Agent Meadows kills the lights and returns to her laptop. An image pops up on the conference room’s white wall, showing an aerial map with hundreds of blue dots and several thick red circles.
“This is the area by the elevated train downtown, near Clark and Lake,” says Meadows. “For the ten a.m. text messages, and I mean every single one of them, the burner pinged one of two different cell sites. One is right at Clark and Lake, the other is a couple blocks south and east on Dearborn between Washington and Randolph. Now, these are high-density areas.”
“Lots of large commercial buildings,” says Andy Tate.
“Well, hang on,” she says. “Each cell site has directional antennas that divide the area into sectors. So for the cell site at Clark and Lake, the southeast antenna was pinged. And for the one on Dearborn, the northwest antenna was pinged. So that gets us a fairly small cross-sectional area.”
“An area of large commercial buildings?”
“Actually, no,” says Meadows. “Look at the buildings that fall into these sectors. At the intersection here of Clark and Randolph, you have the Daley Center. County offices, right? Judges, prosecutors, law enforcement. Then you have the Thompson Center—state governmental employees. And the county building and city hall. Same idea—government employees.” Meadows looks at Jane. “That fit your profile of the unknown subject? Some government employee? You said you had a working theory that this guy had money.”
“Just a theory,” Jane says.
That’s what Conrad’s ex-wife Cassandra thought—Lauren was looking for a fat wallet to replace the one who was divorcing her.
“Okay, well, we have a bunch of government buildings, and we have a massive parking garage in this sector. You think your guy was texting from a parking garage at ten in the morning?”
“Presumably not,” Jane says. “The assumption is he was at work. Just an assumption.”
“But a good one,” says Meadows. “So if someone with a lot of dough is at work, and he’s within this sector, he’s probably working in this building right here.” She taps a building on the corner of Randolph and Clark. “Forty, fifty floors tall. Lots of commercial companies, lenders, lawyers, the white-collar private-sector type. People with some money in their pocket.”
Jane looks at the map. “The Grant Thornton Tower.”
“That’s what it’s called now,” says Meadows. “I’m old-school. I’ll always think of it as the Chicago Title & Trust Building.”
“So this is where the eight p.m. text messages came from,” Meadows says. “This is the Bucktown/Wicker Park area. You know, by that three-way intersection of North, Damen, and Milwaukee.”
“I know it better than I care to admit,” says Jane. “From my younger days, of course.”
Meadows winks at her. “So again, looking at the overlapping sectors from these cell towers, it looks like your offender was in this neighborhood right here.” Meadows finger-draws a circle on the projection screen. “North of North Avenue, south of Wabansia, around Damen or Winchester.”
“And what’s there?” Jane peers at the map.
“Some condos on Winchester, which is residential,” says Meadows. “Otherwise, you have some commercial establishments on Damen. An AT&T store, Nike, Lululemon, a pizzeria, and a restaurant called Viva Mediterránea, which I highly recommend, by the way. Great martinis.”
Jane’s been to Viva. Not for martinis but for a man. The martinis were better.
“But unlikely he was texting from Nike or Lululemon or Viva Mediterránea every single night. Most likely,” says Meadows, “he lived right up here in Wicker Park. Probably the 1600 block of North Winchester.”
“That’s your best guess.”
“By far,” she says. “Especially because, that’s where he went after the murder.”
Jane sits forward. “The CSLI—”
“He’s texting her on the night of the murder, on Halloween, right?”
“Right,” says Jane.
“Right outside her house, right?”
“Right.”
“Then the texts stop. That, we assume, is once he’s inside the house.”
“Right.”
“So he’s in the house, he kills her, and then he leaves. But this time, he doesn’t leave his phone off.”
“What does he do?”
“Well, as you know,” says Meadows, “your cell phone will stay active even if you’re not texting or calling from it. It will refresh, update—”
“So you’re saying after the murder, he left it on, and his burner kept pinging cell towers, allowing us to track him.”
“Yes, exactly. And if we isolate on October thirty-first, we have this nice trail.”
Agent Meadows works her computer, popping up a new screen, concerned only with the CSLI from October 31, Halloween. Jane stands up and stares at the trail of cell tower pings and the areas swept in by those cell towers.
“It sure seems to me,” says Agent Meadows, “he headed east from Lauren’s house, he went through some park toward Harlem Avenue, then he got on the Eisenhower, drove to the Kennedy, took the Kennedy up to North Avenue, and then went to his home in Wicker Park.”
Jane looks at Andy. “He probably caught a cab at Harlem and Lake,” she says.
“He could have parked his car there,” says Andy.
“Yeah, but it’s pretty tough to park a car around there,” Jane says. “I’ll bet he took a cab or Uber.”
“Meaning there will be records.” Andy makes a note. “I’m on it.”
“Anyway, so the offender gets home, someplace in Wicker Park near that three-way intersection. And then he sends his last text,” says Jane. “The so-called suicide note.” Jane looks at the transcript of the text messages, the final text Lauren received after her death:
Mon, Oct 31, 10:47 PM
I’m sorry, Lauren. I’m sorry for what I did and I’m sorry you didn’t love me. But I’m not sorry for loving you like nobody else could. I’m coming to you now. I hope you’ll accept me and let me love you in a way you wouldn’t in this world.
“Time of ten-forty-seven p.m., Halloween night,” says Jane.
“That makes sense,” says Agent Meadows, who doesn’t have the transcripts, only the CSLI information. “That’s the last ping we get on the cell phone. After ten-forty-seven p.m., the signal dies for good.”
“Meaning he turned off his cell phone.” Jane looks at Andy. “And then . . . killed himself?”
Andy shrugs.
“Not sure why he’d bother turning off his cell phone before committing suicide,” Jane says. “What, he’s saving the battery?”
“We don’t even know if he did kill himself,” says Andy. “Let’s find out.”
“So what’s your problem?” Andy asks as he and Jane leave the FBI field office.
Jane shakes her head. “You know what my problem is. It feels weird.”
“What’s so weird about how they were behaving?”
“Why does Lauren turn off her phone at home, after Conrad’s already moved out? I mean, while he’s living there, sure. But once he’s gone in mid-September? He’s not there to see her phone light up or hear it buzz.”
“Maybe she’s thinking ahead to the divorce,” says Andy. “Conrad playing hardball. Hiring an investigator to track her cell records.”
“A cell phone Conrad doesn’t even know exists?”
“Shit, I don’t know, Janey—it’s not that odd, is it? People having an affair acting paranoid?”
Jane goes quiet. Of course, what Andy’s saying is one way of looking at this.