Page 31 of The Whisper Place (To Catch a Storm #3)
When people heard I was a private investigator, they got a very specific image in their heads.
It usually involved me in a trench coat and a hat, sitting in a car at a stakeout holding binoculars.
I had to explain that the lion’s share of PI work was digital.
I spent most of my days online, in databases and searching through electronic archives.
The old-school stereotype of some PI in a noir movie wasn’t true.
Except when I was sitting in a car at a stakeout with binoculars.
Jonah passed me a Red Bull, which he claimed was from Eve, and stretched until his entire spine cracked. “I don’t think he’s coming out. It’s after ten o’clock.”
We’d been parked on the side of the road leading to Silas Hepworth’s property for over two hours.
A large oak tree partially shielded the car, but we still had a decent view of the side of Hepworth’s house and were taking turns with night vision binoculars.
If he went to the same outbuilding Charlie described, our plan was to drive up to the house and pretend that we needed to ask him some follow-up questions.
With any luck, we could get a glimpse of what he was doing out there.
“Charlie said he went out after the news last night. Let’s give it another hour.”
Jonah grunted and thumped his head on the headrest. He hated the passenger seat. “If he doesn’t show tonight, I can’t do this again tomorrow.”
“Hot date?”
“Yeah, actually.” Even the hair falling in his face couldn’t cover the smile.
“Good for you, man. You deserve it.” I punched him in the arm and focused on the house. “I can’t tomorrow, either. Shelley and I have plans.”
“So whatever this guy’s getting up to, he better get up to it tonight.”
We traded the binoculars every ten minutes, yawning and listening to NPR. The security lights flicked on at one point, but it was just a deer wandering through the yard. I was nodding off when my phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Have update on the 10-55. Call this number tomorrow.
It was from Laredo, the officer assigned to investigate the body we’d discovered in the reserve. I hit the button to call immediately. He picked up on the second ring.
“I said tomorrow.”
“We’re both working now.”
He was walking somewhere. The connection cut in and out. “I don’t have an ID, but the ME said decomp was advanced.”
“Are we talking months?” It had been almost three since Valerie had murdered her husband.
“Years. ME estimates between seven and ten. It’s an adult female.”
Jonah and I looked at each other. The body didn’t belong to Ted Kramer.
“Any leads on the ID?”
“Since you were out on a casual hike in the area, I’d ask you the same thing,” Laredo said, which meant he wasn’t getting any promising hits in the missing persons database.
“It doesn’t fit the timeline of our missing woman.
She’s only been gone a few weeks.” I asked him to keep us updated, which he seemed less inclined to do now that we didn’t have any information to offer.
The call started cutting out as he rattled off the usual “active and ongoing case” disclosure, which I could recite in my sleep. Then the line went dead.
Jonah swore. “So there’s another body in those woods.”
“At least one.” The Wolf River Bluffs Forest Preserve had a few hiking trails, but no camping facilities, shelters, or other visitor amenities that would make it a popular hiking destination.
It wasn’t near any major highways or tourist areas.
All those factors could make it an ideal dumping ground.
The woman buried out there seven to ten years ago was probably completely unrelated to the Kate Campbell case.
It was only by chance, and the dumb luck of that tree falling over to expose her grave, that we found her at all.
Jonah disagreed. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
“Who is she then? Laredo’s clearly having no luck ID’ing her or he wouldn’t be taking my calls at ten-thirty at night.”
Jonah grabbed his laptop, but didn’t make much headway. The phone hotspot was at one bar and every page he tried loading kept timing out. Cell service in rural Iowa was patchy at best. Hepworth’s security lights activated again, this time from two deer running. This stakeout sucked.
The phone rang again with the Illinois area code.
“Laredo?”
“Uh, no.” The voice on the other end was higher, younger. “I think I missed some calls from you.” The connection glitched, coming back in time for me to hear, “I’m Theo Kramer.”
Ted’s son, who lived in Chicago. I put the call on speaker as Jonah shut his laptop and sat up straighter.
“Thanks for getting back to us.”
“Yeah. Uh, I’m sorry to call so late. I guess I figured I’d be leaving a message.” He laughed awkwardly.
“This is perfect timing. My partner’s here, too.” Briefly, I outlined the reason we’d reached out. He seemed surprised to hear we were looking for Kate Campbell.
“I don’t know if I can really help. I haven’t seen Kate in years. Not since Valerie left my father. That was maybe 2015?”
“Did you keep in touch via phone? Social media?”
“No.” He paused. “I don’t think they would’ve wanted to.”
“Why not?” Jonah asked.
Theo seemed to be shuffling the phone around. That, or the connection kept glitching. “They got out. Away from him. Once you get away from him, you don’t really want any rem—” The connection shorted again.
“Goddamnit.” I got out of the car and stalked up the nearest hill, looking for a better signal. Jonah followed. “Can you hear me, Theo?”
After trying a few different spots, the call cleared up. Theo was still there. I apologized and shifted the conversation to his father. “What’s he like?”
“Asshole. Big one. If you’ve talked to him for two minutes, you probably already know that.”
Jonah glanced at me. From the light of the phone screen, I could tell he was wondering the same thing I was. “When was the last time you saw your father?”
Theo sighed. “Two Christmases ago, I guess? He demanded I come home for the holiday. Kept calling and texting. I finally gave in. It was Covid and I couldn’t really go anywhere else, but man, it was the wrong call.”
“You have a bad relationship with him?”
Theo laughed again, loud and bitter this time.
“Cliché, right? Sons hating their fathers, but mine . . . Everything was about how it made him look. My grades, my sports, my friends. And nothing was enough. It’s like I grew up with a black hole.
I don’t know how, but after I moved out and Valerie left, he got even worse.
When I saw him on Christmas, he was raging about all kinds of shit.
Covid conspiracies, election fraud, tons of racist stuff.
He spent half the day online and showed me pictures of Valerie’s new place.
I was like, what, are you stalking her?”
“Was he?”
“Not in his mind. He doesn’t think like that. He threw shade on her house and her car, talked about how much worse off she was without him. I was like, yeah, whatever, this has been fun. I left as soon as I could and I’ve hardly talked to him since.”
“I’m sorry. Sounds like you didn’t have it easy,” I offered.
“I’m gone now. On two different meds, I barely make rent, and my last girlfriend said I had ‘trust issues,’ but I’m not under his thumb anymore. I make my own decisions. Living my own life, you know?”
The wind picked up. At the bottom of the hill, the car doors stood open, light spilling out of the cab. I was about to thank Theo and let him go when Jonah grabbed my wrist, holding the phone in place.
“You lived at your dad’s house the whole time you grew up?” Jonah rattled off the address.
“Yeah?” Theo sounded confused.
“Did you ever hear about a woman who’d gone missing in that area? It probably would’ve been when you were in late middle or early high school.”
Of course. Theo would have been right there when the woman was buried in the woods behind his house.
He thought for a minute before answering. “Not that I can remember. But I wasn’t really paying attention to the news then. That was around the time my mom left. She just left a note one day and was gone.”
I looked at Jonah, his face cut into ghostly light and shadow. His eyes went wide with understanding.
I thanked Theo for his time, rushing him off the phone, when a gunshot exploded in the night.