by Tom Ryan
As I approach, I become aware of the stale funk of weed hanging around him like a thin fog. I wonder if he’s spent the whole night wandering around and smoking.
“You look sharp,” he says, taking me in.
“Thanks,” I say.
“I was kind of surprised to find out that you bothered to come to this,” he says.
I shrug. “I guess it was worth checking out.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Not really my scene, but I guess people change when they start hooking up with someone.”
I pull my head back, regarding him curiously. “Are you jealous?” I ask.
He snorts derisively. “Jealous? Of who?”
“I don’t know, Burke,” I say. “Just wondering.”
He ignores me, reaches inside his jacket instead. He pulls out a piece of notebook paper and hands it to me.
“What’s this?” I ask, but I’m already opening it, reading it before he answers. “An address?”
“It’s a library in the city,” he says. “A smaller branch.”
I look at him, confused. “I don’t understand.”
He rolls his eyes and sighs at me. “I did a search on the Gmail address you gave me,” he explains. “It wasn’t tied to any social media accounts I could find, but it did pop up on a couple of message boards. Nothing interesting, just some local music fan pages, stuff like that. Anyway they were public, and the security wasn’t great, so I was able to pinpoint the IP address for a few of them. That wouldn’t have been much use if they’d been attached to private residences, but as it turns out, they were associated with this library.”
“So what am I supposed to do with this?” I ask.
He shrugs. “How am I supposed to know?” he asks. “Listen, this is the best I could do. So do what you want with it.” He hops down from the wall, done with the conversation.
“Thanks,” I say. “Seriously. I appreciate it.”
He stares at me for a minute, shakes his head slowly. “You know, you weren’t the only person who was screwed up by Sibby’s disappearance.”
I take a half step back, surprised.
“What? No, of course—”
“I know you’ve spent your whole life feeling guilty because you were there and couldn’t do anything, but I don’t think you’ve ever stopped to consider what it was like to not be there. Does it ever cross your mind that I wish I’d been there to help you both?”
I stare at him, unable to process what he’s trying to tell me.
“Burke,” I say weakly. “You wouldn’t have been able to do anything even if you were there. They were fully grown adults. We were kids.”
He gives me a half smile, and I realize what he’s thinking. How is that any different from me?
“I know that, Dee,” he says. “The same way you know it. But I think you forget sometimes, it wasn’t just you and Sibby; it was you and Sibby and me. We were together all the time. And you got tied together with her because of that. I was just the lucky kid who wasn’t hanging around that day. I lost one of my best friends too, you know, but nobody ever seemed to worry about how I was doing. They were too concerned with poor Dee.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he holds up a hand to stop me. “I know how awful it sounds, Dee. Why do you think this is the first time I’m saying this to anyone?”
Before I have a chance to respond, he turns and begins to walk away, pulling his stocking cap down low and shoving his hands into his pockets before leaning into the driving snow.
It isn’t long before he’s disappeared into the shifting white sheet of it.
32.
I don’t want to tell Sarah about the direction Burke’s pointed me in. It might be nothing. It might be a mistake or the wrong clue. It might—and I doubt this, but it might—bring me right to Sibby’s new doorstep. But I can’t know that now, and until I know more, I want to go on my own.
The bus makes two round trips into the city every day. If I catch the 9:00 a.m. bus, I can be in the city by the time the library opens and have a few hours before I have to get back to the station at 2:00 p.m. to catch the last bus back to Redfields.
I leave for “school” early and wait around the side of the house until I’m sure everyone is gone; then I use my key to sneak in the back door, so none of the neighbors will see me, and flip open my dad’s laptop.
As always, Dad’s browser is open, and his Gmail account is logged in. I quickly open a new message, type in the school’s address, and type a quick message saying that Dee has an appointment and won’t be in school today. I send it and wait, refreshing the browser a dozen times a minute until a reply appears from the school receptionist. “Thanks for letting us know, Mr. Skinner. We’ll pass that on to her teachers.”
I quickly delete the message and go into the sent folder to delete the outgoing message. Covering my tracks feels almost as bad as doing this in the first place, but I never skip school, and this time I have a good excuse. I check my time—less than fifteen minutes until the bus leaves. I’ll have to run.
The bus pulls into the city depot at about 9:40 a.m., and I step off and after a quick check of the map on my phone, I walk fifteen minutes to the library. It’s a newish building, and I’m happy to step out of the cold into a large, bright reception area, warm from the sun streaming through huge floor-to-ceiling windows that run along the back of the building. I walk up to an information desk and a woman looks up from her computer.
“Hi there,” I say. “I’m wondering if you can point me to the public computers?”
“Sure,” she says. “It’s on the second floor. Do you have a card? You’ll need one to log in.”
I hadn’t banked on this, but after I fill out a form, she hands me a fresh new library card and points me toward a stairwell behind a door on the other side of the room.
The lab is dingy, not as well maintained as the rest of the library, and the computers are definitely a few years old. I guess that’s because most people use smartphones or laptops these days. There’s just one woman in the room, sitting at a corner computer, typing, but the rest of the consoles are empty.
I drop into the seat closest to the door and realize I haven’t thought too far ahead, and I’m not sure what to do next. I think for a moment, then turn to my screen and shake the mouse to wake the computer. I log in using my card, then open the browser history and search for “Radio Silent.”
A box pops up, telling me there have been zero results.
I try “Sibby Carmichael” and “Sibyl Carmichael” and “Layla Gerrard” and “Redfields,” but nothing comes up.
I log out, then shift one seat down to the next computer, log in again, and do the same searches. The woman in the corner gives me a funny look, but it’s not like I’m doing anything wrong, and so she soon turns back to her work.
There are a total of fourteen computers in the room, and by the time I’ve made my way around all of them except for the one the woman is using, I’ve found nothing except a couple of news articles about the Layla case still sitting in the browser history. That’s not really all that surprising considering it’s the biggest news to hit the area in a while.
I glance surreptitiously at the woman. There’s probably nothing on her computer either, but I can’t very well leave one unchecked.
I stand, thinking that I might walk around and come back in a while, hope that her computer is empty, but when I glance at her again, she’s looking right at me, and I surprise myself by walking right up to her.
“Excuse me, are you Pretty in Ink 31?”
The woman looks totally bewildered, not that I can blame her.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m looking for someone,” I explain. “I think it’s a woman, but I’m not sure. Their email address starts with Pretty in Ink 31. That’s not you?”
The woman shakes her head slowly and deliberately, and I wonder if she’s trying not to unsettle me. “No,” she says. “Not me.” She reaches down and grabs for her purse, then stands
and hurries out of the room, leaving me alone.
I’m sure she thinks I’m nuts, but there’s not much I can do about that now. I sit down at the freshly vacated computer, a fresh tingle of anticipation running down my spine as I carefully enter my log-in details. For a brief, exciting moment, I’m convinced that I’m going to find something that points me in the right direction.
A quick search pops my balloon. Nothing.
I sit back into my chair, defeated, and I wish I could somehow channel the Laptop Detective Agency for this gig. Sleuthing is a lot easier when you have twenty thousand people sifting for clues. At this point, my only option is to sit here for a week and ask everyone who comes into the room if they’re Pretty in Ink 31, which doesn’t seem very practical.
Some moms push strollers into the room and set up at computers right next to each other, chatting loudly over the sound of their fussy babies, and I decide it’s as good a time as any to leave.
I stand on the street outside the library, frustrated. There’s someone out there who can help, and I just don’t know how to find them. I have a few hours to kill before the next bus heads back to Redfields, and I realize that I haven’t made any kind of plan for this occasion. I guess I was expecting that I’d spend the day following a trail of clues and…and what? Did I think I’d end up finding Sibby just in time to take her on the next bus with me?
Shaking my head at my stupidity, I cross to a coffee shop across the street.
The place is small and quiet, with just a few college students set up at little round tables, working on whatever it is that college students work on.
The woman behind the counter is distracted by something and takes my order without really looking at me. I grab a table in the window, and she brings my cappuccino over a few minutes later.
I sip on my coffee and open the browser on my phone, looking to see if there’s some way I can kill a few hours, since I’m going to be here anyway.
I look up at a loud bang from behind the counter. Through a pass-through window behind the counter, I can see the woman who served me arguing with a man in a chef’s hat.
“Archie,” she’s saying. “I told you I couldn’t work this weekend.”
The man turns away from her dismissively. “That doesn’t help me,” he says. “I need you here Saturday.”
“I can’t do Saturday,” she says. “I can do Friday and Sunday, but that’s all I’ve got for you right now.”
“Sorry, kid,” he says. “The schedule’s been out for days. Sheree has to take her kid to the dentist on Saturday, and I can’t leave Jimmy to do a full Saturday shift by himself.”
She turns away and sighs, annoyed, then comes back out from the kitchen to the space behind the counter.
Something about their conversation has snagged a corner in my mind, but I can’t figure out what exactly. I run back through their exchanges in my head.
Across the counter, the woman calls into the kitchen. “Archie, can you cover me for a few? I’m going out for a smoke.”
A reply comes back, inaudible from where we’re sitting, and the woman comes out from behind the counter, grabbing a coat from the rack. As she steps past me and pushes out the door, I glance up at her and see a tattoo creeping up from her back to cover her shoulders and neck, and suddenly I realize what grabbed my attention.
Don’t bother writing me back. That’s all I’ve got for you right now.
This woman just used the exact same phrase that was in the second email. Not exactly an unusual expression, but particular enough that I can’t think of another time I’ve heard it used recently. The tattoo gives me another possible clue; is this what Pretty in Ink is referring to?
My cappuccino is still half-full, but I get up from my chair, pulling on my coat and hat.
The waitress is standing half in an alley beside the building, huddled over her phone, texting and smoking.
“Excuse me,” I say, walking up to her. She glances up, curious and confused. “Are you Pretty in Ink 31?”
Her expression changes, goes darker, and she seems to shrink back from me a bit.
“What is this about?” she asks, suspicious.
“Did you write an email to Radio Silent, the podcast?” I ask.
Her eyes go wide. “Wait, what? How would you know that?”
I take a deep breath. I realize again that I haven’t thought this out properly, but I’m in too deep to stop now.
“I am the Seeker,” I say.
33.
At first she doesn’t believe me, but when I recite back the gist of the email she sent to the Radio Silent account, her skepticism dissolves and is replaced by pure astonishment.
“You can’t be more than, like, sixteen!” she says.
“I’m seventeen,” I tell her.
She takes a drag of her smoke, shaking her head as she considers everything. “How did you know it was me, anyway?” she asks.
I explain to her how I traced the email address to the library and ended up at the café.
She looks at me curiously. “And you’re willing to reveal yourself to me, on account of a girl who went missing ten years ago?”
I breathe out slowly, trying to decide how much to tell her. “There’s a lot more to it than that.”
She turns to glance back at the café. “Listen, I have to finish my shift, but I’m off in about an hour. Do you want to hang out here until I sign out, and then we can go to my apartment to talk? I live around the corner.”
“Sure,” I say. “If it isn’t too much trouble.”
“No,” she says. “It’ll be good to get this stuff off my chest. I’m Alice, by the way.”
“Dee,” I say, shaking her hand. If she makes the connection to Delia Skinner, she doesn’t let on, and we head back into the coffee shop.
I kill the next hour surfing on my phone, keeping up with developments in the Houston case. There’s a new email from Carla, who has been working hard, looking for anyone who might have some info about the guy who harassed Vanessa at the Impact. There are no solid leads yet, but Carla is hard on the case. I almost wish I could ask her to take over the podcast entirely.
Finally Alice hangs up her apron and walks over to meet me, pulling her winter coat on. “I’m wiped,” she says. “Can’t wait to kick up my feet.”
I follow her around the corner to a narrow brick building, and she pulls a key out and unlocks a heavy front door. Her apartment is up two flights of stairs and at the end of a dark, narrow hallway. Inside, however, there’s lots of natural light from some big wide windows at the back of the room. A fat, cheerful-looking cat appears from a doorway, walking over to greet us.
“Hello, Barley,” says Alice, bending down to scoop him up. I follow her into the apartment, stepping around a pile of cardboard boxes near the door and kicking off my boots. “Ignore the boxes. They belong to my ex. He’s supposed to pick them up and keeps trying to arrange it for when I’m home. I have no interest in that bullshit, pardon my French. Grab a seat. I’ll make us some tea.”
The apartment is small but really cool. There are plants dangling from corners and in the windows, and the walls are hung with prints and paintings and random objects: a twisting length of driftwood, a beautiful piece of painted silk. The furniture is mismatched, probably thrifted or inherited, but it all works together.
“I love your place,” I tell her as I sit on a low-slung sofa under the window. It’s old, upholstered in teal-blue fabric, well-worn and nubbly, but stylish. Behind me, the wide windowsill comes down almost perfectly to the back of the couch and is lined with books.
“Thanks,” says Alice. She’s puttering about in the small kitchenette, pouring boiling water into a teapot, pulling pottery mugs from a cupboard. “I’ve been here for a few years. It feels like home.”
On the coffee table, a couple of textbooks are stacked on top of some loose paper. I pick one up. Design Fundamentals, it says.
Alice, bringing the tea into the living room on a tray, notices me lo
oking at the book. “It’s one of my books this semester,” she says. “I’ve gone back to school, hoping to get into graphic design.”
“You’ve got the eye for it,” I say, putting the book back on the table. Alice just smiles, handing me a mug. She sits across from me, and a slightly awkward silence follows.
“So you’re the Seeker,” she says finally, shaking her head slowly, almost as if she doesn’t believe it. “And I suppose you’re here because you want to find Sibyl Carmichael.”
“That’s part of it,” I say. “Why did you write that email?”
Alice frowns, takes a sip of her tea. “I asked myself that a lot after I sent it,” she says. “But before I sent it, I asked myself a million times why I hadn’t done it earlier. I mean, not just contact a podcast, but contact anyone. Police, reporters, someone.” She shrugs. “It was when I first heard the story about that new girl, gone missing in the same town. The same street! I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”
“You didn’t really say anything though,” I say. “The email is totally vague.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I know. It was the best I could do at the time. Under the circumstances. Still is, if you want the truth.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why couldn’t you tell me something more specific?”
She closes her eyes and doesn’t say anything, and after a moment, I realize that her hands are shaking slightly.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes. Just…just give me a moment.”
She carefully places her mug back on the table and takes a deep breath, reaching out her arms to stretch high above her head.
“I’ve been afraid,” she says slowly, choosing her words carefully. “For a long time. There are people who I used to know, who I worked hard to put in my past. I don’t want them to know where I am or anything about me, really.”
I lean forward in my seat, eager to hear what she has to say next.
“Do these people have Sibby?” I ask.
