Belching from fast food and soda, he brought it to his desk, sat down, and tore open the package. Peering inside first, he eventually dumped the contents onto his desk. Across the desktop blotter spilled a photo ID, a necklace of diamonds and green gemstone, newspaper clippings, and a handwritten letter. The detective slowly inspected the necklace, then stopped when he saw the name on the driver’s license. When he finally got around to reading the newspaper article and letter, he quickly picked up his desk phone and dialed. It was Saturday afternoon and the staff was thin.
“Hey, boss,” the detective said. “Sorry to bother you on a weekend, but I got something you need to see.”
Two hours later, calls had been made, facts had been checked, and at three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, the detectives dropped everything back into the envelope, slipped their arms into suit coats, and headed out of the precinct offices.
CHICAGO
August 1979
TWO DAYS AFTER THE WAREHOUSE BURNED TO THE GROUND, THOMAS Mitchell was gravely concerned. He was inundated with police reports, insurance claims, employees and clients inquiring about being paid, and outstanding jobs waiting for completion. He had anticipated all of it, and knew there was no other way. But the planned commotion was not what had him out of sorts. He’d come home in the early hours of morning after torching his warehouse with the stale smell of whiskey on his breath from his stop at the bar, and had passed out on the couch.
When he woke late Saturday morning, he had a long list of errands to run. He first noticed the unmarked squad car parked across the street that afternoon. When he made a run to the insurance adjustor’s office, he saw the same car in his rearview mirror. He had other places to go, but didn’t dare drag the tail anywhere that was unsafe. When he pulled back into his garage hours later, he walked to the front room and peeled the curtains to the side to see the car back in its spot, parked across the street.
By evening, he started making calls because it was what a concerned husband was supposed to do. He called Catherine Blackwell, and even resorted to calling Angela’s parents. No one had heard from her, which he knew would be the response. But what he wanted was a record of his concern so that if anyone looked, they’d see his desperate attempts to find his wife.
It was nine o’clock at night when he had exhausted his options, and considered that the next logical step would be to call the police. He swallowed hard at the thought. He had taken care of the warehouse; the garage and basement were empty. Despite his precautions, he had a strong sense that things were falling apart, and that he might have to put his final safety effort into place: run.
He had money stashed for that exact reason, but before he had a chance to seriously consider this last option, there was a knock on the front door. He looked around his empty house, then slowly walked to the foyer and opened the door. Two men in suits stood on his porch. The humid summer night layered their foreheads with perspiration.
“Thomas Mitchell?”
“Yes?”
The man pulled a badge from his waist and held it in front of Thomas’s face.
“Chicago Police. We’d like to speak with your wife.”
A grave look came over Thomas’s face, and he tried hard to morph his distress of self-preservation into something that might be mistaken for spousal concern. He cleared his throat.
“I’m afraid I haven’t heard from her all day.”
CHAPTER 20
Chicago, October 27, 2019
THEY WERE STILL SEATED AT CATHERINE BLACKWELL’S KITCHEN TABLE. Catherine had poured herself another coffee. Rory had declined again.
“You see, outside of a standard Google search,” Catherine said, “I’m afraid I don’t make a very good detective. It’s been forty years and I know as much about what happened to Angela now as I did back then. The Facebook page was my effort to include others in my search for Angela, which was why I was so excited to hear from you.”
“I’m not sure I’d be able to help you,” Rory said.
It was a ridiculous statement and Rory knew it as soon as the words floated from her lips. Rory Moore was the perfect person to help Catherine find answers. She reconstructed deaths for a living. She pieced together bits of evidence that had been overlooked by everyone else. She pored through information and found answers where everyone else saw only questions. If Angela Mitchell were alive, Rory was better equipped to find her than anyone else.
“Then why did you contact me?” Catherine asked.
Rory adjusted her glasses. “I heard about the case,” she lied. “It’s been in the news lately, with Thomas Mitchell’s upcoming parole. I was curious. That’s all. I’m sorry to have raised your hopes, but I’m not the one to help you, and . . .”
Rory stopped herself, then spoke again.
“Catherine, I don’t mean to be dismissive. But have you considered that perhaps the reason you’ve found no answers for forty years is because there are no answers to find? Have you considered that Thomas Mitchell actually did kill Angela, as he was charged?”
“Many times, dear. Many, many times over the years. But there’s been one thing that’s always convinced me otherwise. One thing that’s made me sure she’s still alive.”
“What’s that?”
“A couple of years after Angela went missing, a man came poking around. He contacted me to ask questions about Angela. Seemed to know a lot about me and my relationship with Angela.”
“After the trial? This man came around after the conviction?”
“Yes,” Catherine said. From the stack of binders, she pulled a leather-bound folder in front of her and turned the pages. “I recorded everything back then. Oh, where is it?” She turned a few more pages. “Yes. Here it is. On November 23, 1981, I was visited by someone who claimed to be looking into the death of Angela Mitchell.”
Rory paused, working it out in her head.
“If this man came after the trial was over, what was he looking for?”
“He never came right out and said it, but I knew what was happening. He believed Angela was alive, and he was looking for her.”
A flutter went through Rory’s chest. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I refused to speak with him. I knew what was going on, and I wasn’t going to help in any way.”
Rory squinted her eyes. “What was going on?”
“Thomas was looking for Angela. If he could find her, his sentence would be overturned and he’d be a free man, despite the many other women he killed. The women Angela had discovered. The women she became obsessed with. Thomas hired this man to find Angela, I’m sure of it. And ever since that moment, I’ve known she was alive. She’s been hiding for forty years.”
Rory became dizzy. A spinning light-headedness meant to fog her mind, a defense mechanism, perhaps. But her thoughts were clear and she knew the answer to her question before she formed it.
“What was his name?” she asked quickly.
“Who?”
“The man. The man who came asking questions. Do you know his name?”
“Yes, I recorded everything,” Catherine said, looking at the page in front of her. She ran her finger down the print, stopping near the bottom and pausing a moment before looking back at Rory.
“His name was Frank Moore.”
PART II
THE RECONSTRUCTION
CHICAGO
November 1981
FRANK MOORE WAS TWO YEARS REMOVED FROM HIS STINT AT THE PUBLIC defender’s office in Cook County when he signed on at Garrison Ford. The public defender’s gig was a rite of passage for most criminal defense attorneys, a way to rapidly acquire a large number of cases, learn the law, get in front of judges, and endure the spoils of wild courtroom failures. It was a part of every great defender’s coming of age, a painful post–law school education necessary to forge a successful career defending criminals. Frank’s record over the first two years of his career had been good enough to land him a job at Garrison Ford, one of Chicago’s largest a
nd most accomplished criminal defense firms. He joined in the summer of 1979 with grand visions, monumental goals, and a true passion for protecting the rights of those who sought his help. Had someone told Frank Moore back then that he’d spend most of his career running a one-man shop, far from the spotlight of Garrison Ford’s high-profile cases, he’d have never believed them. He was young and hungry and filled with fire. Nothing was going to get in his way. That is, until he was assigned to the case that would change his life forever.
The summer of ’79 had been plagued by the disappearances of six women, and the city was on edge. When the police found their man, Frank’s phone rang. His boss, a partner in the firm, needed his help on a sensitive case. A man named Thomas Mitchell, who had notoriously been dubbed The Thief, had hired Garrison Ford to defend him against the charge of killing his wife. For a high-profile firm, it didn’t get much better. Frank Moore, young and bright and ambitious, would do the scut work of research and briefs. He jumped at the opportunity.
Over the following two years, between the summer of 1979 and the fall of 1981, the case took nasty and insurmountable turns. In the end, Garrison Ford had presented a failed defense of Thomas Mitchell, and The Thief was sentenced to sixty years for the murder of his wife. After the trial, Frank Moore became lead counsel on Thomas Mitchell’s appeals. It was during the appeals process, when Frank met often with his client to discuss strategy, he first started to believe Thomas Mitchell’s wife might be alive.
* * *
“I’ve filed the notice of appeal,” Frank said. “Next I’ll finish my brief and submit it in the next week or ten days.”
“And the brief goes after her?” Thomas Mitchell asked.
They were seated in a private interview room at Stateville Correctional Center, which was reserved for privileged attorney-client meetings. Frank was on one side of the table, and his client—handcuffed and orange jumpsuited—on the other. Frank knew it was possible that someone from the prison was listening to their conversation, but not likely. And he didn’t really care.
“It goes after how the defense obtained the alleged evidence against you. It goes after the judge’s decision to allow that evidence to be presented in court.”
“Good. Go after the judge and go after the evidence, but go after her, too. She was having a nervous breakdown when she did this to me. She was swallowing Valium at three times the rate it had been prescribed. Plus, mentally, she was not all there.”
“We have a lot of ammunition, Thomas. My first brief will be based mostly on the legality of the evidence presented against you, the complete circumstantiality of it all, and the argument that none of it should have been allowed in court. If our initial appeal is denied, and there is a very good chance it will be, then our next appeal will include details about your wife’s mental state when she disappeared. Remember, the appeals process allows us to continue to the federal level through the writ of habeas corpus, if needed. And there’s a lot of work to be done on the state level before we even consider that route. Hopefully, someone in their right mind within the appeals court makes the sound and just decision about this. So I’ll make a strong opening argument in this initial appeal to the state. But we’ll save details about your wife for later, if we need them, including the fact that you were convicted of second-degree murder without the prosecution producing a body.”
“They can’t produce a body, because there is no body. Where are you on that? Any progress?”
Frank gathered some papers and placed them into his bag. Pulled out a different stack and looked at it. “Her parents were a dead end. They hadn’t seen her for many years before she disappeared. Only a few times since she turned eighteen, they told me.”
“Could you read them?” Thomas asked. “You didn’t get a sense that they were lying to you?”
“They weren’t lying.”
“She had to have help. A woman like Angela, she doesn’t just go off on her own. She’d be too scared. Sometimes she couldn’t bring herself to leave the house. Now I’m supposed to believe she up and vanished all on her own. No, someone helped her. Someone is still helping her. Her parents are the most likely ones. Did you tell them you were looking for her?”
“Thomas”—Frank put his elbows on the table and leaned closer to his client—“They were very upset. They believe, like the rest of the country, that Angela is dead. I didn’t tell them who I was or that I thought their daughter was still alive. I made up a story about the possibility of a civil suit.”
“Maybe you should have told them what you’re really after.”
“That’s not the right approach. They believe their daughter is dead, I’m not going to fill them with false hope that she’s alive.”
“It’s not false. She’s alive.”
Frank nodded his head. “But I’m not the one to tell them that. I’ll conduct my search for her the way I think is best.”
“Did you talk with Catherine?”
“Catherine Blackwell, your business partner’s wife. Yes. I visited her a couple of weeks ago. She’s still very distraught at the mention of you or Angela. We didn’t have a fruitful conversation.”
“Do you believe me?”
Frank stared at his client—convicted of killing his wife, accused of killing many more—and paused too long before he answered. “I’m looking for her, aren’t I? If I didn’t believe you, do you think I’d be spending all my time on this? And by the way, I’ve got to start billing for my time.”
“I’ve got money.”
“It’s going to be expensive.”
“I’ll pay you whatever it costs to find her. But I want you to do this quietly. Don’t involve your firm. I’ll pay you separately.”
“I haven’t even told my wife what I’m doing. Do you think I’m about to tell the partners at Garrison Ford? On the record, you and I are working on your appeals. Off the record, you’re retaining my services independently to look into a personal matter, settle your debts, handle your finances, negotiate your way out of the business you still technically co-own, deal with your property, et cetera. I’ll write up the paperwork.”
“What’s next?” The Thief asked.
“I’ll file the notice of appeal this week.”
“No. What next with your search for her?”
“Oh,” Frank said, collecting his papers to leave. “The psychiatric facility where she spent her teen years.”
CHAPTER 21
Chicago, October 28, 2019
LANE PHILLIPS STOKED THE DYING EMBERS AND BROUGHT THE ORANGE glowing logs back to life. He stacked two more splinters of wood on top, watched the flames grow, and sat on the couch, where his laptop was open. Rory was next to him, her own computer on her lap as she typed away. Fall had come quickly, descending on them from the heavens as cold Canadian air swept across the Midwest to send temperatures into the forties. It felt too soon to turn on the heat, so they opted for their first fire of the season.
“So your father was forever tied to this man, and now you are, too?”
“Not forever,” Rory said. “But for at least eighteen months. I’ll represent him at the final hearing, review all the stipulations one more time, and hand him off to his parole officer. The judge ordered me to look after his finances with monthly reports for a year and a half, since he’s got a solid nest egg stashed away, and my father was listed as the financial power of attorney. So I’ll make sure he doesn’t go broke. Then he’s on his own.”
“And why the order to go out to Starved Rock?”
“The judge waived the requirement to live in a halfway house due to his notoriety. He inherited a cabin near Starved Rock in the nineties from an uncle. My father put it in a trust and handed it off to a management company. The property has been a vacation rental for all these years. He’s going to live there, so the judge ordered me to tag along with the social worker and the parole officer to have a look at the place ahead of the release. Make sure it meets all the requirements.”
“I’m goin
g with you,” Lane said.
Rory hadn’t told Lane about her meeting with Catherine Blackwell. She allowed him to believe her nervousness had started with her visit to Stateville Correctional Center. It was a logical conclusion, as compared to the real source of Rory’s distress—that her father had been trying to find Angela Mitchell before he died. And more troubling than the discovery itself was what it was doing to Rory. That walled-off place in her mind had been disturbed, the once-calm waters clouded now with muck and filth. The only way to restore clarity was to figure out what her father had found. The only way to tame those waters back to peace, and to quiet that place in her mind, was to look for Angela herself. To ignore this urge was to stoke the flames of a sickness she had managed to control for many years. She knew the best way to extinguish the impulse was to nurture it, like Aunt Greta had taught her as a child when Rory defused her fanatical impulses by mastering the detailed craft of restoring china dolls. The burning question now, though, was if Rory would be reconstructing the woman’s death, or following the footsteps of a woman who was still very much alive.
“Fine,” Rory said. “Come with me.” She looked up from her laptop and offered a rare glimpse of emotion. “Thanks. I didn’t want to go alone.”
A pang of guilt prickled her neck for keeping her secret from Lane. The man had done nothing more than love her—and all of her flaws—for the better part of a decade. Didn’t he deserve to hear this part of her life? Perhaps so, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. Rory pointed to Lane’s computer, then looked back to her own.
“Let’s go, we’re way behind. What have you got?”
Some Choose Darkness Page 15