Missing Persons (9 page)

 

 

It only occurred to me as I was driving away from the hospital that I didn’t know where Vera lived or how to get in touch with her. I called Frank’s cell phone, since it was still in her possession, and was startled by the sound of his voice telling me he wasn’t available but would get back to me soon.

“Fat chance,” I said, but I had to pull the car over to the side of the road. Hearing him again left me shaking.

I wondered for a moment why his phone was still working. Then I remembered we still shared a plan, so I was the one who would have to cancel it. Vera had the last “I love you” and I had the phone company.

“This sucks,” I yelled. “This fucking sucks.” I slammed my fists on the steering wheel, accidentally hitting the horn and beeping at a woman walking her dog.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. She smiled a little but turned her dog around and started walking in the opposite direction.

“Why did you leave me, Frank?” I asked the dark sky. Even as I posed the question I wasn’t sure which time I was talking about.

“I
’m here to see Detective Rosenthal,” I said.

It was eight fifteen a.m. and already almost eighty degrees. Chicago weather is like that, so cold in the winter that tears freeze on your face, so hot in the summer that everything, including your brain, turns into a puddle. Andres and Victor had picked me up at my house. Driving together would make things easier since we were hitting more than one location in the day. I’d left them to haul lights and other equipment out of the van, while I went from the heat into the overly air-conditioned Ninth Police District. I spent the next several minutes trying to get the attention of a receptionist at the missing persons division.

“Excuse me,” I said louder. “I’m here to see Detective Rosenthal.”

“I’ll call her,” the receptionist said, making it clear she was doing me the biggest favor of my life.

Finally a tall, thin, thirtysomething woman came toward me from another room. “I’m Yvette Rosenthal,” she said. “You must be Kate.”

When Andres and Victor arrived with the equipment, Rosenthal showed us options for the interview and Andres and I picked the conference room. Technically on a shoot, I’m the boss, but if the camera person is really good, like Andres, it’s a shared responsibility, more like sixty-forty, with the producer in the lead. I get the extra points because, among other things, I decide when to break for lunch.

“It’s going to take us about an hour,” Andres said to me, which was code for “Kate, get her out of here so we don’t have to chitchat while we work.”

I touched Rosenthal’s arm. “I’d like to grab a cup of coffee and go over some of the details of the interview while we wait.”

“Perfect.” She led me toward a small eating area the detectives shared. “The coffee is strong, if you like it that way.”

“Fine with me.”

Even when the interview subject isn’t the family member of a victim, the bonding experience is a little awkward. It’s the “I’m a person, you’re a person” part, where they see I’m not intimidating and begin to feel, without my actually saying it, that I will make them look good. I don’t actually say it because I don’t always make them look good.

Detective Rosenthal would have nothing to worry about, though. True-crime shows are usually tipped in favor of law enforcement. If she was also a mom or had devoted some of her off-hours to the case, it would only sweeten the image I was trying to create.

We sat at a small orange table with an open package of doughnuts on it. I avoided mentioning the cliché and just sipped my coffee.

“You must do this all the time,” she said.

“I work on a lot of different kinds of shows,” I told her. “I’ve done a lot of true crime, but it’s mostly homicides. This is my first missing person.”

“They’re tough. I came here from homicide two years ago, and I never get used to it.”

“Theresa’s mom thinks her daughter is being held captive.”

She nodded. “I think the only way she’s holding it together is because she believes she’ll see Theresa alive again.”

“She won’t, will she?”

Rosenthal took a deep breath, slowly letting the air leave her lungs. “I doubt it,” she finally said. “It’s been too long. We don’t often have good outcomes this long after a person has gone missing.”

“Linda said she’s gotten hang-ups. She thinks that it’s proof Theresa’s alive.”

“I hope she’s right.” Rosenthal shifted in her chair. “But think about it. You’ve picked up the phone and no one is there. So have I. We probably get as many hang-ups in the course of a year as Linda does. We just don’t read anything into it.”

“That poor woman,” I said, more to myself than to her.

“Can I ask you something?” Rosenthal sat up straight. “Why Theresa? She’s just an ordinary person. Nothing special about her life or, sadly, her disappearance. Happens every day.”

“That’s exactly why. We want people watching the show to think, ‘That could be me or my sister or my wife.’ That way they’re invested in the outcome.”

“And they stay through the commercial breaks.”

I nodded.

“So no dead hookers or drug addicts?” she asked.

“Only if it’s a housewife or college student leading a double life,” I said. “Any chance of that with Theresa?”

“If you find that out, I hope you’ll tell me.”

“Well, I did notice the police report had a few things blacked out.”

“Nothing that would affect your show.”

“For instance?”

Rosenthal just smiled. Not that I was expecting she would tell me, but she seemed a little too pleased with herself that she was keeping a secret.

“Police work has got to be frustrating sometimes.” I took my own deep breath and turned the conversation in a different direction. “I did a story once where a man died of an apparent heart attack, but the autopsy revealed his heart was fine. It didn’t look like much, but there was a cop who just kept asking questions until he found out the truth. That must happen a lot—homicides that look like natural causes.”

“Sometimes. Most killers are more straightforward. They shoot or stab or choke. To stage a murder as a heart attack would take some medical knowledge. Is that what happened in that case?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it on
Caught!
? I think I might have seen that episode.”

I nodded.

“So who did it?”

I started to blush. “The girlfriend.”

“It usually is. The wife or the girlfriend. The husband or the boyfriend. People are so scared of a stranger murdering them in their homes. Don’t get me wrong, it happens. But if you really want to know the person most likely to kill you, look at who’s in bed with you. That’s who you have to worry about.”

“I guess I’m lucky I’m sleeping alone.”

 

 

When Andres and Victor were ready for us, Detective Rosenthal and I sat opposite each other, just as I had with Linda. Rosenthal had been interviewed many times before, so softball questions weren’t necessary. Besides, this wasn’t personal for her. She was just here to give the facts and one “I won’t rest until we find her” sound bite, and I would have what I needed.

“How did you get involved in the case?” I asked.

“I got called in when Theresa had been missing for about a day. I spoke with her mother, Linda Moretti, who had reported Theresa missing. I interviewed several of her friends, people at the hospital where she volunteered, as well as her current and former boyfriends. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to develop any leads as to her whereabouts.”

“How long does someone have to wait before filing a missing persons report?”

“That’s an urban myth—the waiting period. I can’t speak for other states, but in Illinois there is no waiting period. If someone is missing, you can file a report right away.”

“But in the case of an adult, if it’s only been a day or two, will the police take it seriously?”

“Absolutely. First of all, if the person was known to disappear for days at a time, it’s unlikely their family would bother to report them missing. So if a wife or a mother or a son comes in and says, ‘My loved one has disappeared,’ that’s an indication that this is out of character for the person. Secondly, we look at the person’s activities right before they disappeared. If they withdrew large sums of money from their accounts, if they were in some kind of trouble at home or at work, or had legal trouble, these would be indications of a voluntary disappearance.” She took a breath and I nodded for her to continue. “If someone disappears who has no history of walking away, and no reason to, we start looking right away for other possibilities.”

“What was your instinct with Theresa?”

“She didn’t walk away. That would be my assessment. She seemed happy in her relationship with her boyfriend, Wyatt. She was close to her family. She had friends. Add to that, the money in her account has not been withdrawn since she disappeared. To me, this wasn’t voluntary.”

“How much money did she have in her account?”

Rosenthal hesitated. “Nothing unusual.” There was a catch in her throat.

I thought for a moment about pursuing it, but I knew I’d get stonewalled and I had too many questions to ask to make an enemy of Rosenthal now. Instead I went for safer territory. “Where was Theresa going that day?”

“We don’t know. She told her mother she was meeting a friend for coffee. Her friend, Julia Kenny, later told me they didn’t have plans, so we really have no idea where she was going.”

“Was she lying to her mother?”

“That’s one scenario. Perhaps the women got their plans mixed up.”

“Or Julia is lying.”

“We checked Julia, of course. We didn’t see any reason she would have to hurt Theresa. I think it’s more likely there was a misunderstanding.”

“Did Theresa even get to the coffee shop?”

“We have no evidence she was there. We also don’t know that she wasn’t. It was a pretty busy place and not a place she frequented often. No one recognized her photo, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.”

“Her mother indicated that her ex-boyfriend Jason Ryder had been obsessed with her.”

“Mr. Ryder is a person of interest in this case. He made some harassing phone calls to her home and had a confrontation with her brother. But we have no evidence that he saw Theresa the day she disappeared or even in the week prior.”

“No phone calls between them?”

“None that I’m aware of.”

“And her current boyfriend?”

“We have nothing that would indicate he has special knowledge in this case.”

“Meaning you don’t suspect Wyatt Brooks?”

“It’s an open investigation, so we suspect everyone and no one. But as far as we know, there wasn’t a motive for Mr. Brooks to have harmed Theresa, nor is there evidence he was in her neighborhood on the day she disappeared.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

“I think Theresa left her house and encountered someone who kept her from continuing with her day, and that person is the reason she hasn’t been seen since.”

“Do you think she’s dead?”

“I wouldn’t speculate on that.”

Off camera, of course, Rosenthal had done exactly that, but I wasn’t expecting her to repeat it on the record. That wouldn’t be the sort of sound bite that Theresa’s family would want from the lead detective on their daughter’s case. And it wouldn’t make her look like the hero cop I had in mind. I had to follow up, though, so she wouldn’t think I was letting her off too easy.

“But it’s been more than a year,” I pressed. “What are the odds she’s alive?”

“I’m not much of a gambler. I would say that unless I find evidence to the contrary, I am working this case under the assumption that Theresa is alive.”

“When will you give up on this case?”

She shifted uncomfortably. This was the money quote and I could see her struggling. “There are new people missing every day. We don’t give up on any of them, but I admit a fresh case will get more attention, because, well . . .”

I stopped her. “What I need you to say is, you will never give up.”

This is another dirty secret of TV producers. We often tell our interview subjects what we want them to say. I prefer it if they come to it on their own, but I have to get what I have to get.

Rosenthal seemed relieved at the interruption. “You’re not going to use the other stuff, about the new cases?”

“No. I think someone watching this show doesn’t want to hear that old cases will inevitably be at the bottom of the pile. I think they want to hear that if they were in Linda’s shoes, their loved one will be as much a priority to the police as they are to the family.”

She nodded. “Can you ask me the question again?”

“When will you give up on this case?”

“I will never give up on Theresa. Ever. Each case, each person, is as much a priority to the members of this department as it is to the families of the missing. I’m going to work this case until I bring Theresa home.”

I smiled. “We’ve got it. Thanks, Detective.”

“You made that easy,” a more relaxed Detective Rosenthal said as Victor removed her microphone.

“It’s easy when you speak the truth,” I told her, without a hint of irony in my voice.

“T
ell me we can take lunch,” Andres said as he packed the last of the equipment back into the van.

“I don’t want hot dogs. I don’t want pizza,” I said. “I want healthy food. I’m sick of gaining weight every time I do a shoot. We’re going someplace that has salad.”

Victor walked up behind me. “Screw that. Let’s get Ukrainian. There’s a great place down the block.”

“Healthy Ukrainian,” I said, wondering if there was any such thing.

Twenty minutes later, we shared varenyky topped with bacon and sour cream, stuffed cabbage rolls, and plates full of sausage. And we did what we always did—Andres and I discussed the case, while Victor listened to music and drummed annoyingly on the table.