Page 7 of Guess Again

Madison, Wisconsin Wednesday, May 28, 2025

ETHAN RAISED HIS EYEbrOWS.

“What’s the favor, Pete?”

“The year you left the DCI, I was assigned to a case.

Young girl named Callie Jones went missing.

Vanished without a trace from Cherryview.

You remember it?”

Ethan left the DCI in 2015.

He had been in his first year of medical school at the time.

He remembered little from that year other than anatomy lab.

“No.”

“The case was all over the news.

You don’t remember it?”

Pete’s disdain for Ethan’s career change was still palpable, even a decade later, and Ethan didn’t care to rehash old arguments.

“Give me some details, maybe it’ll ring a bell.”

“Girl’s father was a wealthy businessman turned state senator.

She was a star volleyball player about to enter her senior year of high school.

Pretty, charming, was gonna be a doctor.

Had the world by the balls.

Then, during the summer of 2015, she disappeared.”

Ethan slowly nodded his head.

“I do remember that.”

“Glad you could take your head out of the textbooks at .

.

.

thirty-however-old you were back then, to notice what was going on in the world.”

“I started medical school that August.

What’s the favor, Pete?”

“I worked that case hard.

Went at it from every angle, but never caught a break.

The case went cold.

I worked it as my primary for over a year until my boss assigned me to a different case.

Still, though, I kept digging. Dug for five years. And even after that, every so often when I was between cases, I’d go back to the Callie Jones file and review things because I knew there was something I was missing.”

Ethan nodded “Head scratchers are hard to let go of.”

“You don’t understand head scratchers because you never had one.

You and I were partners for ten years, which constituted your entire tenure at the DCI.

During that time, you had a one-hundred-percent solve rate.

So don’t pretend you understand what it’s like to have a head scratcher, Dr.

Full-of-Shit.”

“What’s the favor?”

Ethan asked again.

“Callie Jones is back.”

“Back, like you found her?”

“No.

She found me.

I got so involved with the case that this girl seeped into my psyche.

Back when I was working the case, I knew her so well that I started dreaming about her.

Then those dreams turned to nightmares, and before long Callie Jones started haunting me. She’d show up every time I slept, begging for my help. It took years for those dreams to finally end.”

“And now they’re back?”

Pete cocked his head.

“Every time I close my eyes.

The girl probably knows I’m dying because ever since they slapped me with my diagnosis, Callie Jones is there every night I go to sleep.

It’s almost like she knows I’m the only one on this planet still looking for the truth.

And after this damn disease takes me, no one else will lift a finger to find it.”

“What’s the favor, Pete?”

Ethan asked a final time.

“I need you to look at the Callie Jones file and put your one-hundred-percent solve rate to the test.

And keep it perfect.”