Page 66 of Guess Again
Blake grabbed two Coors Lights from the fridge and placed them on the kitchen table as he took a seat. Ethan sat down across from him. They both opened their beers and took a sip.
“Yes,” Blake said. “Callie was pregnant. And, yes, I was the father.”
“She went to Chicago to have an abortion.”
Blake took another sip and then stared at his beer can as he spun it in the circle of condensation that formed on the table.
“She went to the clinic, but never had an abortion. I told her I wanted to keep the baby, but I understood if she didn’t. She had so much going on, and I told her it was her call.”
“You ever tell Pete Kramer any of this back in the day when he was investigating?”
Blake shook his head. “No. He never asked, and I never offered. I knew coming forward about my relationship with Callie would paint me as the main suspect. And since I had nothing, and I meannothing, to do with Callie going missing, I stayed quiet.”
Ethan considered Blake Cordis as he took a sip of beer. Just like during his visit with Maddie, Ethan considered that the man was either a very good actor or telling some form of the truth.
“Let’s do this,” Ethan said. “I’ll tell you what I think happened, and you tell me if I’m right or wrong.”
Blake nodded.
“You were having a sexual relationship with Callie Jones, one of your student athletes. You were a legal adult, twenty-one years old in July of 2015. You’d be twenty-two in September. Callie was seventeen. You got her pregnant, and an abortion was the only way to keep your relationship secret. But after thinking about it, Callie decided to keep the baby. On Saturday night, July 18, 2015, she texted you to tell you. You texted back and forth using the prepaid Samsung phone, and she told you she was keeping the baby and wanted to start a life with you. With nowhere left to go, you took matters into your own hands. You told Callie to meet you at North Point Pier, where you killed her.”
Blake smiled and finished his beer in one long swig, then cocked his head.
“Wrong, wrong, and let’s see, oh yeah, wrong again.”
“You and Callie used a text encryption app to communicate and erased your text threads after you sent them. You were clever and careful, but I was able to recover the texts, Blake. I saw the thread from the night Callie disappeared.”
“Maybe you did. And that probably explains a lot. But it doesn’t mean I killed her.”
“Then explain what I’m getting wrong.”
“You’ve got most of it right. I was in love with Callie Jones, no doubt about that. I still love her to this day. I talked heroutof having an abortion, not into having one. I wanted to start a life with her. But she had her whole life in front of her—college and medical school, and she felt the pressure of the world on her shoulders. Her parents were lunatics. Her father, our great Wisconsin governor, was MIA during her high school years, more interested in his career than he ever was in Callie. Her mother was bipolar and lived vicariously through Callie, as if Callie’s successes were her own. If Callie didn’t thrive in every way—academically, athletically, socially—her mother would go into deep bouts of depression. And Callie had to carry all that around. So I told her that I understood if she didn’t want what I wanted.”
“But to the contrary, Blake. Callie texted you that night. Told you she wanted a life with you. You told her to meet you at North Point Pier. What happened after that?”
Blake shook his head. “You see, that’s where you’ve got things wrong.”
“Enlighten me.”
Blake tossed his empty beer into the garbage and grabbed another from the fridge.
“I lost the prepaid. I had it Friday night when Callie and I texted. But sometime on Saturday, the phone disappeared. I wanted to tell Callie but couldn’t risk texting her from my own phone. I knew she was going to a party with her friends on The Crest Saturday night, and we had plans to see each other Sunday. I figured if I didn’t find the phone by then, I’d tell her Sunday, and we’d buy another one.”
Ethan squinted his eyes. He tried to read the man across the table. Although it had been a decade, Ethan had conducted many such conversations with kid killers in the past, and none had been as convincing as Blake Cordis was tonight.
“You didn’t have the Samsung on Saturday? The day Callie went missing.”
“No, sir, I did not. And if you’re claiming someone texted Callie that night to lure her to North Point Pier, I believe you. But it wasn’t me.”
Blake took a sip of beer.
“I swear to God. It wasn’t me.”
Ethan jumped the rail fence and headed toward his Jeep. He climbed inside and started the engine. The headlights illuminated the gravel shoulder in front of him, and the bugs swirling in the night. The hum of the cicadas was audible even inside the Wrangler. But all of it was lost on him. Ethan’s mind was churning, and his gut was telling him that he had things wrong. That Blake Cordis was not the man he was looking for, and that some other insidious puzzle was unfolding in front of him. The time he needed to unravel the mystery, he knew, was gone. Francis was set to be transferred in the morning, and Ethan was no closer to finding Callie Jones or Portia Vail than he had been when he started looking.
He had no choice but to go to Boscobel and grovel for answers.
CHAPTER 63
