After twenty minutes of this, Kaitlyn resigned herself to the fact that the only intel on Townsend she was going to get from this guy was a greatest hits of dickish antics. But then, as she debated how best to extricate herself from the conversation, Will unexpectedly shared a story that caught her interest.
“I remember there was this big house party in Barton Creek where he and all his friends lived. Some neighbor approached the house and threatened to call the cops, so Townsend shot at him with a paintballgun from an upstairs window until the guy finally left. Apparently, the guy suffered a corneal abrasion or something from one of the paintballs and showed up on the evening news, wearing an eye patch, complaining about the out-of-control parties in the neighborhood. Townsend wore aPirates of the CaribbeanT-shirt under his uniform the next day.”
Will laughed, but the story didn’t sit right with Kaitlyn. “Heblindeda guy?”
“He, like, scratched his cornea. I’m sure the guy was fine.” Will shrugged. “But I wasn’t actually there. I just heard about it later. Everyone did.”
“And everyone thought it was funny that he shot a guy?”
“It was a paintball gun. It wasn’t a big deal.” Will smiled in a way that saidCan’t you take a joke?
The image stayed with Kaitlyn for the rest of the day. She pictured the nosy neighbor writhing in pain, hand clutched to his face. A raw, bloody eye socket. Townsend standing in the window, finger still on the trigger, a look of cold amusement on his face. Nothing Will had said about Townsend was outright incriminating in regard to his relationship with Amanda, but there was just something about his description of the guy that made Kaitlyn’s skin crawl.
I’ll give it one more week,she told herself on the drive home.
Seven days came and went with no word from Amanda and no word from Townsend Fuller. Kaitlyn was forced to admit she was in over her head. She looked up the number for the Austin Police Department, hands shaking as she dialed.
“Hello? My name is Kaitlyn Reade. I need to report a missing person.”
Riding the elevator up to the Stevenson Ellis office on Monday morning, Kaitlyn thinks about how infuriating it is, the fact that the world does not stop moving just because your own life has come to a standstill. Two women to her right chatter about the latest episode of some HBOtrue crime series.Fuck your TV drama,she wants to tell them.My sister is missing—like, real-life missing—and no one even gives a shit.
When she called to report Amanda missing, the officers had assured Kaitlyn they’d investigate, including looking into her sister’s last known boyfriend, Townsend Fuller. But when she called back a few days later, they claimed he’d already been cleared. “We spoke to him, ma’am,” a woman who introduced herself as Detective Harris said. “He’s not a suspect at this time.” She thought she was putting Kaitlyn at ease by saying this, but she thought wrong.
“How can that be?” Kaitlyn argued. “I saw his car outside of Amanda’s apartment.”
From the information database she paid for, Kaitlyn knew that Townsend Fuller was the registered owner of a silver BMW Z4 Roadster. When she googled the make and model, an image of a sporty coupe convertible popped on her screen and sparked a memory. The night of her disaster date with the data science professor at Latchkey, when she passed by Amanda’s apartment building without stopping in, she spotted a car that looked just like it. She remembered it barreling through a stop sign right as she stepped into the crosswalk, nearly hitting her in the process. It had to be the same one, right? It had to mean something.
Kaitlyn had spent more time than she cared to admit hovering in the vicinity of Townsend’s condo building, waiting to catch a glimpse of the roadster to confirm her theory. One Saturday in mid-June, she’d seen it pull into the circular drive. For a moment, she thought about getting out and confronting him right then and there, but she could see there was a woman in the passenger seat with him, and Kaitlyn hadn’t liked the idea of having an audience.
“We asked him about that night,” Harris had told Kaitlyn. “You thought you saw his car outside of Amanda’s place around eleven p.m. on May eighteenth? It turns out he was just getting takeout from a nearby restaurant.”
How convenient for him,Kaitlyn had wanted to say. But she simply said thank you and asked them to please keep her informed. It wouldn’tdo her any good to make enemies of the detectives working on the case. Not when she could tell they already thought she was just being hysterical. Already, they’d confirmed that Amanda wasn’t abroad (they’d checked flight records) and wasn’t traveling by car (her white Honda Accord was sitting in her building’s parking lot). She could be traveling with friends or hitchhiking, they said. She could be totally fine. After all, wasn’t this behavior pretty on-brand for her? Wasn’t that why Kaitlyn waited three months to report her own sister missing?
They won’t come out and say it, but she knows what the police believe, because it was what she herself once believed: that the only danger Amanda is in is the danger she poses to herself.
Over the years, Amanda has let Kaitlyn down in a hundred different ways. There was that time she skipped Kaitlyn’s college graduation (without apology) to attend the Hangout Music Festival in Alabama instead. And there was that time she missed their family Christmas (without explanation) only to later post pictures from a nightclub in Miami. But flakiness can’t explain the aroma of bleach permeating Amanda’s empty apartment or her Instagram grid, not updated since March. It can’t explain why she didn’t show up to their father’s grave for his birthday, like she’d promised she would.
The last brunch they shared in February ended with regretful words and hurt feelings, but still, the sisters had made a vow: They would visit Dad’s gravesite on his sixtieth birthday in June, and together, they would celebrate the milestone he’d never reach. That day was a week ago, and though Kaitlyn showed up at the cemetery—wishing, hoping, praying that her sister would prove her wrong—Amanda did not. But when she shared this story with the police (which felt, in her mind, like irrefutable evidence of something gone very wrong), they weren’t as convinced.
“You’re worried because she didn’t attend your dad’s birthday?” they asked. “But he’s deceased?”
They didn’t understand why she found this so troubling. They didn’t understand that—as capricious as she could be—Amanda wasn’tcallous. She wouldn’t just vanish for months without a word. Even if she was busy drinking herself into a stupor in New Orleans last week, she would have found her way back to Dad’s grave, to keep her promise.
Unless she ditched you,a voice hisses in the back of Kaitlyn’s mind.Unless she fucked off and didn’t even bother to let you know.
ShrinkGPT, the AI-assisted therapy app she’d started using a few months earlier, warned her about indulging these sorts of intrusive thoughts. After confessing once that she feared everyone would leave her, the AI-therapy chatbot had Kaitlyn repeat the phraseEveryone will leave mefor a full minute, over and over, while the app timed her. And Kaitlyn did: “Everyone will leave me. Everyone will leave me. Everyone will leave me. Everyone will leave me. Everyone will leave me. Everyone will leave me. Everyone will leave me.” When the minute was up, the chatbot said, “See? Doesn’t that sound ridiculous?” But for the rest of the day, Kaitlyn just kept hearing the phrase (Everyone will leave me. Everyone will leave me. Everyone will leave me) until it felt like an incantation or a prophecy.
But surely Amanda wouldn’t vanish from her life without warning like their parents had; surely she knew that Kaitlyn couldn’t endure that kind of pain again.Amanda would not leave me,she tells herself, quieting that voice.Amanda would not leave me.
The elevator doors open on the twenty-fourth floor, and Kaitlyn makes her way to her desk, nodding at the few people she passes. No one asks about her weekend, and she doesn’t stop to ask about theirs; it’s known by now that small talk isn’t her thing. An initial case assessment is awaiting her attention, but first, she has her own task to complete. Looking around first to make sure no one is peeking over her shoulder, Kaitlyn logs onto Reddit and navigates to the Missing Persons community. Then she checks on the post she submitted last night.
A short press release about her sister’s disappearance had appeared on the Travis County Sheriff’s Office website, which Kaitlyn submitted to the subreddit, hoping to pique the interest of a few bored internetsleuths. So far, the thread has generated one comment from a user named Stoner_Sandwich420:She looks hot.
She sighs. Not even Amanda’s thousands of social media followers seem to care about her disappearance as much as Kaitlyn expected. After posting that call to arms on her sister’s Instagram Story (it was a good thing Amanda used the same password—geminibaby530—for just about everything), Kaitlyn had expected to be flooded with tips, theories, and search party volunteers. Instead, all she received in response were a handful of likes and crying-face emoji reactions. It makes her furious, really, if she thinks about it too long. If a stereotypically “hot” white girl can’t get the attention of the police, what hope do the millions of other women who go missing every year have?
Maybe Kaitlyn just needs to help move things along.
After looking over her shoulder once again to make sure her coworkers are preoccupied, she creates a burner account. No one will take her seriously if she comments on her own Reddit thread. And she’s tired of not being taken seriously. With the new username, she posts a screenshot of the Instagram Story she created last week, ending with that damning last line:I know he’s involved in Amanda’s disappearance, and I have proof.If her warning about Townsend didn’t get the attention it deserved from Amanda’s Instagram followers, then perhaps it will here.
