Ella is five foot six inches tall and has a slim figure. It’s not like her to disappear like this. She has a good job, a ton of friends and family who love her, and we’re all incredibly worried. We just want Ella to come back home safely. Please, if you have any information, please get in touch with either myself or the Portland Police department. I just want my baby back home.
I frowned slightly as I got to the bottom of the text, then saw the post had over five hundred likes, and a couple hundred shares. It seemed a lot of people wanted Ella Port to come home. I frowned as it suddenly came back to me. I’d just come back to Willow Bay at the time, and I was just getting started on my vet business so I had exactly zero time to focus on the news, but the name was starting to sound familiar to me. I checked the time stamp on the post and sure enough, March of 2014 fit. I actually remembered when Ella Port’s disappearance happened.
I scrolled back down to the bottom of the post and clicked on the comments. Most were simply people expressing their love for Tina and Ella and hoping that the woman would find her daughter, but a few offered advice and suggestions. And then, the twenty-seventh comment there made the fifteen minutes I’d spent scrolling through all of this worth it.
“I know Ella will forgive me for telling you this, but she was actually suing her old boss. He was sexually harassing her and he fired her when she went to HR. She didn’t want you to know. Her attorney is Annie Pelchuk at Forrester, Forrester and Cork.”
I tapped Jason on the arm hurriedly.
“Ow! What?” he asked, looking over at me. I handed him my phone wordlessly, and he read the comment, then went back to the picture.
“Did they ever find Ella Port?” he asked finally. I shook my head.
“I don’t think so. I mean, we can look it up, of course, but I remember her disappearance, even if it’s only vaguely. I would definitely remember hearing if she was ever found. This was huge news in the Portland area for a while. Pretty blonde woman disappears without a trace? The media was all over that.”
Jason nodded.
“Ok. So now we have three people who are either dead or missing, who all had a connection to that law firm.”
“Who were all sleeping with Jonathan Smith!” I replied.
“Well, we don’t know that for sure.”
“Come on, look at her. I think it’s a pretty safe assumption to make.”
“He wasn’t even her lawyer!”
“So? Doesn’t mean they didn’t run into each other in the hallway and end up being together.”
“I know when I run into pretty people I just immediately have sex with them,” Jason deadpanned, and I punched him lightly on the arm.
“You know what I mean,” I replied. “They could have started talking in the elevator, that sort of thing.”
“I do know what you mean, I’m just teasing you because you just get so cute when you’re angry,” Jason laughed. “You make this cute little face, like an angry squirrel. Yeah, that one!” he exclaimed as I sneered at him.
I flipped him off as I jumped out of bed and went to grab my clothes. “We have to tell Sophie and Charlotte. I think we may have just found a serial killer!”
Half an hour later we were sitting in our living room. Taylor’s shift at the police station was about to start, so he’d gone home to get changed. Sophie opened a bag of white cheddar popcorn and poured it into a bowl for us while Jason and I explained everything we’d found.
When we got to the end of the story, Sophie had a handful of popcorn stopped halfway to her mouth.
“That’s insane,” she finally muttered. “A serial killer?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte said. “A lot of this is conjecture. Besides, didn’t that Gary guy say that the police in Chicago found out that Jonathan Cork had an alibi?”
“Yeah, but how good was his alibi? Haven’t you watched any CSI shows, ever? It’s super easy to fake an alibi. What if he just got a friend to lie for him, or something?” I retorted.
“Sure, but I just think maybe we’re jumping to conclusions here.”
“I don’t see you coming up with any better ideas,” Sophie said. “I’m fully on team serial killer.”
“Uhhh, you might want to rephrase that,” I teased.
“Don’t mock me, I’m on your side for once,” Sophie replied.
“Ok, ok, enough fighting for now,” Jason said. “We have to decide what we’re going to do.”
“Murder Jonathan Cork and hide the body!” Sophie exclaimed.
“Nope, we’re not doing that,” Jason replied. “Angie, what’s your take?”
“I think we should tell Chief Gary,” I said slowly. “After all, it’s his murder investigation. And besides, he’ll know what to do. If Jonathan Cork really is a serial killer, he’s already killed at least two, and probably three people. I think this is probably something we should leave to the police.”
“When did you become such a baby?” Sophie replied. I opened my mouth to reply, but Charlotte got there first.
“If by ‘baby’ you mean responsible adult who doesn’t want to get us all killed, sure. I’m with Angela. I think we need to go to the police with this.”
I groaned. “Great. I hate agreeing with you, you’re such a goody two shoes. It always makes me feel like I’m being the teacher’s pet or something.”
Sophie laughed. “Well if we can’t murder him, I think we should at least confront him. Maybe if we go to see him we’ll either find out that he does have a good alibi, or we’ll shock him into confessing, or something. Can’t we record the conversation or something? If he admits to us what he did, then we can give that to Chief Gary.”
Jason nodded. “I agree with Sophie. Oregon is a one party consent state, meaning we can record the conversation without him knowing about it.”
“Oh, you just want the tape so you can have a scoop for your paper,” I muttered, irritated that Jason didn’t take my side on this. Feeling my annoyance, he reached over and wrapped his arms around me.
“Don’t worry, Angie. I still think you’re awesome, I just think you’re wrong about what we should do. Besides, why don’t we just give this a shot? If it doesn’t work, we go to Chief Gary.”
“And in the meantime, Jonathan Cork has time to dig graves for all four of us,” Charlotte muttered.
“Well, it’s two against two,” Sophie said. “So I guess the only way to decide what we’re going to do is with a game of rock, paper, scissors.”
“I guess in this group, reasonable discussion among adults before coming to a mutually beneficial conclusion is definitely out,” Charlotte muttered.
“Reasonable discussion is overrated,” Sophie said. “Now come on, which one of you is going to battle me so we can decide what we’re going to do?”
“I’ll do it,” I said. Charlotte looked like she’d rather stab someone than play rock, paper, scissors to determine how we were going deal with a potential serial killer.
“Hey, why don’t I get to play?” Jason complained jokingly.
“Because I am way better at this game than you,” Sophie replied.
“How do you know that?”
“You didn’t grow up in this family.”
“I guess that’s fair,” Jason conceded, leaning back on the couch to watch the battle.
I stared down Sophie, giving her the most threatening look I could muster. We’d been battling over everything by playing rock, paper, scissors since we were five years old. This wasn’t new territory for us.
Sophie matched my gaze, her eyes steady. We didn’t even look at each other’s hands as Sophie began the incantation.
“Rock, paper, scissors,” she said, as I took my clenched fist and opened it flat, making a sheet of paper. I looked down and my heart sunk as I saw Sophie’s scissors.