“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.