“If it ends up on your podcast that I helped you, I’m going to arrest you for interfering in an ongoing investigation,” he says.
“If you wanted to put me in handcuffs, Detective, all you had to do was ask,” I reply. Just quiet enough to be a warning, too low for the straining ears around us.
He gives his head a weary little shake but then turns to his computer, opening a new window and punching in some numbers. Copying the license plate from the photograph and hitting enter. I watch him go still as his eyes trace over the screen.
“What is it?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer. “Kyle.”
“I’m going to need to know exactly where you got this photo,” he says.
“I told you,” I say, getting up from my chair and moving around the desk so I can see the screen. There’s a DMV form for vehicle registration, showing a Tesla Model S with a matching license plate and the name of the owner.
The car is registered to Theodore Nelson Vreeland.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Ted is arrested three days later. I watch it on the morning news, as he’s led out of their Wicker Park condo, the same grand house where I shared a dinner with him and Ava, the opulence of the place making it seem bulletproof. A fortress of wealth, rendered useless. Its monster already inside.
Now he’s flanked on each side by a couple of suits—federal agents, most likely—and surrounded by reporters. A jacket, slung over his hands in front of him, covers what must be handcuffs on his wrists.
Andrea sets a bowl of oatmeal in front of me on the breakfast bar and drops some cereal onto the tray of Olive’s high chair. Tending to both of her charges, all without taking her eyes from the TV in the living room.
“I actually can’t believe this,” she says.
“I know.”
Olsen has been radio silent since he ran the Tesla’s license plate for me, but I know there must be more to the case for the feds to have made such an immediate arrest. I wonder if the Tesla was the first piece of evidence against Ted or the last in a long line of connections, links in a chain that begins with Dylan Jacobs and ends with Ava’s husband. Or maybe it begins well before Dylan. Maybe it even begins before Sarah.
“How old do you think he is?” I ask, motioning toward the television. Ted is bending to sit in the back of a police cruiser, a cop’s hand on his head, ensuring he doesn’t graze it on the doorframe.
“I don’t know. Thirty-five? Thirty-eight?” Andrea replies. “You’ve had a lot more contact with him than I have. What do you think?”
“Somewhere around there, probably,” I reply. “So, maybe the same age as Maggie. A year or two older, give or take.”
“Is he from here?” Andrea asks, stirring frozen blueberries into her own bowl of oatmeal.
“Evanston, I think,” I reply, trying to remember what Ava said when she talked about her husband.
“Evanston? Seriously?” Her movements still.
“I know,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s not possible, is it?”
“I mean . . .” Andrea is quiet for a moment. “Could the man in the car have been a teenager?”
Again, my recollection is the problem. I shut my eyes, conjuring the memory like an incantation, like I have so many times. It was a man. A man, maybe the age of our father or a bit younger. The man whom I’ve never been able to recognize, faceless, in the dreams where he makes me murder my sister.
“Maybe,” I say. Because I can no longer trust myself. “Maybe it could have been Ted.”
“Evanston is so close,” Andrea replies.
“I don’t know.” I remember what Ava said when Colin talked about Sarah’s pink dress. A false memory, she called it. Something the brain creates on its own, as vivid as if your eyes had actually seen it. A lie of the mind. And suddenly the person in the front seat of that sedan is a boy, with a square jaw and sandy hair. The golden skin of an athlete who spends his days running across open expanses of well-tended grass. The sort of boy who would easily have enthralled my sister, once upon a time. Just as he tempted me, briefly, in the alley that night.
I rub my eyes, trying to clear away the image in my mind. Because if I’m wrong about this, if I’m wrong about the man in the car, about Ted, about my sister, then I can trust nothing. Not myself. Not anyone.
“Have you heard from Ava?” Andrea asks, and I wonder if she sees the ways in which I could so easily come apart once more. I wonder if this is how it will always be, when the question of Maggie draws close to an answer. I wonder if I’ll survive actually finding the truth.
“I can’t imagine she’ll want to talk to me now,” I reply. Now that her husband has been arrested, like reliving the nightmare of Colin’s arrest all over again, I’m sure. She’s probably coming apart too. And suddenly, I’m desperate to see her. Desperate for her not to be angry with me.
“Maybe she doesn’t know you had anything to do with the police identifying the Tesla,” Andrea says. “After all, she’s the one who asked you to investigate.”
Ted, I think. Ted, who cornered me in an alley, warned me to stay away from the case. Threatened me, even. Ted, who cooked me dinner, who made Ava smile.
“So what do we do?” I ask. “Now that we’ve apparently broken the case wide open?” I know what Andrea’s answer will be, even before she says it.
“We should get some recording done,” she replies.
* * *
* * *
WE SPEND THREE hours in the studio, running through the details of the case. Except this time, through the frame of Ted as the killer. Amazingly, after all this time, the pieces begin to fall into place.
The question becomes one of motive. Whether the hair in Sarah’s shower drain belonged to Ted. If he was at Sarah’s apartment and what may have transpired there to necessitate a shower. Perhaps Ted was feeling neglected by Ava’s preoccupation with med school, her insistence on a specialty that would disrupt their lives for years to come, and had turned to Sarah for attention.
“But can we just assume they were sleeping together?” Andrea says. “I mean, isn’t that kind of a stretch?”
“Yeah, it’s a stretch,” I reply. “But it’s not out of the realm of possibility. We know, based on Dylan’s report to the police, that Sarah hadn’t had any houseguests recently. So, it was someone Dylan didn’t realize was there. Or Colin. And why else would someone be secretly showering at Sarah’s place, if it wasn’t sexual?”
“So Ted kills Sarah to keep her quiet about their affair?” Andrea asks, pausing momentarily to adjust the mic in front of her. “Was she that big of a risk to him?”
Olive watches the whole exchange from her baby swing in the corner, an uncharacteristically quiet observer.
“He and Ava were getting serious,” I reply. “I mean, you should see this guy. The best of everything. I could imagine him killing Sarah just so he wouldn’t lose his perfect life.”
“His perfect wife, you mean,” Andrea replies.
“So, let’s say Sarah leaves her apartment to meet her friends. We know from the court transcripts, and Sarah’s case file, that Colin took a cab to his grandmother’s birthday dinner at Au Cheval.” Andrea nods as I speak. I can feel it, that same lurid energy, the excitement building between us. “But Ava and Ted are on record saying that they arrived separately to the birthday dinner—Ava from their apartment, and Ted from his office.”
“His office was only a fifteen-minute drive from Sarah’s apartment, according to Google,” Andrea interjects.
“Right, so he could have easily been waiting outside when she left. He might have convinced her to get in the car with him and then killed her.”
“In the car?”
“Why not?” I reply. “They were never able to determine that she was killed in her apartment. They assumed that Colin probably cleaned up the scene, but there’s nothing to prove tha
t she wasn’t killed somewhere else. Then all Ted had to do was put her body in his trunk, and he had plenty of time to arrive at Au Cheval ahead of Colin.”
“And just sits at the restaurant, with a body in the trunk?” Andrea asks, less a question and more an exclamation of disbelief. Disgust.
“And then after dinner, Ava drove their grandmother home and then dropped Colin off, while Ted supposedly went back to his office to finish up some work. He didn’t get home until late. So Ted could have easily driven to LaBagh Woods and buried Sarah Ketchum’s body there, without Ava or Colin ever suspecting anything.”
“And after Colin’s conviction, his perfect life would have fallen back into place,” Andrea says, picking up the thread. “He and Ava get married. They plan on having a family.”
“Except,” I say, “the one hiccup was Ava’s constant crusade to release Colin from prison. It undoes her to the point where she can’t move forward with any of their plans. She doesn’t want to slow down at work or start a family until Colin is released.”
I think about our dinner at Chicago Diner, when Ava insisted that Ted was supportive of the abortion she had after Colin’s conviction. I wonder now if his veneer of understanding covered something darker, a deep resentment of Colin. A desire to go to any lengths to get his sterling life back on track.
“So when Ava started talking about reaching out to me, about the potential connection between Maggie and Sarah, Ted must have begun to see the danger I posed to him. Ava had the case file with the extra hair listed on it, and that hair had been tested for DNA.”
“And Ted’s DNA wasn’t in the system,” Andrea says.
“But an additional investigation could be potentially damning, if he was ever asked to furnish a DNA sample. And Dylan was the loose end. Dylan was the only other person who might have suspected that Ted and Sarah were having an affair. So, Ted went to the library and preempted that part of the investigation. Posed as me in an email, asked Dylan to meet. Killed him. Drove back to Chicago, and once again dumped a body in LaBagh Woods. Which accomplishes two things: it gets rid of any insight Dylan had into Sarah’s case, and it discredits me with the CPD. So anything we might uncover would be seen as compromised.”
“But wait,” Andrea says. “Why dump him here? Why not up in Milwaukee?”
“The same reason everyone assumed Colin dumped her in those woods,” I reply. “They were familiar. He’d done it once before, and Sarah had only been found by chance, days later, after rain had washed away most of the evidence that could have linked her to Ted.”
“It seems like such a risk, though,” Andrea replies.
“Think about it this way,” I say. “Dylan was listed as a missing person in Milwaukee for months. It wasn’t until we called in the tip that the Milwaukee PD even made the connection to Sarah’s case. And the only reason they started searching in LaBagh was because I suggested it. Dylan would never have been found otherwise.”
“So now Ted is going down for two murders, instead of one.”
“And if everything goes the way it should,” I reply, “Colin McCarty will be released from prison.”
“So Ava frees her brother but unknowingly implicates her husband,” Andrea says. “That has got to be such a major head trip. I can’t even imagine.” I feel my phone buzz in my pocket. I glance at the screen and hit the stop button on the computer’s recording module.
“Speak of the devil?” Andrea asks.
* * *
* * *
“I CAN’T BELIEVE it,” Ava says when I answer. “I actually can’t believe it. That fucker.” She hisses the word. I can hear the throb of true rage in her voice. It’s a bit comforting, actually. I was worried there might be tears. I was worried I might be put in a position of guilt by association. That Ava might have wanted to string up the messenger.
“Was it the DNA?” I ask. “From the shower? Is that what did it?”
“They called me on Sunday and said they found Dylan Jacobs’s body. That they needed DNA samples from us, from everyone connected to Sarah’s case, for exclusionary purposes,” Ava says. “I brought them Ted’s brush. Gave them a cheek swab. I didn’t even hesitate. What a total rube they must think I am.” She laughs a little, a bitter sound.
So it was true, I think. They got Ted’s DNA. They must have matched it to something—either the hair in the shower drain or something they found on Dylan. I realize I’m not breathing and pull the phone’s mic away from my face. Breathe into my cupped hand for a moment. To keep myself from panicking, hyperventilating.
“I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you,” I say when I’ve regained my breath. “I’m so sorry, Ava.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she spits. “That shit, that motherfucking bastard. He cost me years with my brother. My little brother lost years of his life, because I was too blinded by love to see what was right in front of me.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, though it’s a hollow sentiment. I heard it too many times, as a child, to be able to deliver it with any conviction. And I can understand Ava’s rage. I know what it is to have an unbreakable loyalty to a sibling. To be willing to tear down anything else in your life in service to that bond.
“You know Dylan called me once?” Ava says, and I can hear her sniffling. I wonder if she’s crying on the other end of the line. “After Colin’s conviction. Told me he thought Sarah might have been seeing someone else.”
“Dylan told you that?” I ask.
“Yeah. He and Colin never liked each other, but even he had his doubts after the trial. He said Sarah mentioned having a guy over. An older guy, one she had a crush on. Made Dylan swear not to tell anyone.” Ava laughs again, and this time it sounds like a sob. She must be crying, I realize. I’ve never seen Ava cry.
“I never made the connection,” she continues. “I never even considered it could be Ted. An older guy. Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Did he tell the police about it?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I told him to,” Ava replies. “But they were so goddamn myopic when it came to Colin being guilty, they probably just ignored him. I should sue the shit out of them.”
“Ava,” I say carefully, not wanting to betray my own suspicion, “did you ever tell Ted what Dylan said to you? About Sarah seeing someone else?”
As soon as I’ve asked the question, I catch my mistake. Because this is Ava, and she’s quicker than anyone I know.
“Oh god,” she says. “You think that’s why Ted went after Dylan?”
“I don’t know,” I say quickly, but my heart isn’t in it. I’m guilty of the same things she is, the belief that I am somehow responsible for all the troubles that befall the people in my life. All-powerful, the two of us. “Let’s just focus on Colin right now,” I say. “How quickly do you think you can get him out?” I think of his splinted fingers. I think of the beating he just endured. Broken ribs. A fractured eye socket. There’s an urgency here. We have to get him out, before something more terrible happens to him.
And a new possibility rises, as if out of cold, soundless depths of water. I wonder if Ted’s money, his connections in this city, could buy this sort of violence. If he could slip the right amount of cash to the right person and have Colin killed.
“We have to appeal to the judge and the state’s attorney,” Ava says. “They’re not just going to let him out, not until Ted is convicted. And that could be—I don’t know. Maybe years, even.”
“What sort of appeal?” I ask.
“We have to put public pressure on the judge to vacate Colin’s conviction. Pressure the governor, even. And the state’s attorney has to decline to file additional charges.”
“Public pressure,” I say, as if I’m finally understanding the meaning of those words. “The podcast, you mean.”
“You have to finish it. Release it. All of it, as quickly as possible.”
“I have to talk to Andrea,” I say, glancing out the studio’s door to where Andrea is sitting, nursing Olive on one of the seats at the breakfast bar. I can tell she’s listening to my end of the conversation though, because her eyes flick to me as soon as I say her name. “I’m not sure how quickly we can get it all edited and released.”
“I’ll help you with anything you need,” Ava says. “Money, resources. I can give you any sort of interview you want. Nothing’s off the table.”
“Okay,” I say. “We’ll work on it. We can probably get something pulled together in the next few weeks.” I raise my eyebrows at Andrea. She slowly nods.
“We have to do this, Marti,” Ava says, a note of desperation in her voice. “I have to fix this.”
“I know,” I reply. “And we will.” As I hang up the phone, I’m struck again by that feeling of power. I’ve had a part in this, I know. I’ve had a hand in justice’s being done, finally.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
T he podcast is a sensation. It has everything that the public wants: a dead girl; two intrepid investigators; a wrongfully convicted kid from a rough, working-class background; police misconduct; and a new murder. And of course, the arrest of an attractive, privileged killer to top it all off. Ted is ubiquitous on cable news, his high-cheekboned mug shot staring out of every supermarket tabloid. Ted Vreeland is suddenly Patrick Bateman. Hannibal Lecter. Jack the Ripper, finally unmasked. “Bundy 2.0” trends on Twitter following the release of each episode.
Andrea cut seven episodes together with the grace of a symphony conductor, always seeming to know when to hammer the details and when to pause for the human element. By the time we release the fifth episode, Ted’s trial date is set for the following spring, and every major news media outlet in the country is covering the story.
I can’t sleep.
Ever since Ted’s arrest, when I returned home to my apartment, the dreams have been getting worse. No matter what I try, I wake in the middle of the night in a pool of my own sweat and can’t get back to sleep. I’ve tried warm milk and Ambien and walking laps around my apartment. But somehow, I always end up on my couch, drinking vodka and watching whatever is on TV between the hours of three and eight a.m.
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