The Last Friend

by Harvey Church

  Yes, that excursion would come at a cost of $10,000. Yes, he knew that paying her only opened the door for future extortion. And he also realized that, even if Monica managed to take him out to some remote, unmarked grave site, he could be putting himself, and his own life, at risk.

  But, watching the ceiling above his bed with the kind of stare that belonged to a first-time moviegoer, Donovan knew he couldn’t risk not complying with Monica’s request. He had to try everything. If it meant wasting $10,000 for a chance at finding Elizabeth’s remains, then he had to try. He’d spent more on worse opportunities, hadn’t he?

  And so Donovan accepted that he would get to see Elizabeth’s grave. He wondered where someone sick enough to abduct a nine-year-old might bury a body once he was done torturing, molesting, and killing that child. If Monica’s stories were any indication, that sicko had taken many young girls, which meant he had a hell of a lot of bodies to dispose of. Maybe he dumped them in a well. Or buried them in a forgotten ditch down some abandoned logging road in Wisconsin, or even Minnesota.

  Although it seemed marginally morbid, Donovan had tried to envision what he would find at the site, wherever it might be. Dead since before Amelia’s suicide, Elizabeth had been gone for some time. Were there old grave markers, covered in moss and growth? Or what else could identify the site as Elizabeth’s grave and not, say, one of the many other tortured young girls? How would he know, for certain, that it was his daughter’s grave site?

  Tearing the sheets away, Donovan let his legs fall out of bed and he sat straight. Through the tiny opening in the bedroom window’s curtains, the light from the streetlamp poured into the dark. A car drove past, headed to the apartment buildings at the end of North Williamson. Nothing unusual for a Tuesday night in Oak Park.

  At last, Donovan accepted that he wouldn’t find sleep so easily tonight. Rising out of his bed, he found a pair of pants and a shirt before going downstairs, finding his car keys, and leaving for the garage. But as he crossed through the backyard, he felt a draft and had to reach down and zip up his pants.

  Easing into the Impala, Donovan decided to make another trip to Roseland now that it was so late that even one of Chicago’s scariest neighborhoods was likely asleep.

  * * *

  Stopping across the street from the apartment building where Monica lived, Donovan watched the shadows for a moment before killing the engine. He’d seen a few people on the busier arterial street but a lot fewer on this quieter residential street. Before he stepped out of the car, he noticed a drunk, or worse, couple wandering toward him, their path crooked and their arms around each other’s shoulders, which was probably contributing to the problem.

  When the couple passed, they wished him a good night and left the heavy odor of excessive alcohol in their wake.

  Donovan crossed the street once the couple was safely behind him. He walked along the walkway, passing the sign that advertised a “suite” for rent, and stepped up to the front door. He gave it a gentle tug and was surprised when it swung open so easily, even though he could tell from the latch that it operated on a buzzer system.

  Inspecting the main door, he noticed that someone had jammed a Popsicle stick into the latch so that it wouldn’t lock. In the interest of keeping the apartment’s residents safe tonight, Donovan picked at the splintered wood and freed the latch so that the door locked when he released it.

  Next, he walked to the mailboxes that occupied the one wall in the lobby. He knew Monica Russell lived on the third floor, but none of the mailboxes had that last name on its label. He saw Howell in apartment 302, and Griffin in 301. There were two other apartments on the third floor; 303, which was assigned to Dormeo, and 304 to Fletcher.

  After committing those names and numbers to memory, Donovan climbed the stairs to the third floor. The apartments facing the street were 303 and 304. On the right was Fletcher, the apartment where Monica Russell lived with a man whose skull had a roaring lion inked into its side. Stepping up to the door to 304, Donovan angled his ear and listened.

  He heard the television, one of the late-night talk shows. Jimmy Fallon? He wasn’t sure. He wanted to hear a voice, an argument like the one he’d witnessed yesterday. But Mr. Lion Fletcher and Monica Russell made for a quiet couple tonight.

  Just as he started to pull away from the door, Donovan heard the rumblings of a conversation. He eased his face even closer, leaving less than an inch between the cartilage of his ear and the wood surface of the door. Fletcher was saying something about finding his car keys and being late, and then Donovan heard the voice he’d been listening to since Sunday say something about his inability to keep track of his own ass if it weren’t attached.

  Somewhere on the second or first floor, a door opened and he heard the sounds of footsteps. The main entrance opened and crashed shut, and then it was silent again, except for the bickering inside apartment 304.

  As the voices came closer to the door, Donovan heard that Fletcher had found his keys and was leaving. He told Monica that if she happened to move out before he got home, so be it; he wished her a happy life and good riddance, with a few insulting expletives exchanged between the two of them.

  That was when Donovan stepped away from the door entirely and wandered deeper into the hallway, coming closer to unit 301. He kept his attention aimed at his feet as Fletcher’s apartment door opened and the man with the lion tattooed on his skull stepped into the hall. Donovan walked toward him as Fletcher used a key to engage the lock. If Fletcher looked up, it would appear that Donovan was coming from Howell’s unit. Or Griffin’s.

  “Great night,” Fletcher growled, following Donovan down the stairs.

  “You bet.”

  “Hey, you don’t look like you’re from around these parts,” Fletcher said as they reached the second floor and turned to start down the stairwell to the first.

  “Nah, I was visiting . . .” Donovan glanced over his shoulder at the doors for apartments 301 and 302 and made a fumbling motion as he thought back to the names he’d seen on the mailboxes downstairs. With a chiseled man—or was he more psychopath than man?—on his heels as they descended to the main floor, quick thinking didn’t come so easily to Donovan.

  “Miss Howell,” he blurted at last. “I was visiting Miss Howell.”

  “Uh-huh.” Fletcher chuckled. Donovan imagined that Fletcher was shaking his head with a smart-ass smirk on his face. “You know, mister, Daisy’s got a new boyfriend every other week. Likes the middle-aged ones, too.”

  “It’s not like that,” Donovan said. If his mouth hadn’t been dry, he would have choked on his own saliva. “Not like that at all.”

  Another chuckle. “That’s what her college prof said, and now look at him.”

  Donovan said nothing, reaching the main floor and hurrying to the door to hold it open for Fletcher. As the larger, younger, stronger, and crazier man stepped past him, their eyes locked. To Donovan, it felt like staring down the barrel of a gun during a game of Russian roulette.

  “If you want someone a little older,” Fletcher said, his breath stale from an earlier beer, “you can head right back upstairs and take my old lady. Right stupid and likes to fuck, even though she’s not that good at it.”

  Gulping, Donovan looked away. “No thanks. It’s really not like that.”

  Fletcher laughed and smacked the side of Donovan’s shoulder before continuing outside and noticing the Popsicle stick on the ground. He picked it up with his thick fingers and showed it to Donovan.

  “That girlfriend of yours has got to stop letting all you guys into the building.” He tossed the stick back onto the grass and hurried down the front walkway to the Mustang parked on the street.

  Careful to not get sick, Donovan placed one foot ahead of the next, crossing the street as Fletcher started the Mustang’s engine. Its bark caused Donovan to jump, but by the time he reached his Impala, the other car was gone, racing toward the traffic light at the end of the street.

  Once he was saf
ely behind the Impala’s wheel, Donovan rested his head back against the driver’s seat, breathing deeply to calm himself down. Coming here had been stupid, he realized. What if Monica had caught him?

  But she hadn’t, he told himself, rolling his head to the side so he could stare out the windshield at the dark, curtainless windows to unit 304. Monica hadn’t caught him. More than that, her crazy boyfriend hadn’t recognized him, which meant he wasn’t part of Monica’s scam to get $10,000 from him.

  And if he wasn’t part of the extortion attempt, then maybe Monica really was in trouble. Maybe Fletcher was the trouble, and in exchange for helping her get away from her wild and unappreciative boyfriend, Monica was going to take him for a walk through a forest, all the while pretending that his daughter’s shallow grave was around the next corner.

  Either way, coming so close to making such a stupid mistake tonight, Donovan felt he had a better appreciation for the reality of his situation. And that reality suggested that Monica was lying when it came to knowing his daughter as well as she claimed to.

  CHAPTER 11

  Back home, Donovan took a shower to wash the smell of fear and sweat off his body. Or maybe it was the smell of the apartment where Monica lived with her tattooed boyfriend, where Daisy Howell entertained older men and got them sent off to jail for doing things with her that they should know not to. Under the spray, he tried not to think about Monica’s motives for wanting or needing $10,000. He also tried not to think about what her true relationship had been with his daughter, but it was impossible to not think about those things.

  Once Amelia had died, Donovan had stopped adulting and interacting with people; he’d lost his daughter, and then her mother. He’d taken a leave of absence from Saint Xavier University where he lectured about the philosophy of love, a subject he’d given up on and abandoned once he’d become acquainted with tragedy. If he happened to get a migraine, he would sleep (the only time he could remain asleep for more than a few hours) until the pain receded, and then it was a Netflix marathon for a couple of days, until the next migraine stole his ability to focus. Rinse and repeat.

  Stepping out of the shower, Donovan decided to get his computer out to do some research. The last time he’d used his computer for anything other than personal banking, he’d lost his wife and spent a night in jail until one of Mike Klein’s colleagues—Agent Ted Marshall, he believed—from the Chicago bureau had shown up to vouch for him and bail him out.

  Donning a fresh pair of crisp pajamas, Donovan wandered into the study, where there was the old queen-size bed he’d once shared with his wife and a desk half buried in paperwork, mostly paid bills. Underneath that paper he located the laptop, which be brought to the surface and opened up. He pressed the power button and watched the IBM logo fill the screen. It took a couple of minutes for Windows to load, followed by the usual warning box that his version of Windows was no longer supported. He wasn’t sure if that was a scam or legitimate, but he clicked the “OK” button anyway and then navigated to the Simon Says icon called Google Chrome to access the internet.

  The one thing that impressed Donovan was just how much information people had managed to cram onto the internet—something that didn’t even have a physical existence or location—in the years since Elizabeth had been abducted. Facebook was just one example of that. In the past, Donovan had used a fake profile to track down some really disgusting and vile people. As late Tuesday night crept into early Wednesday morning, he logged in to that inactive fake account.

  Having been away from the website for so long, he had to answer a few questions to confirm his fake identity. Luckily, it was easily done, and then he was trolling the site as a twenty-five-year-old female. He found his way to one of his daughter’s old friends’ profiles from Oak Park Elementary. The girl had been one Elizabeth’s best friends; she’d lived a couple of streets over, but after Elizabeth’s abduction, her family had moved to Saint Louis of all places. That girl, who was now a woman, had married a handsome man, had a daughter of her own, and, according to the picture at the top of her profile, was either pregnant or severely bloated.

  Chuckling at his own thoughts—nobody gets bloated like that!—Donovan clicked deeper into Marissa Sanderson-Tomlin’s profile. Although a lot had changed since he’d last prowled through Facebook, Donovan found his way to the part of her profile that listed Marissa’s group memberships. One of those groups was Oak Park Elementary, and another was OPE Class of 2006. He decided on the second group.

  Click.

  And voilà, a fairly complete and exhaustive list of students who had attended Oak Park with Marissa and, consequently, his daughter. Grabbing the reading glasses out of the desk’s top drawer, Donovan pressed his face closer to the screen and scrutinized each of the faces in the tiny photographs. Because the IBM laptop’s screen wasn’t exactly HD quality, getting a good look at the images proved challenging.

  Instead, he clicked on the ones that bore any resemblance at all to Monica Russell, regardless of what their names were. Because, if Donovan’s theory was even partially correct, the only way Monica could’ve known such intimate details about his daughter was if she’d truly known her.

  Not in captivity, because that left too many unanswered questions—again, why hadn’t she gone to the police after escaping? How had she escaped in the first place? Why hadn’t anyone else escaped and gone to the police?—but prior to that so-called captivity. And the only time that could’ve been was during Elizabeth’s elementary school days. Therefore, Donovan believed Monica had gone to school with his daughter. Even though he didn’t recognize Monica the same way he’d easily recognized Marissa Sanderson (still the big cheeks and even bigger smile, still the freckles on her forehead, still the curly red hair), fifteen years could mean a lot of physical change as people grew up.

  After going through the profiles of nearly all female students from Elizabeth’s class, Donovan decided to tackle the bigger group, the Oak Park Elementary list, because nobody from the 2006 class list looked familiar. While it meant he would have to sift through all types and ages of students—12,741 in total, according to the members number—he saw no way around it. He wasn’t falling asleep anytime soon anyway.

  Donovan started at the top. He bypassed all the male profiles but clicked on most of the female profiles. Monica could be any of them. And while he tried to work quickly, Donovan was slowed by the sluggishness of the aged IBM technology. By six in the morning, he’d only seen seventy-five profiles.

  And he was yawning.

  But before giving up and turning off the heating-up, whirring laptop, he searched for Monica Russell in the Facebook search box. She was the top result, one of just a handful. In her profile picture, she was wearing her Maple Tree top. Her purple hair wasn’t purple (it was jet black), and she had duck lips.

  Click.

  Shaking his head, Donovan caught himself smiling at the image as the computer took its sweet time. Something he noticed once the profile loaded was the big twelve-year gap in her timeline. She listed herself as a former student of École Privée Renée Levêsque in Lafayette, Louisiana. There weren’t any photos from her youth. She only had sixty-two friends. Her boyfriend’s name was Leo Fletcher, which aroused another smile from Donovan because Leo is Latin for lion. He wondered if Leo knew that, but then decided he wouldn’t bet money on it, not $10,000 worth anyway.

  Yawning again, Donovan realized his waking hours were drawing to an end. At last he shut the IBM down, and once the fan stopped and the screen turned black, he folded the computer and placed it underneath all the paperwork once again. If nothing else, he realized it was time to upgrade.

  CHAPTER 12

  By ten o’clock on Wednesday morning, Donovan gave up. He realized he wasn’t going to achieve any noteworthy amount of sleep, so he tossed the blankets aside and changed out of his pajamas. For the first time in years, he had a to-do list. A small one, but a list nonetheless.

  While his Nespresso brewed in the kitchen, Don
ovan walked through the house and stepped out to the front porch. This particular morning, the newspaper delivery had reached the second of three steps. Glancing across the quiet street to see if anyone could be watching, Donovan bent down and grabbed the rolled-up paper.

  Climbing back up to the porch, he glanced over his shoulder at the street one more time, caught nobody watching him, and then slipped inside. With the Nespresso on one side and the paper open before him at the breakfast bar, Donovan read through the headlines. He also read the first paragraph under each one—he always did that—but only continuing to the next if the story showed signs of promise.

  Ten minutes later, Donovan was climbing into his Impala and driving out to Lincoln Park, a half-hour drive at this time of day with the heavy traffic moving steadily and the radio station playing more music than commercials. By the time he took the North Avenue exit, he’d caught himself whistling for the fourth time.

  At Sheffield, he made a right and entered the parking garage at the North Avenue Collection shopping mall. There was a Starbucks across the street and a Nordstrom Rack next door, but Donovan couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone shopping. That Wednesday would mark something of a first, at least in the past eight years or so.

  As he walked back toward North from the garage, he realized that the Second City branch where an old friend worked was a little farther than he’d expected. In fact, he nearly had to walk all the way to Kingsbury, which was half a city block away.

  That particular Second City branch was located on the ground floor of a converted warehouse or factory. It was squeezed in between a Best Buy and an “upscale” furniture store that advertised $750 sectionals. Upstairs, there were three levels of residential lofts.