Wherever She Goes(31)

This is the person Kim has been calling. Not Thom Milano, but his wife. A relative of Kim’s. A close relative. I would guess sister, but I won’t jump to that conclusion.

I find Ellie’s profile easily—Thom’s links to it. Neither has theirs set to private. They aren’t that sort of people. A very average middle-class couple, raising their family in a flyover state, posting pics of softball games. Maybe that should make them boring. It doesn’t. I read their profiles and skim their pages, and envy stabs so sharp it physically hurts.

This isn’t just a couple putting their best face forward on social media—there is such genuineness in their smiles, in their posts, that I do not for one moment doubt their happiness. When I envy them, I feel guilty, too. Guilty for thinking of myself, how once upon a time, I had this. Had it. Lost it. The guilt comes because I should be thinking of Kim. This is about her, and if I feel anything, it should be sorrow for this reflection of a life she might have had.

Forget all that. Focus on Ellie.

Thirty years old. Married since she was twenty-one. Two kids quickly followed. Ellie grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Maiden name: Mikhailov. I search on the name. It’s Russian. I remember Kim on the phone. I remember telling Officer Jackson about it.

“She sounded very upset. She was speaking in another language. I don’t know exactly, but I’m guessing Slavic.”

Russian had actually been my guess, but I’d been wary of saying that. I didn’t want to sound too certain.

Had Kim been talking to her sister?

I jump to Ellie’s profile section for languages spoken. “English. Some Russian, but really only enough to curse out people who cut me off in traffic :)”

Kim hadn’t been talking to Ellie on the phone then. It was, however, a family mother tongue. So maybe they were cousins rather than sisters—Kim coming from a branch of the family that maintained their native language more.

That’s when I get to the section for family. Ellie lists a sister. Seven years younger. And her name? Kimmy.

I mine Ellie’s profile for every mention of this younger sister. There’s no link to a Facebook profile for her. There are photos, though untagged. Ellie has posted old photos of herself and sometimes she’s with her little sister. In those photos, Kim grows from a baby to a fifteen-year-old. There’s a final picture, for Kim’s fifteenth birthday. And then she’s gone.

Fifteen.

Is that when Kim had Brandon? Ejected from her family for a teen pregnancy? No. I’m sure Brandon was no older than five, and according to this timeline, Kim would have been twenty-three when she died, meaning she’d had Brandon when she was closer to seventeen.

While I don’t find more recent photos of Kim on Ellie’s page, I do find references to her. Old friends periodically ask how Kim’s doing, and Ellie replies that she’s fine, living her own life, but they’re in contact and she’s doing great. Sometimes she’ll say she visited with “Kimmy” last month or that she just talked to her.

Still, there are no recent photos of them together. No updates saying that Ellie was going to visit her sister or that Kim was coming over. If I hadn’t seen those phone records, I might think these claims of contact were fake. But they did talk, weekly, often for an hour or more. That isn’t two sisters who’ve drifted apart and only exchange cards at Christmas.

There are a couple of instances where someone asks “Where’s Kimmy living these days?” . . . and Ellie doesn’t reply, as if she missed the question. In another one, a guy from Cedar Rapids asks if he can get in touch with Kimmy, and Ellie answers that her sister isn’t on Facebook. When he asks for an email address, she pretends not to see the question.

There are also no mentions of Brandon. No suggestion that Kim has a child. And that, I am sure, is not accidental.

Ellie is guarding her sister’s privacy. Because her sister is in hiding. Using a fake name. Concealing her child from the world. Staying in close contact with her sister, but otherwise cutting all ties with her former life.

I imagine a world where I had someone I could keep in touch with. A sister or a brother or even a cousin I couldn’t bear to cut from my life when I went on the run. I tell myself it’s better this way—beholden to no one, endangering no one—but that’s a lie. I envy Kim for having Ellie in her life.

That’s when I realize Ellie is out there, going about her Saturday in South Dakota, with no idea what’s happened to her sister. No idea her sister is dead.

I have Ellie’s phone number. I could call. But that’d be wrong. As hard as it will be to hear this news from the police, it wouldn’t be any easier from a stranger. Let Ellie continue her weekend unaware. Let her enjoy it. The news will come soon enough now that I have Kim’s real name.





Chapter Eighteen





I do not stop with that name. I can’t. I feel like I’m catching snippets of Kim’s life, just enough that my analytical brain cannot help filling in the gaps and making educated guesses. It’s like catching a glimpse of an elegant security system and think I wonder if I can hack that.

I can’t walk away now. I need to know, to satisfy my curiosity. What I’m doing here is perfectly safe and legal. I’m sitting in coffee shop number three, drinking a decaf latte, and browsing the Web, like half the other people here. I expected to spend the day with Charlotte, so I have no other plans. I can continue working this puzzle.