by Beverly Long
“But it was different with the Whitmans?” Rena asked.
“Yes. Leah had arrived first and she and Emma were just about to walk out. Then Troy arrived. And Leah got so angry. Said that she’d had to leave work in the middle of an important meeting and that Troy was inconsiderate as usual in not calling her to tell her that he was going to be free to get Emma. It was ugly. They were flinging accusations back and forth. It actually reminded me of how my sister used to fight with her husband. I think that’s why I told her. I shouldn’t have. It was bad enough that I saw it.”
“Nobody else around?” A.L. asked.
“I don’t think so. I think I might have mentioned that Emma is generally one of the last to be picked up. It’s possible that a couple of the teachers might have seen it. I remember that we were having a staff meeting that night. We do that once a quarter. But we didn’t talk about it. It’s very uncomfortable to witness someone fighting like that. I think the saddest part for me is that Emma didn’t seem all that bothered by it. It made me think that she’d heard similar arguments in the past. And she really is a very sweet little girl.”
“You didn’t say anything about this before,” A.L. said.
“If I had any reason to believe that the Whitmans mistreated Emma in any way, I would have said something. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think they both love Emma very much. I’m just not certain how much they love each other.”
A.L. could relate. It had been that way with him and Jacqui. Both had loved Traci fiercely but knew the marriage wasn’t going to make it.
“It’s been more than three days,” Alice said, sounding hopeless. “They’re not going to find her, are they?”
“Nobody is giving up,” A.L. said.
“At some point, we’ll have to, though,” Alice said.
“That point is a long ways away,” A.L. said. “I think we’re done here now.”
Alice stood. “I appreciate everything you’re doing to find out who is responsible for this. I really do. And I’m sorry if I impeded that effort.”
A.L. could almost see the wheels churning in Rena’s head. Is Alice truly sorry? Or is she simply acting contrite but continuing to be less than forthcoming with the whole truth?
“Thank you, Alice,” he said.
When they were back in the car, Rena sighed. Loudly. “Every time I’m ready to be really pissed at her, she claws her way back.”
“Into your heart?” A.L. asked.
“Not my heart. But into some quasi acceptance zone.”
“You accept her explanations?”
“I accept her logic.”
A.L. nodded. “Yeah. Me, too. We need to keep looking. Who haven’t we talked to yet? Let’s go through the list one more time.”
“Can I do that with a cup of coffee in my hand?” Rena asked.
“Christ, Morgan. Do you do everything with a cup of coffee in your hand?”
“Just about. Some things are more awkward, though.”
That got her a quick smile. And he did drive directly to one of her favorite coffee shops. Which was surprisingly busy even though it was early evening. “Guess this proves that lots of people drink coffee at all times of the day,” she said as they stood in line.
A.L. looked around at the relatively young crowd. “Most of these people were having Bloody Marys for breakfast with beer chasers.”
“It is Wisconsin and lots of them are probably students.”
“That reminds me, how is Gabe doing with his classes? Is he happy to be a student again?”
“I think he loves it,” she said. “I heard him say the other day that everybody should go back to school in their forties, that our minds are so much more open to learning.”
A.L. thanked the young man who handed him two coffees. He carried the cups to a small table in the corner. At the next table were two men, both wearing light blue scrubs. He suspected they were from the hospital three blocks east.
“You know, we never actually talked to Kara Wiese’s husband,” he said.
“Right. We did get verification that he was working on Wednesday.”
“We did. But I think I’d feel better if we actually spoke to him,” A.L. said. “If he’s working today, he’d be just finishing up his shift. Want to take a quick run down to the hospital, see if we can get lucky?”
“We desperately need to get lucky,” Rena said. “Emma needs us to get lucky.”
A.L. shoved his chair back, so fast that it scraped the floor and made a noise. “Sometimes you got to make your own luck.”
* * *
Baywood Memorial was a level-two trauma center, an accredited chest pain center and a certified stroke center. All that meant that they could treat almost any emergency from a sore throat to a heart attack or stroke to a gunshot wound. The most serious traumas or any burn victims generally got airlifted to Madison.
There was a marked police vehicle in the lot. Parked and empty. That probably wasn’t unusual. Sometimes there were disruptive people who required a police response. Sometimes, officers accompanied inmates from the county jail.
They entered through the emergency room doors that opened as they approached. There were at least ten people in the waiting area, one with a service dog sitting quietly at his feet.
A.L. and Rena stepped up to the glass window. A.L. suspected it was bulletproof. “We’re looking for Sam Wiese. Is he working tonight?”
“Are you a patient?” she asked, not answering the question.
“No.”
She looked at him as if expecting him to offer up more. When he didn’t, she pointed to the chairs in the lobby. “Have a seat. I’ll see if he’s able to take a break.”
“He must be working,” Rena murmured.
It was almost ten minutes before a man wearing blue scrubs and tennis shoes came through a door from the back. He glanced around the waiting room. A.L. stood up. “Mr. Wiese?”
“Yes.”
A.L. passed him a business card. “Could we maybe step outside for a minute?”
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t sound too concerned. It was hard to rile an emergency department nurse. They’d seen it all.
Once outside, Rena also passed him a card. “Thanks for talking with us. Did we catch you at the end of a shift?”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand across his short hair. “Long day.”
“We’ll try not to keep you long,” A.L. said. “We are the detectives who are investigating the disappearance of Emma Whitman.”
He nodded. “I recognized your names. Kara mentioned it. She’s torn up about this.”
“We understand that you were working this past Wednesday?” Rena said.
“Yeah. I do three or four twelve-hour shifts a week. And I’m going to grad school to be a nurse practitioner.”
“Had you ever met the missing child, Emma Whitman?”
“No. I’ve never been to Kara’s work.”
“So you don’t know anyone from there?”
“I know Claire Potter. She’s been at the house a couple times.”
“She and Kara are friends?”
“Yeah. She’s cool.”
That reminded A.L. that it had been Claire Potter who had originally mentioned that Kara had been interested in buying a house. Kara had later said that she was talking to the bank about refinancing.
“With working and going to school, that doesn’t leave time for much of anything else,” A.L. said.
“Not really.”
“Kara mentioned that you were recently looking at refinancing your house but decided not to pursue it. That can be a pretty time-consuming process,” A.L. said.
Sam shook his head. “We’re not refinancing.” He didn’t sound concerned. Probably just thought A.L. had his facts mixed up.
“Really? I thought for sure that it was Kara
who’d mentioned that. But we have talked to a lot of people.”
“Yeah. Not us. We just bought our house a couple years ago when we got married. We got a really good rate. We’d be fools to refinance so soon.”
“Okay.” A.L. looked at Rena.
She smiled at Sam. “Thanks for your time. Good night.”
Once they were back in their car, Rena turned to A.L. “What are the chances that Kara was pursuing a refinance without her husband’s knowledge?”
“Possible but not likely. Couples talk about things like that. Maybe one person does all the work to gather the documents but it’s with the other person’s knowledge.”
“Agree. What’s the likelihood that Sam is going to tell Kara that we came to see him tonight?”
“Pretty high. He knew our names. Maybe Kara had warned him that we might want to talk to him. He’ll tell her we came to his work. She’ll want to know what we asked him and he’ll tell her about the refinancing questions.”
“I think so, too. So she’s going to know that we now have doubts about what she told us.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in silence, both pondering what the next best step would be.
“Did you see the yellow ribbons?” Rena asked.
Up and down the main street around the trees. They’d gone up this morning. “Yeah.”
More silence.
“You know who I want to talk to?” Rena said.
“Claire Potter,” he said.
“How did you know?”
“She’s the right one.”
“Okay. Tonight?” Rena asked.
“No time like the present.” He didn’t need to add that tomorrow was Sunday and it would be four days since Emma had been seen.
It was past eight when they arrived at Claire’s door, getting dark. Lights were on in the back of her house. They rang the bell.
Then A.L.’s cell phone rang. “McKittridge,” he answered.
“Are you at my door?”
He recognized her voice. “Yes, Claire. It’s me and Detective Morgan. Can we have just a few minutes of your time?”
“Sure. Hang on.” Then she disconnected. In fifteen seconds, the door was opening. She smiled at them. “I thought it was you but I scratched one of my contacts and so my vision in that eye isn’t good. I didn’t want to open the door to a stranger.”
“Good thinking to call first,” A.L. said.
“A week ago I might not have,” she said. “But this whole thing with Emma has me second-guessing everything. How the hell does a five-year-old just disappear?”
“We share your frustration,” said Rena. “We’re continuing to follow every lead, which has brought us back to your door.”
“Okay.”
“On Thursday, when we were here, you said that one of the reasons a teacher might leave the room is to make or receive a phone call. Specifically, you said that you thought Kara was buying a new house because you thought she was talking to her banker or her lawyer.”
Claire said nothing.
“Did Kara tell you that she was buying a new house?” A.L. asked.
“No.”
“Perhaps refinancing a house?” A.L. followed up.
“No.”
Rena leaned forward in her chair. “Did those conversations occur in the classroom?”
“No.”
Claire was clearly uncomfortable and that was making the back of A.L.’s neck itch. “We need a little help here, Claire. Why did you think she was talking to her banker or her lawyer?”
“I’m reluctant to say,” Claire said.
Now his neck was not only itchy, it felt hot. But he told himself not to push, that Claire would come to the right decision on her own. Rena settled back against her chair, as if she, too, was prepared to wait as long as it took.
“I really like Kara and I know she didn’t have anything to do with Emma’s disappearance. She was in the classroom when it happened. And then I taught with her all day. And I would have known if something was wrong. But there wasn’t. She was fine. We were all fine until we heard the news.”
A.L. and Rena said nothing. It was so quiet in the little house that they could hear the pump in the fish tank in the corner of the room.
“Twice when her phone rang, I saw the name of the caller flash across the screen before she answered it. I recognized the name.”
“Who was it?” A.L. asked.
“Steven Hanzel. He’s a loan officer at the Baywood Bank.”
Neither Rena nor A.L. indicated that they already knew the man. “How is it that you know Mr. Hanzel?” Rena asked.
“His kids come to the learning center. And his ex-wife goes to the same place I do for yoga. She’s told me a few things about...their marriage. Both before and after the divorce.”
“So not great things,” Rena said. “But yet, you chose to believe that any reason Steven Hanzel was calling Kara had to be business-related and not personal?”
A.L. was grateful that Rena had asked the hard question. He wasn’t sure how he’d have phrased it and she’d done a good job.
“I told you that Kara and I are friends. We go to dinner sometimes. We’ve talked about what Steven Hanzel’s wife had told me, for goodness’ sakes.”
There it was. She didn’t want to think that her friend had been stupid by taking up with a sleazebag. “You never asked Kara about the calls from Mr. Hanzel?” A.L. asked.
“No. I just couldn’t. Maybe I didn’t really want to know. But I have to admit that sometimes I was pissed off. He’d call and she’d leave the room immediately and sometimes we’d be in the middle of some activity that really needed two teachers. It seemed...neglectful.”
“Can you give a time period that these calls were occurring?” Rena asked.
“A few months ago it was the worst. But recently, it’s been better. Maybe they’re talking outside of work hours because she doesn’t leave the room nearly as much.”
“Better but still occurring?” Rena drilled. “Like how often in one week?”
“Like I said, months ago it would have been several times a week. Now it’s maybe one every couple of weeks.”
“Claire, you’ve been very helpful,” Rena said.
“Really? Because I feel sort of shitty, to be honest. She’s my friend and I basically just told you that I think she’s having an extramarital affair.”
“Trust us on this, Claire. We’re not concerned right now with what anybody is doing within or outside of their marriage unless it has some direct relation to our investigation into Emma’s disappearance.”
“Do you think this does?” Claire asked.
“We have no idea,” A.L. said honestly. “But I’m glad we know it.”
* * *
They sat in their car outside of Claire’s house. “Are you surprised?” Rena asked.
“About Steven Hanzel?” A.L. asked.
“About either of them.”
“Not about Hanzel. He seemed like a goofball when I met him. His boss thinks he’s a loser and Chuck Hayes implied that he played around on business trips. Kara, maybe. She seems pretty bright so I guess I’d expect her to be smarter than to fall for the goofball.”
“Love and/or lust makes people stupid,” Rena said.
“Which one of them do you want to talk to first?” A.L. said.
“Kara. But wait a minute. Let’s think about this. She said that the calls had diminished but not stopped. We checked Kara’s cell phone. There’d been no calls between her and Baywood Bank for more than two months.”
“We didn’t look at calls specifically between her and Steven Hanzel, say, to his personal cell. We have to do that,” A.L. said.
“You’re right. I’ll get somebody started on that.” She picked up her cell phone. Typed. Looked up. “You should take Wash
ington Street,” she said offhandedly. “That’s the fastest way to her house.”
“We’re not going to her. She’s coming to us.”
Rena stopped typing. “Trying to make a point?”
“Yeah. Don’t fuck with us.”
Seventeen
Kara Wiese said she was in her pajamas and asked if she could come to the police station the following day. A.L. said no. She said it would take her an hour to get there. A.L. said, “Do your best.”
The good news was that the extra time gave them an opportunity to verify that there had been no telephone calls between Steven Hanzel’s cell phone and Kara Wiese’s cell phone. Neither of them had home phones.
“You think Claire was wrong?” A.L. asked. “Or they’ve both got a second phone?”
“Hard to know. I’ll get somebody to do a search for another number under her name. Plus, we’ll ask her about it. If she ever gets here,” she added.
“I’m five minutes away from sending squad cars with lights and sirens to her house.” He leaned back in his chair so far that the legs came off the floor. When there was a knock on the door, the legs hit the floor hard.
“She’s here,” said the officer working the front desk.
“Excellent. Be right back,” A.L. said to Rena. He walked to the front entrance. “Evening, Kara.”
“Evening, Detective,” she said.
“Let’s walk back this direction,” he said pointing. “Detective Morgan is going to be joining us.”
“Everyone’s working late, then,” she said.
“We’ve got a missing child,” he said.
“Of course. That’s why I’m here.”
A.L. opened the door.
“Detective Morgan,” Kara said.
“Thank you for coming in,” Rena said. “We have a few questions about a previous statement that you gave us. In specific, you said that a few months back, you made several calls to the Baywood Bank because you were interested in refinancing your current home. Is there any part of that statement that you’d like to amend?”