Page 32 of Silence of the Missing

She waved the offer off. “Much as I’d like to take your money now, let’s see where we are when and if I get some useful stuff, okay? That way, you’re not on the hook for more than I quoted and I’m not on the hook to refund you a portion if I don’t find much.”

She stood to walk me to the front door. “People assume, when they come here, I must make a fabulous living—big house in Evanston and all. But the truth is, I do this for two reasons. One, I’m a problem solver. This work exercises parts of my brain I enjoy using. And two, I like helping folks. Genuinely.

“This house and all its comforts? These didn’t get here through me. That’s all the work of my husband and his family. I won’t bore you with details, but they own or manage a significant number of apartment buildings here in Evanston and on the northside of the city. If I were on my own, we’d be meeting in a McDonalds.” She winked. “Give me a couple days. I’ll call.”

I left her and stepped out into the warm summer night. Dread and hoped mixed within me. What would she discover and would it lead me down another nightmare alley or into a wood even darker than the one Jeb entered all those years ago?

V

I was just getting ready to head out the door for my walk to the L train on Morse Avenue when my phone rang. I stopped, sat down on one of the back steps, and pulled the iPhone from my messenger bag.

Harriet McGill.

My heart rate sped up. Did she already have answers? Taking the call might make me late for work, not a good thing, especially because of all I’d missed lately, but I didn’t care. There was no way in hell I could let this call go to voice mail. I pressed the green circle on the screen.

“Hello?” Even though I’d done nothing more strenuous than take a few steps out my back door, I imagined I’d sound to her as though I’d paused in the running of a marathon.

“Sam?”

“Yup. It’s me.”

“I hope this is a good time. You weren’t sleeping, were you?”

“It’s the greatest time in the world. Couldn’t be better.”

She chuckled. “Well, I did some digging and have some results for you. I’ll email you a detailed report, so don’t worry about taking notes.”

I was glad of that. Taking notes would entail going back inside for pad and paper and in these times of tablets and touch screens. Who had those things handy anymore?Not me, Harriet, not me. Now get to it…

“I did manage to find your Mr. Sgro. Thank god for the alias database I subscribe to. It’s not cheap, but in situations like this, it comes in very handy.”

I wanted to scream. The suspense was, as they say, killing me. “And? What did you find?”

I could hear her mouse clicking in the background. That’s how bated my breath was.

“Chris Sgro, at least the one we’re looking for, wasn’t anywhere to be found.”

“Shit.”

“Now wait a minute. Hewasto be found on the alias database and I think he’s the man you’re looking for. His real name is Keith Walker. He’s also gone by John Soldano, Vito Weeda, and Mac Comparetto. He appears to like passing for Italian!“ She snorted. “But that ethnicity is as fake as the names he chose. Keith Walker has been arrested several times.”

“For what?” Even before she uttered even one crime he may have committed, I felt a chill that made me shiver, despite the morning’s heat and humidity, which could be defined as the last gasp of summer.

“Abduction, statutory rape, kidnapping, sex trafficking, child porn, and attempted murder are the highlights, although there are more.”

She recited the list like it was something simple—what to get at the grocery store, for example. But the power of the recitation turned my stomach, confirming the worst nightmares I’d had since 1986.

“Is he in prison?”

“That would make sense, wouldn’t it? But here’s the kicker: he’s managed through the years to evade long-term confinement. Yes, he’s been locked up, Joliet, Raiford down in Florida, and a couple other places, but through plea deals, overcrowding, and insufficient evidence, he’s never stayed for long. From what I can determine, his longest confinement has been for a couple years and that was back in the 1990s.”

So, if Jeb was abducted by this person and kept…and kept…and kept, he must have been free while the guy was incarcerated, right? Why wouldn’t he have shown up on my doorstep back then? This information just made things curiouser and curiouser.

“Is he still alive?”Please say no. Please say no.

“Oh, yes.” She paused. I swear to god I could hear the wheels turning, her debating whether she should reveal something else. “I’m going to tell you a thing and I want to advise you not to act on it. This is a dangerous man.”

“Tell me.” If she didn’t, I wasn’t sure my heart would ever start beating again.

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