“Hush, Krista.” Her father’s tone was devoid of spirit, but stern and final. The silence that had permeated their home for over two weeks fell heavier over them, stifling out her breath. She closed her eyes, free-falling through that silence, unable to catch herself.
When they reached the gravesite, Krista slid out and stood stiffly next to her father, as the pallbearers — boys from their church’s youth group — carried Ella to the tent. For all she knew, one of them could be the killer, masquerading as a trusted friend.
Every tear was suspect, every pained face questionable. She shivered in the cold, thankful that her father had decided to inter Ella in an above-ground tomb. Neither of them could stand to watch them lower her back into the ground — and bury her again. It rained all around them, wind blowing mist under the tent. Still, at least three hundred people had turned out.
Even some of the girls from the center where Krista worked had come. Though many of them had lived through murders of family members, as well as rapes and terrors of their own, they had piled into Carla’s van to give their condolences.
The pallbearers walked up one at a time, putting their roses on the coffin. The mourners stood shuddering in the rain, wiping their noses and hugging. She hoped they never forgot.
From the depths of her pain, a purpose emerged. She would make it her business to remind them.
three
The house filled up quickly with friends, relatives, and strangers armed with casseroles and offering hugs and tears. At twenty-five, Krista had had little experience with funerals, except for her mother’s. She supposed they’d done the same the day they’d buried her, when Krista was eleven, but she hadn’t been expected to host them then. When she’d locked herself and the newborn Ella in her bedroom to insulate them from shattering condolences, no one had forced her to come out.
Today she felt an obligation to welcome people in and help them when they didn’t know what to say. Their struggles to make sense of such a senseless death drained her, and she longed for them all to go home and leave her and her father to their grief. But relatives had traveled long distances and were determined to stay, and the teen girls from the Eagle’s Wings ministry needed some reward for coming. Most of these teens were middle-school dropouts, their parents in prison or on the streets with needles in their arms. Those who were privileged to have at least one parent who loved and cared for them were alone most of the time, as their parents worked two and three jobs just to provide a moldy apartment for them to live in. Some were pregnant, some tattooed, some were on drugs themselves. They didn’t fit in with Krista’s relatives, but she was moved by the fact that they would come. That meant that all the seeds she and Carla had planted in their lives were beginning to flower. It moved her to tears that they would risk their own discomfort in order to comfort her.
She didn’t want to break down in front of them. They needed to see her strong, courageous. They needed to see a peace that passed all understanding.
But inside, a silent rage boiled, threatening to ruin her ministry and her image. Worse yet, it threatened to ruin God’s image.
When the girls finally left, she breathed relief, no longer feeling she had to be the mature, settled one. While her relatives talked quietly among themselves, she slipped into her bedroom and turned on her computer. As soon as it was fired up, she navigated to GrapeVyne.net, the online community that had occupied so much of her sister’s time. Signing in with her sister’s name and password, she brought up her page.
Friends had posted hundreds of notes to her dead sister, so many that they’d pushed Ella’s final Thought Bubbles far down the page. Krista scrolled down and found her sister’s last public thoughts.
Thinking about becoming a brunette.
Krista smiled. Ella was never satisfied with herself. A real blonde dyeing her hair brown? Her friends responded by telling her she was crazy.
The Thought Bubble before that made her smile fade. It was the statement that might have cost Ella her life.
Riding my bike to Sinbad’s. Dying for a soda, and Dad won’t keep them in the house.
Ella had never come home from Sinbad’s. Her bike had been found overturned in the street near the convenience store, her cell phone and purse lying on the ground. Some of the contents of her purse had scattered out, and her hand mirror was shattered into dozens of pieces.
Any predator with a computer would have been tempted by that Thought Bubble. Why had Ella felt compelled to tell everyone where she was going and when?
Krista scrolled down as she’d done so many times since her sister’s disappearance and saw Ella’s habits and schedule posted in various Thought Bubbles throughout the day. She’d posted dozens of pictures of herself, some with her school jersey on. Some of her posts mentioned her school, her teachers, her after-school activities, her friends. She posted often during the day, using her cell phone.
The killer had access to this information, and he was somewhere here, hidden among her GrapeVyne friends. Krista clicked on Ella’s Friends and saw a list with pictures of over eleven hundred people. What had her sister been thinking, to post private thoughts to over a thousand strangers? Why hadn’t Krista realized it and stopped her? She’d tried to give her sister her space, but she should have been spying on her, demanding to be added to her Friends List so she could monitor what was going on.
She scrolled down through the faces, searching for someone who looked evil. Someone who could stalk and rape and bury alive a young girl in a shallow grave out in the woods.
The friends all looked benign and young, but it was subterfuge, she knew. He was there, somewhere. He was watching, enjoying the fallout. He may have even added his condolences to the others on Ella’s Vyne.
Then it hit her. She could talk to him. If she posted a note to him, he would read it.
An inner fire hit her face, burned her eyes, tightened her lips. Her heart kicked against her chest. She put the cursor in Ella’s Thought Bubble, and typed,
You think you got away with this, but I’ll find you. I’ll hunt you down like the animal you are.
She hit send. There was a 140-character limit, but she had more to say. She waited for the box to empty and her note to flash up on the screen. Then she added,
You’ll wish you’d never heard the name Ella Carmichael, and you’ll suffer the way she suffered.
Then she signed it, Krista Carmichael. She hoped he was reading it already.
Terri Blackstock, Downfall
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