“To use your analogy, God wired Maggie to be all about music,” David told her. “You take a break in a conversation, and she’s jotting a song lyric or two in the margin of the newspaper she’s reading. She can’t help herself. Her mind thinks up music all the time. Create a pause point, create stillness, and her mind comes alive with rich refrains. It’s like a tide of music flows in any time there’s an opening. Who’s to say that the producing of ideas, the what-ifs that so suit your job, aren’t also wired into how your mind works? You may never shut it off, Evie. When there’s a puzzle to chew on, your mind keeps turning it over and generating solutions until it’s resolved.”
“You don’t do that.”
David shrugged. “I work cases differently. I’m looking someone in the eye, listening to what is said, watching for the lie. I’m intense but in a different way. I give the work my focus and a lot of hours, but it’s not doing what you describe as your process. To each his own. We both get the job done.”
“How to have a life when that’s how I work, that’s the mystery,” Evie said. “When you’re having a meal together with Maggie, she’s humming a few bars and asking what you think, ‘Do you like this song fragment?’ With me, I’m likely thinking, ‘I bet he gutted the guy with a fishing knife, and he’s probably still got the knife in his tackle box’—not exactly the kind of remark you can share across the table. And when my mind is there—on a murder or something worse—it’s hard to shift back to pleasantries about the blueberry muffins being extra good this morning.”
David smiled. “Point taken.” He pulled open the door to the coffee shop. “Job collisions and how your mind works aside, do you want to get married?”
“That seems to depend on when you ask, which is part of this problem—I honestly don’t know.”
He ordered two hot chocolates with extra whipped cream. They started the walk back, Evie’s hands wrapped snugly around the warm cup.
“You really do need to make one of your two-column lists,” David advised. Evie simply nodded, not sure what she’d even put on one.
They walked a minute in silence.
“An observation, Evie? If you wanted to get married, you’d be saying yes to Rob. You haven’t told me one concern yet about him—his character, his job, his history—just that his parents don’t see you as the right one for him. It’s a good sign when a guy makes his own choice rather than simply echoing his parents. Given he loves you, he’s probably the right guy.”
Evie nodded. “The question really is, do I love him?”
“I’d say that’s the question,” David agreed.
“I’m probably overthinking it.”
“I’ll make a guess you tend to do that,” David replied lightly.
Evie smiled. “How did you know you were in love with Maggie?”
“Everything in me said I loved her—emotions, heart, dreams. She was it.”
“You’re not going to be much help.”
David laughed. “Can you see yourself spending a lifetime together?”
“Yes.”
“Do you miss not seeing him?”
“It’s more like . . . like I would deeply feel the void if he were not around to be with. But we’re not everyday close, like some dating couples are. You probably talk to Maggie more than I do Rob.”
“Make your lists, Evie,” he said around a chuckle. “There’s a reason probably unrelated to Rob that has you shying away from marriage. ‘Single’ isn’t the answer unless it’s actually what you want for yourself. And you really don’t strike me as one who wants to spend her life on her own. Your voice softens when you talk about him.”
“Ann has some reservations about him being the right guy for me.”
“She knows you both well?”
“She knows me as well as anyone. Rob she’s met a few times.”
“Then listen to her concerns, weigh them on your list. And quit grimacing over the idea of a list—it’s just a tool, forcing you to think clearly on paper, a way to dig down to the root of a matter that has you so uncertain.”
“It’s the very fact I need to make one that has me grimacing. You didn’t have this kind of stress when you thought of a future with Maggie.”
“Sometimes love comes easily, and sometimes it’s the most challenging decision a person ever makes. That reality doesn’t make one way right and the other wrong, it just is. The love underlying marriage is more than an emotion, more than a set of facts adding up to a decision. It’s the choice that this is the person I’m going to stay with for the rest of my life. It’s something you have to make with your head and your heart, Evie. It’s a decision with consequences. More time can be good and helpful, adding new information. But when it’s time to make the decision, you need to make it. Avoiding that step doesn’t get you anywhere productive.”
“You make it sound so . . . well, so easy, David.”
He opened the door to their temporary offices. “Not easy. Just necessary. Life is mostly captured in the decisions we make, the choices, the pivots. You’re at one of those points. Accept it, Evie. When it’s time to decide, you pray, you think, you listen to your mind and heart, and then you make the decision.”
Evie found herself reviewing once more the known facts of her case as she drove back to the hotel. Like an oyster forming a pearl, it had become an irritant she couldn’t ignore. She wasn’t chasing a ghost. Someone had made Jenna disappear. She wished she could see him more clearly—the outline of a person would make it easier to fit a name to the shape.
“I don’t think it’s my guy’s first time,” she whispered to herself. She needed to dig into similar events tomorrow—the last remaining line of inquiry she hadn’t actively pursued yet, beyond asking the FBI to generate data.
The missing driver’s license might be a trophy that could cross between cases. Choosing someone at a concert, that might be a pattern. The clean abduction without witnesses might point to method. The better she understood Jenna’s situation, the easier it would be to spot related cases.
The car’s radio shifted to a Triple M song, and Maggie’s clear, strong voice caught her attention. She focused on listening to enjoy the song. Knowing Maggie’s history with David, Evie understood now the deep well of emotion Maggie drew from to put into her songs. She had a lot to offer people who were also waiting for love in their lives.
“God, if Maggie can accept that Jesus loves her, she’s going to find herself in an ocean of love, not only married to David, but enjoying a love relationship with Jesus forever,” Evie whispered.
She wished she knew how to solve truly hard problems like Maggie’s questions about God. How did you explain that when God raised Jesus from the dead, it was the sign Jesus was in fact His son and savior of the world? It was the proof Jesus was who He said He was, that He had the authority on earth to forgive men’s sins as He claimed and could give eternal life to everyone who called on Him. The call of Jesus was so simple—“Follow me”—and yet it took a step of faith to say yes and trust that He would be there to meet you. If Maggie could take that step, she’d find that Jesus was indeed there. But no one could do it for her. Evie could only imagine how deep the ache was in David’s heart as he yearned and prayed for Maggie to believe.
“God, would you help Maggie find you this year? Please help somebody describe you so clearly that she can see your outline in their words, realize you are really there, and accept you. Please plant that seed of faith in her heart. I know how richly you love her. This is something you are eager to accomplish. Let it all come together this year, however it needs to unfold. That would be such a relief to David, and a blessing to Maggie. Thanks, Dad.”
She was so relieved God understood people better than she did. Maggie’s questions came from a lifetime of experiences, and somewhere in that history was the obstacle that needed to be cleared away. There was a way to reach faith in God. Evie wished for both David and Maggie’s sake that their journey moved forward in the next months.
As she turned toward the hotel, her thoughts drifted back to the questions she wanted to ask Jenna’s boyfriend during their conversation. She would be speaking with him in about thirty-five minutes.
At two a.m., Evie draped her arms around a pillow and considered getting up to watch an old movie. If her brain didn’t shut off soon, she was going to have to do something. She’d finished both books she had brought with her, a nice break, but then reality had returned. This case had theories churning around like a storm-tossed sea.
The interview with Jenna’s boyfriend had been a spectacular bust. She’d thought Robin had been hard to shepherd through an interview. Steve . . . he was willing, even eager, to talk about Jenna, but Evie had vastly underestimated the crosscurrents and undertow within him.
Over the last nine years Steve had pushed hard to solve what had happened to Jenna. He was now such a walking conglomerate of mashed-together interviews he’d had with others, that whatever he had known at the time was layered over and intermingled with hundreds of conversations he’d had with Jenna’s friends and neighbors after her disappearance. Whatever original facts he had for investigators were only going to be found in the notes from his initial conversations with cops.
That realization had buried her hopes that their conversation would be useful, but it had taught her something she’d need to better grasp as she worked numerous cold cases, and so the time spent had been helpful in that respect.
She’d seen three major facets to Steve tonight. He was a guy still grieving the loss of someone he’d loved. He was still a reporter—sports at the time—but Jenna’s disappearance had moved him into news reporting where he still remained, and he asked probing questions of his own. Finally, he was still very much the wary, careful, non-named suspect, the boyfriend cops had repeatedly talked to in informal and formal interviews, trying to break his alibi or show him as somehow complicit in Jenna’s disappearance. This case was history, but for Steve it was very much part of his personal history, his life story, with pain for his loss, and pain at the question marks still hanging over him.
She felt sincerely sorry for the man. Like Jenna’s parents, Steve needed an answer to be able to move on with his life. The only thing the interview had really done was confirm to her that Steve hadn’t been involved in whatever crime this was. Jenna’s disappearance had haunted him and torn up his life in ways it wouldn’t have done had he been responsible for the crime. If he were guilty, he’d simply have been relieved to have gotten away with it and have distanced himself from the event.
What happened to you, Jenna?
Her brain seemed stuck in an aimlessly spinning solve-it gear. She had facts, theories, but nothing had jelled into substance. That had to shift. She’d start looking at specific names tomorrow, Evie decided, dig out someone to focus on and see what she could find. It had to be better than these endless middle-of-the-night cogitations.
Evie pushed back the covers. She’d brought Jenna’s laptop with her to the hotel but hadn’t yet gotten to it. She would see what Jenna had been working on before she disappeared, who she’d been talking with via email, what websites she’d been visiting.
Evie turned on the table lamp, set up the laptop, powered it on. “God, at this time of night, what’s on my mind isn’t elaborate—where did this crime happen? Who was involved? What thread will lead to something useful? All those useful five W’s and an H are just hanging out there. Help me make progress on this. Thanks.” It wasn’t an elaborate prayer, but it was better than sitting here working alone in the middle of the night. God was up. She might as well talk with Him.
She yawned as she brought up Jenna’s email account. The inbox had 816 messages. Evie laughed softly. “Why don’t you read these for me, God, and tell me which handful I should care about?”
She started scanning subject lines. An hour of this should either put her to sleep or give her something useful. Right now she’d take either outcome as progress.
Nine
David had texted that he’d pick up breakfast, so Evie didn’t stop on the way into the office Friday morning.
He was taking off his coat as she entered the office suite, so she must have been following him in traffic. “Not as cold out there today,” he commented.
She laughed. The digital sign at the bank she’d passed had said twelve degrees. “I’m glad my car’s battery is hearty or I’d have been stranded many times over by now. We need March and that first thaw.” She dumped her coat and gloves onto her office chair. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“My pleasure.”
She found plates and napkins as he unpacked the sack. “How did your conversations go last night?” she asked.
“Surprisingly successful. The fourth name on my list is Grant Quince. Saul proved the man stole money from a business partnership to support a drug habit, and he ended up doing four years. He’s a bad liar, and the month before Saul disappeared, Grant got two parking tickets on the same street where Saul’s office was located. There’s also three assault charges on his record.”
Evie nodded as she bit into her breakfast sandwich. “That sounds very promising.”
“He says he doesn’t remember where he was when Saul went missing, but I could practically smell the fear on him. It could be the drugs—he’s clearly using again by the look of him—but it could be what he knows.”
David shared his hash browns with her. Evie appreciated the salt and the crunch and tried to remember they weren’t good for her even as they tasted wonderful.
“Number six on my list—Bradley Vine—was caught in an affair, lost his marriage, his reputation, and with it most of his business clients. I found out through his ex-wife that he’d hired a PI to investigate Saul, hoping to get him arrested for trespassing, picking a lock, something that would get his license pulled, cause him some grief in return.”
“Not as promising, but more creatively interesting.”
“The guy he hired is more thug than investigator, has a history of using his fists to get information.”
“Now I’m liking that lead more.”
“I’m still looking to find the guy he hired—Vincent Lane—so I can have a conversation about what he might have done. I could see a confrontation going too far, and whoops, Saul’s dead.
“Thomas Ford at number twelve was suspected of selling backroom inventory from the electronics store where he worked. Saul was hired to figure out what was going on. When Thomas realized he was being tailed, he backed up and smashed into Saul’s car with his, tried to pull Saul and his camera out of the car during the altercation that followed, ended up doing three years for possession of stolen goods found in his apartment. He got out of jail, beat up the owner who had hired Saul to follow him, did another year in jail for that. Next time he gets out of jail, Saul’s car goes up in flames one night. No arrest on that car arson, but the timeline clicks.”
“Why isn’t he your lead suspect?” Evie wondered.
“Tom didn’t lie when I interviewed him. Admitted what he did, drew the line at what he didn’t. Cops interviewed him after Saul disappeared. His alibi at the time was a short-term job hauling furniture with a friend in Wisconsin. It’s got major holes, as it’s only a couple hours’ drive back here, but cops confirmed he was in Wisconsin. Tom stays on my list, but I tend to believe him when he said payback was payback, and he’s not one to murder a guy.”
“You did have a good night,” she said after a sip of orange juice.
“It felt like progress, something I sorely need.” David finished his first egg sandwich and wadded up the wrapper. “My plan for today is to track down more names on that list, have more conversations, see what other rocks I can turn over.” He motioned with his second breakfast sandwich. “How’s your day shaping up?”
“Ann and I are going to spend most of it doing interviews of people on my whiteboard list. The background reports I’m getting confirm we have the right names to consider.”
David nodded. “A productive day is ahe
ad for both of us.” He gestured once more with his sandwich. “If you happen to see a for-sale sign on a decent house, jot down the address. I’m officially house hunting.”
“Sure. Looking for anything in particular?”
“Ranch-style, two-car garage, a little grass, not on a major street. I can fix it up. So long as the neighborhood is low crime, I’m good. Maggie will be living in Barrington. I figure if I split the distance between the airport and the tollway, I’ll have the shortest commute I can arrange between my personal and work lives.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” Evie assured him. She’d never actually owned a house, always rented, so it would be interesting to watch David settle in someplace.
After breakfast, David headed to the conference room while Evie turned her attention to Jenna’s files. Cops had considered some similar cases. She found those reports, went online to see their current status. Three of the five were still open. She looked deeper at the two solved ones, the arrests made. The individuals involved didn’t seem like possibles for Jenna’s disappearance. Evie cleared a section of the whiteboard and put up photos from the three still-open cases.
She didn’t know what pieces truly mattered—attending a concert, the missing driver’s license, no sign of struggle in the apartment, the body not found, Jenna’s appearance and personality, or something else entirely. The FBI report on missing women was in her inbox. She opened it and found it ran sixty-two pages. A lot of college girls had gone missing over the twelve years Evie had asked for.
She had about thirty minutes before Ann would join her. She began to read the five-line abstracts for each entry. She found a case in Indiana that sounded like a match, pulled up the file to read the summary, added another photo to the board. Missing college girls . . . Jenna Greenhill was one of a larger subset of crimes.
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