His last text haunted me: 41st and Vincennes! Help! I knew it as a decent neighborhood in a formerly gritty part of town. So I drove down in a pouring rain, cursing the drivers who kept trying to cut me off.

Once I arrived, I got out of the car to look around. That’s when I got my first clue to his possible whereabouts: a pathfinder’s sign in a vacant lot “pointing due north, and a souvenir coin labeled “Navy Pier, Chicago” on its face. I thought, “If he’s being followed, he’s leaving an unassuming trail to follow; you’d have to know him to really get these clues. But how does he have time to leave them if he thinks he has a tail?”

Stumped, I headed to Navy Pier. I paid an outrageous sum of money for a parking spot, and got lost in a crowd of oblivious Saturday evening tourists. As I raked my eyes back and forth, looking for him, I thought, “Jory, why the hell did you bring me here?” The frantic energy that had propelled me down to this godforsaken city had been replaced by anger and fear: what if I couldn’t find him? What if this was all a wild goose chase, and I was the real target? Was he (or they) simply using Jory as bait?

The thought rattled me to the core. Forcing down a wave of panic, I pulled out my phone. I dialed Sarah Alphonso, a sometime friend and Chicago Police detective who worked missing persons cases. The inside line she gave me rang about 10 times, and with each ring, my frustration mounted. “Dammit”! I murmured, and just as I did, someone picked up. It wasn’t Sarah, but Jimmy Tobeth, her partner. Turns out this was Sarah’s night off; Jimmy asked a few pertinent questions, then agreed to patch me through to Sarah’s cell, and the three of us could confer on her line.

“This is Sarah Alphonso”, an irritated voice said. “Sarah”, I began, trying to fight panic, “my brother is missing and thinks he’s being followed”. A dead silence rang in my ears for a few moment, then Sarah came back on the line. “Holy hell, it’s Jory, isn’t it? I knew it, I warned him, but he didn’t listen-I told him before he left Chicago to not come back for at least 3 years; those assholes don’t give up! Thought I was buying him time, so they would presume him dead!”

Suddenly, nausea surged up: was this about the party that we’d had back in summer 2018, the one that ended in a brawl in our parent’s driveway? Was there more to this story than the scraps of clues I had been given by the text and the pathfinder’s sign in that vacant lot? “Hey, Tobeth”, Sarah snapped. “I’m hanging up; get Alyssa’s twenty and text me; meet her there and I’ll catch up with you guys”. She rang off, and Tobeth talked me through where I was, and what might happen next. His manner was terse, but not unpleasant. I had interviewed him in my work as a city beat reporter, so I was familiar with his style and cadence. He said he would meet me on the pier in half an hour.

Shit, I thought. “Every moment we waste is another mile farther from me”, I mumbled as I splashed water on my face in a busy ladies’ bathroom. I headed toward the main entrance to make myself obvious to my cop friend and her partner when they arrived. I damn near wore a hole in the floor as I paced in a circle, waiting.

Once she arrived, we went to a tiny Mexican place three blocks from the pier. It was quiet; there were the three of us, a young couple and an elderly woman in the dining room. Over some of the best enchiladas I’ve ever had, we started to hatch a plan to find him, hopefully unharmed. As we paid the check, my phone rang. It was Jory. He was right: he was being followed. The birds of his past had come home to roost. Sarah, Tobeth and I all exchanged a look, then headed out on an uncertain course, taking the biggest gamble of our lives.