Page 9 of Guess Again

Madison, Wisconsin Thursday, May 29, 2025

THE ELEVATOR DEPOSITED THEM ON THE THIRD FLOOR, AND ETHAN followed Pete down the hallway as his old partner used the wall to aid his balance.

Pete stopped at room number 349 and knocked.

A man in a suit and tie opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

Pete pointed at Ethan, and the man nodded.

He pulled a badge from his breast pocket and held it out for Ethan to see.

“Jon Grace, DPU.

I need to pat you down before you can enter.”

Ethan raised his eyebrows.

Wisconsin’s Dignitary Protection Unit was in charge of protecting the governor and his family.

These guys were akin to the Secret Service.

Ethan looked at Pete.

“See why I wish you hadn’t worn your doctor costume?”

Ethan put his arms out to his sides while the DPU agent checked his body for weapons.

“Go ahead,”

the agent said when he was finished.

Ethan followed Pete into the hotel room and, sure enough, was suddenly face-to-face with Wisconsin’s newly elected governor.

A woman was also present who Ethan did not recognize.

“Ethan?”

the governor said, extending a hand.

“Mark Jones.

Thanks for coming.”

“Yes sir,”

Ethan said, shaking the governor’s hand.

“I’m not really sure what’s going on here.”

Still holding Ethan’s hand in a firm alpha grip, Mark smiled.

“We’ll get to all that.

This is Geraldine Feck, our state’s attorney.”

Ethan finally got his hand back from the governor and offered it to Ms.

Feck, wanting to ask Pete Kramer a thousand questions about what the hell he was doing in this hotel room with the governor and the DA.

He felt awkward standing in the hotel room in scrubs, and wished he’d changed into his civilian clothes before hustling out of the hospital for this meeting.

“Let’s have a seat so we can talk,”

Mark said.

They sat around a table in the suite that overlooked Lake Mendota.

The governor lifted a box from the ground and pulled bound folders from it, distributing them around the table.

When one of the packets reached Ethan, he looked at it and read the title page.

CALLIE JONES

MISSING 7/18/2015

Ethan looked at the girl’s name and it finally registered.

Jones.

Mark Jones had been the wealthy businessman turned politician whose daughter had gone missing in the summer of 2015.

Callie Jones was the governor’s daughter.

Winning the gubernatorial election the previous year was the catalyst for reopening his daughter’s case.

“Ethan,”

Mark said once the packets had been distributed, “I know you’re a busy man, so I’ll get right to the point.

My daughter went missing a decade ago.

Agent Kramer worked the original case and, even after chasing some promising leads and zeroing in on a few potential suspects, came up short.

Despite some exhaustive investigative work, no hard evidence was ever found.

Eventually, those in charge believed the case was unsolvable and moved on.”

“But since the 2024 election,”

Ethan said, “you and a new group of law enforcement officials have come into office.”

“I see you’re starting to put the pieces together,”

Mark said.

“But it wasn’t my idea to assemble a team to look into my daughter’s disappearance.

It was Agent Kramer’s.

We all know about Pete’s recent diagnosis, and it was his request that we take one more look at Callie’s case.

Pete has served the state of Wisconsin for thirty years, and we owe him a debt of gratitude.

He presented this idea to me. I obviously have a personal connection to the case, and then we both ran it past District Attorney Feck.”

There was a pause, and Ethan felt the need to fill the silence.

“How, exactly, do I fit into all this, sir?”

The governor pulled another file from the box.

“I dug into your background and looked closely at your time in the DCI.”

Mark looked down at the packet and turned a page.

“You sported a one-hundred-percent solve rate on the cases you were assigned while you were an agent with the Division of Criminal Investigation.

Impressive.”

Ethan nodded but said nothing.

“You were a special agent for ten years, specializing in kid crimes.

You were Agent Kramer’s partner for your entire tenure.”

Another nod.

“Pete believes, and I agree, that you represent our best chance at figuring out what happened to Callie.

And although reopening the case was not specifically my idea, I would very much appreciate your assistance.”

Ethan pulled his brows together as he began to understand the situation.

“Sir, as I’m sure Pete told you, or maybe it’s in that file you have on me”—Ethan pinched the collar of his scrubs—“I’m an ER doctor, not an investigator with the DCI.”

“Yes,”

Mark said, looking down at the file.

“You left the DCI in 2015 to attend medical school at UW Madison.

Finished first in your class and took an emergency medicine residency in Milwaukee where you were chief resident in your final year.

It appears that you excel at whatever you do in life.”

“If you know all that, sir, then you know I don’t investigate crimes anymore.”

“I’m hoping you’ll make an exception.”

The governor cleared his throat.

“My daughter went missing ten years ago, and I’ve never gotten any answers to what happened to her.

Pete has become a close friend over the years and has never stopped looking for Callie, even after the DCI brass discouraged him from doing so.

But with my election, there’re new people in place now, and I would consider it a personal favor if you’d take a look at my daughter’s case.”

“Look at the case?”

Ethan said.

“As in, what? Review the file?”

“To start, yes.

But I’m hoping you’ll put your boots on the ground and actually investigate it, too.”

“Investigate it how, sir? I’m a doctor.

I don’t have any jurisdiction or authority to investigate a missing persons case.”

Mark nodded at Geraldine Feck, who took over.

“Governor Jones is willing to formally make you a consultant to the DCI, and my office will grant you the authority to investigate the case.

That means anything you turn up can legally be used to move the case forward.”

Feck reached into her briefcase and slid a badge across the table.

Ethan saw that his name was engraved on it.

“You’ll get creds, but no weapon,”

she said.

“And for as long as you work the case, you’ll be on the DCI payroll.”

Ethan lifted his hands and smiled.

“You all know I have a full-time job, right? And a contract with the hospital that requires me to actually show up to my full-time job?”

“Look, E,”

Pete said.

“We didn’t come to you on a whim.

We didn’t decide yesterday to ask for your help on this.

We looked at this from every angle.

We know your work schedule.

And I’ve got to admit, you do it the right way. You work seven straight eight-hour overnight shifts, followed by seven days off. They call you a ‘noc-turnist. ’ Sometimes, you go rogue and work twelve-hour shifts for a week straight, and this earns you two weeks off. It’s a nice gig if you can get it. With the right planning, you’ll have the time to commit to the case if you work your ER schedule correctly. We’re asking you to take the summer to investigate and see what you turn up. If you can’t move the case forward by summer’s end, there’re no hard feelings, and you forget about your short return to the DCI.”

“To compensate you for your time and expertise,”

Mark said, “not only will you be paid as a formal employee of the state, but we’ll pay off the federal loans you took out to pay for medical school.

According to our records that would be about three-quarters of your medical school debt.

The private loans, unfortunately, we can’t help you with.”

Ethan raised his eyebrows.

At forty-five years old, he was swimming in an ocean of student loan debt that, at the current rate, wouldn’t be paid off for decades.

“What do you say, E?”

Pete asked.

“It’s a good offer.”

Ethan looked down at the Callie Jones file and was about to speak when his phone chimed with a text message.

He knew from the ringtone that it was the hospital.

He pulled his phone from the breast pocket of his scrubs, read the text, and then looked at Mark Jones.

“There’s an emergency at the hospital.

I’ve got to get back.”

“Well,”

Pete said, “you’re certainly a man in high demand.”

Ethan looked at the governor again.

“Can I think about your offer, sir?”

“Of course.

Take the file,”

Mark said.

“Read through it while you make your decision.”

Ethan stood up and lifted the file from the table.

“I’ll just get a hold of . . . ?”

“Call me,”

Pete said.

“It’s been a while, but my number hasn’t changed.”