Chapter Eight

UNDERGROUND. DARK. A RED BANDANA.Cold. The smell of vinyl.

Beneath the glow of a green shaded lamp, Chelsey sits in her father's office and replays her interview with Ellie Black, listing the facts on a sheet of paper—a loose, nonsequential outline. She clicks off the recording and presses her palms against her eyes until she sees stars. She is stumped. Frustrated by Ellie's refusal to cooperate.

But she has been here before. Standing at the bottom of the well. Staring at the stone when she really should be looking up. Searching for a new angle. She opens Ellie's case file, mouse drifting to the photographs. The images are still jarring. Ellie with her limbs outstretched. Each bruise measured and cataloged. There are pictures of her clothing. Items laid out on a steel table. A dingy white bra and pair of thin underwear with pin holes from overuse. A pair of unlaced shoes. Jeans. A sweatshirt with a University of Washington Volleyball insignia. The bloodstain is smeared as if wiped. A transfer, then. Not from a gunshot or other spatter. Could the sweatshirt have been used to clean blood off of something or someone?

A small square of fabric has been cut from the center of the stain to be submitted for analysis. It will be run in CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System, for a match. If the blood isn't Ellie's—and if Ellie's abductor has priors—it will show up. Blood always tells.

Chelsey leans forward and rubs her lips until the letters blur together. What had Ellie been wearing when she was taken? She slides back in time, recalling her initial conversation with Kat the day after Ellie disappeared.

It was midmorning. Ellie had been missing for less than ten hours. Kat had peered up at the ceiling. What was she wearing? I don't know. At that moment, Kat was pale and blank, the physical manifestation of the word shock. You know, I lost Ellie once when she was a toddler. We were in Seattle at the Children's Museum. One minute she was there, and the next, she was gone. You turn your head for one second… Anyway, we found her in the next exhibit. One of my girlfriends said I should start carrying a photograph of Ellie, just in case. I'd forgotten about that until now. Kat wrung her hands, too distraught to continue. She squeezed her eyes shut, then forced herself to carry on. We fought about her jeans yesterday. She'd written on them with a Sharpie. Did you and your mom ever fight? she asked Chelsey.

No, Chelsey replied, thinking of her teenage years after Lydia died, how she and her mother orbited each other like binary stars, never crossing paths. You couldn't fight if you didn't speak to each other.

That's good, Kat said with a furtive smile. She shook her head. I can't remember her top. I should have told her she couldn't go out last night, but I didn't want to fight again. It's been rough with Ellie. Much rougher than with my first. We got pregnant with Sam when I was eighteen. And I waited to have Ellie until I was older. I wanted to do it right, you know? All the things with Sam I got wrong. But Ellie… she's so different than I imagined. So much harder. I can't help thinking she's somewhere and needs my help. In my head, I keep hearing the words Ellie needs me. Ellie needs me.

Chelsey sucked in air through her teeth, feeling a kinship with Kat. It haunted her, too. The voice she could not hear. Often, she wondered what Lydia's last moments were like. How much blood she'd lost. What she saw. What she said. If she'd begged. Asked for her mother or for Chelsey. Enough. Chelsey shook it off. It's no problem you don't remember what Ellie was wearing, Chelsey had said to Kat, flipping her notebook shut. I'm heading to India's after this, and I'll ask her. See if she has any photographs.

India did have a picture of them drinking wine coolers and flashing peace signs in the cheap motel room. Chelsey opens that photo now. It takes a moment to load on her father's old Dell computer. The image revealing itself one static inch at a time. There. Ellie was wearing a maroon crop top with a flannel over it.

These are not the clothes Ellie was wearing in the forest, not the clothes stripped from her body in the hospital, not the clothes laid out on the metal table. These—this University of Washington sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes—are new clothes. Not surprising; it's been more than two years. Her abductor could have bought them. But maybe Chelsey could trace them. There is a lightness in her chest. A lead.

She narrows in on the sweatshirt. It's a popular school. Could Ellie's abductor be an alumnus? She zooms in. The emblem is the UW logo with the word VOLLEYBALL underneath. She clicks to the next photo of the back of the sweatshirt, a number fifty-five. She opens her browser and searches UW Volleyball. Rosters date to 2011. No players with the number fifty-five. Huh. She clicks back to the photograph of the front of the sweatshirt and zooms in on the tags—ONE OF A KIND CUSTOM COLLEGE APPAREL. She searches the company online and phones customer service, perching on the edge of her seat while the line rings.

An answering service picks up. "Thanks so much for calling One of a Kind Custom College Apparel. You've reached us after business hours…"

She leaves a message with her details. "This is Chelsey Calhoun. I'm a detective with Coldwell Police Department. I have a question regarding a sweatshirt purchased from your company. Please give me a call back as soon as possible."

Disconnecting the call, Chelsey flexes her hands and rubs her eyes. She's tired now. Her body achy. When was the last time she slept? She cannot remember. Never a good sign. She stumbles to the couch in her father's office and collapses.

She dreams of the beach.

Of Coldwell's rocky bluffs. And it is no longer a dream but a flood, an infinite sleeping memory, a loop she lives in. Of a car mangled and crumpled, perched precariously on a wedge of basalt, tipping in the wind. They'd been driving around Coldwell searching for Lydia when they got the call. Her parents told her to stay put in the backseat, but Chelsey had followed them, past the uniform vomiting in the sand reeds, down the path in her pale pink puffer jacket. Below, she recognized the blue sedan as Oscar's car. The driver's door was open, Oscar's body sprawled half out of it. A gouge in his forehead, watery blood leaving a trail down and pooling in his open eyes. One of his K-Swiss shoes was a foot away, lodged on a sharp rock. His fist was full of Lydia's hair. The yellow strands bloated with sea foam, a chunk of her scalp weighing it down. Chelsey's mother screamed and went as if to fling her body over the edge, but a cop held her back. Chelsey's father could not move. His face was white. Bleached completely of color. A murder-suicide, police ultimately determined. Oscar killed Lydia, then himself.

A shrill ring rends the memory in half, and Chelsey bolts up. She finds her phone on the carpet. "Detective Calhoun," she answers. It is light out now, and she's suffering a faux hangover. Her mouth full of cotton, her eyeballs sticky and dry.

"Yeah, this is Gino from One of a Kind Custom College Apparel. We received a phone call from you?" His deep voice curls into a question.

"Yes." Chelsey scrambles to the desk and pounds the computer awake. The sweatshirt photos are still on the screen. "I'm a detective working a missing person case and have a piece of evidence, clothing purchased from you. I'd like to track down who made the order."

"All right, I'm not sure if I'll be of any help. We ship around five hundred units a week. But let me pull up the records. Wait." He pauses. "Maybe I should check with my manager. Do you need a warrant for this?"

"No. I don't," is all Chelsey says, and there is quiet on the other end of the line. "You could help me find a missing girl's abductor." She stops. Waiting for the idea to take root and blossom. Gino could be a hero.

A short beat. "You got a style number? I need all eight digits plus what comes after the dash. That'll help me figure out the year."

"Where is it located?" She zooms in on the tag. No numbers, only the company name and size—small.

"Inside of the sweatshirt, left-hand seam."

"I don't have that." Chelsey rubs the bridge of her nose.

"Without that—"

"The sweatshirt is gray with a University of Washington Volleyball insignia and the number fifty-five on the back," she says, sharp, insistent but calm. "Can you search using any of those parameters?"

"Hold on. Let me check if any orders came in with a special request for that number. It'll take a minute. But you know, this computer system only goes back five years. Anything before that isn't accessible anymore."

"Give it a try," Chelsey prompts.

There is tapping in the background. "Got something," he says. "An order from 2018 for a custom sweatshirt, University of Washington Volleyball, number fifty-five." He whistles low. "Man, this is lucky. Did I say we ship out over five hundred units—"

"Name? Name on the order, please." Her palm is sweaty. This could be something, or this could be nothing. But the chance, the promise of it, makes Chelsey salivate. She has a tree to shake now. A fight to win.

He sighs. "Althea Barlowe." Chelsey takes down the address and hangs up on Gino mid-sentence.

She types the name into the computer. A headline appears: MISSING GIRL FOUND DEAD. Althea's name is highlighted as the grandmother of Gabrielle Barlowe—a sixteen-year-old girl last seen five years ago in a University of Washington Volleyball sweatshirt. And found… found about a year and a half ago deceased. The story unspools around Chelsey. Gabrielle's body was discovered on Spencer Island, a marshy park area northeast of Coldwell. She'd been strangled. No other details but the date. There is a photograph of Gabrielle. She is roughly the same age as Ellie. Same dark hair. White. Big eyes and lips puckered for the camera.

Chelsey sits back, unanchored and adrift but happy to let the tide take her. What new island will she wash up on? She does the math while gnawing on her cheek. Gabrielle Barlowe disappeared years before Ellie but was found six months after Ellie was abducted. Their timelines overlapped. What does that mean? Could they have been at the same place at the same time? Held somewhere together? Adrenaline surges through Chelsey's body, and she shoots upright to stand.

She gathers her coat, her keys, and gets in the car. Her hands flex around the wheel. She is still deep in the well, but instead of looking up, instead of staring at the stone, she is digging now. What was Ellie doing wearing a dead girl's clothes?