“A sandwich is fine. I’m thinking Italian would be nice for dinner tonight. A good spaghetti or lasagna.”
“I’m game.” She called in a delivery order for soup and sandwiches, considering David. He didn’t look like the boyfriend of a famous singer. He looked like a cop. She’d just think cop and hopefully forget, or at least adjust quickly to, the unexpected fact of his girlfriend’s status in the music world.
She drank the coffee he had brought her and once again shook off the distraction. She scanned over the collection of data. There’s enough to give me a basic sense of Jenna’s life, she thought. Time to look at the specifics of what had happened. She pulled out the first police report. It had been called in by Jenna’s best friend, Robin Landis, on Monday afternoon, October 20. Jenna had last been seen Friday night. A rather long gap . . .
Once the timeline was filled in with details pulled from police reports and witness statements, Evie settled back in a desk chair to study the information and unwrapped a roll of sweet-tarts. A bag of them had showed up at her home, gift-wrapped, with a Have fun on the task force note from Gabriel Thane. The sheriff of Carin County was a good friend who knew her well. She’d tossed the entire bag in her suitcase, figuring it might last the first week.
Okay, Jenna. I’m looking for you now, and I’m going to dig in until I find you. What’s here to see? The items on the board showed a typical college student going about her life. Classes. Friends. Boyfriend.
Jenna had gone out with a group of friends on that last Friday night, dinner first and then a concert. She had parted from the group just after 11 p.m. on the block where she lived. At 11:42, Jenna sent a text message to her mother—Back in apartment, received your message, will call you in the morning. After that . . . nothing. Jenna hadn’t been heard from or seen again.
The missing-persons report had been filed on Monday afternoon. Jenna hadn’t been answering texts or calls, she missed church where she was a semi-regular, missed her classes on Monday morning, including a chemistry test worth twenty percent of the semester grade. The building manager had opened the apartment door for a worried friend, and her friend had then called the police. Jenna’s purse was there with her phone and keys. Her car was in its assigned parking spot. No sign of a struggle. Just no Jenna. . . .
It was fairly typical for a missing-persons case landing on a detective’s desk. A few days of delay, friends and family getting worried, the realization they couldn’t locate her, so call the cops.
On the surface, the case seemed straightforward. But it hadn’t been solved in the last nine years, so something was muddying what should have been an open-and-shut investigation and arrest.
Evie reached over for a blank pad of paper, divided the page into two columns, and numbered the lines one through twenty. On the left side she wrote FACTS, on the right side THEORIES.
Under FACTS, she listed:
1. Good grades
2. No history of problems with the law
3. No history of excessive drinking
4. Steady boyfriend
5. No roommate
6. Keys recovered in apartment
7. Phone ditto
8. Wallet ditto
9. Car in her parking space
10. No sign of struggle in apartment?
Evie put a question mark on that last one because she’d want to study the apartment photos with a magnifying glass before affirming it.
11. Last seen Friday night, 11 p.m., her block, walking to her apt building
12. Last text sent, Friday, 11:42 p.m., to her mom
13. Did not answer phone calls on Saturday
14. Did not attend church on Sunday
15. Did not appear in Monday classes
16. Credit cards not used after Friday night
17. Bank accounts not accessed after Friday night
What had Jenna been wearing that Friday night? If it was a unique outfit, and those clothes were in the apartment, Jenna had been home long enough to change before whatever this was had happened.
Evie scanned the reports. Friday’s attire: blue jeans, a red college sweatshirt, tennis shoes, maybe gray. If Jenna hadn’t had several close variations of that outfit in her closet, Evie would be surprised. Friends didn’t remember her wearing jewelry. That wasn’t helpful either.
She would find more details in the police reports and witness statements as she got deeper into those thick files, but for now this looked like the opening set of operative facts.
Under THEORIES, Evie started making another list. Her process was pretty simple: gather facts, speculate on possible theories, eliminate them with more facts, and eventually she’d find her answer.
1. Killed or still alive?
2. Missing by her own choice?
3. Stranger in apartment, lying in wait?
4. Robbery of apartment, she walked in on it?