“Mrs. Greenhill, this is Lieutenant Evie Blackwell, with the Missing Persons Task Force. Detective Newcrest said he spoke with you yesterday. I’m so sorry your daughter’s case remains open. Would now be a good time to have a short conversation?”
Evie settled deeper in the chair and prepared to mostly listen.
Six
David returned while Evie finished up a call with Jenna’s academic advisor. When he shook off his coat but didn’t go to the conference room, she nudged her bowl of sweet-tarts toward him, got a smile of thanks as he took one and sat down.
“Thanks, Mrs. Cline,” she said into her phone. “Yes, I’ll call if I have more questions. I appreciate your time.” Evie clicked off with relief. The woman loved to talk.
It wasn’t hard to read David’s expression. “That bad?”
“Yeah. I should have taken you along for the interview with Saul’s sister. You would have melted. Cynthia Morris, forty-two, single mom with a teenage son. She made a point to let me know right off that she and Saul were stepsiblings—his dad married her mother. Then she gave me an hour on how good a brother Saul was. He stayed in her life even after the two parents divorced, his dad married yet again, and there was yet another set of steps for Saul to deal with.”
“Loyal, caring.”
David nodded. “He’d stay at her place if he was working on that side of town, be the uncle to her son, play some ball, be a good influence. He was there the week he went missing, came by that Sunday night, stayed until Wednesday morning.”
David opened his notebook and read aloud, “‘He was in a mellow mood, not particularly busy with work, said he’d just finished a couple of long involved matters. For him, he was flush with cash, insisted on getting some repairs done while he was around, had the plumber out, got my car battery replaced. Being a nice brother.’”
“Oh, man,” Evie said softly.
“Yeah. He mentioned to Cynthia he had a meeting with a client in South Harbor that Wednesday afternoon and thought he might hit a concert in Arlington Heights if he had time that evening. I’ve confirmed he had a ticket purchased for the concert on his credit-card statement. It’s not clear he attended the concert, but a receipt on Thursday morning puts him at a gas station well north, in Gurnee. Cops at the time confirmed with security-camera footage it was in fact Saul using that credit card and that he was alone—their assumption is that he’d traveled north for work. After that the trail is stone cold. It’s going to be his job that is the source of this. But family, particularly Cynthia, takes the brunt of his absence without a trace.”
“That’s the toughest kind of interview.”
David put away the notebook. “It wasn’t as emotional as you would expect, but very sad. She knows he’s dead. She just wants answers, to be able to give Saul a fitting funeral.”
Evie thought it would help David to talk about the rest of it. “What else did she say? I need to get my head away from Jenna occasionally, think about something else.”
David smiled. “Now you’re just being kind. You’ve really got a few minutes for this?”
“I do.”
“Cynthia was worth the time.” He took his notebook out again and read a few more notes. “He was into his cars, sports, liked baseball, would often go to a club to listen to live music, loved jazz, would attend a concert every few months just to enjoy the crowds. He was the guy every lady should marry, but no one ever did.
“Saul loved his work. He loved the puzzle of it, the search for how to answer the question were it an affair, stealing from their boss, or lying on their résumé. He considered it to be a good service to society, keeping people honest. The PI work came naturally to him. He liked people, could walk into any environment and be comfortable there.
“His motto was ‘Follow the people, find the crime.’ He’d be out on stakeouts, following people all hours of the day and night. He knew this city and its suburbs like the back of his hand. He’d hire taxi drivers to help him out, and sometimes borrow business vehicles from friends—a landscape truck, flower-delivery van, or a plumber’s truck.
“Saul wasn’t a particularly physical man, out to win every fistfight he might get into, but he could disarm tense situations and avoid altercations. If he couldn’t disarm, couldn’t simply leave, he’d throw the dirty punch and knock the guy out, or smash him with a bottle—he would fight to end it fast, wasn’t going to be polite about it.”
“That’s useful to know,” Evie observed.