by A. M. Taylor
“Well, Hale invited us,” I say, motioning at myself and Ange. Bright leans forward to sniff the contents of both our cups, and shakes his head wearily, faux-disappointment prematurely ageing his young face. “Anyway,” I continued, “I thought you were supposed to be with Serena in Madison tonight?”
“Gotta work tomorrow,” he says, “either of you seen Nate or Leo yet? I’m meant to be meeting them here.”
But Nate’s just arrived and has clearly spotted Bright with ease as he pushes through the crowded room towards us and claps Bright on the back in salutation. They exchange gruff greetings and Nate says hello to both me and Ange before turning his attention to the corner of the room. The music’s loud, too loud to hear what Nora and Louden are saying, but they’re drawing a lot of attention regardless. Everyone within earshot of them is surreptitiously eavesdropping, some dropping the pretense at subtlety altogether and staring, mouths slightly open at the feuding couple.
“How long’s that been going on?” Nate asks the three of us.
“Since we got here, pretty much,” Ange answers. “So about two hours?”
“You’re kidding?”
“Only slightly. I suggested they maybe take it to another room, but I don’t even think they heard me.”
“Remember when the reason they couldn’t hear you asking them to get a room was because they were practically having sex on the couch?” I ask, referring to more than one occasion.
“Gross, Fielder. That’s my sister you’re talking about.”
“Your sister’s had sex, Nate. Get over it.”
Nate shakes his head and looks around the room, anywhere but at the corner. “I need a drink for this,” he pronounces, and wanders off towards the kitchen.
Hale rushes towards us, appearing out of the crowd as if from nowhere, and says, eyes wide, almost breathless: “Nora caught Louden and Natalie Carmichael in the bathroom.”
“Natalie Carmichael?” Ange says, incredulity written all over her face. “I didn’t even know she was here.”
“Yeah, she’s still in there. She won’t come out of the bathroom,” Hale says, looking back towards the hallway. “This is so fucked up. People are using my parents’ bathroom! They’re going to kill me.”
“I’m not sure that’s the most pressing problem here, Hale,” I say, as the fight in the corner comes to a crescendo and we all turn to watch as Louden stalks off down the hall to where the downstairs bathroom is, back towards Natalie Carmichael, and Nora stumbles off on her own in the direction of the kitchen. All three of us share a look and silently agree to follow her.
She’s standing over the kitchen countertop, eyes firmly on her cup, which she’s filling with rum, only stopping about three inches from the rim to top up with Coke.
“You okay?” I ask under my breath as Ange, Hale, and I sidle up next to her.
She blinks, very, very slowly while looking down into her cup, before raising it to her lips and turning towards us. “I’m fine,” she says shortly, after taking a long slug of rum and Coke.
“What happened?”
Her chin lifts and her mouth is drawn down into a frown, her eyes hard. “He was fooling around with Natalie Carmichael in the bathroom when we got here.” She takes another sip of her drink and continues, “Apparently he didn’t know I was coming though, so really it’s my fault.” Her voice is thick with acid.
“For fuck’s sake, Nora, just break up with him,” Ange says. “This has got to be it, right? His last chance.”
Nora just shrugs and takes three massive gulps of her drink before scanning the kitchen. Nate’s nowhere to be seen but that’s not much of a surprise. He tends to avoid his sister as much as possible when we’re all at the same party. If I was her I’d already be out of here, but Nora’s never really been one to run away.
“What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “Why aren’t you more angry?”
“Yeah,” Hale says, “I know he’s my brother and everything, but if this was one of us, you’d be the first one shouting ‘DUMP HIM!’ across the room at us.”
But Nora isn’t really paying us any attention, her gaze has landed on Bright, and Leo, who’s just arrived, and waves happily at us hiding in the kitchen, blissfully unware of the recent drama.
“I am angry,” Nora says at last. “I’m fucking livid. But I also really wanna get drunk, so let’s just do that, shall we?”
“I remember losing track of her around two o’clock, but I think I just thought she went home with you and Ange?” Hale said.
“Yeah, and we thought she’d gone off somewhere to patch things up with Louden. Guess we were all wrong.”
“Oh my God,” Hale said in one breath, interrupting me. “That night. The night she disappeared …”
“Yeah?” I said, prompting her, because she seemed to be thinking twice about telling me.
“I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this …” she said with a groan.
“Tell me what?”
“Louden and Bright. They lied about their alibis. They were covering for each other because neither of them had an alibi that night and they knew it would look bad.”
If someone had told me then that all the air had left the room—literally—I would have believed it. I couldn’t breathe, even the thought of it, of taking another breath, felt insurmountable. But then survival and rationality kicked in and I hauled a great gulp of air into my lungs.
“They lied?” I managed to croak.
“Yes,” Hale said simply, and in my view, much too calmly.
“Are you … are you sure? How do you know?” And how could you not have told anyone, I mentally added.
“He told me. He may not remember telling me, but he told me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Hale sighed again. “Look, Louden hasn’t dealt with any of this well. I know you think you have the record of dealing with Nora’s disappearance the worst, but believe me I’m pretty sure Louden could have you beat.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he went from a fairly heavy social drinker to a very heavy drinking-on-your-own drinker, to drugs, to an overdose, to rehab.”
“Hale, I had no idea. About any of that,” I said, surprised at least that I could still be surprised.
“Yeah, I know. That’s kind of the whole point. No way would my parents ever want to make any of this public knowledge. But anyway. There’ve been a few times when I’ve had to clean up some of his messes, and one time he told me about the alibi. He was … well, it was awful, let’s just leave it at that. But I’m pretty sure he doesn’t remember any of it.”
“And you’ve never asked him about it?”
“No. Anytime anyone mentions Nora or that night he just shuts down. But that’s not the point. The point is that, yeah, Louden lied about his alibi, but so did Bright, and now you’re telling me Bright also slept with Nora just days before she went missing?”
It seemed pointless to point out that both these revelations—Bright and Nora sleeping together, neither Bright nor Louden having a valid alibi—looked bad for Louden too, but I still couldn’t help asking: “Hale, what time did Louden leave Forest View on Sunday night?”
She was quiet for a while, and I swear that even after all these years, I could visualize her face perfectly, bronze-brown eyes lit up with anger when she said through gritted teeth: “You mean the night Elle was killed?”
“Yes.”
“We left a little after nine. We drove back to Chicago together.”
“That’s a long drive that late at night. Especially at this time of year.”
“Yeah, well. We both had work the next morning and he really hates being in town; he just wanted to get out of there.”
“Nine o’clock?” I said, double-checking; but I was barely listening when Hale said: “Yes.”
Elle had last been seen around eight o’clock that night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I don’t know what it was exactly that
sent me back to Nora’s Facebook account. I probably would have logged into Louden’s or Bright’s if I’d had the wherewithal, but I didn’t even know where to begin, so I let myself be foolish and selfish, let myself make just one more bad decision and signed in as Nora again.
The ping of the messenger system going off surprised me, and for a second I forgot whose account I was logged into when I saw it was Ange messaging me.
Hey
I replied.
Mads? Is that you?
Yeah of course
You scared the shit out of me
Why?
You’re signed in as Nora you idiot. I almost shit myself
Sorry, I forgot to turn chat off
I wrote, realizing as I did so that this might have happened before. What if I wasn’t the first person to log into Nora’s account? Those read messages that had all been sent after her disappearance had been bothering me, but if someone else had logged in and read them then I could only really think of one person who that would be.
There were a thousand reasons Elle might have wanted to access Nora’s account. Maybe it was just to look, to sense her, to see. To wallow a little, to play in a garden where Nora still lived and breathed, even if just virtually.
Who knows what spurred her to do so, but I’d had a feeling it was something to do with those messages she’d been getting. Maybe it was just the fact that she’d turned seventeen the last year. The last time she’d ever be the same age as her older sister. She was about to outrun her, outpace her. Maybe she just wasn’t ready to leave her behind. Or maybe getting those messages had made her think all over again of what she’d lost, what we’d all lost, and who had taken it from us. But what could she have found here, I wondered, that led her to a snowdrift on the side of the road?
So, I checked Nora’s inbox again, this time remembering that Elle’s own anonymous messenger had appeared in the “message request” section rather than in her main inbox. I drew in a strong, sharp breath when I saw the last few messages were from someone calling themselves “John Smith”; the same “John Smith” who’d been contacting Elle. I leaned over my laptop, blood pumping erratically in my ears and opened the message stream.
From: John Smith 12/31/2017 08:14
Who are you?
From: John Smith 01/01/2018 00:36
You’re not Nora Altman
From: Nora Altman 01/01/2018 22:44
How do you know that?
I could be
From: John Smith 01/01/2018 22:55
Because she’s missing
From: Nora Altman 01/06/2018 23:11
Sometimes missing people get found
From: John Smith 01/06/2018 23:17
Not you
From: Nora Altman 01/06/2018 23:21
What makes you say that?
From: John Smith 01/06/2018 23:24
I just know
From: Nora Altman 01/06/2018 23:31
How?
From: John Smith 01/06/2018 23:34
I just do
From: Nora Altman 01/06/2018 23:45
There’s plenty of theories I’m still alive
Living in Canada or whatever
From: John Smith 01/06/2018 23:52
So that’s where you are? Canada?
From: Nora Altman 01/07/2018 00:57
I’m here: http://tinyurl.com/hfa6noh3
Ice cold fear gripped at my insides until it broke and shattered, reverberating through me like a bell; I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. I stared for so long at those messages, barely able to breathe as I did so, that the screen went black. Waking my laptop up again, I clicked on the link in the last message, but it just led me to a 404 Not Found page and I returned to staring blankly at the messages in Nora’s inbox, trying to figure out what it was exactly I was reading.
The thought of Elle sending and receiving those messages haunted me; seventeen years old was too young to confront a ghost, too young to be turned into one. But there were fewer shadows haunting my mind now, less doubt stalking my thoughts. Here was their killer, whoever this person was, they’d reached through that screen and taken both Nora and Elle and now all I needed to do was figure out exactly who they were. I closed my eyes and saw both Louden and Bright at the memorial on Sunday, barely even two weeks ago. Could one of them really have done all this, I wondered: Killed Nora ten years ago and stood by our sides ever since, in grief and in mourning for an entire decade, only to then steal Elle from us too? Even as I edged ever closer to an answer, I still couldn’t quite believe it. But then I saw Nate standing by the lake on Sunday afternoon, face washed with such grief, and then, just a week later, being hauled up the police station steps, head bowed against accusations, and something inside me finally snapped into place.
Whoever “John Smith” was, it wasn’t Nate. Of that I was certain.
I rang Keegan because he was the only person I could think of who might be able to help me.
We met at CJ’s the next morning and I showed him the messages from “John Smith,” pointing out the shortened URL in the last message Elle had sent.
“Did you click the link?” Keegan asked, pointing at the screen.
“Yeah, it didn’t go anywhere though.”
“Was it already purple when you clicked it or still blue?”
“I don’t know, I can’t remember. Why?”
“I’m pretty sure she was using this to try and track the sender’s IP address. It wouldn’t bring up an exact hit, but she would’ve got a general area at least.”
“I didn’t think you could track Facebook message IPs.”
“You can’t unless you have a warrant or whatever, but that’s not actually what this does. If the other person clicks it, it automatically sends an email to your account, and you can track that. It’s really rudimentary but it works. You just have to have someone that’s stupid enough to click the link in the first place,” Keegan looked up quickly from the screen and made a face at me, “no offense.”
I raised my eyebrows. “None taken. Elle was clearly much smarter than I am.”
“Yeah, it’s a nice easy way of getting it done. She probably just looked up how to do it online to be fair though. It’s not rocket science.”
“So, the only way we’ll know if she got the guy to click that link is if we can get into her email?”
“Yeah probably. You know her address and password?”
I nodded, turning the computer towards me and pulling up Gmail to log in as Elle, reassuring myself that one more breach of privacy was worth it if it meant I could figure who had done all this.
“What am I looking for?” I asked as I scanned Elle’s inbox, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
“I don’t know really; here let me take a look.” Keegan reached for the laptop, swiveling it away from me and peering down at the screen intently. He double-checked the date Elle had sent the link and looked at every email she’d received that day, but there was nothing to indicate John Smith had fallen for her trap.
“I really thought this was it,” I said, disappointment weighing down my words. “I thought we had him.”
“Well, hold on, don’t lose hope just yet. She might have put it in a different file or trashed it or something.”
“Well, if she trashed it then we’re screwed.”
Keegan shook his head, still staring intently at the laptop screen, scrolling dutifully through Elle’s inbox. “Nah, Gmail saves trashed emails for thirty days, so if she did it will still be there. Hasn’t been thirty days yet.”
It was then my phone rang, Ange’s name lighting up its screen. “Hey,” I said on picking up, “I might have found something pretty good.”
But Ange was breathless about something, not even stopping to say hello. “Put on the news,” she said instead.
“I can’t, I’m at CJ’s.”
“They’re about to release another statement to the press about Elle. I think this could be big. I’m on my way to the police station right
now.”
I looked over at Keegan, who was still digging through Elle’s emails, and said: “I’ll be right there.”
Keegan refused to stay behind for the press conference and ended up driving us both down to the police station in Waterstone while I searched the contents of Elle’s trashed emails. It wasn’t all that difficult to find in the end—it was the last email she’d deleted before she died.
“It’s just the IP address,” I said to Keegan. “How would she have found out where the messages were coming from with just that?”
“Just put it into IP tracker or something, it should come up with a geographical location at least. But don’t expect an exact address or anything, it’s not that specific.”
Keegan walked me through the steps as we drove towards the police station, and by the time we got there—the car park too full of TV station vans, reporters and photographers for us to find a parking space—I had the location.
My heart dropped to somewhere around my knees when I saw it come up on screen, and if I hadn’t been sitting down already, I would have needed to.
It was the area covering the lakes between Forest View and Stokely; Witchend, Pine Grove and Fox’s Leap. Keegan had pulled in somewhere and turned the car’s engine off and was turned towards me.
“Maddie? Did it work?”
“Yeah, yeah. It worked.”
“And?”
“Fox’s Leap Lake,” I said, my voice scratching the air.
“What?”
“It’s the Altmans’ lake house,” I said, “the messages were coming from their lake house.”
“You mean …?”
Not Bright. Not Louden. “Nate,” I said distantly. Nate had been sending those messages. I tried to make this match up with the picture I had of him in my mind, but I was too slow, too sluggish. Stuck. All that energy I’d had just the night before—mere hours earlier—all the certainty was suddenly gone, and once again I was stuck. Immobile and impotent.
I couldn’t stop staring at the screen even as the crowd of reporters outside began to assemble more formally, and the doors to the police station opened as the Chief walked out. He was accompanied by Gutierrez and Lee and I realized that they were having to do this outside, in the freezing cold, because there were too many people to fit inside the station.
