Pretty Little Killers (37 page)

That night—the night they all worked so long the coffee didn't even taste good anymore—was awful. Berry couldn't stop thinking about the case, mulling it over in his mind as he drove home. He knew Alexis was probably going to be “mad as a wet hornet” when he arrived. He was right.

“It was an awful night,” Alexis agreed.

Then inspiration hit him like an early fall frost.

“It just clicked,” Berry said. He'd been watching the video all day long, looking at every possible make and model of car and—nothing. But the minute he sat down with his wife, it hit him: Shelia told police she picked Skylar up and later dropped her off at the end of the street, but they had never seen Shelia pick Skylar up the first time.
Damn
, he thought.
Colebank was right all along
.

He didn't waste a second. He called Gaskins and then added Spurlock so they were all on a three-way phone call.

Gaskins was a few miles away, pacing in his kitchen. Even from upstairs, his fiancée Kelly Wilkes could hear Gaskins talking to himself. They usually only had a few hours each evening to spend together. At one time, that had been because of Kelly's schedule. She managed a fast-food chain and was going to college at night. But ever since Gaskins got this case they'd hardly seen each other.

So their relationship suffered, too. At first, Kelly expected Gaskins home for dinner a little late. Then she realized if she waited for him, dinner would be burnt to a crisp.

“Well, I'll see you when I see you,” she finally learned to say. She ate alone many nights, watching episodes of
Law & Order
.

At other times Kelly tried to call Gaskins but got no reply. “He might not answer me for a couple of hours and I'd be worried he'd be out there dead,” she said.

Like Alexis, she was frustrated by her man's constant texting—especially when they did sit down to a meal together. “Get off there,” Kelly would tell Gaskins. “Dinner's gonna get cold.”

Upstairs in bed, Kelly could hear Gaskins below, still talking to himself as he paced around the living room. She knew he was obsessed by the case and figured by the time he'd solved it, the floor covering would be worn out.

Oblivious to Kelly's worry and only able to think about the missing girl, Gaskins continued to pace, trying to figure out what he'd missed. He knew if he thought long and hard enough, retracing every step of their investigation, replaying the entire case from start to finish, he could find the answer. For the next hour or two, that's what he did. He remembered how everyone believed at the outset that Skylar left with a boy, or because of a boy—either a random stranger she met online or in the Wendy's drive-through lane where she worked, or a boy she'd been sneaking around to see, without her parents' knowledge.

Pretty early on, they ruled out the theory Skylar left with a stranger. That left only boys she knew, so they had looked at Dylan Conaway, at Eric Finch, at Floyd Pancoast, at Dylan's cousin, Kevin Willard, at . . . so many boys Gaskins couldn't remember all their names. There was only one problem: none of those boys drove a car like the one in the video and, in fact, no one could remember seeing Skylar with a boy, or hearing her express interest in a boy—any boy. So no, it hadn't been a boy at all.

Gaskins thought back to Shelia and Rachel, to how they had picked up Skylar and then dropped her off—supposedly at the end of the street. It was Shelia who had given the police names of other boys they might want to look at. But those leads were dead. They went nowhere. There hadn't been a party at the Conaway home, either, or anywhere else. For once, it seemed like the teens were telling the truth, when they said there had been no parties in Blacksville that night.

He believed someone out there knew something, but they were just too scared to talk. Then again, there was the troubling fact that
Skylar wasn't seen coming home on camera. That took Gaskins back to square one, to Shelia and Rachel, and he realized there was only one answer left: it was Shelia's car. Nothing else added up.

Walking the floor, ruminating on all he knew, Gaskins was methodically working out the kinks of the case when Berry's call came through.

“That
has to be
Shelia's car!” Berry was practically yelling. “The girls are
definitely
lying!”

The next day at work, everyone involved celebrated the first major crack in the stone wall Shelia and Rachel had erected. They did so after gathering around the video again—this time backing it up to 11:00
P.M
., the time Shelia said she and Rachel picked up Skylar.

Sure enough, no one saw anything like that on the video—because no car showed up to get Skylar then. The vehicle they had been searching for so long and hard, had been there the entire time, just like Colebank originally suspected. It was a silver Toyota Camry—and it didn't pick up Skylar until 12:31
A.M
.

thirty-three

Contents under Pressure

Berry knew he was
taking a chance. The idea might come to nothing, but it was worth a try. He knocked on the door of the Neeses' apartment, trooper hat in hand.

Dave answered. “Come on in, Chris.”

Berry could tell Dave was down. Without Skylar, Thanksgiving had been rough for the Neeses and as Christmas drew near, both of them had grown increasingly sad and weary. Berry wondered how much more they could take.

“Dave.” Berry nodded as Dave stepped back. “I have an idea.”

Mary was sitting on the couch, staring at the TV. Dave sat down beside her. Berry stood, shifting from foot to foot.

“Time to shake some trees,” Berry said.

“See what falls out,” Dave replied, sitting forward on the edge of the couch. He liked the idea already.

Berry had told him before that “shaking trees” often results in a big break in an investigation. When leads dry up, go out and do a “knock and talk”—the police equivalent of a cold sales call. Start asking questions and make yourself as much of a nuisance as possible, then sit back and see what happens. Berry knew Shelia and Rachel were hiding something, but he hadn't been able to make them
talk yet. He felt like they were beating him. Berry couldn't take that, because Berry
hated
to lose.

“I know those girls aren't telling us what they know,” Berry said. “I just have to find the right buttons to push. I wanted to arrest them both for obstruction, but Ronnie didn't think we had enough.”

“Those girls have been lying since day one,” Dave said.

“What Dave said,” Mary said, turning away from the TV for the first time. “I cut Shelia off a long time ago.”

“It may be worse than either of you think.” He looked at the recliner. “I know they read the TEAMSKYLAR 2012 page. I want you to use that. Mind if I sit down? I need to tell you some things. It won't take long.”

Mary sat at the computer, trying to compose her thoughts. She was optimistic, but she would try anything if it would bring Skylar back.

In the months after Skylar disappeared, bits and pieces of Mary's memories began to surface. For instance, she remembered that Skylar had rejected the idea of applying for a job at Chick-fil-A, where Shelia then worked. Instead, she got a job at Wendy's, joining her childhood friend, Hayden McClead. Soon after, Skylar got Daniel a job there, too.

Skylar and Daniel had always been tight, but with all three of them working at Wendy's, Skylar and Hayden grew close again. Hayden—like many of Skylar's friends—didn't like Shelia. She wouldn't hang out with Skylar if Shelia was around.

To Hayden and other teens, it seemed like Shelia was always testing the limits in uncomfortable ways. She liked being more outrageous than her peers. Hayden recalled a specific party held in Blacksville where Shelia really pushed the limits.

Everyone was getting high, and Shelia and another girl, Janet,
²⁸
were kissing. Some boy began snapping photos, so Shelia and Janet
started a striptease for all the partygoers. Hayden and Skylar were disgusted and sat back in a corner, trying to pretend it was no big deal.

Thinking about the stories Skylar had told her and the ones she later heard from Hayden, Daniel, and others, Mary realized that while she and Dave had tried to accept Shelia and think of her as a daughter, they never completely succeeded. In the years since Skylar and Shelia first met at The Shack, Mary and Dave had seen Shelia mostly in the summer and a few times during the school year. In eighth grade, Skylar and Shelia's visits became more frequent, with Shelia staying overnight at the Neeses' or Skylar sleeping over at Tara's place in Blacksville.

In ninth grade, everything changed. Mary said that as time went on, she and Dave finally began to notice little things about Shelia they had always overlooked. Shelia was their daughter's friend, and they wanted to see only the best in her, but her effect on Skylar hadn't always been positive.

For instance, there was how Skylar treated her own cousin, Kyle Michaud. Two years older, Kyle had been there the day Skylar came home from the hospital. Carol had only Kyle, and Mary had only Skylar—so Skylar and Kyle grew up as close as siblings. But once Shelia came to UHS, Skylar wouldn't even talk to Kyle when she saw him.

As Kyle later put it, they passed in the hallway “for more days than there were words exchanged between the two of us.”

He'd told Mary how acutely he felt the effects of Skylar's withdrawal from family and friends. One day was particularly vivid in his memory. He'd driven his father's car to work and was waiting in the parking lot to give Skylar a ride home, as he did two or three days a week. Only that day in December 2011, she didn't show.

A couple of years apart in age, Skylar was a sophomore that year, Kyle a senior. They had already drifted far apart. On the days Skylar rode home with him, she'd wear her earbuds, blast the music, and only answer direct questions. Otherwise, they didn't talk.