“Her name is Nerina. She’s been kidnapped by the Raen.”
I groaned. The last time Andrew Russo had hired me, I’d been attacked by dragons, bats, and flying horses on a wild drive downstate to Urbana.All for some ancient feud between the Raen and the Rossini—two families locked in combat for centuries.
The Raen were some kind of doomsday cult. The Rossini had split off from them a long time ago, and they’d struggled for control of mystical resources ever since.
I wasn’t eager to get back into their family politics. But Andrew Russo had paid me three times my normal fee last year, so that was all right. Still . . .
“You know, the police and the FBI investigate kidnappings for free,” I mentioned.
“We can’t go to them. You know that. Nerina is important.”
Everyone’s important, I wanted to say. I doubted Russo’s primary concern was the girl’s safety. So I sighed. “What have you got?”
Nerine Ariane. Nineteen years old. College student at DePaul University, studying photography. She had a Lincoln Park apartment. I started there.
No sign of forced entry or struggle. I found a suitcase in a closet. The dresser was full of clothes and underwear—yes, I looked, because I’m a detective—as was the laundry hamper. No obvious signs of anything missing.
A plump black cat complained with loud meows as I searched—another sign that Nerina hadn’t planned to be gone this long. I filled the cat’s food and water bowls and scooped out the litter box. I petted it a few times. It rubbed against my leg, then went back to the dry food.
My next step? Nerina’s boyfriend, obviously.
The Rossini were a mite overprotective, but they were smart enough not to forbid a 19-year-old woman from having a life, even if they did their best to track her day and night. Nerina’s boyfriend was Ben Ajasic, a grad student in philosophy who lived a few blocks away. She’d gone out on a date with him the night she disappeared, and hadn’t been heard from since.
I’d run a background check of my own on Ben back in my office and found two traces: He was from Lafayette, Indiana, where the current patriarch of the Raen lived; and he’d attended a private high school where a lot of Raen were educated.
Pretty thin, but it kind of supported Russo’s insistence that the Raen were behind her disappearance.
In my Honda I called Russo. “I’m going to have to talk to the boyfriend. Have your people had any contact with him?”
“Carole called him, pretending to be her aunt.” Carole Rossigna lived in Urbana. I’d met her briefly last year after tearing up her lawn in my Honda. Long story. “Ajasic claimed he hadn’t seen her in days.”
Pretended? “What about her real family?”
“We are her family.” He sounded offended.
“I mean, her parents? Siblings? Aunts and uncles and cousins?”
“Her parents are dead. She’s an only child. She’s alone, except for us.”
Wow. “So who were her parents?”
He hesitated. “It’s too complicated to go into over the phone.”
Of course. “I’m going to talk to Ajasic now.”
“Don’t mention us.”
“Of course not.”
I called Rachel next. She’s my girlfriend, a graphic designer, and at least slightly psychic. I always to try let her know where I am when I’m working a case, so she knows where to start looking if something bad happens. “I’m going to see the missing person’s boyfriend. Wish me luck.”
She snorted. “Okay. Be careful. I’m making ratatouille for dinner, and I don’t want to have to eat it all by myself.”
“Love you too.” I hung up.
I parked my Honda down the block from Ben’s building, walked up, and buzzed his apartment.
“Hello?” The voice was scratchy through the intercom.
“Mr. Ajasic? My name is Thomas Hale. I’m a private detective looking for Nerina Ariane on behalf of her family. She’s disappeared. Can we talk?”
A few seconds passed. “I’ll be down in a minute.” He didn’t buzz me in.
Ben Ajasic was tall, with short black hair and a thin beard. Jeans and a gray T-shirt. Reasonably attractive, I guessed. He opened the door, and we stood in the small lobby inside.
“What’s this about?” He crossed his arms. “Who are you again?”
“Thomas Hale.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie. My name is Thomas Hale Jurgen. I gave him a business card with the same name and a phone number that matched a burner phone and one of the email addresses Rachel sets up for me to preserve some semblance of anonymity. Neither were perfect protection, but they’d stop the casual seeker.
He peered at the card, then shoved it into his jeans. “I haven’t seen Nerina since Sunday. We went out on a date, and she went home. Sometimes she doesn’t call for a few days.”
“Why not? Did you have a fight?”
Ben scowled. “Of course not. She’s busy with classes. Me too.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Dinner.” The answer seemed obvious to him. “Then we came back here and then . . .” He shrugged. “She left a little while later.”
“What time?” When I was a reporter, I liked to give people lots of time to think about my questions. Now I felt like a cop on one of the Law and OrderTV shows. But even as a reporter, I knew how quick questions could sometimes goad people into telling me more than they meant to.
“I don’t know!” He shook his head. “One o’clock or so.”
“You let your girlfriend walk home alone at one in the morning?” This was Chicago, after all.
“Nerina is very—independent.” He glanced over his shoulder at the elevator. “Is that all? I’ve got work to do.”
So did it. “Thanks for your time. Call me if you think of anything. Or hear from Nerina.”
He walked to the elevator and punched the button. “Yeah. Sure.”
Back in my Honda I called Rachel again. “I think he was lying. I wish you’d been here.” Rachel’s kind of psychic. She can usually tell when people are hiding something.
She laughed. “You’re a reporter and a detective. You don’t always need me.”
“Maybe I just like having you around.”
“Jerk. I’m busy with a big landing page.” Rachel’s a graphic designer. “Call me when you’re in real trouble.”
“Always.”
Ben was my only lead so far, so I decided to wait a few minutes in case he went anywhere. I knew what kind of car he drove from my background check—a red Hyundai—and I was parked across the street. I listened to classic rock on the radio, sipped a little water, and kept my eyes on the apartment building.
Patience pays off, sometimes. Twenty minutes into my little stakeout I saw Ben emerge from the apartment building and hop into his car. Maybe I’d spooked him. Or maybe he had a dentist appointment.
We drove a few miles until he parked on the street and headed into a small office building on Lincoln Avenue. I kept my flashers on while waiting for a spot to open up, getting plenty of angry honks and pointed middle fingers from the cars forced to go around me. I texted the address to Rachel and waited.
Just as an old gray Impala began edging out to the street to give me a spot, Ben and another man burst through the doors. Instead of getting into Ben’s Hyundai, the man—fiftyish with graying hair and glasses, heavyset in a long jacket—led Ben down the block. I saw Ben open a car door—a black Subaru—and I veered around the Impala to reach the vehicle before it pulled away. The driver gave me a honk and the bird. I was making friends all over today.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was headed toward the horizon. We headed north on Lake Shore Drive into Evanston, north of Chicago, and turned away from downtown into a residential area. Eventually the Subaru parked in front of a small, two-story house on a darkening street.
I parked and used my smartphone to research the location. It would have been easier back in my office—my fingers kept hitting the wrong keys—but eventually I got the name of the owner—Elliot Barsch, a real estate developer with an office in the building I’d tailed Ben to earlier.
His firm, Barsch and Associates, LLC, was involved in three projects around the city. Not Trump-styled towers, but modest commercial properties. No obvious connection to the Raen, but I could check with Russo on that.
My phone buzzed. Incoming call, forwarded from the phone set up for the “Thomas Hale” number. I answered.
“Mr. Hale? It’s Ben Ajasic.”
Did he know where I was? “What can I do for you, Mr. Ajasic?”
“You can come up to Evanston and see Nerina for yourself. She’ll tell you nothing’s wrong.” He gave me Barsch’s address.
Oh-kay . . . “It’ll take me an hour or so.”
“We’ll be waiting.” He hung up.
Now what? I peered at the house. A porch light came on.
I called Russo. “Ben Ajasic says Nerina is in a house in Evanston. He wants me to see her to make sure she’s all right.”
He laughed. “Great. I’ll send some people to extract her—”
“Wait a minute. You can send some people, fine. But I’m here right now. I’ll wait for you, but then I’m going in to talk to her. If nothing’s wrong, we all leave. I don’t want to be in the middle of a SWAT team swarming the place.”
Russo hesitated. “No one will get hurt.”
“No assault.”
“Fine,” he growled. “What’s the address?”
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