The Book of Cold Cases(3)
“It means you live too much inside your own head, overthinking everything,” Esther said. “It means you need to meet people who aren’t patients, real people who aren’t murder victims on a page. Make friends. Find a man to date.”
“Not yet for the dating thing,” I told her. “Maybe soon.”
“The divorce was a year ago.”
“Eleven months.” I dodged a woman coming the opposite way up my aisle, then moved around a couple pondering the cracker selection. “I’m not opposed to finding someone. It’s dating itself that freaks me out. I mean, you meet a stranger, and that’s it? He could be anyone, hiding anything.”
“Shea.”
“Do you know how many serial killers dated lonely women in their everyday lives? Some divorcée who just wants companionship from a nice man? She thinks she’s won the dating lottery, and meanwhile he’s out there on a Sunday afternoon, dumping bodies. And now we’re supposed to use internet apps, where someone’s picture might not even be real. People are lying about their faces.”
“Okay, okay. No dating apps. No dating at all yet. I get it. But make some friends, Shea. Join a book club or a bowling league or something.”
My cart was full. I paused by the plate glass windows at the front of the store, letting my gaze travel over the parking lot. “I’ll think about it.”
“That means no,” Esther said.
“It means I’ll think about it.” The parking lot looked like any normal parking lot during after-work hours, with cars pulling in and out. I watched for a moment, letting my eyes scan the cars and the people. An old habit. I couldn’t have told you what I was looking for, only that I’d know it when I saw it. “Thanks, sis. I’ll talk to you later.”
I bought my groceries and put them in the cloth bags I’d brought with me. I slung the bags over my shoulders and started the walk home in the rain, my coat hood pulled up over my head, my feet trying to avoid the puddles. The walk toward Singles Estates took me down a busy road, with cars rushing by me, splashing water and giving me a face full of fumes. Not the most pleasant walk in the world, but I put my earbuds in and put one foot in front of the other. Esther had long ago given up on telling me to get a car. It would never happen.
Besides, I got home before nightfall, so I didn’t have to walk alone in the dark. I called that a win.
CHAPTER THREE
September 2017
SHEA
At home in my little condo, I changed into dry clothes, made myself a tuna salad sandwich, and powered up my laptop.
Despite the stress, the gnawing uncertainty, the expense, and—yes—the heartbreak, this was the upside of getting divorced: I had the freedom to sit in my underfurnished living room in pajama pants and a T-shirt, eating mayonnaise-drenched tuna and working uninterrupted for the rest of my evening. The project I was working on, the obsession of my off-hours, was my website, the Book of Cold Cases.
It wasn’t an actual book. It was a collection of posts and articles written by me about unsolved crimes, the famous and the not so famous. The site included a private message board where people as obsessed as I was could post their theories or the new facts they’d found. I’d started the site nearly a decade ago as a personal blog, a place where I could post in near obscurity about the things that fascinated me. But over the years, it had started to take on a life of its own, and now the site had nearly two thousand members, all of whom paid a small yearly fee. I sold ads on the site sometimes, too. The money wasn’t nearly enough to live on, but it was enough for me to pay for upgraded servers, occasional professional webmaster work, and—most importantly—research help.
I logged on and scrolled through the new messages on the message board. There was a lively conversation going on about the disappearance of a little girl in Tennessee, and another one about a woman in Michigan who claimed she was abducted but could provide no evidence of it. Someone had revived an old thread about the Zodiac Killer because of a recent podcast they’d heard, and someone else had posted a link to a new theory about the JonBenét Ramsey case. I read through everything and added my own comments, looking out for messages that were inflammatory or insulting. Even in a closed group, the internet was the perfect place for people who wanted to call each other names, and it required constant moderation. People could get as angry about a twenty-year-old murder as they could about modern-day politics.
When I was finished, I clicked over to the article I was currently working on, about a woman in Connecticut who had left her house and disappeared, leaving her two-year-old daughter alone in her playpen. Security footage showed her walking past a mall three miles away, but how had she gotten there, and why? She’d left her car in the driveway. Cell phone records showed a single phone call from the woman’s phone to 911 four hours after she disappeared. The call had disconnected as soon as the operator answered. Did that mean the woman was still alive then, trying to call for help? Or had someone else used her phone? These were the kinds of questions that could send me straight down the rabbit hole for days on end.
I picked up my phone and called Michael De Vos, the private detective who worked for me sometimes. Being a layperson had its limits when you wrote crime stories, and Michael was a help when I needed expert analysis. He used to be a cop in the Claire Lake PD. He picked up right away.