Page 27 of Guess Again
Boscobel, Wisconsin Wednesday, July 23, 2025
SINCE FRANCIS BERNARD HAD UTTERED CALLIE JONES’S NAME, Ethan was all in on the investigation.
He’d nearly killed himself at the ER the week before by working six straight days of twelve-hour shifts.
But it had earned him two weeks off, which he combined with two weeks of vacation time.
He now had a month free from his responsibilities at the ER, and he planned to spend every moment on the Callie Jones case.
During the past week, after his long and grueling shifts at the hospital, Ethan spent his free time poring over every detail of the Callie Jones file.
He met with Mark Jones and had a long discussion with the man, allowing Callie’s father to paint the picture of the dysfunctional Jones family from the summer of 2015.
He met with Callie’s best friend, Lindsay Larkin, who filled in details about Callie’s troubles during the summer she went missing.
He’d met with Damien Laramie, Callie’s stepdad, who was still angry and bitter that Callie’s “selfishness that summer,”
as the man put it, had led to his wife’s taking of her own life.
There was a lot to unpack.
Ethan poured a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table.
In front of him was the Callie Jones file.
Two inches thick with pages that were dog-eared and tattered, it was obvious that someone—likely Pete Kramer—had been through the file a number of times.
Ethan opened the front cover to a photo of Callie.
Auburn hair, honey-brown eyes, and an olive complexion. Her teeth were white and straight, and the girl offered an intoxicating smile—the kind, Ethan could tell, that made everyone feel welcome. She looked impossibly young and innocent. Staring at the picture of the missing girl raised long-buried feelings of despair and hopelessness that had driven Ethan from this profession years ago. He turned the page and read a short bio.
Callie Jones was seventeen years old and about to start her senior year in high school but had already received an early acceptance to the University of Cincinnati and a partial athletic scholarship.
She was set to play volleyball for the Bearcats while embarking on the challenging eight-year, direct-to-medical school program.
Only a handful of such spots were available nationwide, and one of them had been awarded to Callie Jones.
There was even talk of Callie capturing a spot on the women’s Olympic volleyball team if she continued to excel in college.
Pretty, athletic, and smart, Ethan thought.
Was about to conquer the world, until she disappeared.
Ethan turned the page.
Callie was last seen by her teammates on Saturday, July 18, 2015, out at The Crest—an island in the middle of Lake Okoboji known for late night parties and general debauchery.
As he read through the file, Ethan ignored the whispers that told him he was too far removed from this type of work to offer anything meaningful to the case.
The thoughts were his mind’s way of protecting him, of discouraging him from steering his life off a cliff—which was exactly what would happen if he became involved with the DCI again.
But deep inside, Ethan knew he had no choice.
Pete Kramer’s dying plea had gotten the conversation started.
The governor’s promise to erase two hundred thousand dollars of student loan had kept his interest. But the final push had come from the least likely of sources. How on earth Francis Bernard knew anything about Callie’s case, and why the man was dangling it in front of Ethan, was something he could not begin to comprehend. But he sure as hell was going to find out.
Ethan closed the file and pulled out the timeline he had created of Callie’s known interactions in the week before she disappeared, which culminated in Callie driving her parents’ boat out to The Crest the night she disappeared.
Ethan had arranged a second meeting with Lindsay Larkin for the upcoming weekend to visit the island and retrace Callie’s footsteps that night.
Up to this point, his early investigation told him that Callie Jones had the weight of the world on her shoulders that summer.
An overbearing mother, a new stepdad, an MIA father, and the news about acceptance into a direct-to-medical school program had all combined to form a perfect storm of anxiety, frustration, and duress.
A thought crossed Ethan’s mind as he pieced together the details of the girl’s life.
Had Callie Jones run away?
The whispers from the dark corners of his mind grew louder and told him that in order to answer that question, and the hundreds of others that were forming, he was going to need help.
Inexplicably, that help resided in the person he least wanted to ask.
He packed up the file and headed for the door.
“Take a seat,”
the guard said.
Four hours later, with help from the DCI and a push from the governor’s office, Ethan had managed an impromptu visit to the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility in Boscobel.
He sat at the visitation booth and a minute later the door on the other side of the glass opened.
Francis Bernard appeared—hands cuffed in front of him.
The shackles on his ankles forced him to move with a controlled shuffle.
Francis looked toward booth #4, and a shrewd smile came across his face. Nothing flagrant. Just a delicate twist to the corners of his lips. Still, it was impossible to miss the man’s joy that Ethan had returned so soon.
Ethan’s visits over the years had served a single purpose—to remind Francis that his appeals were futile, and that he would never see another day of freedom in his life.
Despite the fact that Ethan had been victorious on this front for the last several years, the man always offered a pompous expression of joy.
As if Francis knew something Ethan did not.
Francis sat opposite him and raised his cuffed hands to the phone, lifted the receiver from the hook, and placed it to his ear just as Ethan did the same on his side of the glass.
Francis’s smile grew larger.
“That was fast.”
“You said you knew something about Callie Jones.
What is it?”
The elated expression fell from Francis’s face, replaced by faux disappointment.
“Is that what this is about? We’re not going to talk about your father?”
“What do you know about Callie Jones?”
“Oh,”
Francis said, his forehead wrinkling as if confused.
“I know plenty.”
“Bullshit.”
Francis smiled again.
“Are we going to play games, Ethan?”
Ethan remained silent.
“If you thought I knew nothing, you wouldn’t be here.
You believe.
.
.
no, in fact, you are certain that I know something. And since the big boys recruited you out of retirement, you’re under pressure to deliver. So you’re sniffing for information wherever you think you might find it. Even embarrassing yourself by coming all the way out to Boscobel to ask me about Callie Jones. It’s sad, really. You’re so lost that you have to ask your father’s killer for directions.”
Francis looked up to the ceiling, as if he were on camera.
“Alleged killer, to anyone who’s listening.”
“Yeah,”
Ethan said, nodding his head.
“That’s what I thought.
You don’t know shit.
You’re just so lonely that you’ll say anything to get someone to come and see you.
Even me, the guy who promises to keep you here forever.
That’s sad.”
“You’ve heard the Tolkien quote: ‘Not all those who wander are lost,’ haven’t you?”
Francis said, picking up as if Ethan hadn’t said a word.
“But the unspoken part of that quote, the natural assumption and the real truth, is that all those who are lost certainly wander.
And you are as lost as a puppy in the night, Ethan.
So I’m going to help you.
I’m going to help you stop wandering in the darkness.
I’ll give you some direction. Do you want direction in your life, Ethan?”
Ethan said nothing as the seconds dragged past.
“I won’t make you beg.
That’s beneath me.
Are you ready?”
Ethan stared unblinkingly through the glass.
“Go to Menomonee Valley in Milwaukee, to the old, abandoned stockyards.
Find a decrepit looking warehouse.
Number nine, Ethan.
Are you paying attention? Warehouse number nine in Menomonee Valley.
High up on one of the walls is an envelope with something for you. Go, Ethan. Find what’s there. Do your thing, Mr. One Hundred Percent. And then, come back and we’ll talk some more.”
Francis smiled, hung up the phone, and left the visitation booth.