Page 33 of Guess Again
“Come on in.”
Ethan followed Christian inside and slipped his backpack off his shoulder, setting it on the kitchen stool. He unzipped the top and removed a plastic evidence bag. Inside was Callie Jones’s cell phone that Pete Kramer had retrieved from evidence. No one had laid hands on it for ten years.
“What do we have here?” Christian said, inching closer to get a better look. “Is that an evidence bag?”
“It is.”
Christian raised his right eyebrow.
“It’s a long story.”
“Try me.”
Ethan nodded, knowing he’d have to come clean if he wanted Christian’s help.
“You and I have a lot in common.”
“Oh yeah? You have recurrent kidney stones and like pickleball?”
“No. You left your previous life behind for something different. I did the same.”
“I left Silicon Valley because it was going to kill me if I stayed.”
Ethan nodded. “I used to be a detective, and I left that world for the same reason.”
Ethan saw Christian lift his chin slightly, understanding but wanting more.
“I was a special agent with Wisconsin’s Division of Criminal Investigation.”
Christian angled his head as he worked through it all.
“You left law enforcement . . . to be a doctor?”
“I did. Because if I stayed it would have killed me. I used to investigate kid crimes, and I saw too much violence against young people. Things I was never able to stop. The best I could do was hunt down the people who committed the crimes and bring them to justice. After a while, it stopped being terribly satisfying because in the wake of that tiny victory was still a dead kid. So I retired, went to medical school, and now I try to help peoplebeforethey die.”
Christian pouted his lips. “So what are you doing with a phone sealed in a plastic evidence bag?”
“I’m doing an old friend a favor. Ten years ago, my previous partner worked a missing persons case that went cold. As sort of a last ditch effort to find answers, he and the governor have asked me to take a look at the case and see if I find anything.”
“And did you?”
“I’m hoping you can tell me.” Ethan pointed at the evidence bag. “Back in 2015, a girl named Callie Jones disappeared from right here in Cherryview, Wisconsin. Last time she was seen was leaving The Crest.” Ethan pointed to the lake through the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Investigators found her cell phone and her boat, along with drops of her blood, at North Point Pier the next morning. This is the girl’s phone.”
Christian placed the tips of his fingers together and flexed them, clearly anticipating that his computer skills were about to be called upon.
“What do you need?”
“Agents with the DCI did a search on the phone, found some incoming and outgoing calls registered to a prepaid cell phone. That lead never went anywhere, other than to suggest that Callie Jones was in contact with someone who wanted to stay anonymous.”
“Sounds suspicious.”
“It is. And I need your help with a couple of things. First, Callie made a bunch of calls and sent a string of text messages to this prepaid number. The tech guys at the DCI can see the footprints of the text threads to know that they existed, but were never able to recover the actual texts. They think she used an app that automatically erased the texts after a set period of time. I need to know if you can find them.”
“The texts?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe. If I get into the guts of the phone. What’s the second issue?”
