Authors: Bianca Sloane
Marion picked up the case notes from the file in front of her and nodded. “Phillip Pearson talked to his wife Saturday evening on January twenty-seventh for fifteen minutes. He left her two subsequent voicemails, both on Sunday the twenty-eighth, neither of which she returned. Called her friend, Cicely Anderson, Sunday afternoon when Tracy still hadn’t called back, to ask if she had heard from Ms. Ellis. Mr. Pearson called to report his wife missing that same day. Ms. Ellis’ body was found behind the rocks of Belmont Harbor that Thursday, February second. Autopsy declared her death to be from blunt trauma to the face.” Marion set her notes down and looked up at Sondra. “As far as we were able to determine, your sister went jogging, something we were told she did often and was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“It took almost a week to find her body.”
Marion looked at her notes again. “We had two major snowstorms that week—one Saturday night and another on Monday, followed by deep freezes that lasted a day or two. Kept most people off the lakefront. It wasn’t until the warm-up and thaw a few days later that she was found.”
Sondra leaned back in her chair. “Who goes jogging in a snowstorm?”
Detective Wallace snorted. “In this town? You’d be surprised.”
Sondra shook her head, trying to wrap her head around this concept. “And the police believe… ?”
“That Ms. Ellis went jogging Saturday evening and was mugged and killed.”
“Okay, so, she got mugged. But she wasn’t raped or anything? Don’t muggers usually carry guns or knives? And aren’t most women who are killed usually raped? Why would he smash her face in with a rock?” Sondra struggled to keep from crying as she thought of that concrete shattering Tracy’s skull.
Marion twisted her lips into an uncomfortable bow. “We believe your sister’s assailant came up behind her and attempted to assault her. She threw her wallet at him. She fought with him and they struggled. She was probably screaming her head off and he couldn’t get her to stop. If he was planning to sexually assault her—which not all of these creeps even want to—at this point wasn’t worth it—not to mention how cold it was—and used the rock to keep her quiet. He took her wallet, flung it on the beach as he fled. Happens all the time.”
Sondra leaned back against the wooden chair, digesting what Marion had told her. “And no witnesses? No one heard or saw anything?”
Marion shook her head. “No. Nothing. We did an exhaustive canvas of the area, didn’t turn up anything.”
Sondra closed her eyes, tears beginning to well beneath the lids. She wiped her eyes and looked at the detective. “Did you have any suspects? Any at all?”
Marion handed Sondra a Kleenex from the box on her desk. She waited for Sondra to dab her eyes and blow her nose before she continued.
“There wasn’t any physical evidence to link Tracy Ellis to any suspect. Unfortunately, the snow and her being frozen like that… the trail started and ended cold.” She cleared her throat and looked down, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
“What about Phillip? What was his alibi?”
Marion looked back down at her notes. “At a conference in Milwaukee. Left the Thursday before your sister disappeared. Hundreds of people saw him over the course of the conference. His cell phone records indicated he talked to your sister when he said he had and the signals were bouncing off the right towers. The lobby cameras of the hotel he was staying at recorded him leaving for dinner Saturday evening with two people and came back with those same two people around ten. He was ruled out as a suspect immediately. Why?”
Sondra looked down at the desk, wondering whether to share the little bits of information she’d found out over the past few days. She herself still wasn’t sure what to make of things.
“I’m just trying to understand what happened,” she finally answered, deciding to hold on to what she had learned just a little bit longer.
“Besides, no one we questioned said anything about problems between the two. By all accounts, he was frantic over what may have happened to her.”
“Yeah,” Sondra sighed, tired by now of hearing that, especially after reading Tracy’s diary and knowing about the imminent divorce. “I know.”
“I’ve been doing this a long time, seen a lot of guilty husbands. Your brother-in-law didn’t fit the profile. As hard as this is to hear, trust me when I tell you this was a senseless, random act.”
Sondra chewed her bottom lip, not believing it was random at all. Her gaze drifted down to the case file open in front of Marion. “Are… ” Sondra swallowed. “Are my sister’s… pictures in there?”
Marion hesitated as she looked down at the file underneath her palm. “Yes, but Ms. Ellis—”
“Please? I just… I think it will give me closure.”
Marion paused again before she relented. “Ok, but I have to warn you—these are pretty graphic.”
“That’s okay. Please. I want to see them.”
Marion pressed her lips into a thin line as she looked at Sondra. Finally, she reached underneath the sheaf of papers in the case file and began to gather the last photos ever taken of Tracy Ellis. She handed them to Sondra gingerly.
“You don’t have to do this—”
“I know,” Sondra cut her off. With wobbly fingers, Sondra picked up the glossy stack. The picture on top was a front-facing shot. Having been under snow for so many days, the pictures revealed an eerie frozen death mask. The pink flesh and what had once been bright red blood, now an icy black sludge, mingled with the exposed white facial bones. One eyeball had fallen out of the socket and hung to the side and the whole thing looked like a big black hole where a face used to be.
But it wasn’t the colors or intensity of the photos that made Sondra gasp.
“Ms. Ellis, I told you, this would be hard—”
“That’s not it,” Sondra whispered, her heart stuck in her throat. She looked up at Marion, tears cascading down her cheeks. “That’s not Tracy.”
“Ms. Ellis, faces look different in death, not to mention how brutal this was—”
Sondra’s tears were flowing now as she continued to examine each photo, knowing it wasn’t Tracy. “I’m telling you—that’s not her. I looked at her every day for fifteen years until I left home for college.” Sondra wiped her eyes. “And it’s not her.”
“Mr. Pearson positively identified her.”
Sondra let out a bitter laugh as she tossed the stack onto the desk. “I don’t care. It’s not her.” Sondra thumped the photos with her index finger. “I guarantee you, if my mother saw these photos, she would tell you the same thing.”
Marion ran her tongue along her teeth. “You are absolutely positive about this?”
“I’m as sure of this as I’m sitting here. It’s not her.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Sondra looked down at the dead woman’s photos again. “And son of a bitch, the body was cremated,” Sondra murmured. Sondra looked up. “Detective Wallace, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I know my alarms are going off like crazy. I think yours should be too.” She stood up and looked back down at the mangled woman in the photos.
“That woman is not my sister. I suggest you find out who she really is. And I don’t know if that means my sister is dead or alive or what. All I know is, I have to find her, no matter what.”
Sondra turned on her heel and walked out of the station.
H
e had just started driving, with no real idea of what his next move should be, when the solution came to him. He stopped at a gas station and found a payphone.
It was time to call in a chit he never knew he’d need.
“Dr. Keegan.”
“Keegan. Phillip Pearson.”
Silence on the other end, but Phillip had expected that.
“Phil. It’s late. What do you want?”
“I’m calling in that favor you owe me.”
An anguished, exasperated sigh from the other end. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
“I’ll bet you thought I was going to forget, didn’t you?” Phillip laughed, his breath puffing out in the bitter air like a plume of chimney smoke. “Or I guess a better way to put it is that you were
hoping
I would, huh?”
“Just spit it out, Phil.”
“I need you to admit a patient for me. Tonight.”
“Are you crazy? It’s almost midnight.”
“Oh, like you don’t check people in at all hours of the night. Consider it an emergency. Oh, and you’re the only one I want handling this. No shoving this off onto one of your lackeys.”
“There are protocols, Phil, certain way these things have to be done—”
“I don’t care. You’ll figure out a way around it. You’re good at getting out of things.”
“Forget it. You’re gonna have to come up with something else.”
“Nope. This is it. This is the favor I told you I would want one day.” Phillip hopped from one foot to the other, trying to keep the blood circulating. He looked at his watch. “I’m about an hour away, which should give you enough time to get out of bed and meet me over there.”
An angry sigh this time. “Fine. Fine. I’ll meet you there.”
Phillip smiled. “See you then.”
He hung up, let out a short breath and started walking back to his car. He glanced behind him. She was sedated in the backseat and he estimated she would be coming out just about the time they reached their destination. He’d give her another dose when they got there and instruct Keegan to keep her sedated—among other things. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was the only way. He slid behind the wheel and pulled out of the gas station as he turned up the easy listening station and settled in for the drive.
S
he knew without a doubt the woman in those photos wasn’t her sister.
So who the hell was she?
Sondra was sitting at a coffee shop, scrawling all types of questions, answers and narrative into her notebook, trying to make sense of everything. Truthfully, she didn’t know what to think anymore, but she knew that she had to keep going in order to figure out the trail, no matter where it led. Sondra looked at her watch and realized she was late for her appointment with Carl Fisher, Phillip’s lawyer. She hailed a cab and within minutes, she was in the lobby of his Loop office and the receptionist was taking her to see him.
The stout silver-haired gentleman rose when he saw Sondra and held out his hand. “Ms. Ellis,” he said, his thick Midwestern twang ringing in Sondra’s ears as he shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Carl sat down and folded his hands in front of him. “What can I do for you, Ms. Ellis?”
“I’m looking for my brother-in-law, Phillip Pearson.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know where he is. Haven’t spoken to him in about a year.”
“Well, where was he then?”
“Back in Michigan from my understanding.”
“Hmm. What kind of work were you doing for him?”
“Ms. Ellis, you understand I can’t divulge the exact nature of my business with Mr. Pearson. What I can tell you is that I settled your sister’s estate.”
“Alright, alright, how about this… I ask vague questions and you nod. Will that work?”
Carl raised his scraggly white eyebrows. “Well, we can try that.”
“Did my sister have a life insurance policy?”
“Yes.”
“Phillip got all the money when she was declared dead?”
“Yes, he was the beneficiary.”
“What about the house? He made money on that, even though it was Tracy’s house?”
“Ms. Ellis, your sister and her husband sat down with me right after they got married and drafted their wills. They made themselves the executor of each other’s estate, which included all life insurance policies, retirement accounts, investments, etc. So, to vaguely answer your questions, yes, Mr. Pearson was left all of your sister’s assets. Your sister wasn’t wealthy by any means, but she was careful with her money.”
Sondra tapped her finger on the edge of the desk. “And you said the last time you talked to him was about six months ago. Do you have his address?”
“Mr. Pearson preferred to conduct all of our business in person. He would come to my office to collect his mail, sign any papers, and pick up any checks. He would call me periodically to see if we needed to meet, and that’s what we would do.”
Sondra bit her bottom lip. “So you never had a phone number or address for him? Didn’t you think that was strange?”
“Oh, people handle these kinds of things all kinds of ways. I had one client who would only meet with me on the third Sunday of each month in the parking lot of the Jewel on Clark and Division. People are strange. Besides, he always paid me in cash, so I didn’t much care how he wanted to conduct our business.” Carl paused. “Why are you looking for Mr. Pearson?”
Sondra ran her tongue across her teeth. “Just some family business I wanted to discuss with him. Do you think he’ll be calling you anytime soon?”
Carl shook his head. “Doubtful. We concluded business rather swiftly since your sister’s estate was pretty well in order.”
“If by chance, he does call you, could you call me? Don’t tell him I was looking for him, though.”
Carl frowned. “Why not?”
“I’d prefer to discuss that with him. Confidentiality. You understand.”
Carl gave her a tight smile. “I suppose I could do that.”
Sondra scribbled her cell phone number on the back of one of Carl Fisher’s cards from the holder on his desk. “I really would appreciate it if you let me know.” She stood up and handed Carl her phone number.
“Thanks, Mr. Fisher. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Good day, Ms. Ellis.”
Sondra gave him a curt nod and left the office.
H
e had always hated going out with her. The stares they would get. Women would figure he must be rich and the brothers would wonder how in the hell a guy who looked like him landed a fine sister like her. He sometimes wondered himself. He would never know what made him call her that day. He was so shy around women, no matter what they looked like. Tall, short, beautiful or ugly—his mouth would explode with cotton and his bowels would churn. Girls had made him nervous his whole life. He was a nerd, plain and simple. He was smart, but that didn’t count for much with the pretty girls. Or the ugly ones, since they both pined for the handsome jocks. He’d never been the most handsome or most athletic or “most anything.” Even if you weren’t good looking, if you were at least “Most Anything,” you could get the girl.