Pretty Little Killers by Geoffrey C. Fuller Daleen Berry Page A

into the open.
    After Mary and Dave learned over the next month that their missing daughter had been sneaking out frequently, Floyd Pancoast, the boy Star City police had caught joyriding with Skylar, came forward. He knew some of Skylar’s secrets. “He was one of the suspects in the beginning,” Mary said. “We pretty much harassed him. Dave and I went to him in person, and he told us, ‘I loved Skylar. I miss her so bad.’”
    Mary heard Pancoast was big into marijuana, which is why she asked him directly, “How could you guys drive around every night, getting high, and Skylar’s getting up and going to school every day and has a 4.0 average?”
    Pancoast told her, “We didn’t get high every night. We’d just drive around. She listened to me.”
    Through the police investigation, the Neeses learned Skylar and Floyd were no more than good friends. He didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance. “So I had to apologize to him,” Mary said. “He still feels terrible about losing Skylar.”
    A compassionate woman, Mary’s expressive eyes often reflect her own sadness as well as the sorrow she sees in others. She and Dave must have realized they were wrong when they saw the raw emotion on Floyd Pancoast’s face. Afterward, they offered him comfort, as they did repeatedly with various teens who had been touched by Skylar’s disappearance.
    Almost immediately after people learned Skylar was missing, the rumor mill began churning out stories. One of the most persistent involved a boy. No one seems to know who this boy was, but every variation suggested he was instrumental in her disappearance. Pancoast was one of many such “boys” the police questioned: Were you romantically connected to Skylar? Did you do drugs with her? Did you see her the night of July 5 or the early morning hours of July 6 ?
    Mary insisted Skylar and Pancoast were not romantically involved, and just “buddies.” In truth Pancoast, who sported a buzz cut andtattoos, wasn’t Skylar’s type. Mary couldn’t say exactly what her daughter’s type was, though, because Skylar never had a boyfriend.
    Everyone believed Skylar was focused on getting a good education so she could go to college. For the time being, she was not interested in romance. Occasionally, she giggled with her girlfriends over one cute guy or another or took part in drunk-girl kissing games, but she wasn’t serious about dating or sex the way many teens are. Perhaps Skylar was on the verge of such stirrings.

    The afternoon after she and Rachel killed Skylar, Shelia was headed back toward Blacksville. She probably wondered if Rachel was going to ruin everything. She had to be more careful. How could she have lost her phone? Rachel claimed she had looked everywhere and couldn’t find it.
    â€œIt must have fallen out when . . . you know,” she’d informed Shelia a couple of hours earlier. Shelia told her to shut up—not over the phone—but at least Rachel hadn’t texted it. Their plan had been very clear: all communication about anything suspicious must be in person or on FaceTime. The police could get everything else—phone calls, tweets, texts— everything . FaceTime, an app that let the two girls place a video call, was the only safe way. On FaceTime, once a conversation was over it was gone forever.
    As she drove toward the spot where they’d gone the night before, Shelia might have thought about what happened, glorying in the crime they had gotten away with.
    Or maybe not. Shelia was proud of her ability to block out unwanted thoughts and emotions, and she was very, very good at it. She tweeted as much, quite often.
    When she arrived, Shelia pulled over and got out. She tried sending a text to Rachel’s phone and then listened carefully. She didn’t hear anything. Again, she texted Rachel’s cell. Shelia probably would