Page 14 of Guess Again
The news anchor had just started her report on Governor Jones reopening his daughter’s case when she heard a car door slam outside. She muted the television and stood from the couch. The bag of fast food had surprised her the first time it was dropped through the slot. Since then, food had arrived like clockwork and she thought many times about an ambush. About grabbing the hand that reached through the slot to drop the food. But what she would do from that point, after she had grasped her captor’s arm, was a mystery. Instead, she decided reconnaissance was her best option. She hurried to the door and lifted the hatch to peek through. She watched the landing of the basement stairs and waited for them to brighten when the upstairs door opened.
They did, and she heard footsteps bounding down the steps. What she saw next stunned her. She had always imagined a big, burly, slob of a man as her captor. Instead, she saw a woman wearing a black mask emerge from the stair well and approach the door. She quickly lowered the hatch and moved to the side, watching as the Culver’s bag was stuffed through the slot and dropped onto the floor. Just as the bag landed, she moved back to the slot and lifted it. She saw the woman walk to the landing and disappear up the stairs, leaving her alone with her fast food.
She heard keys jangle from upstairs as the front door deadbolt twisted into place.
CHAPTER 16
Milwaukee, Wisconsin Wednesday, July 9, 2025
IN THE MID-1800S,STOCKYARDS WERE CONSTRUCTED IN THEMENOMONEERiver Valley of Milwaukee’s west side to house the thousands of cattle that came through the city by rail and eventually made it to the meatpacking district. Long ago abandoned, no one had initially been clever enough to figure out what to do with the stockyards. So, they sat empty and isolated for years. Although the valley, which stretched from American Family Field in the west to the Harley Davidson Museum in the east, had been renovated in recent decades, it still housed several abandoned warehouses from the old meatpacking district that had yet to be snatched up by builders and developers. Most of those structures sat close to the train tracks and rattled when freight lumbered past, making the transformation to condominiums nearly impossible.
As she drove through the stockyard, her heart pounded as if a rabid animal were trying to punch its way out of her chest. Francis had sent her here, and she was eager to please him by following his instructions to a tee. Lightning flashed overhead, preceding a vicious crack of thunder. Rain fell in sheets and the windshield wipers could barely keep up. She squinted into the night as her headlights guided the way. Far off in the distance she looked for the lights of American Family Field, hoping they’d provide comfort knowing that thousands of people were so close. But the retractable roof was closed and no lights were visible, adding to the foreboding and loneliness she felt.
After Francis told her the location during their visit the day before, she had repeated it to herself over and over as she made her way out of the prison. When she reached her car, she wrote everything he’d asked of her into her notebook. She had sat in the parking lot for an hour reviewing his requests, carefully replaying their conversation in her mind in order to document even the smallest detail. Most important was the number of the warehouse.
Nine. Warehouse number nine.
She crossed the train tracks and turned onto the small road that was poorly paved and in terrible condition. Rainwater filled the potholes, and her car bounced as she drove slowly through them. To her right were the train tracks. To her left was a series of abandoned warehouses. She drove until she saw it. Years of sunrises had bleached the east-facing door, melting away the paint until only a barely visible number 9 remained in splotchy white.
Miraculously, despite the decrepit nature of the building and its less than savory location, she’d found it. And with her discovery came a surge of adrenaline for what waited inside. She pulled her car close to the entrance and kept the engine running. She opened the driver’s side door and stuck an umbrella into the night, depressing the button on the handle and springing it into action. Rain cascaded against the umbrella as she stood from the car. The typical drop in temperature that came with summer thunderstorms was absent tonight. Mixed with the rain was an invisible heat, as if she were standing in a steaming shower.
She walked to the warehouse door and twisted the handle, finding it unlocked as Francis told her it would be. The door creaked open, and she walked inside. The tin roof echoed from the pouring rain. She closed the umbrella and pulled out a flashlight, shining it around the interior to gain her bearings. The warehouse was empty but for random bits of garbage and paraphernalia. The place was clearly a transient spot for the homeless. Needles and syringes scattered the area, and makeshift beds were positioned near the walls.
Per Francis’s instructions, she hurried to the southeast side of the warehouse, the glow of her flashlight guiding her way. When she reached the corner, she shined her flashlight upwards and found the retractable metal ladder ten feet above her. She used the hooked handle of the umbrella to grasp the lowest rung. When she pulled, the ladder clattered down until it was three feet off the floor. She dropped the umbrella, put the small flashlight between her teeth, and started up the ladder. A bolt of lightning momentarily previewed her destination—a metal-gridded gangplank and loft above.
When she reached the top, she took the flashlight from her mouth and shined it around the landing. The brown, metal footlocker was exactly where Francis promised it would be. She scrambled onto the metal loft and crawled to the footlocker. Another bolt of lightning allowed her to see through the grated metal she was kneeling on and revealed how high above the warehouse floor she was. She took a deep breath and tried to settle her nerves. When she reached the metal box, she found the large combination lock bolting the top closed. She remembered the numbers Francis had relayed to her: 21-4-36.
She spun the lock clockwise first to twenty-one, then counterclockwise to four, and finally back clockwise to thirty-six. She closed her eyes and pulled. The lock gave way, and with the disengagement came a sudden surge of heat and moisture between her legs. As she opened the top of the footlocker, a shiver ran down her pelvis and brought with it warmth between her thighs. It was then that she realized the hold Francis Bernard had on her.
Inside were dozens of old audio and videocassette tapes, as well as stacks of photos. She could only imagine what was on the cassettes, but from what the pictures showed, it wasn’t hard to guess. She looked briefly at the glossy 8x10s. They were of the eight women who had perished in the summer of 1993 during the Lake Michigan murders. All the women had been found lying on the shores of Lake Michigan with their throats slashed and a black heart tattooed onto their breast.
She held one of the photos up and could hardly believe what she was looking at.
“Oh, Francis. You devil.”
CHAPTER 17
Madison, Wisconsin Thursday, July 10, 2025
ETHAN WALKED INTOER ROOM6AND SMILED AT THE YOUNG MANsitting in bed. The kid was twelve and wore a dusty baseball uniform. He had an icepack pressed to the right side of his face.
“Fastball or curveball?” Ethan asked.
“Fastball,” the kid said.
“I figured. Hang a curveball and they’ll take it to left field. Leave a fastball in the heart of the plate and it comes back up the middle. Let me take a look.”
Ethan pulled down the lamp that hung from the ceiling. The kid took the icepack from his face to reveal that his right eye was swollen shut with a significant laceration to his upper cheek.
“Nasty,” Ethan said. “But the good news is that the X-rays and CT scan show no orbital fracture. So as bad as you look now, you’ll be good as new in no time. No permanent damage.”
“And the gash?” Mom asked.
Ethan pulled the lamp closer to get a better look. “Nice and clean. I’ll sew it up using subcutaneous sutures. It’ll heal without a scar. In a year you’ll never know it happened. But put a little movement on your fastball. If you turn it into a cutter, they’ll dribble it to short.”
The kid smiled. “I’ll work on it.”
When Ethan was finished suturing the laceration, he said his goodbyes and allowed the discharge nurse to finish up. His shift was over and his board of patients clear. He headed to the doctor’s lounge to complete his charts before going home. As he started his final chart, he heard a knock and saw Chip Carter, the CEO of the hospital, standing in the doorway of the lounge. Chip had started his career in emergency medicine before jumping ship to hospital administration. In addition to his medical degree, Chip held an MBA. Ethan suspected he made over a million dollars a year running the busiest hospital in Madison.
