“Why isn’t he your lead suspect?” Evie wondered.
“Tom didn’t lie when I interviewed him. Admitted what he did, drew the line at what he didn’t. Cops interviewed him after Saul disappeared. His alibi at the time was a short-term job hauling furniture with a friend in Wisconsin. It’s got major holes, as it’s only a couple hours’ drive back here, but cops confirmed he was in Wisconsin. Tom stays on my list, but I tend to believe him when he said payback was payback, and he’s not one to murder a guy.”
“You did have a good night,” she said after a sip of orange juice.
“It felt like progress, something I sorely need.” David finished his first egg sandwich and wadded up the wrapper. “My plan for today is to track down more names on that list, have more conversations, see what other rocks I can turn over.” He motioned with his second breakfast sandwich. “How’s your day shaping up?”
“Ann and I are going to spend most of it doing interviews of people on my whiteboard list. The background reports I’m getting confirm we have the right names to consider.”
David nodded. “A productive day is ahead for both of us.” He gestured once more with his sandwich. “If you happen to see a for-sale sign on a decent house, jot down the address. I’m officially house hunting.”
“Sure. Looking for anything in particular?”
“Ranch-style, two-car garage, a little grass, not on a major street. I can fix it up. So long as the neighborhood is low crime, I’m good. Maggie will be living in Barrington. I figure if I split the distance between the airport and the tollway, I’ll have the shortest commute I can arrange between my personal and work lives.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” Evie assured him. She’d never actually owned a house, always rented, so it would be interesting to watch David settle in someplace.
After breakfast, David headed to the conference room while Evie turned her attention to Jenna’s files. Cops had considered some similar cases. She found those reports, went online to see their current status. Three of the five were still open. She looked deeper at the two solved ones, the arrests made. The individuals involved didn’t seem like possibles for Jenna’s disappearance. Evie cleared a section of the whiteboard and put up photos from the three still-open cases.
She didn’t know what pieces truly mattered—attending a concert, the missing driver’s license, no sign of struggle in the apartment, the body not found, Jenna’s appearance and personality, or something else entirely. The FBI report on missing women was in her inbox. She opened it and found it ran sixty-two pages. A lot of college girls had gone missing over the twelve years Evie had asked for.
She had about thirty minutes before Ann would join her. She began to read the five-line abstracts for each entry. She found a case in Indiana that sounded like a match, pulled up the file to read the summary, added another photo to the board. Missing college girls . . . Jenna Greenhill was one of a larger subset of crimes.
The interviews went about as Evie had expected. “Ann, do you get the feeling the last person these people want to remember is Jenna Greenhill?” she asked, walking away from an automotive garage where Benjamin Reece worked.
“It’s certainly less cooperation than we get from her friends.”
“At least it confirms we’ve got the right names.” Evie marked off number five. They weren’t going to get a confession out of someone, but she would settle for hearing a lie and seeing acute nerves kick in. She was mostly hearing stress and anger that cops were out asking questions again.
“Who’s next?” Ann asked.
Evie had lined them up in order of geography to limit drive time. “The ex-girlfriend of Steve Hamilton, Candy Trefford. Has a temper and a jealous streak, and in the last nine years has had three restraining orders filed against her.”
“I like the idea of it being a woman,” Ann remarked, opening the car door. “Gender bias aside, Jenna doesn’t see it coming if it’s a woman, and when cops did interviews, asking if people saw anything out of place that night, those questioned are going to be thinking male, not female.”
Evie, behind the wheel, entered the address for directions. “Exactly. I’m thinking Candy viewed her first name as something to live down, let herself get a temper, had a ‘you’d better take me seriously’ attitude toward guys.”
“Makes sense. We’ve both seen it. Live against type, be aggressive with the world.”
Evie nodded. “Steve was a nice guy. Candy didn’t like him moving on. And Jenna is the target of that anger. It’s plausible, if I could figure out how it played out. The easiest was to get Jenna in Candy’s car, hit her, dump the body somewhere. The text message to Jenna’s mom throws the timing off, but it’s possible Candy sent the text, then returned Jenna’s keys, phone and purse to her apartment, walked out.”