by Allen Eskens
Abrams had been a sophomore at the University of Minnesota, living in an apartment with Paula Schmidt, her best friend from high school. The two women had gone out dancing the night that Eleanora disappeared, getting into a club using doctored IDs because they were only twenty years old at the time.
Just before midnight, a camera at the entrance showed a man dressed in a pirate costume escorting a tipsy Eleanora out of the club, his broad-brimmed hat covering his face as he passed. Footage from earlier in the evening caught a glimpse of the man’s face, but it had been at such a distance that all they could ascertain was that the man was Caucasian and had a beard—whether that beard was real or part of the costume, they couldn’t tell.
Paula swore that Eleanora wasn’t the type of girl to wander off like that. She would never just up and leave a club without telling someone. And she wouldn’t go off with a man she had just met. Yet Paula didn’t report Eleanora missing until the next day, just in case she had done one of the very things that Paula swore she wouldn’t do.
The medical examiner didn’t rule the case a homicide at the time because she found no clear evidence of foul play. There had been sexual activity with borderline trauma, but there was no way to know whether the sex had been consensual or not. The lead detective had the foresight to request a screen for date-rape drugs, and they found GHB in her system, levels on the cusp of what could occur naturally in a dead body. The roommate swore that Eleanora—Ellie, as Paula called her—never took liquid ecstasy. Still, the medical examiner concluded that the GHB levels proved nothing definitive.
They found no defensive wounds, no ligature marks, and she was fully dressed. The cause of death was drowning, and the water in her lungs came from the river. Her body had been badly damaged postmortem, which led to the belief that she had gone into the river upstream of St. Anthony Falls. Interviews with friends, classmates, and family found no enemies or suspicious stalking activity. And none of them could identify the man in the pirate costume.
After spending the better part of a day digging through Eleanora’s file, Niki tracked down Paula Schmidt and headed out to the suburbs to re-interview her. On the drive, she got a call from Matty.
“We got the forensics back on Spencer’s computer,” he said. “No search history on Sadie Vauk, the salon—nothing to link him to our victim in any way.”
“Pictures?”
“He took pictures of her at the wedding, but nothing unusual. It wasn’t like he was fixated on her or anything.”
“What about the Bronco? Any idea where it might be?”
“No online payments for a storage unit. Nothing on his phone, either. He didn’t disable the location tracker, and according to the phone data, he’s never stopped at a storage unit.”
“All we know is where his phone’s been, not him. If he’s smart enough to get rid of his router, he’s smart to leave his phone at home.”
“I think we should apply for a second search warrant—specific to the Bronco,” Matty said. “Go back to the house and look for a paper trail. He’s good at keeping things off his computer, but maybe he slipped up and kept a receipt.”
“Can’t hurt.”
“Any luck in St. Paul?”
“Nothing yet, but I’m on my way to meet with a witness. Now that we have a suspect, maybe I can shake something loose by coming at it from a new direction.”
“I’ll get to work on that search warrant.”
“Thanks, Matty. I’ll call if I get anything on my end.”
* * *
Paula Schmidt lived in a blue town house in Eagan, along with one husband, two small children, and three cats. She kept a pleasant home that seemed to hold the exact amount of clutter one would expect with toddlers and pets running around, and she struck Niki as being overly eager to talk.
“Are you reopening the case?” Paula asked as they took their seats at a dining room table.
“I’m looking into some things, but I can’t say that I’m reopening anything just yet. I need to ask you a few questions about the night Eleanora went missing. You knew her pretty well, right?”
“We’d been best friends since seventh grade. I lost a sister that night.”
“In the report it says that you were roommates?”
“At the U of M. We lived in Dinky Town.”
“You went to the club about nine?”
“Right.”
“And you don’t recall seeing the man in the pirate costume that night?”
“I mean, I might have seen him, but the place was packed with people in costumes. I was dancing…and we’d been drinking a little.”
“They showed you the picture from the security camera?”
“It was so blurry, I couldn’t even see his face.”
“Did Eleanora do anything in the week or two prior to her disappearance where…there would have been a photographer involved?”
“A photographer?” Paula looked confused at first, thin lines wrinkling across her forehead. Then she closed her eyes as if to focus on her recollection. “It was a long time ago.”
“Take your time. It’s important.”
“It was Halloween…and before that.…” She opened her eyes. “The party.”
“Party?”
“We were members of Alpha Chi Omega— Give me a second.” Paula jumped from her seat and ran upstairs, coming down a few seconds later holding a picture in a frame. “Our sorority had a costume party that week with Sigma Nu. There was a photographer there.”
Paula handed Niki the picture. It showed two women with their arms across each other’s shoulders. On the left, a younger version of Paula toasted the photographer with a cup of beer. On the right, Eleanora gave a peace sign with her raised hand. She wore the nurse costume that she would wear on the night she died.
“It’s the last picture I had with Ellie. You think the photographer had something to do with…”
“Can I take it out of the frame?”
“Sure.”
Niki pressed the clips aside and pulled off the back of the frame, her breath catching slightly when she saw the stamp. GVS Photography.
“Can I keep this?”
“Anything you want. Does it help?”
Niki carefully lifted the photograph by its edges and slipped it between the pages of her notebook, where she could carry it without contaminating it any further. “Was the photographer who took this picture a man or a woman?”
Paula again closed her eyes as if to transport herself back to the night of the party. “A man, I think—yes, a man.”
“Was he wearing a costume?”
“I don’t…Wait…yeah. I think he wore…a Phantom of the Opera mask.”
“Beard or clean-shaven?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“I barely remember him being a man, so…Who was he?”
Niki had come to that meeting with Gavin’s face, his name, and his lisp in her quiver. Paula had already made it clear that the face was a nonstarter, but maybe the name might ring a bell. “I believe the person who took this picture is named Gavin Spencer. Does that name—”
“Gavin Spencer?” Paula lit up. “Gavin Spencer took that? He went to school with us—with me and Ellie. He…Oh my God…that was Gavin?”
“What?”
“That fucking bastard! That…”
“What?”
“He took Ellie to homecoming. It was horrible. He talks with a bad lisp, right?”
Niki almost broke her composure. “Go on.”
“Ellie felt sorry for the little prick. She was just being nice to him, and he…”
“What happened?”
“Gavin’s mom threw hot coffee on Ellie after the dance. We called the cops and everything. Did he…did he kill Ellie?”
“We don’t know,” Niki said. But that wasn’t true—Niki did know. Unfortunately, the gap between knowing a thing and proving a thing could be as wide as a canyon.
/> Putting Gavin Spencer at a party with Eleanora Abrams the week she was murdered didn’t put him in the club. The Phantom of the Opera wasn’t a pirate, and nothing they’d found in their search of Gavin’s house hinted at a connection. Even with the homecoming story and the photo, Niki was a hundred miles away from probable cause, and even further away from proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But in her heart, she had no doubt—she knew.
“Tell me everything you know about Gavin Spencer.”
Chapter 27
Dr. Roberts worked at the Hennepin County Medical Center, but also had an office in a nearby high-rise built of steel and blue glass, a building Lila used to call the Aquarium. Her mother had driven Lila there for her visits with Dr. Roberts back in that summer when Lila’s gloom had sent her to the hospital.
Gloom—that’s the word her mother, Charlotte, used when talking about Lila’s downfall. “You seem so gloomy,” Charlotte had said. “You need to get some fresh air. Call Sylvie. Maybe catch a movie. That’ll cheer you up.” But Lila could not call Sylvie. They were no longer friends, and explaining why they weren’t friends would have taken more energy than Lila cared to muster. Instead, Lila chose to resolve her gloom with a handful of her mother’s Ambien.
Even after the suicide attempt, Charlotte used words like gloom and doldrums to talk about Lila’s circumstances, avoiding any true conversation. As for the suicide attempt itself, her mother called that the incident, as though not calling it what it was raised doubt as to whether it happened at all. It was the incident that happened back when Lila was in the doldrums.
Lila paused outside of Dr. Roberts’s office, the harsh florescent light in the corridor behind her casting her shadow against the door, a phantom inviting her back into the room where she had shed so many tears. In those months with Dr. Roberts, she had loved him and hated him. He’d guided her through a dark place, opening wounds that she refused to acknowledge. And when she lashed out, he had let her. All of those old feelings—emotions she thought she’d tamped down long ago—found new life and now itched beneath her skin.
And as he had done all those years ago, Dr. Roberts greeted Lila with the smile of an old friend. He hadn’t changed much since she had last seen him. A smallish man with a balding head and thin wire glasses, he liked to walk around his office in his socks, a practice that Lila thought was meant to ease her anxiety—and it had.
“It’s so nice to see you again,” he said. “Please, have a seat.”
His office had a desk in the corner, but Lila had never seen him behind it. Instead, they sat across from each other in leather chairs separated by a mahogany coffee table. A shelf behind the desk held some books, but beyond that, the office had been decorated like a fine parlor. Wood trim, Persian rugs, and oil paintings—abstract pastels hanging on the taupe walls—gave the room a soothing ambience.
Lila and Dr. Roberts took seats in the very chairs they’d sat in eight years ago, as if nothing had changed, but to Lila everything had. She wasn’t the same girl who shook with anger as they cut through the tangle of her past. But then she thought about how she’d seized up at Gavin Spencer’s hearing and felt as if those eight years had never happened.
“I’ve often wondered how things worked out for you,” he said.
“Honestly, life’s pretty good,” she said. “I went to college, like I said I would. And then law school. I’m working at the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. And I’ve been sober now for…” She paused to think back to the date of her suicide attempt—the last time alcohol had passed her lips. “Eight years and forty-three days.”
Roberts received this news with a satisfied smile, which stayed for only a moment before he turned serious and said, “And yet here you are.”
Lila squirmed in her chair, the way she had back then. “It’s just that…something happened, and I think it goes back to the night I was raped.”
Raped. It felt strange to say that word. Her mother would leave the room if ever Lila used it. Even around Joe, Lila had taken to saying things like “the night I was assaulted,” or “the night of the attack.”
Dr. Roberts settled back into his chair, a cue to Lila that she had his full attention.
“I was in court, doing a first appearance—that’s when they bring people in to have their bail set—and this guy came in. I’ve never seen him before—at least, I don’t think so—but when he spoke, I…I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Take your time,” Dr. Roberts said. “Just tell me one detail at a time.”
Lila took a breath and willed her heart to slow down. When she was ready, she said, “I felt a chill flush through me, but it was warm, too, like the way you feel just before you throw up. And I couldn’t talk. I tried, but it was like all the air drained out of my lungs and I couldn’t fill them up again. Then I started shaking. It scared the hell out of me.”
“Had anything like that ever happened before?”
“A few years back, I was driving to my grandmother’s house and saw this car. It was sitting out in the middle of a field and…I don’t know…it tripped something, and I almost passed out. I had the same reaction in court this morning. I thought it might also be a trigger or something.”
“It’s hard to say. With all the work being done in the field of PTSD, we still don’t have a full understanding of how triggers work. The men who assaulted you had left you in a car in a field, so I can see why that car would have triggered you. But the guy in court—is there any chance you’d met him before?”
“There’s nothing in his file to suggest that we ever crossed paths. He wasn’t even in Minnesota at the time of my attack.”
“Was there anything unusual about him—anything that stands out?”
“He had a lisp, a heavy one, but I don’t remember anyone from my past like that.”
Roberts put his hands together, fist in palm, as he considered Lila’s suggestion. “Triggers aren’t necessarily tied to concrete things we remember. Sometimes a trigger could be associated with something deeper in the subconscious.”
“That’s why I wanted to see you. We did that one session with Dr. Eggert when she hypnotized me. I was wondering if I said anything about a guy with a lisp when I was under. I know it’s a long shot.”
Roberts stood, walked to his desk, and retrieved Lila’s file. After returning to his chair, he paged through the papers to find a particular set of notes, pausing to read to himself.
“You talked about a guy named John.” Roberts let the file tip away as he raised his eyes to look at Lila. “That would be your friend’s boyfriend?”
Lila nodded without making eye contact with Dr. Roberts.
“Did you ever resolve things between you and…”
“Sylvie.”
“Right, Sylvie.”
“I tried, but…” Lila trailed off, unable to continue the lie. But was it a lie? On the one-year anniversary of her suicide attempt, Lila drove to Sylvie’s house and sat in the car for almost an hour, trying to build up the courage to knock on her door. In the end, she couldn’t do it. Did that count?
Roberts returned to his notes, cocking his head slightly as something snagged his attention. “There is something here. You mentioned a man…you couldn’t understand him, like he was drunk. You said he slurred.”
Lila leaned in. “He slurred? Did I describe what he looked like?”
“No. You had no memory of his face. Did the police interview anyone with a lisp?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s all I have,” Roberts said, folding the file closed. “There’s nothing more about anyone with a lisp—just that one mention of a slur.”
“If he had a lisp and not a slur, might that explain why I fell apart in court? It could have reminded me?”
“It could, but like I said, there’s a lot we don’t understand about PTSD.”
“The only alternative is that I folded under pressure. I don’t want to believe that’s true.”
“I doubt that’s
the case. You’re stronger than you think. I’ve always felt that about you.”
“Thanks,” Lila said, acknowledging his compliment even as she silently disagreed with him. “I miss our talks.”
“Me too. I thought we were making some important breakthroughs when you ended our sessions.”
Lila thought that she might have misunderstood him. She looked at Dr. Roberts in confusion. “When I ended the sessions?”
“Yes. You had a number of issues that warranted deeper discussion. But it was your right to end the relationship.”
“I didn’t stop our sessions, Dr. Roberts. You told my mom that you didn’t need to see me anymore.”
Dr. Roberts raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, Lila, but that’s not true.” He opened the file again and began to dig. “You wrote me a letter.”
When he found what he was looking for, Dr. Roberts handed Lila a piece of paper with a single typed paragraph. It informed Dr. Roberts that Lila was terminating her therapy. The signature at the bottom came close to being Lila’s—but it wasn’t.
“I…” Lila could find no words. How could this letter even exist?
“I called your house, spoke to your mother. She said that you decided to work with a different therapist. Was that not true?”
So many memories had been lost back then, disappearing into the murky dark of Lila’s denial—her self-loathing—but there had never been another therapist. Lila shook her head slowly as she remembered her mother’s many objections: the cost, the constant driving to appointments, and, of course, the embarrassment. People were talking about it: the rape, the investigation, the suicide—the ugliness that was Lila Nash. Which one had been the final straw that pushed her mother to forge that letter?