Two
Evie Blackwell
It was even colder in Ellis than it had been in Springfield. Evie, glad to be getting out of the wind, held glass doors open for David as he pushed a flat cart loaded with boxes into the building. “I’m curious,” she asked, “how do you prefer to begin a case?”
He wrestled against a stiff wheel that wanted to drift left. “I like talking to people. Once I’ve seen the facts I’ve got to work with, I like to get out and start asking questions, see where those answers lead. People point you different directions. The majority of the time they’re being honest and trying to be helpful. When I come across someone lying to me, I know I’m getting close to the answer.”
“You’re looking for the person who shades the truth, lies to you.”
“Pretty much. How about you, Evie?”
“I like to get inside the world of my victim, see what they were doing, where they were going, how they crossed with someone who did them harm.”
“Re-create the day of the crime.”
“The best I can.”
“A good approach.”
Evie used keys the security guard had provided to unlock the main doors for office suite 5, then flicked on lights. The space had recently been refurbished for new tenants—a design firm was moving in late next month—and it still smelled of fresh paint and new carpet. Having expected a small room at the police station, this was luxury.
David scanned the area. “You’ve got four boxes, I’ve got seventeen, so I call dibs on the conference room through there. I need the long table and even longer whiteboard.”
“A couple of desks and the rolling whiteboards will serve my case,” Evie agreed.
“An hour to sort through boxes and see what we’ve got, then bring in an early lunch, update where we are?”
“Sounds good.” Evie set an alarm on her phone. “It’s going to be fun—if I’m allowed to describe it that way.”
David grinned. “I like this job, though I’m careful how often I admit that. I’m sorry my PI is missing, but it makes for a fascinating puzzle, considering what he did for a living. I get paid to do work I love. Everyone should be so fortunate.”
“Ditto.” Evie lifted her boxes off the cart and over to a desk, and David pushed the remaining ones into the conference room.
The detectives who’d had these cases had been cordial, polite, but not enthusiastic about offering further help. They told them, “It’s all in the files,” without saying, Good luck with finding anything else. There were still two map tubes in transit from the archives for her case, but the bulk of the case materials were before her.
The lack of assistance from the locals was probably for the best, at least for now. The facts were in the reports. The theories of what happened . . . well, Evie would rather formulate her own, as would David.
In her experience, solving a cold case came down to looking at the existing facts in a different way, asking new questions, searching intently for a thread that would yield information overlooked in the past. Not an easy thing to do when a case had been worked aggressively, but inevitably overlooked items came to light if she kept digging. If the new evidence didn’t yield an answer, her second course of action was to dig deeper into the lives of the people involved with the missing person, and then push out to find more names beyond the family and friends in the record.
The passage of time nearly always brought out undiscovered truths about people. The “good man” with a terrible secret had been found out and was now in jail, the thief who never got caught had committed one too many burglaries and finally been arrested, and the woman who drank too much now had the DUIs to prove she had a drinking problem. Life reveals truth. That was what Evie depended on when it came to a cold case like her missing student.
Time changed circumstances. Close friends were no longer speaking to each other, families split apart, alliances shifted, people would now talk to authorities about things they’d seen or wondered about when past loyalties had kept them silent. The same interviews done today could yield a treasure trove of new information. Whichever approach worked—looking at facts a new way or finding new insights about those people involved—she’d push until this case yielded an answer.
This missing Brighton College student was her choice off a single line on a summary sheet. Now came the moment of truth. Would it turn out to be an interesting choice? Evie lifted the top off the first box, eager to dig in. “Okay, Jenna Greenhill, what have the cops already found for me?”
The folders were thicker than she had expected. From the dates, it looked like detectives had come back to this case many times. She thumbed through the folders, found lab reports, witness statements, daily updates, phone call lists, credit-card statements, even police reports on five possible related cases. There was a lot of reading ahead of her, but when she was done, she would know how the detectives had approached the case, what they had discovered. Good, the foundation is here.
Thankfully, the detectives had included flash drives with electronic archives of their reports. She’d have searchable information at her fingertips, which would speed up her investigation considerably.
She lifted the lid on the second box and found a treasure trove of Jenna’s personal items. Purse, wallet, keys, desk calendar, journals, cellphone. Evie opened the evidence bag holding the phone, slid the battery back in, and wasn’t surprised when the device didn’t light up. The battery was dead. She’d pick up a replacement as one of her first errands. Jenna’s laptop was sealed in an evidence bag, along with a technician’s note providing a neatly printed password. The last significant item was an accordion folder stuffed with bills, menus, flyers, handwritten notes with phone numbers, names, lists—likely Jenna’s desk and kitchen-counter clutter swept together and kept, since what would matter might be anything here. Good—the cops had paid attention to the small things that could be key to solving this case.
The third box was more of Jenna’s papers, stored in folders with the girl’s handwriting on the tabs—college class schedules, financial aid, class notes, medical records, bank statements, utility bills. One titled FAMILY AND FRIENDS was mostly saved birthday cards and a few personal letters. Jenna had liked her world organized. Her life was here, at least the structure of it.
Evie opened the fourth box and nearly laughed out loud. Jenna had created scrapbooks and photo albums—eight of them, neatly stacked. “Thank you, Jenna. You’re going to make my job easier.”
Four file boxes . . . enough material to build a solid foundation, but not so much Evie couldn’t properly get her arms around it. She was already having a good run of luck with this case.
Evie stepped to the conference room door. “I hit a gold mine.”
David looked up from the box he was unpacking.
“Scrapbooks and photo albums.”
“Girls do like photos and fluff.”
She laughed softly at the kind way he said it. His case boxes were now lined up against the far wall, their lids tucked behind each one. “Having any luck with your discoveries?”
“My PI is Saul Morris—he looks to be an interesting man. I have what may be the contents of his office spread across ten boxes. Two are personal items from his home. A box of police reports and witness statements. And finally, a good assortment of electronics—two laptops, four phones, three cameras, a shoebox full of backup CDs and flash drives. There’s a stack of handwritten notebooks in this one, not unlike a cop would make. I’m very optimistic.”
“I’m glad for you. I’m going to start putting together my board and timeline. Unless you would like some help?”
David considered what was around him. “I’m good for now. Thanks for the offer.”
Evie took the now-empty cart to get it out of his way, checked the supply cabinets, found colored markers for the whiteboards, magnetic clips to hang items. There were a dozen mobile whiteboards stored in the auxiliary space beside the conference room—the design firm had organized this office for doing a lot of visual work. Evie rolled one over to her desk, drew a horizontal line, marked the middle with October 17, 2007, the date Jenna Greenhill had gone missing.
Sometimes determining what was going on before a crime pointed at the solution, but most of the time with cold cases, the answer was discovered in how people acted after the disappearance—guilt stained a person, criminal conduct continued—so there were as many clues, if not more, after a crime as before it. She would work both sides of the timeline with equal intensity.
Perspective first, then details of the disappearance, Evie decided. She looked through the boxes again for facts that would define Jenna’s life.
Jenna Greenhill.
Last seen: October 17, 2007
DOB: 11-12-85, age 21 when last seen
Parents: Rachel and Luke Greenhill
Siblings: sister, Marla, 3 years older
She found a casual photo of Jenna with her mother in an early album—Mom and me, Saturday morning tea and talk of college plans. Jenna wore stylish glasses, shoulder-length auburn hair—she didn’t have a classic beauty, but she looked attractive. Her smile looked a touch self-conscious. No jeans and a casual top, but a summer dress, nice necklace, earrings, no rings. The mother looked much more relaxed than Jenna. Evie posted the photo.
She added a family photo: parents and two girls with snowcapped mountains behind them—Yellowstone, 2003, according to the caption. Luke was nearly a foot taller than his wife and daughters. There were no obvious signs of stress in the family photo, such as one of the girls avoiding being too close or resisting a parent’s touch, and the smiles seemed genuine.
A helpful cop had added Post-it notes to Jenna’s albums. Evie reviewed images, chose several that seemed the most relevant, and added them to the case board.
Current boyfriend: Steve Hamilton
Former boyfriend: Spence Spinner
Best friend: Robin Landis
Study group friend: Amy Bertram
College friend: Tiffany Wallace
Her first interviews would be with family and friends. Evie reached for the phone and called her preferred researcher at the State Police, gave him the names to track down. Jenna’s college friends would have dispersed across the nation after graduation, but hopefully some were still in the area. The rest she’d re-interview by video. She would wait to contact the parents until the detective assigned to the case spoke with them and conveyed the news the task force was once more taking up the search.
“Will music bother you?”
Evie turned to look at David. It was quiet in here. “Try it. I’ll tell you if it does.”
At another desk he pulled up a playlist of songs on a website, and music filled the office suite at a comfortable volume. She didn’t know a lot about popular music, but she recognized the song currently climbing to the top of the charts. “You like her music. You had that band, Triple M, playing on our drive to pick up the case boxes.”
He dug out his wallet and slipped out a photo, showed it to her.
Evie stared. “Margaret May McDonald? She’s your girl? Are you kidding me?”
David laughed. “She prefers just Maggie. There are dozens more photos on my phone, but this is my favorite.” He slid the photo back into his wallet. “She’s scheduled to be the special guest a week from Friday at Chicago’s charity benefit sponsored by the mayor. She’ll be singing a couple of songs. If you’d like to go, I’ll introduce you.”
“I’d love that,” Evie replied, stunned at the news. “Wow. At our first break here, you owe me the story of you two, how that came to be.”
“It’s more dinner-hour fare, as it’s long, with ripples folding back on each other. But it’s a good one to tell.”
“You’re on.”
“I’m going to find the break room and start some coffee. How do you take yours?”
“Black is fine.”
David headed down the hall. Evie added more notes about Jenna to the whiteboard.
Brighton College
Biology major
Chemistry minor
Junior year by credit count
4.4 out of 5.0 GPA
Her thoughts were no longer fully focused on her case. Her working partner was a celebrity’s boyfriend. How had she missed that? It couldn’t be that tight a secret in the music world. Cops were notoriously low-key about celebrities in their midst, but when the significant other happens to be this famous and dating a cop? Evie was struck by how many comments must have drifted by her and not registered.
No wonder David had smiled at her question about a girl. Oh, yeah, he had a girl. Only one of the most famous singing sensations in the country!
Deal with it, Evie whispered to herself, forcing her attention back on task. She posted a copy of Jenna’s class schedule. She searched out names of Jenna’s professors, TAs, her academic advisor, listed them under the class schedule.
She’d been a bit intimidated to work with David Marshal before this, knowing his official reputation, but now it was on a whole new level. He’d probably been backstage at numerous concerts, met any number of other celebrities in New York. She was going to have to brush up on her music knowledge. She knew what kind of music she liked to listen to, but could rarely remember the title of a song, let alone name the singer or the band.
Something similar happened when Rob would introduce her to someone at a party. She’d say hi and have no clue how important the person was in the greater world of finance and business. People probably thought she was rather self-assured, not intimidated to meet important people, when most of the time she simply didn’t know who they were. Ann did the same, introducing Evie to the governor-elect, to the former vice-president. Ann’s world seemed normal and yet was filled with areas that were anything but common. Ann was comfortable there, but Evie struggled to figure out how to do that. She never wanted to be personally famous. If she had a single goal in life, she just wanted to be a good detective.
The alarm on her phone interrupted her introspection. Evie found the stack of area menus the security guard had provided and scanned through them. “What sounds good to you for lunch?” she asked David as he came through the door with two mugs of coffee.
“A sandwich is fine. I’m thinking Italian would be nice for dinner tonight. A good spaghetti or lasagna.”
“I’m game.” She called in a delivery order for soup and sandwiches, considering David. He didn’t look like the boyfriend of a famous singer. He looked like a cop. She’d just think cop and hopefully forget, or at least adjust quickly to, the unexpected fact of his girlfriend’s status in the music world.
She drank the coffee he had brought her and once again shook off the distraction. She scanned over the collection of data. There’s enough to give me a basic sense of Jenna’s life, she thought. Time to look at the specifics of what had happened. She pulled out the first police report. It had been called in by Jenna’s best friend, Robin Landis, on Monday afternoon, October 20. Jenna had last been seen Friday night. A rather long gap . . .
Once the timeline was filled in with details pulled from police reports and witness statements, Evie settled back in a desk chair to study the information and unwrapped a roll of sweet-tarts. A bag of them had showed up at her home, gift-wrapped, with a Have fun on the task force note from Gabriel Thane. The sheriff of Carin County was a good friend who knew her well. She’d tossed the entire bag in her suitcase, figuring it might last the first week.
Okay, Jenna. I’m looking for you now, and I’m going to dig in until I find you. What’s here to see? The items on the board showed a typical college student going about her life. Classes. Friends. Boyfriend.
Jenna had gone out with a group of friends on that last Friday night, dinner first and then a concert. She had parted from the group just after 11 p.m. on the block where she lived. At 11:42, Jenna sent a text message to her mother—Back in apartment, received your message, will call you in the morning. After that . . . nothing. Jenna hadn’t been heard from or seen again.
The missing-persons report had been filed on Monday afternoon. Jenna hadn’t been answering texts or calls, she missed church where she was a semi-regular, missed her classes on Monday morning, including a chemistry test worth twenty percent of the semester grade. The building manager had opened the apartment door for a worried friend, and her friend had then called the police. Jenna’s purse was there with her phone and keys. Her car was in its assigned parking spot. No sign of a struggle. Just no Jenna. . . .
It was fairly typical for a missing-persons case landing on a detective’s desk. A few days of delay, friends and family getting worried, the realization they couldn’t locate her, so call the cops.
On the surface, the case seemed straightforward. But it hadn’t been solved in the last nine years, so something was muddying what should have been an open-and-shut investigation and arrest.
Evie reached over for a blank pad of paper, divided the page into two columns, and numbered the lines one through twenty. On the left side she wrote FACTS, on the right side THEORIES.
Under FACTS, she listed:
1. Good grades
2. No history of problems with the law
3. No history of excessive drinking
4. Steady boyfriend
5. No roommate
6. Keys recovered in apartment
7. Phone ditto
8. Wallet ditto
9. Car in her parking space
10. No sign of struggle in apartment?
Evie put a question mark on that last one because she’d want to study the apartment photos with a magnifying glass before affirming it.
11. Last seen Friday night, 11 p.m., her block, walking to her apt building
12. Last text sent, Friday, 11:42 p.m., to her mom
13. Did not answer phone calls on Saturday
14. Did not attend church on Sunday
15. Did not appear in Monday classes
16. Credit cards not used after Friday night
17. Bank accounts not accessed after Friday night
What had Jenna been wearing that Friday night? If it was a unique outfit, and those clothes were in the apartment, Jenna had been home long enough to change before whatever this was had happened.
Evie scanned the reports. Friday’s attire: blue jeans, a red college sweatshirt, tennis shoes, maybe gray. If Jenna hadn’t had several close variations of that outfit in her closet, Evie would be surprised. Friends didn’t remember her wearing jewelry. That wasn’t helpful either.
She would find more details in the police reports and witness statements as she got deeper into those thick files, but for now this looked like the opening set of operative facts.
Under THEORIES, Evie started making another list. Her process was pretty simple: gather facts, speculate on possible theories, eliminate them with more facts, and eventually she’d find her answer.
1. Killed or still alive?
2. Missing by her own choice?
3. Stranger in apartment, lying in wait?
4. Robbery of apartment, she walked in on it?
Evie lightly crossed off number two—Missing by her own choice, though it remained readable. What she knew about this college girl indicated that was unlikely.
5. Boyfriend Steve Hamilton did something?
6. Former boyfriend Spence Spinner did it?
7. Abduction for ransom that went bad, with no ransom call made?
8. Anyone out there who would want to cause Jenna’s family grief?
She needed a deeper look at the family. Brighton College was a private school and tuition would be expensive, suggesting either numerous scholarships and grants or the parents had money. Evie made a note to research that topic. Cops would have looked at the boyfriends closely, but she’d take another look there too.
9. If killed in her apartment, where did the body go? Hauled out when/how? Friday night? Saturday morning? Not a solitary sign of violent death?
10. Killed in another apt in the building?
11. Any other abductions, disappearances of women from this college?
12. Someone else sent that last text, not Jenna?
Evie stopped when she wrote down twelve, feeling an interesting tug. Maybe killed somewhere else and then someone takes her apartment keys, goes to the apartment, maybe to steal some cash (hard to know) or remove a connection that cops would otherwise find, photos on her phone or laptop, or to retrieve a gift given to Jenna. He (or she) sends text to her mother to misdirect when and where Jenna had been. I’m back at the apartment, sent at 11:42 p.m., only it’s not Jenna sending it. Evie circled number twelve. She’d learned through experience to find areas not yet explored, or only glanced at, and spend more time there. She thought the cops had probably not pursued this particular idea.
13. Jenna was grabbed on the block before she reached her building, killed in some other building/apartment on the block? (But her keys were there—she would have had them with her . . . killer returned them?)
Evie would need to know who had lived not only in Jenna’s building, but in every apartment in the neighborhood—a whole lot of data to dig up and a lot of backgrounds to look into. Evie felt hope begin to rise that this case could be solved. Cops already would have looked at guys living in the area, but had they really drilled down? Systematically, building by building, across that block and others nearby? She could dig in with the benefit of hindsight. There could be a record of something off about the person she was looking to find. Kill one girl, odds were good you had committed other crimes in the last nine years. Evie put a star beside that idea.
What else? What other theories could fit the facts?
14. A good student. Was she writing papers for other students to make extra money? Helping someone cheat, now wanting to stop? Or she’d said no to someone who asked for her help to cheat?
15. She was a good student because she was the one cheating, buying papers and getting advance looks at tests from a TA?
16. She saw something she wasn’t supposed to see and was killed to keep her from talking. A drug deal? A fight? What else happened that night in the area?
Okay, now she was finding herself in the weeds. Evie put down her pen and read back through her lists. She’d add more in the coming days, but enough was here that she might already have brushed up against the answer to this case.
Evie retrieved the photos cops had taken of the apartment and began to sort them out by area and room. She was interrupted by the front desk calling to say their lunch order had arrived. Evie walked down to get it, carried the sack to the conference room. “Mind if I join you?”
David turned from his whiteboard, smiled, and pointed to the clear end of the conference table. “I’d welcome the company. I’ll be paused here in a minute.”
It would be good to step away from Jenna for a bit. Evie divided the lunch order and pulled out a chair. Piles of folders filled the rest of the table, two laptops were open, and the PI’s phones were neatly lined up. She watched David writing more notes on the long whiteboard, building his case overview. She started her lunch. “You’re not linear,” Evie remarked, intrigued by what he was doing. Client names, family members, neighbors, and friends all radiated out in various circle clusters.
David paused to unwrap his sandwich, gestured to the board. “It’s people who interacted with him who can tell me his life story. And one of those people likely killed him. I’ll deal with the timeline when I’m ready to break the alibi that’s spun.”
“You don’t think he could just be missing, that he took himself off the grid and disappeared for some reason?”
David shook his head. “I find it easier to assume the worst. Then I ask the tougher questions.”
“Interesting point.”
He settled in a chair and opened a bag of chips. “You don’t make assumptions to narrow down a case?”
“I run theories, play what-ifs, see how many different stories I can create out of the existing evidence. I try to simultaneously hold all of them as active possibilities as I explore for more facts.”
“We have very different brains.”
Evie laughed. “I’m often told I’m simply odd.”
“Yours works. I’m just more . . . well, let’s just say I shake the box of people connections and wait for the answer to fall out.”
She wrapped up the second half of her sandwich for later and opened her own bag of chips. “I’m going to learn a lot just by watching you work.”
David smiled. “With this case, I’m glad I prefer this approach. My PI disappeared sometime between Thursday morning and the following Tuesday morning. Throw a dart at a map of Chicago and its suburbs to sort out where it happened.”
“Ouch.”
“I chose a black hole for a case,” David replied with good humor. “Saul didn’t have someone he would check in with regularly. He used an answering service instead of a secretary. He was in contact with family, but not in a predictable pattern. There’s no steady girlfriend in the picture that I have so far. By this time tomorrow I’m going to know just how deep a mystery I’ve got here. Even his car is missing.”
“Your reputation will be well earned when you solve it.”
“Or this will take a bite out of it. Solve your case quickly, so you can come and help me out. I’ll need it.”
Evie laughed. “Ditto. Do you like hard cases?”
“Sure. It gives me something more to pray about.”
Evie wasn’t sure if David meant that literally, so she chose to let the comment pass for now. “I’ve seen enough paper with mine I’m ready to get out of here, go see the college and where my girl lived.” She pushed back her chair and picked up the remainder of her lunch. “I’ll be back by dark to join you for dinner. I want to hear the story of you and Maggie.”
“By then I’ll have opened all these folders and be ready for a break,” David said. “Good hunting, Evie.”
“You too, David.”