Page 31 of Guess Again
Chicago, Illinois Saturday, July 26, 2025
THE DAY AFTER ETHAN VISITED CHRISTIAN MALONE HE MADE THE DRIVE from Cherryview to Chicago.
Using GPS tracking software and identifying the cell towers the phone signal pinged, Christian had triangulated Callie Jones’s likely location when she made the call from her cell phone on Thursday, July16, 2015.
Christian offered a disclaimer that he couldn’t be sure, but also gave Ethan the impression that he had little doubt that the call had originated near the corner of West Division Street and North Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood.
And, specifically, from 1152 North Milwaukee Avenue.
Ethan pulled to the intersection now and stopped at the red light, taking in the establishments on each of the corners.
There was a Polish deli on the southwest corner, a dry cleaners across the street, and veterinary clinic next door.
The light turned green, and Ethan pulled through the intersection.
As he headed down Milwaukee Avenue, he came to the address Christian had provided and saw a Planned Parenthood clinic on his right.
A block down he found a parking spot on a side street and pulled his Wrangler to the curb.
He doubled back to the clinic and walked inside.
The woman behind the reception desk offered a confused expression when he walked in.
“Can I help you?”
she asked.
Ethan removed his DCI badge and showed it to the woman.
“My name’s Ethan Hall.
I’m an agent with the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation.
I need to ask a few questions about a missing persons case from a few years back to see if there’s any way to confirm that the victim visited this clinic.”
The woman seemed unequipped to handle Ethan’s inquiry.
“You probably need to speak with my supervisor.”
“That would be great.”
A moment later a woman emerged from the back.
“Hi.
I’m Cheryl Stowe.”
Ethan made the same introduction.
“I’d love to help you,”
Cheryl said.
“But patients who visit the clinic are protected by HIPAA regulations, so I wouldn’t be able to tell you if the person you’re looking for visited the clinic or not.”
Ethan nodded.
“Understood.
The girl I’m interested in is named Callie Jones.
She went missing from a small town up near Madison in 2015.
I’ve got good forensic cell phone evidence that places the girl at this location at 10:00 a.m.
on Thursday, July 16, 2015, two days before she disappeared. The only reason I can think that a seventeen-year-old girl who lived in Wisconsin was standing outside this building in Chicago was to visit this clinic. Maybe because she was pregnant and looking to have an abortion. The forensic evidence placing her here was strong enough for a judge to issue a warrant that allows me to take a look at your records.”
Ethan produced the search warrant but didn’t mention that the judge, who issued it at 8:00 p.m.
the previous night, was a close personal friend to Governor Mark Jones.
The supervisor swallowed hard and nodded her head.
“Of course.
I can show you anything you need.
I just need to make a call and run it past my boss.”
“Of course.”
Thirty minutes later Ethan was sitting in Cheryl Stowe’s office as she typed on her computer.
“I run the clinic now as the supervisor,”
Cheryl said, “but back in 2015 I was a nurse.
Our digital records go back to 2008, so we should be able to access what you’re looking for from July of 2015 through the electronic medical records system.
If this girl came to the clinic, I’ll know in a minute.
You said her name was Callie Jones?”
Cheryl asked as she typed.
“You have a date of birth?”
“August 7, 1997.”
Cheryl finished typing and shook her head.
“No record of a Callie Jones visiting us.
Is Callie the full name?”
“Yeah,”
Ethan said, disappointment heavy in his voice.
“This girl went missing?”
Ethan nodded “Two days after she made a call outside of this clinic, she disappeared.”
“And you know for sure she visited our clinic?”
“No.
But I do know that a seventeen-year-old girl from a small Wisconsin town one hundred fifty miles from here made a call when she was standing on the corner outside of this building.
Two days later she disappeared.
My hunch is that she was pregnant and traveled to Chicago to have an abortion.
And her pregnancy may be directly related to her disappearance.”
“Lots of patients who come to our clinic don’t use their real names.
Many women, especially teens, are scared their parents will find out.
So they use aliases.
This girl you’re looking for might’ve done that.”
“So Callie could have traveled to Chicago, used an alias, and had an abortion without her parents being involved?”
“Yes,”
Cheryl said.
“Parental consent is not required by law to have an abortion in Illinois.
However, if this girl was a minor, defined as under the age of eighteen, she would have needed parental consent to undergo an abortion in Wisconsin back then.”
“But not here?”
Cheryl shook her head.
“Not here in Illinois, no.”
The early pieces of the puzzle Ethan was constructing began to align.
Callie Jones was pregnant and had come to this clinic, where her parents wouldn’t be notified, to have an abortion.
She came all the way to Chicago so that her politician father and overbearing mother would not find out.
Then, she made a call, possibly from this very building, to the prepaid cell phone she had purchased with cash.
The phone that now sat in Ethan’s home. The phone Francis Bernard had somehow led him to.
“You said you worked as a nurse in 2015?”
“Yes sir.
I’ve been here nearly twenty years.
I was the head nurse back in 2015.”
“As head nurse, your role was?”
“Head nurse is also called Mamma Bear.
Most women who come in here are struggling with their decision because of how stigmatized our society has made abortion.
I helped the women, especially the younger ones, through the process.”
Ethan pulled his backpack off his shoulder and unzipped the top.
He pulled a file folder from inside and opened it, then slid a photo of Callie across the desk.
“I know it was a long time ago, but have you ever seen this girl before?”
Cheryl pulled the photo closer and slowly placed her hand to her chest.
“Oh my God.
That’s her.”