“I have no idea,” Andrea replies. “Trying to cover his MO, maybe? I mean, it would have to be different, right? Killing a guy this time. He wouldn’t have had the same weight advantage. And he would have had more time to plan it.”
“He did plan it,” I reply. “He sent the email so that I’d be linked to the killing. Maybe he used drugs because it’s a plausible way I might have killed Dylan,” I say, leaning fully against the tree. I feel sick as the ground pitches and rolls beneath me. Shifting, again, as it always does, just when I think I have my feet firmly planted on the ground.
“He’s fucking with us,” Andrea says.
Despite the heat of the day, I’m shivering. It’s the possibility my mother always feared. That publicly searching for the man who took Maggie would send him after me. Would make me a target.
“Where are you right now?” Andrea asks.
“Outside the . . . Rogers Park police station.” I have to pause in the middle of the sentence to take a breath. As if I’ve been running. Or am being chased.
“Okay,” Andrea says, all business once again. “I want you to go home, pack some things, and meet me at my place. I think it’s better if you stay with us for a few days.”
“You think I’m in danger?” I ask. Because I want her to confirm the fear that has taken hold of me. I want to know that I’m not going crazy.
“It would make me feel better, if you weren’t alone for a little while,” Andrea replies.
* * *
* * *
I TAKE THE L home from Rogers Park as soon as I’m steady enough on my feet, because I want the insulation of a crowd, to be around people going about their normal business on a regular day, killer or no killer. Though it would serve the CPD right if I get butchered while they’re treating me like a goddamn suspect. It would serve Olsen right.
I check my email as the train pushes its way south, in between the brick and stone buildings of Chicago’s North Side, as cars crisscross in the streets below. There’s a message from ARMY8070. A photo attachment, captioned: From a neighbor’s video doorbell. The grainy black-and-white photograph shows a FedEx deliveryman on the porch in question. Circled in red on the street behind him is a dark four-door sedan. It’s impossible to discern much about the car from the quality of the photograph, but below, ARMY8070 has written: Neighbor noticed this Tesla parked on the street, says he remembers it had Illinois plates. May 1. I’m rerunning the ad asking for info on the car.
According to Greg Orloff, Dylan didn’t show up for a deposition on May 2. He would have received the email from the person claiming to be me only three days before.
I send a thank-you to ARMY8070. What do you think are the chances someone else noticed it? I ask. She replies almost immediately.
It’s an ostentatious car, especially for the area. Really not what you want to be driving if you’re going to kidnap someone. Chances are, someone else might have seen it.
Think we’re barking up the wrong tree? I reply.
Possibly. But let’s chase it down anyway.
Sounds good, I reply, though a part of me doubts we’d get this lucky. Of course, you wouldn’t drive such a recognizable car if you were planning to kidnap someone. And if the email to Dylan from MReese90 is any indication, the person who took him was careful enough to plan his moves in advance. The thought brings back all the anxiety of the past hour, and I glance around the L car in spite of myself. To see if I’m being watched.
My phone rings again as I’m walking from the L to my apartment. A blocked number. I almost send it to voicemail but then reconsider.
“Yes?” I answer.
And of course, there is nothing but silence on the line. Fury, now. Not even panic, as if I’ve slipped beyond my own capacity for fear.
“I know what you’re doing,” I say into the phone, my voice so tight it trembles. And then the line goes dead. It takes everything in me not to throw the phone against the asphalt of the sidewalk, watch it spring back up in broken pieces.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
I pack some things—the essentials only, because I don’t really feel like setting the precedent of staying at Andrea’s place every time I get spooked by an investigation—and bike over to her apartment. She and Trish live on the top floor of a three-flat, a home that reminds me a great deal of the one I shared with Eric before our divorce. It’s got that same new-furniture sheen, with a midcentury-modern sofa in the living room, and a funky chandelier in the entryway, and a well-stocked bronze bar cart in the dining room. The large windows at the front of the apartment are hung with heavy curtains that are always open, because there are so many plants crowded into the little space that the curtains don’t have room to close. It’s an apartment that blends Trish’s love of eclectic pieces and the self-conscious need to reflect seriousness. Adulthood. Andrea’s influence. It makes me think of my apartment—the single-income one-bedroom—with its pitted floors and dusty windows and flaking paint. I wonder if it makes me appear pitiable to people like Andrea and Trish, who live in a place like theirs.
I let myself in with my key, as I always do, and am about to announce my presence when I hear raised voices in the kitchen.
“So whoever this guy is, who killed the roommate, he pretended to be Marti to do it?” I recognize Trish’s voice, the slight lilt of her British accent—held over from growing up an expat’s kid in the UK—which has more or less been ironed out by a decade in the American Midwest.
“Maybe,” Andrea replies.
“Maybe?” Trish repeats. “And you think it’s a better idea for her to stay here than with her family?”
“You know she doesn’t get along with her mother,” Andrea says, but Trish cuts her off.
“That’s not our problem, babe. Our problem is that you’ve brought the biggest lightning rod for chaos I’ve ever met to stay in our home. You enable her. You’ve always enabled her.”
“I’m her friend. I support her, there’s a difference.”
“Yeah, well now she’s wrapped up in a murder investigation. So great that she’s staying in our guest room.”
A spot of cold guilt forms in my stomach. It’s the sensation of swallowing a piece of ice, feeling it drag down the back of my throat. It’s a fact that we all try to ignore when we’re together, that I won Andrea and Trish in my divorce by virtue of my closeness with Andrea. But it’s easy to forget that Trish knew Eric first. Is loyal to him, perhaps, in a way she is not loyal to me. Still, this is probably the best opening I’ll get, so I shut the door behind me with a rattling thud.
“Hey,” I call into the apartment, and try to project nonchalance as I head to the kitchen. As if I haven’t just listened to them arguing over me. As if I can’t imagine I’m anything but welcome here.
“Hey, Marti,” Trish says, quickly enveloping me in a hug. She smells of lavender, and it makes me think of my mother. The scent of fraught female relationships. “You’ve had a rough go of it, haven’t you?”
“It’s been a weird summer,” I reply, glancing at Andrea, who is examining the zipper on her hoodie.
“Andrea’s been filling me in,” Trish says. “The police can’t really think that you have anything to do with this, right?”
“I think they’re just trying to rattle me,” I reply. “They’re not huge fans of amateur investigators stomping all over their turf.”
“More like breaking the cases they’ve let go cold,” Andrea says.
“Right, well, I’ll leave you to it,” Trish says, motioning to the nursery. “I think someone is due for a walk around the neighborhood.”
“Thanks, babe,” Andrea says, giving Trish a smile as she goes to collect Olive from her crib. Grateful. Appeasing. Perhaps a bit regretful as well. As soon as Trish is out of earshot, Andrea turns to me.
“So how much of that did you hear?”
“Enough,” I reply
.
“She’s just being dramatic,” Andrea says.
“She’s not, really,” I reply. “She’s right about how crazy this is. She’s right about me being a lightning rod for chaos.”
“Oh, I wish you hadn’t heard that.” Andrea winces.
“It’s true,” I say. “I mean, look at the year I’ve had. And that was before a murderer was using my name in his email address.”
“Still,” Andrea says. “It’s ridiculous to think that you shouldn’t stay here. She’s just being paranoid.”
“She has a right to be,” I say.
“No,” Andrea replies, definitive. “I brought you into this, remember? The podcast. The whole thing. This is happening as much because of me as because of you.”
“So what do we do?” I ask, thinking of Olive, thinking of all the ways in which I’m desperate to protect her from every bit of chaos that has touched my life. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I were one of her mothers. But Andrea is resolute.
“We find him,” she replies. “If the CPD is looking in the wrong place, we’ll find him ourselves. And we’ll bury him.”
* * *
* * *
THE RHYTHMS OF Trish and Andrea’s place—which are almost entirely dictated by Olive’s schedule—are a bit different from what I’m used to. For starters, sleeping until noon is no longer an option. The guest room in which I’m staying is situated right next to their bathroom, so as soon as one of them showers in the morning, the gush of water through the pipes wakes me up. Which would be fine, except my night shifts at Club Rush have had me tiptoeing in after three most mornings, shutting the front door softly and creeping through the apartment to the guest room, avoiding even running the bathroom sink at more than a dribble while I brush my teeth. Olive is up at six, and nothing would make me a more unwelcome houseguest than waking her up before then.
I’m running on so little sleep that I feel half-drunk most of the time. Which is useful, because most of the actual drinking I’m doing is necessarily hidden from Andrea and Trish, after I poured myself a screwdriver at lunch the other day and noticed the concerned glance that passed between the two of them. It’s easy to forget how I behaved while I was trying to be normal.
Andrea works from home during the day while Trish goes to her office, so Andrea and I have ample time to walk around Andersonville, the stroller between us, scandalizing the people who pass and hear snippets of our discussions. Mostly about the logistics of kidnapping someone and driving them across state lines to dump their body. Whether Dylan was likely killed in Milwaukee or killed once he and his kidnapper arrived here in Chicago. Whether the feds will get involved, once the medical examiner is able to definitively determine Dylan’s cause of death wasn’t simply an overdose. How much heroin you’d need to inject into a man of his size to be certain it would kill him. How far from the woods you’d have to park, and how far someone could drag a man’s body before the diminishing returns of exhaustion and delay took hold. I worry that Olive is absorbing all of this through osmosis, but every time I lean down to check on her, she’s as happy as ever, her little sunglasses hanging off her face, eyes inquisitive behind them. She’s listening, though; that much is clear.
Andrea is generally over the moon to have another pair of hands at the ready while Trish is at work, so I spend the afternoons sitting on their living room floor, while Olive plays with her dolls and Andrea does laundry or cleans their kitchen or makes something elaborate for dinner. I mostly search further and further back through Sarah’s social media accounts, or read through the true-crime forum’s message boards, or wish for a cocktail.
That’s where I am when, in my second week at Andrea’s, I get an email from ARMY8070.
Better photo of the Tesla, she says in the text of the message. And it is a better photo of the car, this time from the surveillance camera of a local convenience store. The car’s back windshield reflects the neon Schlitz sign in the store’s front window. But the important detail, the one that makes this photo significant, is that you can also see the license plate number. Illinois plates.
There’s no chance you have a PI license or access to DMV records, do you? I reply to ARMY8070. Again, she responds almost immediately.
No such luck. Might have to go through proper channels with this one.
“Proper channels,” I say to Olive, wrinkling my nose as she gazes up at me. That can mean only one thing.
I dial my phone, and he picks up on the second ring.
“Detective Olsen,” he says, by way of greeting.
“It’s Marti.”
“Marti,” he replies. And then, “I’m glad you called.”
“Don’t be glad just yet,” I reply, and let the words hang for a second, while I decide whether this is really the move I want to make. It is possible that the Tesla is completely unrelated to Dylan’s disappearance. It’s also possible that Olsen will take anything I give him right to his stern-faced partner. I wrinkle my nose again at Olive, who lets out a high-pitched giggle.
“Where are you?” Olsen asks.
“I’m babysitting for a friend,” I reply.
“Staying there?”
“Why do you ask?”
I hear him hesitate before he answers. “I went by your place, a couple of times. It was pretty clear you weren’t home.”
“Not to worry, Detective,” I reply, letting a curl of bitterness into my words, despite the fact that I’m calling Olsen for his help. “There are plenty of places in this city where I can shack up when there’s a murderer after me.”
I think of the numbers saved in my phone, men whose calls I ignored after the initial thrill had passed. There are a few who might still answer if I call, all these months later, but I say it more to reinforce for Olsen how meaningless the other night was. I say it to reinforce it for me too.
“Look, I understand that email scared you,” Olsen replies. “But there’s no reason to assume the guy has any interest in you, other than to use your name as bait.”
“He’s been calling me,” I reply, glancing toward the kitchen, hoping Andrea isn’t listening to my end of the conversation. I’ve kept this little detail from everyone, including her.
“What?” Olsen asks.
“I’ve been getting these calls. For months now, from a blocked number. Someone on the other end, just breathing into the phone.”
“How many times?” Olsen asks.
I do a tally in my head. “Twenty-five, maybe?”
“You’ve gotten twenty-five suspicious phone calls and this is the first you’re mentioning it?” His voice is louder now, sharp. Less like the militaristic cool he maintains on the job. More like the moment in bed, as I awoke from the nightmare.
“Oh, was I supposed to say something when your partner was treating me like a murder suspect?” I reply, matching his admonition with my own. “Funny, I guess I didn’t get the impression that either of you gave a shit.”
“Look, she’s not my partner,” Olsen replies. “And that’s not how I would have played it, if it was my case. But she’s old-school; she was just trying to rattle you. To scare you off your investigation. She doesn’t actually believe you sent that email.”
“But she thinks I’m responsible for what happened,” I say, because it’s difficult not to imagine myself at the center of this. That, through the investigation of my sister, through Jane Doe, I have set in motion the chain of events that resulted in Dylan Jacobs’s death.
“No one thinks that,” Olsen replies. I can tell he’s lying, but it’s a bit comforting, actually. Sometimes it’s nice to be shielded from a truth that has such sharp teeth.
“Well, Detective,” I say, “how badly do you want to make things up to me?”
* * *
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, I’m marching into the Twenty-Fourth District police station, sans the police escort
this time. Defiant, as always. Silvia gives me a weak smile, obviously well apprised of my interrogation two weeks ago.
“Detective Olsen is expecting me,” I say, all business. She nods and motions me back to the bullpen.
He glances up as I approach, but I betray nothing. I feel like the whole station is watching me, as if the air around me pulses with attention as I pass through it. I drop both printed photos of the Tesla on Olsen’s desk.
“These are from Milwaukee. The night Dylan Jacobs went missing.”
He looks them over and then glances up at me. Surprised, maybe. Or impressed.
“Where did you get these?” he asks.
“Targeted ads on social media,” I reply. “A friend of mine is good at crowdsourcing information on unsolved cases.”
“You have interesting friends,” he remarks, setting the photos back down on his desk. “So, what exactly are you asking me to do?”
“Not much,” I reply. “Just run the plates. See which Illinois resident was parked on Dylan’s street the night before he was reported missing.”
“No way,” Olsen says. “There’s no way for me to verify the legitimacy of these. I can’t treat them as evidence.”
“You’re doing me a favor, remember?” I say. “I’m not asking you to put them into evidence. I’m asking you to run the plates. That’s all.”
“I’m afraid that’s not a favor I can accommodate,” he says, his arms crossed in front of him.
“Don’t give me your party-line bullshit,” I say, my voice low, though I’m sure the heat of my tone draws the eyes of the people around us. “We’re way past that now. You owe me this, for that little song-and-dance in the interrogation room. For throwing me to the wolves, after the other night.”
Olsen runs a palm over his mouth. I wonder which parts of the other night, specifically, he’s replaying in his head.
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