Look Closer

by David Ellis

Well, turns out, it’s an exaggeration to say everyone in Grace Village comes out their doors at seven, at least this year, but many people do, calling out the finale to trick-or-treating. But they’re pretty consistent with the lights. Within a second or two, virtually every light on every house goes out, the Village plunging into near complete darkness, only a few measly streetlamps at the intersections.

Anyone like him, like me, trick-or-treating in a town that has ended trick-or-treating, would probably be heading for the exits, anyway, as they say.

Your cell phone sends a signal, it pings off a cell tower, usually the nearest cell tower, and that cell tower keeps a record of the ping—which phone and when, down to the minute and second. So we can track a phone’s movements, which means we can track its owner’s movements.

Dee Meadows works mostly in forensics these days but, once upon a time, did a fair amount of field work with Jane’s mother.

Jane prefers not to drive when she’s spitballing a theory.

Every bit of information that exonerates Simon, you can say, ‘That’s just what he wants us to think,’ or ‘He staged it that way.’

“Your cell phone is always working, even if you’re not using it, if for no other reason than to refresh and receive new text or email messages. It always seeks the nearest cell tower for a connection. And each cell tower then records that connection and memorializes it, stores it, down to the day, hour, minute, and second. So if the government has your cell phone number, they can go back and subpoena those cell-tower records—called cell-site location information, or CSLI—and retrace your steps. Not just the calls you made. Not just the text messages you sent. But every place you walked. Every place you drove. And exactly, down to the second, when you did so.

Does the Fourth Amendment require a warrant for the government to access this highly valuable but highly private cell-site location information?”

I feel a bit guilty about not recycling, but I’ve done worse.

Searches I do on my phone or computer are discoverable. So I’m stuck with archaic newspaper reports, stale as month-old bread by the time I read them.

If I “wind up” a watch or a clock or a toy or an old music box, I’m starting them, but if I “wind up” a comedy routine or a monologue or an essay, I’m ending them. Nowadays, the word “nonplussed” means both “confused” and “not confused.”

This is where it gets risky, but there is no reward without risk, and I’ve come this far.

A neighbor probably wouldn’t be so sure as to call the police. Not when I’m waving at Lauren inside her house, communicating with her through gestures.

Maybe the neighbor was ambivalent, wasn’t sure, didn’t want to make a fuss where none was required, didn’t want to alienate the Betancourts if this was harmless, but still felt some instinct to call the cops while downplaying it—and they’d take their time coming, a nonurgent inquiry.

It feels good dispensing advice, like I’m more in control of events than I feel.

He knows everything. Well, not everything.

He’s not here to kill me. If he was, he’d have already done it.

Hell, it’s been awkward all night, walking around with size thirteen boots on my size eleven feet.

The cabdriver looks at me funny, given my costume, given that he can’t even see my face, but hey, it’s Halloween, and the five twenty-dollar bills I hand him when I get inside the cab seem to relieve any concern he might have.

Andy’s a loyal enough colleague not to show up Jane. But she knows he’s more convinced than she is.

She gets it—the idea of a quick solve, in a tidy package with a bow. The first murder in the history of Grace Village, and the police solve it within a week. The Village president slaps the chief on the back, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief, congratulating each other on a job well done.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” says the chief.

“If Simon was sending text messages from Christian’s end of the phone call, who was responding to them?

Halloween is an occasion for some adults, sure, but with it falling on a Monday, most people who wanted to throw a costume party probably did so over the weekend.

Whoever first said “the waiting is the hardest part” didn’t know the half of it.

We get half our money from state grants, so we are an open book. My name and prints are on file with the state, after the fingerprint-based background check they did on me.

They called the emergency board meeting at eight in the morning, hoping fewer people would attend. It didn’t work. The place is standing room only, with more than four hundred people crammed in there.

We’re hearing that it was some gang initiation thing like we had a couple years ago with the carjackings. Is that true?” Jane covers her eyes with her hand. Three summers ago, the Village did experience a rash of car thefts and carjackings tied to a west-side gang, an initiation ritual. It took coordination from four different western suburbs and Chicago P.D. to finally crack down on it.

A sloppy rush to judgment or good, hard detective work?

“We moved here to get away from violence in Chicago,” says another woman, whose name Jane missed. “Is it coming here now? Is this a new normal?”

One of many people who die in the city every day.

I knew the “days after” would be anxious and frustrating and scary. At this point, I just have to believe in my plan. Easier said than done—

These stupid POD cameras the city of Chicago uses unfortunately don’t stay in one place. They rotate. So the camera doesn’t capture every movement of the Grim Reaper.

“He give me one hundred. The cab ride was maybe twenty-five. You remember the good tippers.” Jane glances at Andy. “I’ll bet you do,” she says.

“No, I can’t,” she concedes. Andy’s right. That’s all possible. “But I don’t like it.”

“Anything else I can do for you, Sergeant Burke?” he says, on his best behavior. Most people are when the cops come a-calling.

I show him into my living room, the first room you see when you enter the house, by my mother’s design. I wasn’t allowed in this room when I was a child. We hardly came in here. My parents would have dinner parties and would end up in this room for coffee and dessert. The furniture hasn’t changed since that time. The couch is stiff, last I checked, so I direct him there and sit in one of the individual chairs, with its outdated velvet cushion. Or who knows, maybe fashion has come full circle, and this is the latest thing.

That’s not very good procedure. A real FBI agent, not someone posing as one, would have asked that open-ended, innocently. Give me a chance to give the wrong answer, so they could slap me with a 1001 charge for lying to a federal agent.

Gavin, trying for the stone-faced, by-the-book special agent, jerks in his position, which is funny to see from someone sitting down.

He poises a finger in the air. It looks like he’s losing some color to his face. “Mr. Dobias, you know it’s a crime to lie to a federal agent.” I do know that. And I’m not lying.

I prefer the word journal, but this is not a time to quibble over terminology.

And sure, I sprinkled in some truth—the best lies always have some truth, right? But by and large, yeah, the whole thing was a work of fiction.

Necessary for Christian, though, full of details to give the whole thing a real narrative form.

He’s playing catch-up. He only knows what Christian told him, and Christian bought the whole routine hook, line, and sinker.

It’s a lot easier to fool someone than to convince someone they’ve been fooled.

These last few months, stressful as they were plotting out all of this, were at least enjoyable in the sense that Vicky was staying with me.

I wish she would stay forever. But what I was offering—commitment, love, devotion—was not enough for her.

I just downloaded a blank form and edited it on PDF. Took me about half an hour. Vicky helped. She helped a lot with the diary, too, for that matter. Gave me some details from a woman’s perspective.

See, here’s the thing: If you’re a con artist like Christian, and someone like Vicky walks in with a wedding ring on her finger—my mother’s, by the way—and says she’s married to Simon Dobias, why on earth would Christian think she was lying? Who lies about something like that? He was spending so much time trying to con her, he didn’t realize he was the target all along.

Also true. Thanks to my father. It’s what gave Vicky and me this idea.