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Meghan scooted next to her, reaching out her hands for both Skye and me. “Then let’s look together to see what he missed.”
* * *
We spent the rest of the night sifting through Skye’s memories.
We watched every painful detail of “James” flirting with her in the Daily Grind.
Every excruciating moment as shy, hesitant Skye got into his car in the parking lot after work that day.
Every unspeakable moment that came afterward.
We could only see what she saw, remember what she remembered, of course.
But as we watched Skye’s memory from the coffee shop, the last time he’d come in, I suddenly yelped.
The disposable coffee cup he was holding in his hands. The one with the little smiley face and the eyelashes and the word “James” and “hot chocolate” in loopy letters.
I had seen it before in my own memories, at his house.
He’d shoved it into the desk drawer.
I let go of Skye and Meghan, frantic to tell them. “Skye, was he holding a coffee cup in any of the security footage?”
Skye shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen all of it. Just the parts my mom watched over and over. I know he’s on camera, though, from when he was in the coffee shop that morning.”
I grabbed her hand and showed her the memory of the coffee cup in his desk drawer. There was no way to know whether it was still there or not. Even if it was, would the detectives executing the search warrant know what they were looking at?
“We have to tell Domanska,” Meghan insisted, already moving toward the motel door. “She’ll listen.”
52. SKYE
Kuna, Idaho
I just knew Domanska wouldn’t find the coffee cup where Brecia remembered.
Who knew if it was still there, anyway? I couldn’t imagine him keeping something like that lying around.
While we whispered through the detective’s dreams that night, I prepared myself to be disappointed.
My murder would remain unsolved. Lots of murders did. I stayed dead either way, of course. So what did it matter?
But it was harder to lie to yourself without the distractions I’d had while I was alive. No phone. No TV. Just my own thoughts, and the prickles of disappointment that crawled across my body as I stared at the detective—who had fought so hard for Meghan—while she slept.
“She won’t find it,” I told Meghan and Brecia matter-of-factly.
They didn’t correct me. But they didn’t stop whispering, either.
I knew she wouldn’t find it.
Right up until the moment she did.
* * *
It wasn’t tucked into the desk drawer anymore. In fact, it was at the bottom of the recycling bin in the garage, hidden underneath Amazon boxes and food packaging, set to be picked up earlier that week—if he hadn’t taken April and the girls and run.
Domanska found it on the Daily Grind security footage—a still frame of James, holding the cup as he walked outside on the morning he’d murdered me—before she found the cup itself.
From the way she lingered on the still frame, zooming in until the little smiley face I’d drawn on the cup, right down to the eyelashes, was visible, I knew she’d listened.
