“The time of this residential video fits with the time of the Korner Fast security footage we have of her in the store,” Becker said. “It isn’t ironclad, but it takes us closer to the possibility that the hooded person could’ve played a role in her disappearance.”
Fifty-Two
Buffalo, New York
Lorena Jo Tullev tossed gnawed chicken bones into the plastic garbage bag as she cleaned up her house east of downtown Buffalo where she lived with her boyfriend.
The coffee table in the living room was a disaster. She grabbed the stinking pizza box, dotted with dried remnants, then the crushed beer cans. Her eyes shot across the room, burning on her boyfriend’s soiled socks, T-shirt, hoodie, and jeans heaped on a chair.
Lorena was sick and tired of coming home from work and picking up after him and concerned with his growing lack of consideration for her.
He belched, drawing her attention to the spare room he called his office. The door was open, his laptop keyboard clicking. Still holding the trash bag, she went in, taking stock of him in jeans, shirtless, his muscular body laced with tattoos. Finally, she said: “If you ever helped me clean up, just once, I’d die, Zoran.”
He gulped beer from the can next to his keyboard.
“You still haven’t told me where you were the other day,” she said.
Eyes on his monitor, he swallowed beer then held his empty can to her.
“Get me another one.”
She didn’t take the can.
“We need to talk, Zoran.”
He crushed the can.
“You need to get me another beer.”
“Zoran?” She took a breath then said: “Are you seeing someone else?”
“I don’t have to answer to you.”
“Show a little respect and talk to me.”
He tossed the crushed can to the floor then turned to her.
“If you’re not happy, leave,” he said. “I meet plenty of women on my job every day, and you know what? Most of them want me.”
Lorena took the blow and retaliated.
“I meet a lot of men at my job and all of them want me.”
He ran his eyes over her.
“Because they know what you are, Skye.”
Lorena kicked the crushed can to the wall then strode to the kitchen for sanctuary. Skye was her stage name, which she never used in their home. Zoran knew that. Lorena was an exotic dancer, and she was not ashamed of it. She was good at it, and she made good money without working overtime or doing specials, as some girls called it.
But Lorena was more than Skye.
She’d studied dance in college with dreams of being in a big production. She moved to New York City, got an agent, went to casting call after casting call, always coming close but never making the cut. She took whatever work she could to pay her bills while her dream eluded her. She did not find a life in a show on Broadway; she found it dancing on tables and laps in Buffalo.
It seemed like a million years behind her.
Now, in the kitchen, fighting tears as she made tea, she thought back to when she met Zoran about two years ago. He’d come to her apartment to fix her cable. He was good-looking, well-built, and even shy. He was accepting of the fact she was an exotic dancer, even proud of her. He was kind and considerate. And in bed, well, he rocked her world. They got a place together, talked about getting married, kids, a house in the suburbs, she’d open a hair salon.
A new dream for Lorena.
Zoran’s job was secure because his uncle owned the cable contracting company, Distinctly Connex. But it wasn’t long before Lorena found herself facing Zoran’s dark moods, his drinking and addiction to online porn. Despite her profession, despite the things she’d experienced, Lorena was uneasy with Zoran’s obsession. They’d argue about it. She wanted him to get counseling, but to no avail.
Zoran couldn’t stop.
And in the last few months, things had gotten worse. He’d disappear for days, going to his fishing cabin. That’s what he told her. But she couldn’t tamp down her fear that he was seeing someone else.
Now, the way Lorena saw it, she had two choices: Leave. Or try to salvage the relationship.
In her heart, she knew Zoran was abused as a child. One time, after his father caught him stealing a Hershey bar, he held a lit match under his fingers. One winter night, when Zoran was eight and wet the bed, his father dragged him into the backyard and made him stand naked in waist-high snow while a blizzard blew off Lake Erie.
Zoran was damaged, flawed, but still a good man, Lorena thought.
But she was fed up with his crap. If things were going to work out between them, he needed to work on himself and get help.
We’re going to have this out right now.
Heading back to his office, she heard his phone ringing.
“Let it go, Zoran. We’re going to talk.”
Ignoring her, he got up from his laptop to search for his phone in the clothes he’d left on the chair in the living room.
Holding back on her anger, Lorena went into his office to wait for him while she heard him talking in the living room to someone at work. Drumming her fingers on the back of his chair, she glanced at his screen, still lit, expecting to find porn.
But it wasn’t porn. Instead, she saw the face of a woman.
I’ve seen her somewhere.
But before Lorena could focus on the image, Zoran returned, went to his desk and calmly closed his laptop.
“Who’s that woman?”
“No one.”
“Zoran, tell me who she is.”
He turned to her.
“I told you. No one.”
Fifty-Three
London, Ohio
At the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s Laboratory, located about twenty-five miles southwest of the state capital of Columbus, Ben Abbott concentrated at his workstation.
He was with the CODIS Unit, tasked with developing and processing DNA profiles from samples submitted from law enforcement agencies across the state. He’d been dealing with one that had been sent by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner, and it challenged him.
It could’ve been because Abbott, nicknamed “the rookie” by his colleagues, had been hired as a forensic scientist three months ago, right out of Yale. Or, it could’ve been because the Cuyahoga sample was slightly degraded, making the results difficult for him to read.
But Abbott was not giving up. He wanted to prove himself.