Lutz had sent Henry and Shawn out to follow up on the few leads they took over the tip line. That left Frank, Tony, Kip, myself, and Lutz sitting around the table at the back of the bull pen. Frank went over the information shared by Beth Riley at the gym and handed Lutz the application that Robert Smith had filled out only two weeks prior.
“Have you gone to this address yet?”
Frank told him we hadn’t, but as he drove to the station, I looked up the address on my phone. I added that it was an apartment complex on Halstead.
“What else do you know about this Robert Smith?”
“Only that he’s new to the area, but we don’t know from where or why he moved to Chicago. That leaves forty-nine other states he could be from.”
Lutz tipped his chin toward my desk. “Grab your laptop and type his name into the database.” He looked at the application again. “Of course he didn’t put in his middle initial. That would make our nationwide search too easy.”
“With all due respect, Boss, the guy didn’t know he was about to be murdered.”
Bob let out a long puff of air and apologized. “Sorry, that was uncalled for. We’ve just hit so many dead ends along the way, and there have to be hundreds of men named Robert Smith in the United States.”
I logged on to our people-search database and typed in Robert’s name. I started with the entire United States to get a feel for what we were dealing with and groaned when thousands of names popped up.
“Maybe I should try the missing persons database again to see if it’s been updated. At least we have his name now.”
Bob nodded, meaning go ahead. I typed Robert Smith into the search bar and came up with a half dozen names—easy enough to go through in a minute. All I needed to do was compare the ages of the missing men to our Robert Smith, and I did, but none were even close. The oldest missing Robert Smith that somebody was actually looking for was forty-seven years old. I was disappointed again, and I was sure the rest of our team felt the same way. We had a name but no backstory to go with it.
“Don’t let it get you down, Jesse. Maybe Henry and Shawn will get lucky. Murders aren’t always solved in a day or even a year.”
I raked my hair as I responded. “I know, but in the meanwhile, those killers are searching out their next victim.” Just as I was about to look up information on that apartment building to find out who the manager was, one of the tip-line phones rang on the counter behind us. I pulled the receiver off the base and answered simply because I was the closest to it. “Chicago Police Department tip line, how can I help you?” I pressed the speakerphone button and set the receiver down. A female voice spoke on the other end.
“I’m calling about that unidentified man who was aired on the news last night. I’ve gone out on a date with him, and his name is Cliff.”
“Ma’am, what is your name, and what is Cliff’s last name?” I asked.
She sighed into the phone. “I’m Liza Wakefield, and as far as Cliff goes, we didn’t get that far. The man was a total jerk, so I ended the date within a half hour. All he did was talk about how wonderful he was and how every woman should be honored to go out with him. That was all I could take, and I walked out of the restaurant.”
“Did you meet Cliff through a friend?” Lutz asked.
“Am I on Speakerphone? Your voice is different than the man I was just talking to.”
“Sorry, but yes. This investigation involves our entire detective team, and I’m Commander Bob Lutz. Nice to make your acquaintance, Liza.”
“Thank you. So, back to your question, I’m embarrassed to say I met him on a dating website.”
I fist-pumped the air, knowing I had been on the right track all along. “What is that dating site called?” I asked.
“It’s singlechicagoprofessionals.com. I’m forty-eight and a high school principal. I figured I’d find the perfect match there, but now I’m disillusioned about dating altogether.” She paused for a second. “I’m so sorry. Here I am carrying on about myself when that man is dead.”
There was no way I was going to tell three other rough-and-tough detectives and my own commander that I was a member of that very site, but narrowing down our search to one dating site was a step in the right direction. We might not have to investigate those other websites after all.
“What was his username?” Frank asked.
She groaned. “I should have known better as soon as I saw it. He went by In-Demand.”
We simultaneously groaned with her.
“Did he mention family or what he did for an occupation? Where he worked, maybe?” Lutz asked.
“He said he was an investor and had hit it big in the tech industry during its infancy. He never mentioned family or having grown kids.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us about him? Did he say where he lived?”
“No, but I did see him step out of a bright-orange Jeep when he got to the restaurant. I remember seeing words on the front bumper.”
“Like the model name?”
“Yes, that’s probably what it was and in large black letters.”
I wrote that down. “That’s a big help, and it could have said Wrangler or Rubicon.”
“That was it—Rubicon. I remember now. He was bragging about it being brand-new and expensive.”
Bob thanked Liza and gave her his office phone number then said we might contact her again. After making sure we had her name spelled correctly and the best number to reach her at, I clicked off the call.
Lutz pushed back his chair and stood. “Now we have something to work with. There are four of you, so start tearing apart that dating site. You may have to open up your own account in order to search for Cliff’s username. Meanwhile, I’ll get a warrant so we can see his application. What was that company name again?”
I wrote it down on a slip of paper and handed it to Bob. “It’singlechicagoprofessionals.com.”
“Right.” Lutz shook his head. “Why the hell anybody would use those sites is beyond my understanding. People like that are just inviting trouble into their lives. Let me know if you find something useful.”
I stared at our commander’s back as he walked out. He was likely as frustrated as the rest of us. Nothing about identifying the men or where they came from would be easy. We were either missing part of their name, or as in Robert Smith’s case, we had his full name yet it matched those of thousands of other men. Without knowing where the men came from, we were still spinning our wheels. We needed to know everything about them if we ever hoped to find the killers.
“Okay, all of us log in to that site and create an account,” I said.
Frank smirked. “As what, a guy looking for a guy? Is that even allowed?”
I sighed, already knowing the answer since I’d checked the site the night before. It was a straight site that allowed men-to-women connections only.
“Sign up with a woman’s username. You can scan the men’s profiles for free, but responding to messages is a pay-as-you-go service.”
Frank scratched his cheek as his eyes bore a hole through me. “How the hell would you know?”
I waved off his question. “Jenna always tried to get me involved in those dating sites. I told her I didn’t have time for such nonsense.”
“Humph. Whatever. So now I have to come up with a clever username.”
I grimaced. “Really? You’re going to put that much thought into it?”
He shrugged as he tapped the keyboard. “There. Now I’m GorgeousGeorgia.”
“You’re weird. Just sign up and type In-Demand into the search bar, and Cliff’s profile should pop up.”
Tony chuckled from his desk two away from mine. “You do seem to know more than you ought to about that dating site.”
I scowled. “Go to hell.” I tried to sign up under a female name and was immediately locked out.
Frank groused. “What’s going on? I can’t conduct a search.”
“Me neither,” Tony said.
I looked at Kip, and he frowned. “Same here.”
“Shit. It’s probably because we all share the same external IP address. The dating site thinks something suspicious is going on.”
“Then I’ll search by myself. You guys log out,” Frank said.
I nodded. “Let’s give that a try.”
Frank typed Cliff’s username into the search bar again. “Damn it. Not happening.”
I covered my face with my hands and groaned. “Lutz is going to be pissed. Now we’ll have to wait for that warrant.”
With Liza’s description about Cliff being full of himself, I wondered if he had joined other dating sites besides singlechicagoprofessionals.com. I had accounts with a half dozen of them already under various female usernames, and it was worth a shot to log on, type “In-Demand” into the search bar, and see if he had joined any others under that username. I glanced at the guys, and on Lutz’s orders, they had settled back into weeding through the hundreds of phone leads after I’d explained our snag from earlier. Lutz had already requested the warrant for singlechicagoprofessionals.com so we could access In-Demand’s application, and now we had to wait.
I logged on to my personal email using my phone to see what accounts I had set up in the over-fifty age group sites. With each log-in on my computer, I typed “In-Demand” into the search bar and got zero results. Either Cliff had never joined multiple sites, or he had been clever enough to choose a different username for each one.
Moments later, Henry and Shawn walked in. “We may have something,” Henry said.
I minimized my computer’s screen and directed my focus to him. “Yeah, like what, because we’re striking out here in the bull pen.”
“Like a woman who recognized victim number three from the news coverage and coincidentally had an altercation with him just last week.”
I raised my hand to stop Henry. “Hang on a second. I think Lutz ought to sit in on this.” I called our boss, and he said he would join us in five, which gave me just enough time to make a pot of coffee.
Minutes later, with fresh coffee on our desks, Lutz walked in and let out an involuntary grunt as he took a seat in Henry’s guest chair. He jerked his chin—his way of saying “go ahead”—and Henry began.
“This woman, a Jasmine Ortega, had just left the home in Old Town where she works as a nanny. She said she was at a stoplight behind a bright-orange Jeep, and the light had gone from red to green, but the Jeep didn’t move, so she honked at him.”
I huffed. “The jerk was probably checking his dating messages.”
Henry and Shawn frowned.
“I’ll explain that part later.”
Lutz shushed me and told Henry to continue.
“Anyway, she said the man jumped out of his vehicle and stormed toward her car. She cranked the wheel, got past him, and then stopped just long enough to snap off a picture of his license plate before taking off again. To her surprise, he chased her, ran her off the road with his Jeep, and continued on. She called the cops but never heard anything after that.”
Lutz cursed. “What district did it happen in?”
“The eighteenth, sir, still in Old Town.”
“I’ll talk to the district commander and Abrams. So she doesn’t know his last name?”
“No, or his first. Did we miss something while we were gone?”
Lutz jerked his head at Frank. “Update them.” He turned to Henry. “I need that Jeep’s license plate number.”
“I have it right here, Boss.” Henry stood and pulled his notepad from his pocket. He flipped to the last page, folded it over, and handed the notepad to Lutz.
“I’ll get back to this later. Right now, I need a word with the commanders.”
I returned to my online search of Robert Smith’s apartment in hopes of finding a manager’s phone number so I wouldn’t have to drive there. From the photos of Sunnyview Apartments and the fact that the website itself looked to be from 1990, I wasn’t surprised that no manager’s number was listed. The complex probably changed managers every year.
I looked at Frank. “Want to take a drive to Robert Smith’s apartment complex after lunch? Maybe the manager will know more than Beth Riley did, and there’s always the chance that he’ll let us into Robert’s apartment.”
“Yep, but I’m not holding my breath. The majority of people don’t go out of their way to make things easy on cops.”