Chapter 4
It was almost six before I made it back to the office. I expected it to be empty. But Caro and Hojo sat in the reception area waiting for me. Word had already made its way to them. Sam’s concerns about a leak appeared to be well founded.
Hojo pulled a rocks glass and a bottle of scotch I knew he kept in a hidden drawer. He only broke it out after verdicts came in on major trials. He poured two fingers and handed the glass to me.
“How much have you heard?” I asked, taking the glass. I didn’t generally like scotch, but appreciated the smooth warmth as I downed it.
“Don’t get excited,” Caro said. “I talked to Janine over in Judge Saul’s courtroom.”
“She told you about the warrant?” I asked. “Who else did she tell?”
“Nobody,” Caro assured me. “But you can’t think that’ll last for long. Gus pulled a warrant on a twenty-two-year-old cold case that freaked the whole town out.”
“Fill me in,” Hojo said. “How soon is this thing going to be something I’ll have to deal with?”
I kicked my heels off and perched myself on the empty desk next to Caro’s. Hojo sat in one of the reception chairs against the wall.
“Ellie Luke,” I said. “Her niece made a fairly convincing case that her own father murdered her and posed her body in a wooded area in Phillips Township. Out by Pine Ridge.”
I gave Caro and Hojo the highlights of Hayden Simmons’s story, ending with the contents of the box she took from her father’s hiding spot.
Hojo whistled. “Man. Caro, you were here then. What do you remember about it?”
“I knew Ellie’s mother a little. The Lukes are next-door neighbors to one of my bunco friends.
I actually met Ellie once or twice when we played over there.
She babysat for my friend’s son at the time.
This was probably thirty years ago. Sweet girl, from what I recall.
Her disappearance really turned things upside down around here for a while. ”
Caro picked up a red file sitting on her desk. I hadn’t noticed it before but my pulse skipped when she handed it to me.
“I haven’t seen one of these in a while,” I said, thinking about asking Hojo for another shot of scotch.
The red files were part of Phil Halsey’s idiosyncratic filing system.
He used them for open but not active cases.
He’d given me an entire box of the things on my first day of work for the prosecutor’s office. It felt like a million years ago now.
I opened the front flap and sucked in a breath.
Phil loved his sticky notes. He color-coded them.
Yellow for action items. Blue for important phone numbers.
Pink for appointments or important deadlines.
It used to drive Caro crazy collecting all of them and entering them into his digital case files.
“I know,” Caro said. “It jarred me a bit seeing those, too. And his writing.”
Phil Halsey had died by violent means right in front of me. I didn’t often think of it. But now, his last seconds flashed through my mind.
“What do you know about the new suspect?” Hojo asked.
I flipped through Phil’s notes as I answered him.
There wasn’t much there beyond what Gus had already told me.
A copy of Ellie Luke’s autopsy report, such as it was.
Badly decomposed by the time they found her, there’d been no internal organs, DNA, or blood samples to take.
No toxicology. No evidence of bullet wounds, stabbing, or strangulation.
Only the massive defect to the back of her skull.
“Jamie Simmons,” I said. “We don’t know much of anything yet. He was a classmate of Ellie’s. Based on the photographs in his grisly treasure box, he was obsessed with her.”
“And he married her sister?” Caro asked. “That’s just … my God.”
“Did you know her?” I asked.
Caro shrugged. “I mean, maybe. I can’t say as I remember her.
Just Ellie. She was a few years younger, I think.
Ellie would have probably been fourteen or fifteen when I knew her.
And I don’t mean know her know her. I just saw her around.
But I remember her being very bubbly. Adorable really.
Not shy around adults, you know? Funny. My friend Vivian, the one who lived next door to the Lukes. She really liked her.”
Phil’s file also contained a copy of Dane Fischer’s polygraph results. I pulled it out.
“Dane Fischer,” I said. “He was the main person of interest at the time.”
“I remember that,” Caro said. “Some sort of cousin.”
I skimmed through the poly. Fischer had been questioned for almost two hours. The examiner detected deception regarding his alibi. His feelings toward Ellie. And finally, his denial of wishing her harm or causing her harm.
“Gus is beside himself,” I said. “If he was wrong about Fischer all these years …”
“Phil wouldn’t file charges,” Caro said. “I remember that very well. Gus was angry. Lord, he was just a kid then himself. I want to say this was his first solo homicide case. That bothered Phil along with a lot of the rest of it.”
“What do you remember about Gus in those days?” I asked. I could barely envision Gus Ritter as a young detective. Twenty-two years ago, he would have been in his early thirties.
“He’s always been one of the good ones,” Caro said. “Intense, sure. Just like now. But smart. Driven. He’s never cared whether he ruffled certain feathers. I mean that as a compliment.”
“What did he look like?” Hojo asked. “I just can’t picture Gus Ritter looking like anything other than the fire hydrant he is.”
Caro laughed. “He hasn’t. I’ve known Gus since he was a street cop just out of the academy. Twenty-five, maybe twenty-six. That man has looked the same for forty years. He could probably grow a full beard in elementary school.”
“How long can we keep this under wraps?” Hojo asked. I understood the concern in his tone. If Gus ended up making an arrest, it would be Hojo’s first high-profile case since his appointment as acting prosecutor.
“Gus is working on getting search warrants for Simmons’s house, phone, computer, car. The whole bit. He wants to serve everything first thing in the morning. We’re trying to be as low-key as possible, but if Janine is already talking …”
“She’s not talking,” Caro said. “She talked to me. It’s not the same thing.”
“It won’t matter,” Hojo said. “Judge Saul needs to keep things under seal.”
“Jamie Simmons has neighbors,” I said. “It’ll get out. My best guess, we can keep things quiet until about noon tomorrow. Not much after.”
“Okay,” Hojo said. “What do you need from me in the meantime?”
“Nothing.”
“Where’s the girl?” Caro said. “Simmons’s daughter?”
“Sam and Gus convinced her not to go home tonight. She’s going to stay with a friend. Sam sent a couple of deputies to sit on Simmons’s house. Make sure he doesn’t try to run.”
“Does he know his daughter fingered him for murder?” Hojo asked.
“Not according to her. She hasn’t said anything to her mother either. This girl is feeling completely alone right now. She has no idea how her family will react to this news.”
“I can’t even imagine it,” Caro said. “That is one brave kid. Poor thing.”
“How does Gus want to handle this?” Hojo said. “Who’s going to break it to the wife … er … the sister?”
“Hayden says her mother will probably be at home first thing in the morning. Jamie is a respiratory therapist over at County. He leaves for work at eight thirty. Gus is planning on serving his warrants by seven.”
“She can’t go back to that house,” Hojo said. “This daughter. It’s too dangerous for her.”
“She knows that. But I’ve told Gus I want a social worker. Erin Luke is about to find out her husband murdered her sister and her daughter’s the one who figured it out.”
“You don’t think she knows?” Caro said. “You don’t think she suspects?”
“Hayden doesn’t think so. She says her parents never talk about her aunt. It’s a taboo subject.”
“I’ll just bet it is,” Hojo muttered. While we talked, Caro fired her computer back up.
“Simmons, huh?” she said. “How long after Ellie’s murder did the sister marry this guy?”
“Well, if Ellie was murdered twenty-two years ago, Hayden’s nineteen.”
“Yikes,” Hojo said. “That is just creepy as hell. So theoretically, Jamie Simmons stalks his classmate. Something happens. He kills her. Maybe raped her before that. We don’t know.”
“We’ll probably never know,” I said.
“So then what, Simmons worms his way into Ellie Luke’s family? Knocks her little sister up? Mara, this is going to make national news.”
“Let’s try to prevent that for as long as possible.”
“Creepy is right,” Caro said. The glow of her computer screen made her face look blue. I could see the reflection of a social media page in her glasses. “My God, Mara, you have to take a look at this.”
I slid off the desk and walked up behind Caro. Hojo came up on her other side. Caro had a news article pulled up from when Ellie Luke disappeared. It was the same story I found with Ellie’s picture. Those ice-blue eyes just drew you in.
“That’s the girl I remember,” Caro said. “That smile. Those eyes.”
She closed the tab and pulled up another page. It was another picture of what I thought was Ellie Luke but she looked much older.
“Wait,” Hojo said. “Did they do an age progression? Why would …”
I felt the blood drain from my head. In our lengthy interview with Hayden Simmons, I’d never thought to ask for a picture of her mother.
It never occurred to me to wonder what she looked like.
But Caro had pulled up a recent picture of Erin Luke Simmons, Ellie’s younger sister.
Hayden’s mother. She and Ellie Luke could have been identical twins.
“My God,” I said, feeling lightheaded. “He …”
“Jamie Simmons had a type,” Caro whispered. “Good lord, Mara. Did he kill that poor girl and then marry her lookalike sister? Like she’s some sort of trophy, too?”
I pulled out my phone. I did a quick browser search until I had the same picture of Erin Luke Simmons pulled up. I shot a text link to Sam then punched in his number. He answered on the second ring.
“Sam,” I said. “I need you to look at the photo I just sent you.”
“Hang on,” he said. I heard him fumble with his phone. “What am I looking at? Wait. That’s Ellie Luke. Is that …”
“It’s Erin Luke,” I said. “Jamie Simmons’s wife. Hayden’s mother. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Christ,” he muttered.
“Exactly.”
“This thing’s going to get messy, quick,” he said.
“We can’t let it. What’s the word on Gus’s warrants?”
“All signed,” he said. “We’re locked and loaded for first thing in the morning. I’ve got eyes on Jamie Simmons’s house. I’ve got more eyes on Hayden. She just got to her friend’s house. I don’t want her making any calls or texts to anyone in her family tonight. She understands.”
“I hope so,” I said. “That poor girl.”
“I know,” he said. “We’re gonna bring Simmons in for questioning, then head over to serve the warrants. I assume you’ll want to be in the observation room.”
“Definitely,” I said. We clicked off. It felt like my legs were encased in cement. Hojo and Caro were statues, too. None of us could take our eyes off Caro’s computer screen. There was no need to imagine what Ellie Luke would look like today. In her sister Erin, we could see her face.