wanted since the first time I saw him, waiting in those chairs at the police station. I want him to be the one to comfort me.
But he must know what I’m asking. He must know what I want is to draw him into the gray, into the haze in between all this certainty and all his righteousness and all his faith. The place where I live. And he cannot follow me there, I know it, because he pulls his hand back from mine.
“It matters,” he replies. “You have no idea how much it matters.”
I nod, because there is nothing left to say. Now he’s the one who knows the truth that no one else will admit. I’ve left him there, in that impossible place. And in the way I knew that Eric would never be able to love me after what I’d done, I know that Olsen will never be able to forgive me for this.
Perhaps my penance is not done yet.
EPILOGUE
I sit down in the sunny little café in Lincoln Park and watch the red light blink from the recorder on the table between us. I feel like I should be used to this by now, going on the record, recounting my story for the benefit of an audience. Except this time, it’s not Andrea sitting across from me. My best friend, who conducts interviews like a dance, leading me where she wants, letting me show off a bit. The best sort of partner. This, I fear, may end up being a little more like sparring.
The reporter, a young man with horn-rimmed glasses, works for Vanity Fair. And I’m hoping against hope, glancing down at the T-shirt and torn jeans that I’m wearing, that he won’t start with a discussion of my outfit. Still, I tuck my messy bob behind my ears, just in case.
“So let’s start with the obvious,” the reporter says, sipping his Americano. “How has your life changed since the night Colin McCarty attacked you in your apartment?”
“Well,” I say, preparing the line I’ve given to everyone who has asked about Colin in the year since it happened, “I believe even more strongly now that our criminal justice system needs to be reformed. I think if Colin had gotten a fair trial the first time around, and if our prison system had any interest in rehabilitation at all, none of this would have happened.”
“So let’s be fair,” the reporter says, leaning forward and scratching some notes on his pad of paper. “You’re the one who helped get Colin McCarty released from prison. And then he turns around and almost kills you. And you’re blaming the criminal justice system for that?”
“Colin was released because there was evidence from the crime scene that was never revealed in his trial,” I reply. “And because the CPD didn’t conduct a thorough investigation of the people in Sarah Ketchum’s life. If they had done those things from the beginning, a couple of podcasters would never have been able to help get his case overturned. And we would have a lot more answers now.”
“So now Ted Vreeland is in prison for these murders, after accepting a plea deal from the state. But, considering the extreme violence of Colin’s attack on you, there have been a lot of questions from the public about whether or not he was actually responsible for Sarah Ketchum’s murder. So what exactly are we supposed to believe here?” the journalist asks. He’s having fun now, at my expense. Showing me the mess I’ve made. “Do you think Colin McCarty and Ted Vreeland worked together to kill Sarah Ketchum and cover up their crime?”
It’s a fine line I’m treading here, and I know it. It’s the dance I’ve been doing since Colin attacked me, trying to balance my desire to see Ted released from prison and my need to keep Ava’s involvement in the case a secret. Because there are those in the CPD who still suspect me of luring Colin to my apartment to kill him. And if I’m going to move the right pieces into place—if I’m ever going to get Ted exonerated—I can’t telegraph my plans for every true-crime junkie in the country. And, more important, I can’t telegraph them for Ava.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “What I do know is that when Colin was convicted of Sarah Ketchum’s murder, he was forced into a system that has no interest in rehabilitation and that thrives on violence. And I got so wrapped up in the case that I wasn’t looking at it objectively anymore. Just because Colin was unjustly imprisoned, and then released, doesn’t mean that he wasn’t dangerous. But because I was invested in the hidden evidence in his case, because I’d gotten to know his family, I wasn’t able to see the ways in which the prison system had amplified his potential for violent behavior.”
“And Ted Vreeland?” the reporter asks. “You know, there’s a lot of noise online from people who think he was set up. A lot of people think it was one big conspiracy, to stop the land deal Ted was negotiating at the time, for the old riverfront property on the North Side.”
“I’ve heard those rumors,” I reply. “But I’m not exactly convinced that members of Chicago’s city council conspired to put Ted behind bars because of a real estate negotiation. It seems like a stretch.”
It’s lunacy, actually. But people have hit on the right aspects of the case—the fact that Ted Vreeland wasn’t ever photographed in his Tesla
at the time of Dylan’s murder, that someone had the foresight to wipe the Tesla down for fingerprints but didn’t clean the trunk where Dylan’s body had been. That there was no other evidence of Ted in Sarah’s apartment—no fingerprints, no witnesses who saw him entering or leaving, no DNA anywhere else—aside from the hair in the shower drain. Ted appeared to be meticulous in all the wrong ways, if he was trying to hide his crimes. Ways that seemed to point all the evidence conveniently back at him. The online conspiracy theorists are just looking in the wrong place for the person who set him up.
“So what else?” he asks. “How else is life different for you now?”
What isn’t different? I think. Eric’s second marriage was featured in Chicago magazine, its story too perfect not to print. I recognized the name of his new wife right away, the younger sister of Eric’s lost childhood sweetheart. They reconnected, after his failed first marriage, over the shared grief they still had for her sister. Summer, his new wife, is four years his junior and claims to have been resoundingly ignored by the boys next door, including Eric, when they were kids. But they were similarly shaped by loss, and when they reconnected at a family Christmas party two years ago, they fell deeply and irrevocably in love with each other. It’s a sweet story, the way that sad stories can sometimes be made sweet, but I wonder if Eric recognizes his own patterns. A girl who lost her sister as a child. A girl always trying to be someone else, the one who was lost. I wonder what Summer can learn from what he tells her of me.
“Well, the documentary series with HBO has been a new experience,” I reply, because Andrea and I just wrapped a ten-week collaboration with a crew of filmmakers, retracing our steps through every detail of the first and second seasons of our podcast. I was reticent about it at first, considering my own colossal missteps in the case, considering how much I’d have to lie. But the director and his crew turned out to be so enthusiastic about casting me and Andrea as the heroes of the piece that it became easy to tell the story as the podcast presented it, violent ending and all.
“But I guess, personally, there isn’t much in my life that looks the same as it did before that Jane Doe showed up in the morgue two years ago,” I continue. “Since then, my marriage ended, and I moved into my own place. I went from bartending at a goth club to being a podcaster and the producer of a documentary series. And I’m in therapy for PTSD. I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself.”
“As a result of Colin McCarty attacking you?” he asks, looking intrigued.
“Among other things.”
“And what about Colin’s sister, Ava?” the reporter asks. “Are you still in contact with her?”
“No,” I reply, and try to keep my face even. Impassive. “Last I heard she’d moved away from Chicago. I heard she was overseas, working with Doctors Without Borders, I think.”
I sleep a bit easier at night, knowing Ava is thousands of miles away. Colin, on the other hand, is still closer than I’d prefer, hooked to a ventilator in an extended-care facility in Oak Park. One of the best—and most expensive—facilities in the state, from what I read online. Courtesy of Ava, likely funded by the sale of that beautiful condo in Wicker Park. I know exactly what she’s doing, tearing her life down, running toward whatever feels alien and penitent enough. I’ve done the same myself.
I visited Colin only once, posing as a cousin from out of state. I couldn’t even enter the room; the feel of his hands on my throat was still so close, so ready to cut off my airway with panic. How ironic, I said to my new therapist, that my own panic does the job just as well as his hands did that night. Keeping me from breathing. It happens too often now, leaving me huddled against walls, in corners, at the mouths of alleys, breathing fast, my hands cupped in front of my face. My body seems to not want me to forget this lesson too quickly.
I watched Colin from the doorway, where he lay in that bed, his body gray and thin and probably stinking, if I got any closer. It seemed a pointless existence to me, lying there unconscious because Ava—for all the steel in her spine, for all her playing god—could not bring herself to let him go. A fitting punishment, maybe, for the lives he ruined. I knew Ava would never take him off life support. She would never be the one to stamp out the possibility that he might one day open his eyes, begin breathing again on his own. I understand her better than anyone, though. It was the same rush of relief I felt when the Jane Doe turned out not to be Maggie. The possibility of getting them back, our lost siblings, is too intoxicating to curtail.
So I watched Colin, looking for any sign that he might still be there, that machine of a brain working away behind his eyelids. Knitting synapses back together, neurons sparking, beginning to dream. Because it is the thing I fear most now, that Colin McCarty might one day wake up.
“And what’s next?” the journalist asks, though his eyes have taken on a somewhat vacant sheen, as if he understands he won’t be gaining a revelatory insight into my case from this discussion.
“Season three,” I reply.
“So you have something in the works already?” he asks, perking up slightly.
“We’re mulling some options.”
“About Maggie? Do you ever think you’ll revisit your sister’s case?”
Maggie. I think of the message I got on my phone the previous week, the notification that popped up on Instagram. A DM from a tattoo artist in Ukrainian Village. Sorry, haven’t checked this account in ages. I remember that tat. What do you want to know?
It took me a moment, rereading my original message, to remember what I’d asked the man. It was about a tattoo of a blue lizard he’d posted, years ago now. I’d sent the message that first night at Mathilde’s, killing time as Carey poured me drinks, when I should have been out running.
Is this the girl who got it? I wrote back, attaching a photo of Maggie at sixteen, and then the artificially aged photo the cops have cooked up. The photo that looks unbearably similar to my own reflection. It took a moment, but then he typed a response.
Definitely could be, the tattoo artist replied. Got a copy of her ID. Looks similar.
The sort of answer that, a year ago, would have sent me tearing across the city to this man’s tattoo parlor, demanding the records of this particular client. Maggie. She might be here. She might be in Chicago.
But then I remembered. If she was here, and she was free to walk into a tattoo parlor and request a replica of her favorite childhood toy—a nostalgia piece about the family she abandoned and the life she left behind—then she also must know I’m here. My photo has been printed in every major newspaper. I am a cautionary tale, the amateur journalist who got more than she bargained for. Who got too close to her subject, lost her objectivity, and was almost killed for it. So I know that if Maggie is out there, she doesn’t want to be found. Not by me. Not by anyone.
And anyway, I’ve had my fill of chasing ghosts.
“I think there are plenty of other girls out there who we should try to find.” Even as I say it, I catch my reflection in the café’s window and nearly have to look twice. Because now, with my hair a bit longer and darkened with dye, from across the room, I barely recognize myself. Sometimes, when I catch a glimpse of my reflection from far away, I can almost mistake myself for Ava.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply indebted to my editors, Sally Kim and Gaby Mongelli, for their brilliant insights and steadfast support throughout this process. Working with you has been both a pleasure and an honor. I’m also so grateful for the thoughtful and creative work of the copyediting and production teams at Putnam. Every step in this process has been a true joy, thanks to you. Thank you to my wonderful agent, Richard Abate, as well as Martha Stevens and Rachel Kim at 3Arts Entertainment. I couldn’t ask for a better group of advocates for this book.
To Matthew Rickart, I could not have done this without you. Your ideas shaped what this novel became, and I will always be grateful for your generosity. Thank you
for helping me find a good story—I hope I’ve told it well—and for being such an incredible friend. To Susan Curry, for keeping me upright, keeping me laughing, for the gift of your friendship, for your faith and your counsel, and for being my ideal reader—the person I will always strive hardest to impress. To Rowan Beaird, for your thoughtful feedback and for constantly inspiring me with your luminous talent. To Rebecca Johns Trissler for continuing to be such a profound source of encouragement, advocacy, and support. To Michelle Falkoff, Judy Smith, Dan Stolar, Brandon Trissler, and Beth Wetmore, for reading my work and for sharing yours. It is a gift, truly. To Amy Holt and Brett Boham, for the podcasting expertise, and especially to Amy, for being the only person in the world I could stand for a week alone in the Oregon woods. To my uncle, John Diskin, for generously allowing me to pepper you with questions about police procedure, and helping me understand the rules before I so flagrantly broke them. To my incredible friends and wonderful professors at the University of California, Riverside; the two years I spent among you were the most challenging and rewarding of my life. It was a privilege.
To Ashley Weinberg Grebe and Vanessa Bordo Flannes, for being my sisters, my biggest cheerleaders, and my safety net. To my brother, Christopher, for knowing me better than anyone else and talking me through all of it. And finally, to my parents. Your love and support have made all the difference in my life. I’m so lucky to be your daughter.
DISCUSSION GUIDE
1. Twenty years later, Marti is still haunted by her sister’s disappearance, both hopeful and afraid of uncovering the truth. Why do you think she is unable to move forward? Do you have any thoughts on what might have happened to Maggie?
2. Marti and Andrea’s podcast plays a pivotal role in The Lost Girls. Are you a fan of true crime podcasts? Do you think their popularity and the media surrounding them have any real impact on the actual investigations, especially cold cases like Maggie’s?
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