Missing Persons (34 page)

Work had always been my distraction but I wasn’t looking forward to being a witness to more grief. I told myself to remember that this wasn’t personal, that I didn’t care, and that these people were just a collection of sound bites to be used for entertainment. I just wasn’t sure I believed it anymore.

First up was Jason. The restaurant I’d rented for the day had let us in an hour before he was scheduled to arrive, and we set up the camera and lights. I got the guys breakfast and went through my notes. Jason was supposed to arrive at eleven, but when he hadn’t shown up at eleven forty-five, I assumed he wasn’t coming. I dialed his number but only got voice mail.

At twelve thirty, Andres and I started talking about Linda’s interview, scheduled for one o’clock. As we talked, Jason walked into the restaurant. He seemed almost as tired as I was, so I got coffee for us and we sat in a corner while Andres and Victor hung back and pretended to be setting up. I could tell that Jason needed a few minutes before he was in front of the camera to relax and prepare himself. I didn’t want to waste time with a useless interview and I was beginning to think that was what it would be. Jason was distracted, unfocused, and fidgeting with something in the pocket of his windbreaker.

“Have you been to her grave?” I asked.

“No. I figured I’d wait until things quieted down. I don’t really want to run into her family.”

“It’s a shame that all of this hasn’t brought you closer to them. You’re all suffering the same loss.”

Even through the pockets of his windbreaker I could see he was clenching his fist. “They didn’t understand what I’d lost.”

Andres looked over at me. “We’re ready.”

I got up. “Do you need a few more minutes?”

He shook his head and got up from the chair. As he did he took something out of his pocket. He saw me notice.

“My good-luck charm,” he said.

“Can I see it?” It didn’t look like the saint’s medal he’d held at the earlier interview and, just to be sure, I wanted to see it up close. He was hesitant to let it go, but I smiled at him. “I need to get a good-luck charm. Something that will keep me safe when I’m nervous.”

“You get nervous? You seem like you’re always in control.”

“I need help too. Everyone does. I just haven’t found myself the right charm.”

“Yeah. Okay. I thought you were just using me, but you’ve turned out to be the one person I could trust.”

I held out my hand and he placed the object in it. A sadness I hadn’t expected washed over me when I looked at the tiny silver jewelry. It was a nurse’s cap. “This was Theresa’s.”

He glanced at the charm. “Yeah. It’s something she gave me.”

I shook my head. “It was a charm her mother had given her for graduation. Why would she give that to you?”

“She left it at my apartment.”

“No, Jason,” I said quietly. “You said she’d never been at your apartment.”

He tried to be casual, but I could see red blotches begin to appear on his neck and face. He was nervous. And when he spoke, he stammered. “Then it must have been somewhere else.”

“She only had it a few weeks before she died. She broke up with you before that.”

I started to walk away but Jason grabbed me, pulling me to him so that he was behind me with his arm wrapped around my waist.

“You of all people should understand what it feels like when the person you were supposed to spend the rest of your life with gets stolen from you.”

I struggled but couldn’t get away. Andres and Victor started to run toward us but stopped suddenly. As I turned my head to the right, I could see what had stopped them. Jason had a gun. It hadn’t been a fist he’d been making earlier. He’d been wrapping his hand around the gun in his pocket.

“Come on, Jason,” I said. “I was really on your side. I was going to make you look innocent. You were the one person in a really long time I actually believed.”

“That’s because we’re the same.”

I looked at Andres and made the eye gesture I’d made a thousand times before. He moved his head slightly back and forth. He was saying no. I squelched the urge to remind him that I was the boss on this crew and made the eye gesture a second time. Andres backed up, moving toward the camera.

“What are you doing?” Jason screamed.

“The camera’s been on,” Andres said. “I’m turning it off. I assume you wouldn’t want this on television.”

“Whatever. Just don’t come closer.”

Andres looked toward me one more time, then pressed the “on” button on the camera and walked a few steps away. For once I wasn’t thinking of a great shot. I was thinking that if Andres, Victor, and I died in this room I wanted to provide the police with irrefutable proof of our killer’s identity.

Then I took a deep breath and tried to pretend this was an interview. “You killed Theresa by accident. You loved her and you didn’t want to hurt her. Is that what happened? Because I think everyone would understand that.”

“They hate me.”

“No. They just don’t know how much you loved each other and how much it hurt to lose her. But I do, Jason. I loved my husband very much.” My voice was shaking and I could feel myself starting to cry but this was not the time. I tried to focus. “If you kill me it won’t be an accident. It will be on purpose. And that would make you a murderer. And you’re not, Jason. You’re a nice guy who loved someone and got hurt.”

I could feel his grip tighten.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

I felt him raise the gun and I closed my eyes in preparation, wondering how long it would take for the bullet to hit, and how long after my death it would be before Mike tried to air the tape.

But Jason let go. I was almost too shocked to run, but Victor yelled at me and brought me to my senses. I ran to Andres, who pushed me behind him. I thought it was over but it wasn’t.

“Don’t do that, man,” I heard Victor say. “Over a chick? That’s such a waste.”

I looked out from behind Andres and saw that Jason had put the gun against his own temple. “I can’t live without her,” he said.

“Yes, you can.” We all turned to see Linda. She was carrying a big metal catering tray. She walked into the room, put the tray on a table, and headed for Jason.

“He killed Theresa,” I said.

She walked closer. “Is this what you are going to do in my daughter’s memory? Is this what you think she would want? She planned to save lives, Jason. Do you think she would want you to take your own because of what happened? If you do then you didn’t love my daughter.”

Jason stared at her in disbelief then started to shake. He lowered the gun and let it fall on the floor. As soon as the gun hit the floor, he collapsed in a heap.

J
ason sat handcuffed at one of the restaurant tables. There were half a dozen detectives and at least twice as many uniformed officers walking in and out of the building. Detective Rosenthal was finally sitting with the man who had killed Theresa.

“What happened, Jason?” she asked.

“I saw her the day before. She told me to leave her alone. She told me she wanted to be with that actor, who was cheating on her. I tried to tell her. She wouldn’t listen. I told her I’d followed him and I saw him with another woman. I never cheated on her. I loved her. Even after we broke up. She slept with other guys. She did things she shouldn’t have, but I forgave her. I deserved her.”

“Okay,” Rosenthal said softly. “Then what happened?”

“She told me she knew exactly who I was. She said I didn’t surprise her. Like it was a bad thing.”

“And on the day she died?”

“I followed her. I saw her with Julia’s fiancé. She didn’t want me, but she did want some guy who was already getting married. I grabbed her when she came out of the restaurant. I asked her what kind of a slut strings me along, sleeps with some good-for-nothing actor, and then goes after the fiancé of her best friend. She told me to leave her alone. She said her friends said she was crazy for talking to me. That she’d had to hide it from them. She said she felt sorry for me. But she didn’t anymore. She was going to tell everyone I was bothering her. She was going to stop talking to me.”

“Did you take her somewhere?”

He nodded. “I made her get in my car and we went for a drive. I didn’t really pay attention to where I was going, so we ended up out in the suburbs. I saw the signs for the forest preserve and I figured it would be a quiet place to talk. That’s all I wanted to do—talk. I don’t know what happened next.”

“Yes, you do, Jason.”

I looked at Rosenthal. She was sitting inches from him. She was calm and understanding: his best friend. She was me, with no camera and a far better reason for pretending to care.

Jason sighed. “She got really mad at me. She said her mother would wonder where she was. She said she had to get home. She told me she never wanted to see me again.” He clenched his jaw, but as he got to the moment of Theresa’s death, his voice was emotionless. It was like he was describing something he’d seen on television. “I hit her. And I just kept hitting her until she stopped moving. Then I put her in the ground and went home.”

“How could you do that?” The words just came out of my mouth. Everyone, including Jason, turned to look at me.

Jason shook his head. “I thought you would understand. That’s why I put the pictures out to remind you of what you had lost.”

“You left a dead bird on my porch and broke into my house because you thought I understood you?”

“I got that letter saying your show was going to find out the truth about what happened to Theresa. And then you told me that I would end up looking guilty, that people would think I didn’t love her. You were going to tell everyone that I was a bad guy. I tried to warn you off. You wouldn’t listen. Then I tried to remind you of what it felt like to be thrown away by the person who was supposed to love you. You still didn’t listen. But then I thought . . . I thought you finally knew how I felt. I thought you understood that you don’t stop loving someone just because they hurt you.”

I did. That’s why, even though everything had pointed to Jason, I hadn’t believed it. I hadn’t wanted to believe it.

“I just wanted a good story,” I said.

“Well, you got it. Just make sure you say that I loved Theresa.”

He was staring right through me. I thought of what it must have been like for Jason’s eyes to be the last thing Theresa saw. Then I remembered something else. “Where’s my husband’s ring?”

Jason nodded toward an evidence bag that contained items one of the uniformed officers had collected from Jason’s pockets. The officer was just about to seal the bag, putting Frank’s ring into judicial limbo, when Rosenthal stopped him. She took out the ring and handed it back to me.

“It was one of my good-luck charms,” Jason said. “To remind me of what Theresa and I were meant to have if she would only have come back to me.”

 

 

We watched as Jason was put into the back of a squad car. Then Andres, Victor, Linda, and I gave our statements to Rosenthal. As soon as that was done, I handed her the shot tape of Jason holding me at gunpoint. I knew Mike would give me grief about it later, but he could wait until the trial was over to get it back.

Tom had been just behind Linda with a large plate of desserts that were now sitting untouched on a table. Gray, Wyatt, David, and Julia had arrived after Jason’s arrest for what was supposed to be another thank-you lunch and their meeting about a scholarship fund. Instead it was a bunch of shell-shocked people sitting around with Tom telling us he knew all along.

“Why did you know?” I asked him.

“She was my sister,” he said. “I could tell whenever his name came up she was scared. She wouldn’t get specific, but I knew.” I could hear the catch in his throat. “I’ve always been the problem child and Theresa was always the saint. I guess she figured I’d beat him up or something. She wouldn’t have wanted that. She hated violence.” He paused. “It killed me knowing that he must have done something to her but not being able to do anything about it. I never knew I could feel so much anger. I take it out on everyone, even my mom. Even you.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Tom,” I said. “I think we all grieve in our own way.”

I watched David put his arm around his wife. I still didn’t like the guy exactly, but he did love Julia, and she loved him. She looked up at me, her face streaked with tears.

“We all were so sick of hearing about Jason that I think she felt she couldn’t admit she still talked to him,” Julia said. “I think she must have felt she had to handle it on her own.”

“It may give you some comfort to know that she was reaching out,” Rosenthal said. “We found a slip of paper in her purse with three numbers on it.”

“Four, three, seven,” I said. “I remember seeing them in the evidence bag.”

“The last three numbers of a stalker hotline. We were able to confirm she’d called to get advice.”

Gray sat down next to me. “Are you okay?”

“No.” I laughed. “Thirty-seven years of the dullest life you could possibly imagine, but the last few weeks have certainly made up for it.”

“You want to go back to dull?”

“I want the new
TV Guide
arriving in my mailbox to be the most exciting part of my week.”

“I can’t picture you enjoying that. You’re too smart. And you read people really well.”

“I had you figured for Theresa’s lover.”

He smiled. “Okay, you read most people well. I was just . . .”

“Me. Some poor unhappily married sap who found out your spouse preferred someone else.”

“Worse. I didn’t know I was unhappily married. But as it’s been pointed out to me, I wasn’t really around enough to know.” He stared at the floor. “And I guess I’ve always felt a little smug that my wife and I never found anyone else we liked more than each other.” He paused, seeming for the first time uncertain. “I guess I was more wrong than I thought.”