by Tom Ryan
“That’s literally the opposite of what I want,” I say. “You realize the entire reason I started the podcast was so I could stop obsessing over Sibby, right?”
“Yeah, but this isn’t Sibby.”
“It’s close enough,” I say. “Too close.”
“You could still disguise your voice,” he says. “Nobody would need to know it was you.”
“That’s not the point,” I tell him. “My job is to tell the stories and then the internet takes over. It would be a totally different thing for me to get involved on the ground.”
He scoffs. “Give me a break. You live in the same town, you used to live in her frigging house, for crying out loud. You were there when Sibby disappeared, and now you run a podcast devoted to exactly this kind of thing. It’s almost like you were put here to solve this case.”
I shake my head. “I’m not going to do it, Burke.” And I realize as I’m telling him that I’ve made up my mind. “It’s too close to home. I can’t go there, and if you don’t understand why, I’m not going to try to convince you.”
He looks like he wants to keep arguing, but then he turns and drops into the chair at his desk. He points to another chair on the other side of the room.
“Pull up a seat,” he says.
I use my elbow to push the pile of dirty laundry off the extra chair, because I’m sure some of that stuff hasn’t been washed in weeks, and drag my chair over to the desk.
His computer is already open, and I can see that his browser is open to a fan-run Radio Silent message board.
“Why are you on here?” I ask him suspiciously.
“Because someone was abducted on my street, and I figured it made sense to check out what people were saying about it online. For one thing, a lot of people think Radio Silent should cover the case, not just me. For another thing, people have started picking up on the connection.”
He turns and looks at me with an ominous lift of an eyebrow, and my heart begins to sink.
“Connection?” I ask, although I know already exactly what he’s going to say.
He turns back to the computer and begins to read. “BeneaththeSurface17 writes: I’m kind of amazed that the media hasn’t picked up on one of the craziest details about this case. A girl named Sibyl Carmichael disappeared into thin air from the exact same street in the exact same small town ten years ago. That can’t be a coincidence.”
I lean forward and put my face in my hands. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”
“They haven’t mentioned you anywhere. But…” He trails off, but his meaning is clear.
I lift my head and look at him. “But it’s only a matter of time before every news crew in the country tracks me down.”
He gives me a sympathetic look. “At least they can’t use your name, right? Since you were a minor?”
“Everyone in town knows who I am,” I say. “The media can hunt me down, ask for comments, make my life hell, as long as they don’t print or announce my name.”
Burke lifts a finger in the air and lifts his chin so he’s peering down at me over the top of his glasses. “The good news is that there might be a more interesting story out there.” He spins back around in his chair and scrolls down through the page. “Listen to this little tidbit, courtesy of old KarmaWillGetUsAll.”
He clicks on a post and I lean in to read over his shoulder. I recognize the account name, KarmaWillGetUsAll, right away. She lives in San Diego and her real name is Penny Jenkins, a detail she included in one of her first emails. An email that she used to give me her credentials as a data analyst. She’s forwarded me a few useful clues since I started Radio Silent.
“Mark my words,” Burke reads from KarmaWillGetUsAll’s post. “This is going to be cut-and-dried. Everything comes back to the father. I’ve found several outstanding loans in his name, along with evidence that this family had to leave their old home and move quickly to avoid being foreclosed on. My best bet is that someone was looking for repayment, made some threats, and the family tried to escape it. Now the chickens have come home to roost.”
“That must be what Quinlee Ellacott was talking about last night,” I say. “Remember her question about whether someone kidnapped Layla to get back at her father?”
He nods. “So if this is true,” he says, “this means that there’s a good chance that it wasn’t some sadistic pervert who took Layla.”
“Anyone who would kidnap a child is a sadistic pervert,” I say.
“True, but don’t you think that this sounds more promising? Like there might be an opening here to find her still alive?”
I think about this for a moment, then shake my head. Even if it’s true that Layla was taken by someone who is trying to get back at her father, that doesn’t mean this is going to end well.
Burke must take my silence as an opening. He turns around in his chair and leans forward, looking me right in the eye.
“Come on, Dee,” he says. “Do an episode! The Laptop Detective Agency is already starting to dig around, even without your involvement. Imagine how quickly you can get this case solved if you do get involved! Don’t you see that you’re in the right place, at the right time, with a perfect opportunity to help?”
I stand up. “Burke, I am going to help.” I realize that my fists are clenched so hard that my nails are digging into my palms. “I’m going to help right now, by joining this search party. Now are you coming or not?”
I leave his room without waiting for him, and after an exasperated sigh, he pushes out of his chair and follows me. In the entryway, we pull on our coats in silence. I can’t tell if we’re fighting, and to be honest, I don’t care.
“Hang on a minute. I’m going to come with you.” We turn to see Terry O’Donnell standing in the kitchen door, tucking his phone into his back pocket.
“Great,” mutters Burke. His mother steps up behind Terry and shoots Burke a warning look.
“That’s a great idea, Terry,” she says. “I’m sure they can use all the help they can get.”
“I’m just gonna grab my cigarettes,” says Terry before heading down into the basement.
“This is the perfect morning for him,” says Burke. “He can wander around outside and smoke and not have to listen to Mom vacuuming.”
Terry thumps back up from the basement and joins us in the entryway. “You ready?” he asks.
Burke just rolls his eyes and steps out the front door in front of me onto the step. Terry is close behind us, shimmying into his boots and slamming the front door behind him. Together, we walk down the steps and toward the tent that’s been set up by the cops near the road.
There are already a lot more people out than when I arrived. Every spot on the street is taken, and people are strolling together in groups from where they’ve parked on other blocks. I recognize a bunch of kids from school and plenty of teachers and other familiar faces too.
“Come on, gather ’round, people,” booms a voice over the crowd. It’s Chief Garber, standing by his cop car and speaking into a megaphone. “We’re going to get started shortly. It’s supposed to start snowing early this afternoon, so we don’t want to waste time.”
As he goes over the general plan, volunteers wander around handing out maps of the woods, divided into grids. The one we’re handed has a section of the grid marked with a pink highlighter.
“Follow the volunteers who are wearing the color indicated on your map,” says Garber. “That way we know that we’re covering ground in equal measure. We’re looking for clothes, new garbage like bottles or cigarette packages, anything that looks out of the ordinary. Signs of a struggle. Anything at all, come and find one of us in uniform and we’ll try to keep track of things.”
I glance around the crowd and notice for the first time how many cops there are. At least a couple of dozen, obviously here to help from other towns and counties.
“Narc central,” mutters Burke, obviously reading my mind.
“What do you have to worry about?” asks T
erry, giving him a jokingly suspicious look.
“Nothing that’s any of your business,” says Burke.
“I’m just joking around for chrissake,” says Terry. “Man, you used to be such a cute kid. What the hell happened to you?”
Burke ignores him, and as the crowd begins to move into the forest, following our guides, he gestures to me to move away from his uncle. No sweat off my back. I step into line with Burke, and we’re soon out of sight of Terry. We reach the tree line and stop, peering into the trees, at the figures of people moving slowly forward, like zombies.
We step into the woods.
16.
I haven’t been back to these woods in almost ten years, when, a few days after Sibby’s disappearance, I accompanied the police, along with my parents and a child psychologist hired by the cops, back to the site of the abduction.
The woods had always been our playground, a wild, free space where we’d been completely in charge. But on that day, our refuge was taken over by adults trampling over our pathways, crashing through our hidden dens. The air was thick with mist, and my father held me close to him as Detective Avery walked with us to the treehouse.
Until then, it had been a normal thing for us kids to push through one of the gates at the back of our yards and step into the quiet darkness of the friendly forest. We’d cut passageways through the trees and built little dens under the boughs of large evergreens, but on that morning, we headed straight for the treehouse, where I was asked to describe as much as I could about the people who took Sibby; their height and builds, the clothes they were wearing, which direction they’d come from, which direction they took her away.
I remember that trip better than the abduction itself. My parents’ calm reassurances, the gently coaching questions from the psychologist, serious-faced forensic investigators methodically searching for clues.
I remember my rising panic as we approached the treehouse. My breakdown when we arrived. My screams and tears, the frantic attempts of my mother to talk me down, my father yelling at the police that he’d known this was a terrible idea. The psychologist kneeling in front of me, talking me down from my panic attack, encouraging me to breathe, to close my eyes, to listen to the memories.
But I could come up with no new description of the people who’d taken her, no details about Sibby’s reaction, or where they’d come from or gone. Just a darkness around me, a dim flickering awareness of their receding footsteps. The squelch and crunch of shoes through the wet springtime leaves.
And then, as I stood there with the psychologist, a new memory appeared.
Just one: a voice. A clipped line, far enough away that I could hear it between Sibby’s gasped cries. A man’s voice, raspy and low.
“We’ve only got one chance at this. Now hurry up.”
Back in the woods that day, I remembered it as clearly as if the kidnapper were leaning in from behind me, whispering directly into my ear.
You can describe a person’s face, remember the details to a sketch artist, watch as they bring your memory to life on paper. But good luck trying to describe somebody’s voice. You might as well try to explain someone’s fingerprint.
That voice has haunted me forever. It runs through my mind at the oddest moments. In class. In the shower. When I’m out for a run. As vivid as anything else I’ve ever remembered and equally as useless. The cliffhanger at the end of a book, the last piece of an unfinished puzzle.
They tried their best. They asked me over and over again to think of something else that they could connect with the voice and begin to zone in on a culprit, but it was an impossible task. There’s no other way to say it: I failed. But now, as we approach the ragged remains of the treehouse, I can hear that voice echoing through the trees as clearly as if it had just been said a few short terrifying moments ago.
All the snow we’ve had over the past few days means the search is going to be difficult. Any footprints will be obscured, and other clues will be hard to find. But the forest is still full of people eager to help.
We don’t even know for sure that Layla was taken through the woods, although it’s the safest bet. It would have been so easy for someone to pull over beside the highway, make their way through the forest, and take someone back the same way, without ever having to deal with the risk of eyewitnesses.
There’s no indication that Layla’s disappearance had anything to do with the treehouse, but that’s where I find myself walking, almost in a trance.
“Where are you going?” asks Burke as I begin to tread my way through the snow toward the huge maple tree where our house had been.
I don’t answer, just gesture vaguely, not sure whether I want him to accompany me or not. He does, but I’m annoyed when I realize that Terry is also heading in the same direction, although he’s hovering back far enough to not make it obvious.
This irritates Burke even more than it does me.
“I don’t know what the hell he’s trying to prove,” he says, barely trying to stay out of Terry’s earshot. “Nobody expects him to help, but if he has to, couldn’t he follow someone else around the woods? It’s not like I don’t have to see him enough as it is.”
“He’s probably just as unsure of what to do as everyone is,” I say. All around us, people are stepping carefully through the snow, between and around trees and tangles of bushes, stopping erratically to stare at the ground, into the crooks of branches, up and into the treetops, as if Layla might be floating above the woods, peeking down at us.
“He’s unsure of how to live like a normal adult,” Burke grumbles. He stops and points. “There it is.”
I stop and stare ahead to where a maple tree sits in the middle of a stand of birches.
“That’s not it,” I say. “It’s smaller than our tree.”
“This is it,” he insists. “You just grew faster than the tree did.”
“There’s no treehouse,” I say.
“This is the tree.” Terry has stepped up beside me and he points up into the branches. “Look.”
Sure enough, there are a few rotting old boards arranged in the tree’s bigger branches, what’s left of the platform. I walk around to the other side of the tree and find the steps that were nailed onto it.
“This goddamn thing,” says Terry, and Burke and I both turn to look at him, surprised at the anger in his voice. “You kids wouldn’t have been in the woods at all if I hadn’t built this stupid treehouse.”
“You built it?” I ask, almost whispering, but I’m already remembering. Of course it was Terry who built the treehouse, Terry who corralled us kids together to collect old bits of lumber and put together a work party. He and his girlfriend, who I found so very glamorous.
“It was your girlfriend, wasn’t it?” I ask Terry. “She had the idea to build a treehouse back here for all the kids. What was her name?”
“Sandy,” says Burke. “I remember Sandy. She was at the movie with us too, wasn’t she?”
“It was her idea,” Terry replies. “I’m glad of it; otherwise, I would’ve been a suspect.”
I’m shocked by this. What does he mean exactly?
He answers my question for me. “An itinerant, unemployed dirtbag like me? Who the hell else would they have pointed at?”
“Whatever happened to her?” asks Burke. “To Sandy.”
Terry’s face goes dark. “Didn’t work out,” he says. “She turned into a holy roller, got in with some religious nuts. We weren’t together all that long.”
“Too bad,” says Burke. “She was really nice. Super pretty. I think I had a crush on her.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure it’ll all be smooth sailing if you ever manage to score yourself a girlfriend,” says Terry bitterly. He lights a cigarette and begins to walk around the old tree, kicking at bits of lumber that have rotted into the leaves.
I laugh. “He got you there, Burke,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah, you can both screw off,” says Burke. He turns around, scanning the ground. “So no
signs of anything happening here, right?”
I look up at the rotten old structure. It’s obvious that if Layla was in the woods, she didn’t come here. Even if someone did want to climb the ladder, there’s nowhere safe to sit once you get to the top. If there is a connection between her disappearance and Sibby’s, the treehouse is not the common denominator.
Throughout the woods, people call to one another through the trees. Occasionally someone yells out Layla’s name, as if she’s playing hide-and-seek, and might just appear from behind a tree, safe and giggling.
“We should probably go out there and help with the search, hey?” asks Terry.
“Yeah,” says Burke. “Why don’t you go on ahead? We’ll catch up with you later.”
Terry gets the hint. He nods and then turns and continues on into the woods without a word.
“Let’s go in the opposite direction,” says Burke.
He turns as if to start walking away, but instead of following him, I reach out and put my hand on the tree’s trunk. Everything around me seems to disappear, the sound of Burke speaking my name recedes into the distance, and the trunk seems to shrink and twist into the ground, or maybe it’s me who is shrinking, back to that year, that spring, back to that small, shy person I was.
I close my eyes against the dizziness, lean forward to put my forehead against the tree, and try once again to remember. It feels close, so painfully close, closer than I’ve ever been before. But then it fades away, and once again, as always, nothing comes to me. No memories. No sudden flashes of insight. Just the awful voice I’ve spent more than half my life trying to forget:
We’ve only got one chance at this. Now hurry up.
“Dee?” Burke’s voice is just behind my shoulder. “You all right?”
I drop my hand and step back from the tree. “I have to go,” I say. “I can’t stay here.”
“Hey,” he says, reaching out to put a hand on my arm. “It’s okay.”
I push past him and begin to run.
