Look Closer

50 Jane

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk about this, but . . . Lauren and Conrad were getting a divorce.” Shari Rowe sits back in the chair in the interview room and awaits a reaction. She is the last of a circle of Lauren’s friends, most of whom live downtown, that Jane Burke and Andy Tate have interviewed tonight.

“We’re aware,” Jane tells her. “How did Lauren feel about that?”

“I mean, it’s not happy times, but . . .” Shari is thirty-six, divorced, a schoolteacher downtown. Glamorous and confident, one of those women with whom Jane never really felt a kinship, but traits that generally matched all five of Lauren’s band of friends. Lauren’s Facebook page is full of photos of these women out at clubs, brunching on weekends, in yoga class, chill moments on “movie nights.”

“But what?”

“Lauren was ready to move on, I’d say. It had been bad with Conrad for a while. It’s not like any of us were surprised. But an affair? She never said anything about that.”

“Would you expect that she would? That she’d tell you?”

Shari thinks about that. “People have their secrets, right? But we were pretty open with each other. We talked about every other damn thing. We had each other’s backs. I’ll say this much, if she wanted to have an affair, she’d have plenty of takers.”

“Men were drawn to her?”

“Oh, yeah, when we’d go out, sure. She started going out with us again over the last year, when things got bad with Conrad. Men would swarm around her. I mean, just look at her.” She freezes on that comment, her eyes misting, realizing that nobody will be looking at Lauren again. “You think she was having an affair, and the guy . . . killed her?”

“We’re just checking every option,” says Andy, who has clearly enjoyed these interviews with Lauren Betancourt’s attractive friends.

“I think . . .” Shari inclines her head. “I think she was looking forward to getting out there again. She said she ‘missed sex.’ I know from firsthand experience that when a marriage is breaking down, sex is the first thing to go.”

“Yeah?” Jane tries to sound disinterested. “When did Lauren say she missed sex?”

“Oh, that was the last time we were out.”

“Last Thursday, October twenty-seventh?” Apparently all six of the women made it out to a dance bar in River North last Thursday.

“Right. God, just a week ago. I still can’t . . . can’t believe she’s gone.” She shakes her head, blinking away tears.

Jane sneaks a look at Andy, whose eyebrows dance.

“Give me the latest,” says the chief, arching his back. It’s past nine o’clock, and it seems like nobody wants to be the first one to leave tonight, after the discovery of Lauren Betancourt’s body this morning.

“Okay, first, the phones,” says Jane.

“We tracked down the telecom provider for both Lauren’s burner and the burner she was texting,” says Andy Tate. “Same carrier, as we figured. We tried real-time CSLI for the other burner, but we couldn’t locate the phone.”

“His phone’s turned off,” the chief says.

“His phone’s off, yes. So no signal.”

“Maybe it’s with him in the bottom of a river.”

Jane lifts a shoulder. She’s not so sure about the suicide angle. Yes, no question, the last text message Lauren’s boyfriend sent more than suggested he was going to take his own life—I’m coming to you now, let me love you in a way you wouldn’t in this world—but talking about suicide is one thing. Actually going through with it is another.

“We should have historical data in a day or two,” says Jane.

“Good. What else?”

“Lauren’s friends,” says Jane. “We managed to get all five of them in tonight. They all say the same thing. Lauren was splitting up with Conrad, so there was that sort of uncertainty about what happens next in your life. But she was anxious to move on. And get this, she told one of her friends last Thursday, when they all went out downtown, that she ‘missed sex.’”

“She missed sex?”

“Right, I know,” says Andy Tate. “You read those text messages—she and her secret guy were screwing their eyeballs out. But she didn’t mention a boyfriend, an affair, a special someone—she didn’t mention anything like that to her friends. For all they knew, she’d been faithful to Conrad.”

“So put that together with other stuff we’ve found,” says Jane. “She’s keeping her affair secret from her closest friends. And we know she wasn’t honest on those text messages with her boyfriend, at least in that one text where she talks about Conrad still sleeping at home and snoring, when we know he’d moved out by then.”

“She kept her cards close to the vest.” The chief screws up his face. “Sounds like a woman with a plan.”

Jane nods. “Right. The secret life of Lauren Betancourt keeps getting odder and odder.”

As Jane and Andy leave the chief’s office, Sergeant Matthew Mooney is walking up with a purpose, holding a paper in his hand.

“Hey, Matt.”

“You wanted any records on our victim.”

“Yeah. Lauren had a sheet?”

“Well, sort of. Take a look at this.”

Jane takes the paper, a PDF copy of an old police report, with Andy Tate reading over her shoulder.

“Holy shit,” Jane mumbles.

“This could have legs,” says Andy. “But this is from so long ago. Who knows if this guy even still lives around here?”

“He does,” says Jane. “Last I saw him, at least.”

“Last you— You know this guy, Janey?”

Jane looks up at the ceiling. “Personally, not that well. Class of ’03, Grace Consolidated. He was the valedictorian of our class. Quiet, shy, kept to himself. I do remember he was a really good runner, too—really good. I saw him at the fifteenth reunion a few years back, but I don’t think we said more than two words to each other.”

Andy takes the report from Jane and reads it again. “Well, Sergeant Burke, looks like you might be having another ‘reunion’ with Simon Dobias very soon.”