Rachel slammed the door, threw the deadbolts, and hurled her backpack on the living room floor. A moment later she stalked into our office.
I swiveled in my chair. “How was school?”
“Don’t ask.” She’s studying psychology in a graduate program. Rachel has red hair and hazelnut eyes, and she can be scary when she’s pissed off.
“I can zap yesterday’s eggplant parmesan any time you want.” Maybe dinner would help her calm down.
“Give me a few minutes.” She leaned over her desk to check her email. She groaned. “Idiots.”
I didn’t ask. She sat down and fired off a few emails, then hopped up and headed for the door. “I’m going to change. No rush on dinner.”
“Got it.” I finished up an email to a client, checked a few other cases, then put my computer to sleep and headed to the kitchen for a beer.
We ate in front of the TV. Rachel had changed to sweatpants and a T-shirt. She still looked hot. We drank beer while she whipped through the channels, looking for a reality show she wasn’t bored with yet.
“Oh, there’s a friend of mine who needs some help,” she said, pausing for an infomercial.
“What kind of help?” I sipped my beer. “Late night study sessions? Explorations into deviant sexual behavior? Clothing optional?”
Rachel punched my shoulder. “Your kind of help.”
I’m a private detective. “Okay. And, you know, ow.”
“He’s been getting emails from his mother.”
“So? She’s nagging him to get a job?”
“She’s dead.”
“Oh.” That was different. And unfortunately, right up my alley. “Maybe your kind of help too.” In addition to being hot, Rachel’s psychic.
“She was murdered by Colin’s father. He died in jail. His aunt and uncle raised him.”
“Wow.” I looked at her. “What class is he in?”
“Addiction. We’re doing heroin right now.”
“Did you think to bring any home for me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ha ha. Will you help him out?”
“Sure. Have him send me the emails and anything he can share about his parents. Any friend of yours, you know, etc., etc.”
“Thanks.” She tossed the remote down. “Nothing good. I’m bored. Let’s have sex.”
“Can we play the pirate and the shipwrecked captive again?”
“Only if you’re the captive this time.” She grinned. “Avast, matey!”
I groaned, but I knew better than to argue.
The next morning I got an email from Colin Mannes:
Tom,
Thank you for looking into this for me. Rachel says you’re a top detective.
I’m sending you some news articles about what happened to my Mom. and the emails I’ve got so far, starting last week. Let me know if you need anything.
C.
The emails started out in a normal tone:
Hello, Colin,
How have you been? I haven’t heard from you in a long time. Hope you’re doing well. I miss you.
Love, Mom
Colin must have ignored it. A second email came a day later, with basically the same message. Colin replied:
Whoever you are, stop sending me emails. This is sick.
The sender replied a few hours later:
Colin, it’s really me. I know it’s been years, I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to reach you. Please answer me. I need you.
Colin sent back:
My mother is dead, you sick fuck. Stop contacting me.
Then the sender sent:
Colin, it’s me. Don’t you remember how I used to make you brownies every Friday and we’d hide them from your father? Your favorite TV show was X Files. You wanted me to read Star Trek stories for bedtime. One time your father made you tell the paramedics that I fell downstairs.
It’s me.
After a day, Colin sent:
My mother is dead. Stop bothering me!
Then:
Colin, it’s me. Please help me.
There were two more from the sender after that, but Colin stopped responding.
I went to the news articles he’d sent. The story was horrific, and depressing. Colin’s father, Bradley Mannes, had beaten his wife Eileen to death, then set fire to their house. Colin had been eight at the time, spending the night with his grandparents—Bradley’s mother and father. They’d all lived in Remington, a small town west of Kankakee about an hour south of Chicago. It happened 19 years ago.
Bradley confessed, recanted, and went on trial. The jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to 35 years. That was the last news item.
Colin included a note after attaching the articles. “I got a letter from the state a month ago saying my father died of cancer in prison. I don’t know anything about where he’s buried. I haven’t talked to them since mom died. Let me know if you need anything else.”
Rachel came into the office while I was rereading everything. “Don’t talk to me, I was up all night studying. After—you know.”
“Oh, I know.” I grinned. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Just enough. I’ve got class, but I’ll be back this afternoon to work.” She’s a graphic designer on top of everything else, and her schedule was chaotic, balancing school, her job, and occasional sex. “Get anywhere with Colin?”
“Just starting. How old is he, by the way?”
“Twenty, uh, six? Twenty-seven? Something like that.” She was checking her email for urgent messages from clients.
“Younger man, huh? Cute?”
“After last night you’re interrogating me? Yeah, he’s cute. Just young. Plus, he has a boyfriend.” She kissed me on her way out of the office. “Don’t get any ideas about this afternoon, lover. I’ve got too much work that I should have done last night except for you distracting me.”
“Me? I just—” But Rachel was gone already. I heard the door slam, and the locks click.
I had some questions for Colin, so I sent him an email asking him to call me. Then I went onto a different case, executive misbehavior at a restaurant chain. Sometimes the life of a P.I. is busy.
Colin called me half an hour later. “Hi, Tom. Is it okay if I call you Tom?” He sounded young, nervous, and slightly frazzled.
“That’s fine. I had some questions, can you talk right now?”
“Yeah, I’m in the car. Not driving, just waiting for class. Thanks for doing this, by the way. How much is this going to cost?”
Money. “I’m doing this as a favor for Rachel. If it gets too involved, we might have to talk about expenses, but don’t worry about that right now.”
“Thanks. Rachel’s great. She’s really smart. And she talks about you all the time.”
Really? I smiled. “That stuff the sender told you, about the brownies and the Star Trek stories—I assume that’s true?”
“Yeah, and nobody knows about it. I mean, my dad never put me to bed or read stories to me, or cooked anything. He was—well, he beat my mom. And me. She didn’t have any friends, she was afraid—afraid of him. Afraid of everything.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that. Did you have any contact with your father after—after it happened?”
“No.” He sighed. “I had to see him in court once. My grandparents took me. After that I lived with my aunt and uncle, and I never saw my grandparents again.”
“Who do you think is sending you these emails? Does your mother have a sister, or cousins, or anyone who’d want to make contact with you?”
“There’s my aunt, but that’s her only sister. I think there’s a cousin someplace, but I don’t remember meeting them—him or her, whatever.”
“What about your father’s family?”
He hesitated. “I haven’t—my grandfather died a long time ago. My grandmother sent me an email. Other than that, I haven’t heard from her since—since it happened. I didn’t want anything to do with his family. I don’t know about anyone on that side.”
I could understand that. But—”Can you give me what contact information you have on her? I won’t contact her without discussing it with you first, but it might be useful.”
“Sure. I’ve got her email, the last address I have for her. I’ll send them over.”
“Good. I don’t know how much luck I’ll have tracing the email address—actually, Rachel is better at stuff like that—but in the meantime, I’d like you to send a message to her.”
“Okay.” He sounded reluctant. “Like what?”
“Ask her some more questions that only she would know. Ask her why she’s contacting you. Ask her where she is. Maybe tell her a lie that she’d catch if—if it was really her.” I was spitballing ideas. “Don’t argue with her. Just let me know what she says.”
“All right.” I heard his car door open. “I’ve got to get to class. I’ll send this stuff later. Thanks again.”
“Very good. Say hi to Rachel for me if you see her. I’ll be in touch.”
We hung up. I tried working on the email address but got nowhere. Rachel might be able to hack it, but it was one of those sites where anyone could sign up for an email address, and even with a lawyer I might not get more than a fake name and another email address.
I dug deeper into the mother’s murder. Remington wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime, although it had its share of small-town problems. People dying from fentanyl, drunken arguments that turned into stabbings and gunshots, that sort of thing. Two men and a woman had been killed in a meth lab on the outskirts just days before Eileen Mannes had been died, and a white supremacist spraypainted a swastika on a church the day after. A woman was arrested for trafficking a teenage girl out of a local motel. Small town America in all its glory.
The body had burned almost beyond recognition, but nobody questioned that it was Eileen Mannes. The police had focused on Bradley Mannes right away, and he confessed pretty quickly, then got a lawyer to get the confession put aside. Even without it, a jury convicted Mannes in less than a day, and the judge had delivered the harshest sentence she could, making a speech about the hideous nature of the murder. I couldn’t imagine what Colin must have felt.
Now what? If someone was impersonating Colin’s mother online, what would they get out of it? Was there a secret inheritance? Did someone have a grudge against Colin? Questions, questions. I sent him an email.
Then I looked up the number for the police in Remington. After explaining who I was and what I wanted, I waited five minutes until someone finally picked up. “Kalinsky.”
I introduced myself and explained what I was working on. Kalinsky grunted. “I worked that case. Long time ago. Pretty bad.”
He must have been a young man then, near retirement age now. I could hear it in his voice. He was being cautious with me, like all cops when a stranger calls them from nowhere to ask about an old closed case. Especially a P.I.
Kalinsky didn’t ask what I wanted. He just waited for me to talk. Another good tactic for cops. And P.I.s. And reporters, like I’d been a lifetime ago.
“This is going to sound like a crazy question.” Like lots of the questions I ask. “But is there any possibility that the body in the case was—misidentified? That it could have been someone else?”
Another grunt. “Well, not the craziest question I’ve ever heard.” He paused, as if thinking over all the stupid questions he’d heard throughout his career. “I’ve got the file right here. We digitized everything a few years ago.” Another paused as he scrolled down the page. “Well, there was no DNA test, and her face was bashed in pretty good, so dental records would have been out. And her wedding ring was gone. On the other hand, she was the right size, in the right clothes, in her own house. And yeah, the husband confessed.” That came out dry, not quite mocking me but not worried if it sounded that way.
“But he recanted.”
“Well, that happens a lot. Lawyers come in and the first thing they want is to get the confession thrown out. We beat the guy, we tortured them, we lied, we didn’t read him his rights, we didn’t give him a glass of water when he asked for it, all that crap. Sometimes it sticks and the confession goes. Still got convicted, though. Jury of 12.”
“Not questioning your performance, detective. I just have to ask.”
“Yeah.” He sounded skeptical. That happens to me a lot. “I’ll tell you, I talked to Mannes the first thing they brought him in. I wasn’t a detective yet, but it was a small department then. Anyway, he didn’t say anything for an hour. Not one word. Didn’t seem like he heard me when I asked him anything, even if he wanted coffee or something. Then, all of a sudden, he starts talking. How when he drinks he goes all out of control, can’t remember anything. He didn’t remember doing anything, just setting the fire, but in the end he says he’s sure he did it. He didn’t want to fight it. I called my boss, we brought someone in to write it down so he could sign it, even though we were recording the whole thing, and we did a video as he read the confession and we advised him of his rights again, and we got video of him signing the document. So that was it.”
“How long did you question him for? Did he call anyone?”
“He called his parents. His folks came in, but they were only there five minutes and then they left with the kid. We offered him another phone call, but—”
Huh? “Wait, what kid?”
“Kid about eight or nine, a little boy. He just sat on the bench in the hall, we didn’t let him see his dad—”
“But it was Mannes’ son?”
Kalinsky gave it a moment’s thought. “I don’t recall that anyone asked. I guess we just assumed it.”
Colin hadn’t mentioned a visit to the police station. Maybe it was too painful to remember. “When did he get the lawyer? Who’d he get?”
“Local guy, friend of his, let me see here—Trevor McCloud. I guess they went to high school together. Trevor did all sorts of work, criminal, civil, property, wills, the way it goes in a small town. Smart guy. He retired a few years ago, moved to Florida. His son’s a lawyer too now.”
I could find the lawyer if I needed to. “All right. Thanks for your time, sir.”
“Any time, Mr. Jurgen. You have a good day.”
We hung up. I made notes, had some more coffee, and went back to my other case. A few hours later, Colin called back.
“I got another message,” he said before I could ask him any questions.
“What is it?”
“I’m sending it to you. It says, ‘You’ve got to help me, Colin. She said that a few times before, when I was ignoring them, but now she says, ‘You’ve got to find him.’”
“Find who?”
“I don’t know! None of this makes any sense! Sorry.” Colin took a deep breath. “Sorry. This is driving me crazy.”
“I can imagine. Is there anybody you can think of who’d want to do that to you? An old friend, an ex, someone from your past?”
He sighed. “I tried to think about that, but I just can’t think of anyone who’d want to screw with me, or at least anyone who knows about my parents. I don’t tell a lot of people what happened. I didn’t even tell Rachel until she said you were a private detective.”
“Is there any money associated with the family? An old bank account maybe?”
“We didn’t have much money. Grandma and grandpa bought the house for us, I think.”
“I have to ask something else.” I hoped this wasn’t too tough for him to go through. “I talked to one of the detectives who handled the case. He mentioned that your grandparents came down to see your father on the night of—that night.”
Silence. “Yeah. They got a phone call. I didn’t hear any of it, but then I had to go to a neighbor’s house for a while. I didn’t know what was going on. They didn’t tell me anything until the next morning.”
“The cop says they brought you with them. You waited on a bench in the hall—”
“What? No. They took me to the neighbors. Mr. and Mrs. Barnes. I remember that. They weren’t gone long, maybe an hour. I just watched TV.”
So who was the kid? Maybe Kalinsky remembered it wrong. I wasn’t sure it mattered, asking questions is my job. It bothers me when the answers don’t line up right.
You’ve got to find him, the message had said.
“Ask her who she’s talking about,” I said. “Who she wants you to find. If you haven’t done that already.”
“No, I just saw it when I got out of class right now. All right.”
“Let’s wait and see what she says. In the meantime, can I contact your aunt and grandmother? I’ll be as discreet as I can.”
“Sure, I guess. Like I said, I haven’t talked to grandma in years. I’ll send you their phone and email.”
“Let me know what the sender says.”
“As soon as I hear. Oh, Rachel says hi, by the way. Something about sharks again tonight?”
“Yeah, that’s a—a private joke.” I grinned, though. “Talk to you later.”
We hung up. He forwarded his “mother’s” message, and sent me info on his aunt and mother a few minutes later.
Later that evening, after Rachel saved me from the sharks (again), we sat in front of a quiet TV as Rachel studied and I read a book about the Crimean War. I was on a history kick lately.
My phone buzzed with a text. Colin. “She answered. Forwarding the email.”
I looked at the email:
Find your brother.
Then the phone buzzed with a call from Colin. “I don’t have a brother!” he said before I could say anything. “I don’t know what she’s talking about!”
“Okay, but is it possible your father could have had another child?” I was thinking of the child Kalinsky had seen.
“I don’t—I suppose anything’s possible with him.”
“Your grandmother might know.”
“Maybe. I can’t—I just can’t. Let me think about it.”
“I understand your feelings.” I looked at Rachel. “I could drive down and talk to her. But it would help if you could talk to her first.”
He hesitated for a long time. Then he sighed. “Yeah. I’ll call her. I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
We hung up. Rachel looked up from her laptop. “‘I understand your feelings?’ Have you been reading my Psych books?”
“Just watching TV.” I picked up my book. “Looks like I’m driving down to Kankakee tomorrow. Do you have class?”
“You mean, do I want to come with you?” She snorted. “Hard pass. I’ve got work, and then my night class. Try to keep up.”
“Just want you to feel included.” I went back to my book.
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