Threads of Suspicion

  “Sure. Late at night, you can tell in a general way that someone is still up—cabinets being closed, music on, voices in the hall when people come and go,” Heather replied. “It’s not a quiet building. It’s got a routine that you start to recognize as normal. Who’s most likely to come in late, the pattern of people’s schedules. Sometimes when you’re having people over, you can get a complaint to hold it down after ten p.m. We’re pretty considerate of each other as we’re going to be neighbors for at least a semester, and we’ve all got to study.”

  It was helpful information. It told Evie the witness statements from building residents when Jenna disappeared should be studied in detail for what they had heard and when. Evie scanned the apartment windows, checking angles from which others would be able to see inside. “The building manager, the super, any problems or delays getting stuff tended to that needs attention—a dripping faucet, broken latch, loose floor tile, that kind of thing?” Management of the building hadn’t changed in the last decade, Evie had checked, so it was likely a few of the same staff were still working here.

  “There’s a maintenance number, and they are good about coming by. You have to leave a signed slip in their box downstairs with details on what is wrong, give permission for someone to come into the apartment if you want someone to handle the problem when you’re not here.”

  There would be keys to the apartment somewhere in the manager’s office, and Evie would want to check how easy it would be for someone to lift those keys, use them to enter the apartment, or make a duplicate for later. Procedures might have changed, some personnel, but certain things would be very much the same. “Laundry is in the building?” she asked Heather, trying to understand the dynamics of a shared building like this.

  “On the first floor, past the mailboxes and the utility room. You can sign up for a specific laundry time for one machine or take your chances that the other is free.”

  “What’s in the utility room?”

  “They keep extra snow shovels, brooms, that kind of equipment available for tenants to use. It’s left unlocked because there’s not much there you would want to steal. Stuff has been spray-painted a bright lime green.”

  Evie smiled. “What do you do with your trash?”

  “We’re supposed to use the dumpster out back marked for this building, but if you’ve got a car and you’re going out by the south parking lot, it’s quicker to use the dumpster for the next building.”

  “Parking’s constantly full? You have friends over, they’re going to have to park where they can find a place and walk over to your building?”

  “Mostly. It’s always a challenge,” Heather agreed. “You can get away with double-parking to bring up groceries, but you better be less than five minutes or someone is going to remember it was your car and make a fuss about it. We’ve got a parking space matching our apartment number, and mostly it’s honored. But in winter it gets to be everybody for themselves when the pavement numbers get covered up. Most simply walk to where they are heading if it’s anywhere nearby. It’s just not worth moving your car and losing your parking space. And the bus is decent for going out to the mall—it passes through this block every hour.”

  That was useful to know. Evie pointed to the refrigerator. “Where do you get your groceries?”

  “There’s a decent grocery store two blocks east that most of us use. And every restaurant around here delivers in thirty minutes or less. This kitchen seems great when you look at apartment options. But having lived here a while, it would be better if they had made this area all office space and given us a half-sized refrigerator and a microwave rather than tie up all this floor space. No one has time or really wants to cook when it’s just one person.”

  Evie remembered those days and mentioned lightly, “I kept my books where the plates were supposed to be.”

  Heather reached over and opened a cabinet. It was filled with art supplies. They shared a laugh.

  The mood shifted to serious again as Heather asked, “Do you think something bad happened in this apartment?”

  “If it did, I’ll figure it out,” Evie replied, keeping her tone matter-of-fact. “Think of it this way, Heather. You’re in the one apartment the building manager worked the hardest to improve for security—new dead bolts, new window locks, a camera in the hall—not to mention it’s been fully updated.” Evie pointed out the living room, then the kitchen. “When Jenna lived here, that carpet was blue, the backsplash had a gold-checked pattern, and every wall was painted white. You’ve got basically a new place. Whatever occurred is history, and every apartment here has its own history, good and bad.”

  Evie looked back at the building from the front sidewalk. It showed its age, but it was well-maintained and matched others on the block, so likely it was built by the same developer. Odds were good the building stayed fully occupied, given it was cheaper housing than the campus dorms and was within walking distance to where classes were held. There would be people around, coming and going, at all hours.

  Streetlights, wide sidewalks, with a patch of grass and a row of large trees in front of each building. The mature trees would leave dark pockets at night, blocking the moonlight and streetlights. The parking lot was visible from the street, but there were enough rows of cars to provide concealment if someone was careful.

  Selecting this building, choosing apartment 19, risking going upstairs—Jenna hadn’t been a random target, not if this happened inside. If it happened on the street or in the parking lot, that could be more random. Grab Jenna because she was the vulnerable one in a target-rich environment. Maybe the guy sat nearby, a van on the street, watching people come and go. Jenna walks across his line of sight and gets picked.

  Right age, appearance—move when she’s near your vehicle, snatch her fast, control her ability to cry out. Or maybe just walk up next to her with a question when she moved into a shadowed area and abruptly hit her hard, knock her out, and ease her into the van. Two minutes? Three? Try not to slam the van door or drive away too quickly. A public abduction was extremely dangerous, but that would increase the adrenaline and excitement levels of such a crime.

  Evie felt a growing supposition that Jenna had walked into trouble that night. Either she was grabbed on the way home, and someone else sent that text to her mom, or she came back outside for some reason and was then grabbed. If an abduction on the street or in the parking lot, Jenna wouldn’t be his first, would she . . . ?

  Jenna had walked to dinner, the concert, then back to the apartment building, so the circuit of those places couldn’t be far. Evie looked at her watch. With daylight left, she decided she had time to find the restaurant and the concert venue. She checked the restaurant name and location in the files she’d stuffed into the backpack, searched for it online, got directions. She headed north on foot.

  She had the list of people who were in the group that night with Jenna, would track them down so she could interview them again, this time to ask about the details. Chinese food. Jenna’s choice, or someone else in the group? The first time Jenna had been to this restaurant, or it was a place the waitstaff knew her by sight, remembered her usual order?

  Evie found the restaurant in under ten minutes, studied it from across the street. An upscale place, probably an occasional destination rather than a frequent one, only when you wanted to splurge on a nice meal. They eat here, that takes maybe an hour of the evening, and then head as a group to the concert venue.

  Evie looked up the Fifth Street Music Hall and was directed four blocks east. She walked that direction, finding herself mostly moving against pedestrian traffic flowing toward the college.

  The Music Hall was a corner building occupying a good half of the block, tented canopies for entrances on both cross streets, a lighted marquee, the band Five Young Guys playing tonight, with the opening band, The Chili Peppers, warming up the crowd. Smoke & Fire was being promoted for Friday and Saturday nights. Evie had no idea who any of these groups were, but they must have a
following sufficient to play here. Three expansive parking lots and a multistory parking garage were in sight of the building, suggesting weekends could be packed houses when a popular band was booked to appear.

  Evie considered what it would have looked like that Friday night. Streets busy with cars, couples and groups streaming to the Music Hall for a concert, a lot of people milling around. The group around Jenna would have been one of many clusters merging together at the entrance. Someone could slip in behind her group, follow her inside—never be noticed, just one of the crowd. A popular concert would draw in music lovers from all over the area.

  Had Jenna been a music groupie? One to hang around for an autograph? Or was she the type to enjoy the music because this was where the group wanted to go that night, then she was ready to call it an evening and get home?

  Maybe she’d caught the attention of someone in the band or the crew that did the setup and teardown. “Why don’t we meet up for a drink when I get free in an hour?” Or, “The band is gathering for drinks to end the evening, why don’t you join us? Don’t tell your friends, so they don’t get jealous—it’s a private invitation. I’ll pick you up, or you can walk behind the Music Hall and meet me at the backstage door”—anything along that line would work if Jenna had stars in her eyes about a band member. Who was playing that night?

  Evie tugged out the police reports, scanned them, but didn’t see the names of any bands. Who in the group had made the dinner reservations, bought the concert tickets, put this evening together? She did track down that name. Tiffany Wallace. Evie shifted folders and got lucky. Tiffany’s witness statement was in the set she had brought with her. She turned pages looking for the particulars. After the concert we headed back to campus . . . Tiffany’s statement was filled with references to the evening’s plans, the restaurant, the Music Hall location, the concert was sold out, their group came and left together, lots of people were on the street as they headed back to campus—details, but not the names of the groups playing that night. Evie flipped through other witness statements, not finding the specifics she was after.

  Her friends had seen Jenna alive after the concert, near her apartment, the cops hadn’t been focused on the concert in the first hours of the search. Not unexpected. Evie was interested only because whatever had happened that night hadn’t been solved, and this was a prime location for Jenna to have been spotted by someone who took an interest in her. The details she needed would be in the other documentation somewhere. She’d find it when she was back at the office.

  She’d seen enough to tell her the core of it. Evie shoved the folders back into the backpack, dug out car keys, and reversed course. She’d come back with Ann for a more detailed excursion.

  Jenna had been around a lot of people that night. Past midnight or one a.m., Evie doubted this was a quiet area on a Friday night. If Jenna had doubled back this direction after leaving her friends, someone would have seen her, noticed her, likely said something when the area got papered with missing-person fliers and cops and friends were asking questions. Evie wanted to see the tip file, the called-in comments that cops might have looked at and not been able to do something with at the time.

  She didn’t know yet where the crime had happened. That felt like the critical missing fact and the most likely reason the case hadn’t yet been solved.

  Evie dumped her backpack on the desk and went to see what David was doing. The conference room whiteboard had been turned into a visual look at the PI’s life. David was sitting on the opposite side of the table, studying the mosaic.

  “Welcome back.” David slid over an open bag of pretzels, and Evie pulled out a chair, took a handful. She hadn’t worked with him long enough to recognize his mood at a glance, but she had the impression his thinking stints were probably as intense as hers, and interrupting was best timed for when he was ready for a break. She was rewarded for the silence with a smile and nod by him toward the board. “I’ve been looking through his files at the type of work he did. A PI doing his job is spying, sneaking around, collecting rumors and evidence to prove someone is a criminal or an adulterer or otherwise a bad person. Really bad people are the ones who tend to turn around and kill you.”

  Evie thought that was a fascinating observation, and considered the board. A missing PI defined “interesting” simply for the parallels with what law enforcement did plus the sheer number of directions it might go.

  David scooped up another handful of pretzels. “I’ve glanced at his personal life. Saul Morris was forty-eight, never married, a clean record with local cops. He worked at a newspaper as a photographer before he got into PI work. Nothing showed up that set off alarms—no sex scandals, no revolving set of girlfriends, no gambling problem.” He pointed with a pretzel at the photo of Saul’s house. “Nothing was found in his place suggesting he was using or dealing drugs, trafficking in stolen goods, or doing some blackmailing alongside his investigating. Hobbies were sports and cars—several car magazines subscriptions, he’d paid to drive around a race track in a performance car—that kind of thing. He preferred to work alone, sole proprietor, no history of hiring any staff. His life was his PI business.”

  “An older guy with an interesting career,” she commented, “maybe a few painful breakups with girlfriends in his twenties and thirties, so why settle down now?”

  “Pretty much how I read it,” David said with a nod. “He was actually pretty tame as PIs go. He was good with a camera, good at tailing people. He worked a number of infidelity cases. ‘I think my spouse is cheating on me’ kind of thing. He was getting referrals from satisfied clients, who told their friends about the PI who’d helped them out. It’s sad when you think of it—the cottage industry that exists around infidelity. It looks to be about twenty percent of his business.

  “He also did a lot of background checks. Prospective business hires, as well as people being considered for promotion to sensitive positions. Numerous traces locating people skipping out on debts and child-support payments. Some of his personal bills he paid by camera work—a newspaper needs a photographer on a breaking story, he’d stop what he was doing to take the job.”

  Evie was seeing a picture form as David spoke. “A realist about the work, a lot of jobs that would take five to fifteen hours, keep the client list full, the income diversified.”

  “I’d say that’s how he was thinking,” David concurred. He nodded at the board. “Notice what’s not up there?” He gave her a minute to scan it. “There’s no work for insurance companies, suspected fraud, thefts, the ‘he said it was stolen and put in a claim, but he’s actually still got it,’ kinds of cheating attempts by people who aren’t very good at it. There’s also no work for lawyers, which is surprising. Most PIs are doing some trial-related work, probing the veracity of statements from defendants, trying to locate witnesses.”

  “A selective kind of PI,” Evie said thoughtfully, intrigued. “So either business was good,” she guessed, “or he lived thin as far as personal needs went, so he could be choosy about which clients to take on.”

  “From what I’ve seen so far, I’d say he was making ends meet, but it wasn’t luxury,” David replied. “He was living skinny in order to stay with the cases he wanted to work. I’m also not seeing what I would call work with the shadier sides of Chicago business—the business owner paying protection money to a crime family, a store dealing with a gang problem so as not to get their front windows smashed. Most PIs are doing some type of ‘social counseling,’ the ‘back off’ message delivery, the ex-husband or boyfriend ignoring a restraining order. But my guy was avoiding that type of job.”

  As Evie listened, she realized David was revealing a rather extensive working knowledge of the PI business. She also noticed his handful of pretzels had become a neat stack as he idly flipped them into order in his hand while he talked. She was going to find the next weeks fascinating and had to force her attention back to the case itself, rather than profile the cop working it.

  “My PI
was the type who preferred to hang back,” David continued, gesturing again with a pretzel toward the board. “He liked to observe, take photos, ferret out the secret. Based on the numerous photos on those laptops, this guy can blend in at hotels, at bars—social, comfortable in crowds. He’s street-smart, can think on his feet. But that may have cost him his life, if he was too confident in his ability to handle himself in difficult situations.”

  David glanced over. “You look into the secrets people are keeping, you’re going to find drugs, gambling, an affair, or a pretty elaborate fraud—the guy with two wives, a Ponzi scheme, embezzlement. I’m going to guess Saul followed someone, taking photos, got spotted himself, and paid for the error with his life—photograph a drug buy, get yourself shot. I’m inclined to think this case is going to come down to something that simple. He was doing a job that can be deadly. And for him, it was.”

  Evie studied the names on the board, not expecting to recognize anyone, just counting for a total. “Getting killed because of work, given the breadth of his clients, is going to make for an interesting exploration.”

  “The number of cases he was working at the time of his death is manageable. That’s where I’ll start digging first. If the answer isn’t found in those, I’ll then look at the closed cases. Maybe someone wanted payback.”

  “You sound pleased,” Evie mentioned.

  David smiled. “I am. I’m starting to understand this guy. I’ve now scanned enough files to know what he was doing in his job, and it’s the job where he poured his time. That’s a good chunk of work sorted out in just the first day.” David reached for a bottle of water. “That’s my case so far. How did your campus visit go?”

  “Useful.” Evie filled him in on her impressions of the college and the apartment building where Jenna had lived.

  He nodded as she finished. “You’re leaning toward a local crime, everything at the root of your case residing within blocks of each other.”