“Let’s hope he doesn’t have that much cash on him,” David said. “Nothing here looks to me like a smoking gun. There’s no photo of one of the missing women, a group of postings that turn dark. Wait . . . hold on. I spoke too fast. This isn’t good.”
Evie glanced over. David turned the tablet toward her. “That’s Maggie, there’s her old Chicago home, and that’s the sweatshirt I gave her for her twentieth birthday, which these days looks pretty faded.”
Evie’s interest spiked. “So he’s met her that early on?”
He nodded, pulling back the tablet.
“We’ll find him, David. There’s really only three possibilities. He returns to Indiana and into the arms of the cops looking for him there, he keeps his head down and hides because he’s heard we’re looking for him, or he stays around Chicago because he wants to see Maggie.”
“Play those out,” said David. “If he’s innocent, he pulls in the driveway of his house and says to the waiting cops, ‘What’s going on?’ If he’s guilty, but thinks he can get away with it, he pulls into the driveway and asks the cops, ‘What’s going on? Search my house? Sure, I’ve got nothing to hide.’ It’s that last option I’m worried about right now.”
As Evie turned into the office park, the car suddenly filled with sharp electronic sounds. The phone in his pocket, the second phone in his briefcase, the tablet—notifications went off on all of them. Surprised, Evie nearly put the car into a snowplow drift.
“That’s the perimeter alarm at Maggie’s place!”
She hit the police lights, swung back into traffic, recalling the route they’d taken the last two trips, and added a siren to the noise.
Twenty-Three
Margaret May McDonald
Maggie used a glue stick to carefully re-secure a photo in an early concert album. She looked so young! There was Benjamin on drums, Paul still playing his original guitar. The memories flooded back from those early Triple M days. She turned to the last photos she had of David before he’d been hurt. She’d forgotten how much he had changed too. His entire presence was more solid now—he even stood differently, and his hair definitely included some gray strands. She smiled as she imagined his reaction if she said that to him. The man wasn’t vain, but he was aware of the years passing.
She could make out faces to about eight rows back. The girl Evie was searching for might be in these photos. Maggie marked the page and carefully closed the album, placed it back in the box. David would take them to Evie when he came by later this evening.
She retrieved her songwriting box from the bedroom bookshelf. Filled with pastel paper, colored pens, and cutout pictures that had captured her imagination, it was her preferred way of working on new songs. A thick clip of pages rested atop the materials—lists of keywords, working titles, themes, lyrics half-formed to draw upon for further inspiration.
Maggie spread out the materials and stretched out on the carpet, started to develop the topic of moving to a new city, a new home, hopefully to capture her mix of emotions during the last month. She didn’t want to lose this opportunity. She lived her life in many ways through her music, resolving what she felt, thought about, and wished for in lyrics she might one day share with others. The only straightforward part of a move was the packing and boxing, while the rest was about emotions. She wrote Leaving on one page, Arriving on another, and finally, Settling In. She started noting down everything that came to mind for each theme.
As she worked, she let her thoughts drift to the reasons that had brought her back to Chicago. She’d returned to be around those who knew her best, to spend time with Bryce and Charlotte, to have more hours in her schedule to be with David, to explore further the big question she still had to resolve for herself—David’s faith. Or do I mean my faith? she mused.
She’d called a hiatus from David twice since this limbo began, when the pain rippled too strong to carry it, only to feel her heart shred even more. She was sure she didn’t want to lose him. And so the subject of faith she was so tired of wrestling with rose again to the top. She hoped some talks with Bryce and Charlotte would spark something to break the impasse.
She could understand Christianity with her head. On the surface it wasn’t hard to grasp, but the actual truth of it was like a rock she couldn’t break open. She’d long since accepted the historical record—Jesus was no figment of someone’s imagination. Jesus had lived over two thousand years ago in the area that was now Israel and Palestine. He’d been a carpenter, born in the city of Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, and about age thirty he had become a prominent religious teacher in his Jewish society. He was crucified by Roman authorities with the agreement of Jewish religious leaders in AD 33.