Page 8 of Daddy Detectives: Episode 1
I nod. “Thanks. I’m heading out. I’ll let you know as soon as I find something.”
Kimi swallows hard and nods shakily. “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. J.”
“No need to thank me.” I hold out my hand. “Can I have the key to your apartment? I’ll stop there first to make sure she hasn’t returned since you left this morning.”
Kimi pulls her key off her keychain and hands it to me. “I’m afraid our apartment is a mess. I didn’t do the dishes last night, and—well, it’s a mess.”
“Don’t worry. It’s fine. I’ll be in touch.”
I leave the carriage house and hop into my car. As I pull away from the townhouse, I’m hit with an uncomfortable sense ofdéjà vu. It wasn’t that long ago that Ian’s younger sister, Layla, went missing. She was about the same age as Dina is now. It turned out that it was her shitty bodyguard at the time who sold her out to a sex trafficker. I was on administrative leave from work at the time, and prohibited from doing any investigatory work, but I couldn’tnothelp Ian’s sister. Ian and I worked together to find her, save her, and in the process we rescued a bunch of other young women who’d been abducted for the same purpose.
Finding Ian’s sister cost me my twenty-four-year police career, but I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. I hope Kimi’s roommate isn’t caught up in something that bad. You never know with cases like these. It might be something simple as taking off and forgetting to call her roommate, or it could be something serious. I’m hoping for the former.
It’s a twenty-minute drive to Kimi’s apartment in Rogers Park. She and Dina live in a unit on the third floor of an older brick building. Because of its age, there’s no elevator. As I climb three flights of stairs, I hear TV sets playing behind closed apartment doors—mostly game shows and soap operas from the sound of it—as well as the occasional dog barking.
When I reach Apartment 3D, I knock first in case Dina is home. I don’t want to walk in unannounced and scare the living daylights out of her. When there’s no answer to my repeated knocks, I let myself in using Kimi’s key.
The apartment is cool and dark, and it smells like pumpkin spice air freshener. I flip on some lights. “Dina? Are you here? I’m Tyler Jamison, Kimi’s friend. She’s worried about you.”
When there’s no reply, I begin a thorough search of the apartment, looking for signs of a struggle or forced entry. The door and window locks look untouched. And while the apartment looks lived in, there’s no obvious sign of an altercation.
It’s not a big place, so it takes me fewer than two minutes to verify she’s not here. And it doesn’t take me long to figure out which bedroom is hers. I find a pile of junk mail addressed to Dina Johnson lying on the nightstand beside the bed in the second bedroom.
There’s nothing here that gives me any insight into where Dina might be, so I lock up the apartment on my way out and head back to my car. My next stop is to visit Teresa and Neil, as they were the last ones to see Dina before she got in herrideshare last night. According to Kimi’s notes, Dina and Teresa work together at a restaurant.
It’s another ten minutes to Teresa and Neil’s apartment. They live in a more upscale complex, in an apartment on the second floor. I take the elevator up.
When I knock on the door, a woman answers. Her eyes are bloodshot, and she’s still in her nightgown and robe. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail.
“Teresa Maxwell?”
The young woman nods as she opens the door wide. “Kimi told me you were going to stop by. Please, come in, detective.”
I walk into the apartment and quickly scan the living room and kitchen. “I’m a private investigator, not a detective. Is your boyfriend here? Neil?”
She shakes her head. “No. He left at six this morning for work. He’s a nurse. He works 12-hours shifts, so he won’t be home until around eight this evening.”
I motion to the sofa. “Have a seat, please. I’d like to ask you some questions.” After she sits, I take a seat on the recliner across from her and pull out my notepad and pen. “From what I gather, you are probably one of the last people to see Dina last night. Tell me what you remember.”
She proceeds to replay their movements from the night before. After having dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, they ended up at a nightclub called Jax.
“Dina called for a ride on one of the rideshare apps. Neil and I waited with her outside the club doors for her ride to show up. A car pulled up to the curb, and the driver waved to her. Dina walked up to the front passenger window and leaned in to speak to the driver. A moment later, she smiled and waved to us as she got into the back seat.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“It was white, but I don’t know the make and model.”
“Four doors, I assume, if she got in the back seat?”
Teresa nods.
“What was her state of mind at that time?”
“What do you mean?” Teresa shrugs. “She seemed fine.”
“How much had she had to drink? Do you think she was drunk?”
Teresa winces. “She’d had a lot to drink, but she wasn’t wasted, just buzzed.”
