27. SKYE

Kuna, Idaho

Now

They found him a month after my funeral.

An officer pulled him over on a traffic stop in Meridian. He had a tail light out. When the officer ran his plates—flagged in the database in connection to my murder—she brought him into the station for questioning.

I wasn't there when they questioned him about me. He was in and out of the police station in twenty minutes. Detective Kittleson called my mom later the following day.

James had refused to answer any questions without a lawyer present. Then he'd calmly asked if he was free to go.

And he was. They wrote him a ticket for driving without a valid vehicle registration and plates. Since it was a first-time offense, he left with a $50 ticket.

Detective Kittleson told my parents that the district attorney had significant reservations about pursuing him as a suspect at this time. The Daily Grind security footage that showed the license plate on the dark-colored Kia didn't show me anywhere near the vehicle. And the FroYo video that showed me actually getting into a dark-colored sedan didn't show the license plate. Not to mention that the driver was hardly more than a dark blur. A positive ID was almost impossible.

All they could say for certain was that James Carson had been at the Daily Grind that day. So had hundreds of other dark sedans. James worked nearby: Why wouldn't he grab something to drink on his breaks? His lawyer had communicated this. There was no way to prove that I had gotten in the car with him.

James said he'd never seen me before—outside of my photo in the papers, anyway.

When my mom learned they'd found him—without arresting him—she was getting ready for work, carefully applying eyeliner in the bathroom. I was sitting on the countertop next to her. I'd become her shadow. And I'd realized over the past month how little I actually knew about my mom while I was alive. I had always called her my "best friend." I knew her favorite Salvadoran dish—sopa de res—and her favorite TV series—El Número Uno. I loved her. There was no question about that. But I hardly knew anything about her as a person. The focus had always been on me: What I liked, who my friends were, how work was going, what I wanted to do after college, what I was thinking about, what I was reading.

In some ways, I felt like I was seeing her for the first time. The way I might have after a few years at college, or maybe after having a baby of my own. As I listened to her talk to her best friend Lucrecia on the couch, I pretended that she was talking to me sometimes. Especially when the conversation drifted into topics that didn't relate to my kidnapping and murder.

I learned that she'd tried pot when she was fifteen. That part of the reason she'd been so excited about me going to college was that she had dropped out her senior year. That when I was six days old, she'd shown up at a pediatrician's appointment without a bra on, because she hadn't gotten any sleep since I'd been born. That she secretly prayed at night, despite telling Lucrecia that she still didn't believe in God. That she wanted to move away from Idaho. That she still thought about my dad a lot. That she wished she'd had more kids.

I listened and watched and wished I could tell her that I was still here. That in some ways, despite the chasm that I'd fallen into, I felt closer to her now than I ever had.

I didn't try to whisper in her ear at night anymore while she slept. Not after what had happened that first night. But sometimes, while she was applying her eyeliner with shaky hands in the mornings and the bathroom was silent except for the ceiling fan ticking, I talked to her. About what foods I missed the most. About my favorite memories of her and my dad. Every once in a while, she talked back. To her reflection in the mirror—but also to me.

"Skyebird, remember when you learned to crawl and I found you camped out behind the toilet in the bathroom with a toilet cap in your mouth?"

I laughed. She laughed. And to my surprise, I found that I could remember exactly what she was talking about if I picked my way back through the memories. They were all there, as clear as crystal. "Do you remember the little fish drawing you taped to my bathroom mirror when I was two, when you were trying to get me to go number two? So it would ‘feed the fishes?'" I said.

She lifted the eyeliner pen to complete a stroke. Then she put her hand down as her eyes crinkled up in laughter. "I remember when you were teeny and terrified to poop in the potty. I told you it would feed los pescaditos, and you got right on board after that. I even made you a little drawing to help you visualize it. Lucrecia told me about that one."

* * *

A few days after they found James, Detective Kittleson finally managed to get a search warrant for the blue Kia. I was sure it would have taken him even longer, if not for my mom's repeated phone calls.

They were looking for blood, fingerprints, hair, and fibers. Any evidence that I'd ever been in that car.

My mom was ecstatic. I was hopeful, too. I'd touched the door handle and the inside of the car. Surely, he couldn't have scrubbed every trace of me from it.

The warrant was served on a Tuesday morning, after he'd left for work.

I fully intended to watch. I wasn't sure what I'd see or if there was anything that I could do, but where else did I have to be?

The part where they actually served the warrant wasn't anything like what I'd seen on movies or TV. Detective Kittleson—and a scrubbed-up tech—stood on the porch and knocked politely.

A woman answered the door, flanked by two of the most adorable blond girls I'd ever seen.

When she saw the officers standing on her doorstep, she looked like she had seen a ghost. Which she had. Because I was standing right there. She didn't know that though.

As Detective Kittleson announced the warrant's scope: the keys to the Kia and the Kia itself, I shifted my gaze to the two little girls. Unlike April, they were totally oblivious to the magnitude of what was happening on their front porch. The taller of the two, whose blond bangs stuck up at an angle that made me think she'd just gotten out of bed, hopped from one foot to the other while she tapped on her mom's leg, pointing at the police car in the driveway. The younger girl looked between her mother and older sister, patiently waiting for someone to tell her what was going on.

I was so busy looking at the three of them, that I didn't even notice the fourth person standing a few feet behind them in the hallway until she stepped forward.

She had straight brown hair and wide hazel eyes with the thickest set of eyelashes I'd ever seen. She was wearing a comfy-looking burgundy velvet tracksuit. She appeared to be about the same age as April. Was this a sister? A nanny? From the expression on her face, my first thought was that she looked like she'd seen a ghost too.

And she had.

Because she looked right at me and whispered, "Are you dead?"