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Turning in my chair, I face my computer screen again. I have some time to kill before traffic dies down enough for me to take an Uber over to Matthew’s place. And I know what I want to do with that time. After checking to see that no one is watching, I open a private browser window and type in the address for the forums.
As the page loads, it’s hard not to feel guilty. Dr. Rajmani would not approve of this backsliding. I’ve been so good recently. I haven’t logged on in almost four months—a personal record. As I navigate to the forums, I feel a twist of anticipation in my gut. Four months is a long time. What if, in that time, some new piece of information has surfaced, something crucial I’ve ignored because I’ve been so busy “taking care of myself”?
I click on the New Developments thread, then feel a swift thud of disappointment as soon as I see the most recent entries. Only two new posts in the last four months.
After all this time, the only people who’ve stuck around the forums are the die-hards—the obsessives, the retired PIs, the morbidly preoccupied housewives. Just the kind of people who might leave a look-alike key chain on my doorstep. People who’ve pored over paparazzi photos of Allie long enough to spot a panda-bear key chain clutched in her hands.
Quickly, I scan the first new post: a long, rambling paragraph from a woman who is sure she spotted Allie in Oaxaca. These types of posts are a dime a dozen. So many people have had “Allie sightings.” Sometimes people even upload fuzzy snapshots—girls with dark hair and dark eyes who bear only a passing resemblance to Allie.
The second post is about Matthew’s wedding, and the commenter has just copied and pasted the text from a recent news article.
Writer and director Matthew Andersen tied the knot with Chloe Navarro this Thursday in a small ceremony in Wayfarer’s Chapel in Palos Verdes. The two met through their charitable work for the nonprofit The Lost and the Missing, which provides aid to the family members of missing persons. Andersen’s niece, Allie Andersen, went missing in 2013. Chloe’s brother, José Navarro, vanished during a rafting trip in the Grand Canyon in 2009.
Then there’s a picture of Matthew and Chloe outside Wayfarer’s Chapel. Chloe wears a sleek, simple dress, her dark hair falling in loose curls around her shoulders. Matthew has one arm around Chloe’s waist and the other around her daughter, Sara, as she laughs at the camera.
Below the article, AceDetective33 has commented: Nice to see a bit of good news for this family.
I exit the page and click through the other forum links, looking for new entries since the last time I logged on. In Greg’s thread, there’s just a smattering of conversation from the past few months.
AceDetective33: And let’s not forget that detail about Allie’s laptop. The cops tried to go through it, but it had been water-damaged. The hard drive was fried.
That November, Allie had bought herself a brand-new rose-gold laptop, although she didn’t really need one. It was for her work in Macnamara’s class, she said. But I suspected she just wanted a new toy to carry around, something that would pair well with her outfits.
Vero88: What’s that got to do with Greg?
AceDetective33: Simple. Greg was dealing a shit-ton of drugs, which Allie knew about. Some people even say she was helping him. So let’s say she had some information on her computer about that. After Greg gets rid of her, he has to get rid of that incriminating evidence.
The muscles in my neck tighten. Is that what was on the flash drive? Information about Greg’s dealing? I’ve never paid much attention to these theories about something of importance being on Allie’s laptop, but now that the key chain’s turned up, I’m beginning to wonder what I may have overlooked.
I skim through the rest of the Greg comments, but there are no more mentions of the laptop.
Marciex3: Personally, I can’t see Greg hurting her. By all accounts, Greg loved Allie. I think he knew she planned to leave town, and he helped her escape.
AceDetective33: But why would she need to leave town?
Marciex3: She was depressed, and her parents had cut off her allowance. They were pissed about those TMZ photos.
The TMZ photos. At the beginning of junior year, photographers had caught Allie leaving Luxe, propped up by Greg on one side and her theater buddy Christie on another. In the photos, her head lolled to one side, and she looked like she was one step away from collapse.
AceDetective33: Check your dates, Marciex3. The TMZ photos came out months before she disappeared. If they bothered her so much, why didn’t she skip town right after the scandal?
Marciex3: Maybe it just built up over time—her getting sick of it all. I think she wanted a fresh start somewhere. Greg helped her, and he’s kept quiet all these years to protect her. They’re probably still in contact.
ChrisB: Oh, Jesus—another FFer.
Marciex3’s theory is so popular that it’s acquired its own nickname: “Friends Forever.” The FFers are a sentimental group who like to post photos of Greg and Allie with their arms around each other. Greg and Allie were a photogenic pair, and it was easy to imagine, looking at them, that their friendship was something deep and real—if you didn’t actually know them. If you didn’t know that Greg was instrumental in getting Allie shit-faced on a regular basis. If you didn’t see that, as much as he loved her, he was dragging her down.
Or maybe I’m being cynical. Maybe I don’t want to believe the FF theory because, if it’s true, it means Allie loved Greg more than she loved me.
AceDetective33: Look, that’s a sweet thought, but I think Allie’s ending was darker than that. She was behaving really erratically those last few days, right? That kind of behavior isn’t uncommon among people who are about to commit suicide. I mean, think about it: the day she goes missing, she drives to her stepmom’s house in Reseda, stays there for, like, just a couple of minutes, and then drives away. The stepmom says she has no clue what Allie was doing there. Her behavior doesn’t make sense because her mind wasn’t right.
I sit back in my chair, the mention of suicide settling like a weight on my chest.
The Thursday Allie went missing, the CCTV camera at the end of Mom’s block had caught an image of her driving into Mom’s neighborhood, then, fifteen minutes later, driving out again. Mom was at work that afternoon, so there wouldn’t have been much point in Allie going to her house. It’s one of the many details of the case that has never made sense.
I blow out a frustrated breath. None of this information is new. Or enlightening. Still, now that I’ve started, I might as well finish. As the sky behind me darkens, I click on James Macnamara’s thread. The picture at the top of the page loads slowly, revealing Macnamara standing in a bar, holding a glass of wine and smiling at the camera. He’s wearing a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, looking a shade too young and good looking to be a literature professor.
The first time Allie saw Macnamara, we’d been standing in line at the coffee shop at the edge of campus, waiting for the barista to slide our coffees across the counter. Suddenly, Allie turned, doing a complete one-eighty as she looked out toward the sun-drenched sidewalk. “Damn. Who is that?”
“Who?”
She pointed at the man lingering on the corner, digging through his laptop bag. I recognized his slender build, the curly hair that had grown long enough to touch the back of his shirt collar.
“Like, the Daniel Day Lewis look-alike,” Allie said, pulling off her Bialucci sunglasses.
“That’s Professor Macnamara,” I said.
Allie’s head snapped around. “Excuse me?”
I handed her the coffee she’d just ordered and grabbed my own. “C’mon. Greg’s waiting for us.”
“That’s Professor Macnamara? The guy whose class you’re taking?”
“Yeah.”
She pointed a finger in my face. “You . . . you’ve been holding out on me.”
I dragged her away from the counter—we were late to class already—but the whole walk to campus, she pestered me about him. You never told me he looked like that. This whole time, I thought you had, like, an intellectual crush on him.
I brushed her off, trying to move off the subject as quickly as possible. He’s just a good teacher, that’s all.
Why didn’t I just tell her the truth? I could’ve told her about the number of times Macnamara had asked me to stay after class to talk about something I’d said during class discussion. Or the way he’d tried to recruit me for his creative writing seminar: It’ll be challenging, but I think you’d really thrive there.
It was just the kind of story Allie loved to hear. She would have hung on my every word, and then she’d have offered advice: Here’s what you say the next time you see him. Here’s what you do.
But that’s exactly why I didn’t tell her. I wanted my feelings about Macnamara to belong to me only. To Allie, the whole thing would’ve been entertainment, a chance to play matchmaker—or puppet master. And that was the last thing I wanted. The way I felt when Macnamara talked to me . . . that felt serious. That felt real. Every day in his class, I waited for his blue eyes to scan the room and come to rest on me.
The office phone rings, jolting me out of my memories. I let the call go to voicemail and pull my attention back to the Macnamara thread. There are only a few new comments since the last time I checked in.
AJBaltimore: personally, I can’t picture that guy committing murder. i mean, look at him.
DNAmy: Oh yeah, because no handsome, upper-middle-class guy has ever killed someone.
AJBaltimore: that’s not what I’m saying. he had no history of violence, none of that, his past girlfriends all said he was a great guy. And you’ve seen his interviews during the investigation—the guy was a hot mess. he seems like the type to panic at a crime scene, not come up with a nifty body-disposal plan. can I see him sleeping with a student? hell yeah. but getting rid of a body? no way.
DNAmy: He’s a smart guy. It’s not that hard to dispose of a body if you do a little bit of research. Easy enough for him to pack her inside a suitcase, haul her out to his car. Then: dismemberment, sulfuric acid . . . take your pick.
My eyes skitter away from the post—this kind of detail will haunt my dreams—and pick up farther down the thread.
Chazzer: Have you seen the YouTube videos of his lectures? Unless he’s a psychopath, he does a good impression of being a pretty great guy. Down to earth. Funny.
Dr.Sleuth: That is exactly the impression that psychopaths are skilled at conveying. Psychopaths are good at appearing completely normal to other people. They learn to reflect back the emotions they see in other people, to hide the fact that they don’t feel those emotions themselves. A psychopath can be well educated, can hold down a demanding job. Sometimes even their friends and families don’t realize what they’re really like.
I reread that paragraph, a queasy feeling sliding over my chest. I remember sitting across from Macnamara during his office hours. How charming and personable he was, how—despite my shyness—he always managed to make me smile. To come out of my shell. Was that an indication of his warmth, or evidence that he couldn’t be trusted?
One afternoon when we’d been talking, he leaned back in his office chair and said, “Sure I can’t tempt you over to the dark side?” He gestured behind him at the bookshelf that was crammed, every inch, with books. “Who needs prelaw when you could have a degree in literature?” He grinned. “Look at the glamorous life this career path could lead you to.”
I smiled. His office was cramped and cluttered, and the air-conditioning only worked sporadically. But in fact, there was something alluring about it.
“I can’t,” I told Macnamara. My mother had drummed it into my head: I needed a career path that paid. You have to be able to support yourself, Tasha, she’d told me. Don’t put yourself in a position where you have to rely on someone else.
“Why not?” He had a way of holding eye contact for a very long time. I was always the one to look away first.
“I just can’t.”
“Hmm.” He tapped his pencil on the stack of essays on his desk. “Well. Just know this.” He handed me back my essay, and I saw the grade he had scrawled at the top: A+. “If you want a spot in my creative writing seminar, it’s yours. Think about it.”
Now, I chew on my fingernail and stare at the picture of Macnamara on the web page. He’s looking at the camera like he and the photographer are in on the same joke. And I remembered how, in his writing class, he used to give me that same look. Whenever I laughed at a reference of his that no one else caught, I could feel the connection between us shimmering in the air.
During lectures, he called on me frequently, making jokes that seemed aimed specifically at me. He told me once that I was too good for LACSA. What I can’t understand is how a student like you ended up here.
With a sharp click, I close the browser window. Clearly, I’d been wrong about Macnamara, about whatever vibes I thought I was getting from him that semester. If I thought he was flirting with me, I was delusional.
Because the next semester, when Allie took his seminar, I found out how he acted when he was really interested in a student.
CHAPTER 14
At six thirty, I call an Uber to take me to Matthew’s house. From the back seat of the Uber, I watch the cars ahead of us, their red brake lights bleeding into the night air. We’re inching down Pico, and I have plenty of time to examine the shops lining the street—coin laundries and hamburger joints and tattoo parlors. And I remember how in high school, after I got my license, Allie used to make me drive to different neighborhoods: Boyle Heights, Little Tokyo, Thai Town. This is your education, Tash Ross, she’d say, turning the radio up loud and singing along.
After our parents got married and we’d moved into the new house on Via Montemar, Allie and I started to spend all our time together—which had surprised me. I’d thought, after Allie enrolled at Palos Verdes Prep, that she would find her place among the popular kids. Sophie Engel, Blake Bryson, Tilly Choi—the kids who sat out in the full sun of the amphitheater, rather than the shaded courtyard by the choir room, which was where I sat with my friends. But Allie had shown absolutely no interest in joining Sophie Engel’s crowd. Instead, every day, she sat in the courtyard and ate lunch with me.
One afternoon, Sophie came over to us and said to Allie, “You know you don’t have to sit here, right? All of us are sitting out by the stage.” She didn’t even bother looking at me.
Allie chewed on a bite of her sandwich, taking her time before she swallowed. Then she took a sip of her drink. “Us?”
“Yeah. Me and Tilly and Bryce and AJ.”
Allie set down her drink and gazed up at Sophie. Finally, she said, “It’s Sophie, right?”
Sophie smiled, delighted to be recognized. “Yeah!”
Allie crossed her legs and leaned back against the tree behind her. “Well, no offense, Sophie, but my sister and I are trying to have a conversation here.”
Sister. It was the first time she’d called me that.
Sophie looked confused.
“So maybe you could fuck off and leave us alone,” Allie clarified.
That was the last time Sophie tried to approach Allie.
Later, at home, Allie told me, “Believe me, I know exactly why Sophie Engel wants to be my friend. She wants to see if I’ll invite her to the house in Malibu; she wants to meet Isabel. So she can brag about it to all her weasel-faced friends.” She made a gagging sound. “Thank God you’re not like that.”
Now, I stare out the car window at a Vietnamese restaurant where the windows are still lined with Christmas lights, green and red bulbs flashing against the glass.
Allie had been wrong about me, back then. She’d thought I was different from Sophie and her friends and all those girls who whispered behind her back at school. But the truth was, I wanted to meet Isabel just as badly as they did. I wanted to see Isabel’s house in Malibu; I wanted to bask in the glow of her beauty.
But I knew it would be disastrous to let Allie see that. So when she talked about Isabel and Matthew and their movie projects, I pretended not to be starstruck.
Sometimes, at home, when the landline rang, it was Isabel Andersen, asking to speak to Allie. (Allie never answered Isabel’s calls to her cell phone.) And, if it was one of the days when Allie refused to come to the phone, Isabel would talk to me, asking me questions like: How is school? Is Allie settling in okay? I’d find myself talking to her as if this were normal for me, as if I talked to Oscar-nominated actresses on the phone all the time. And I let myself daydream about the day I’d finally get to meet her, when I’d get to peek into that other world.
Outside the car, the Christmas lights blink frantically, persistently, and when I close my eyes, they’re still there, flashing on the insides of my eyelids.
CHAPTER 15
December 2007
Isabel and Matthew came over for Christmas not long after we’d moved into the spacious midcentury house on Via Montemar. The place had a pool and a landscaped garden and a view of the ocean. It felt like a palace, although, after all my years of living in a tiny apartment, it often seemed more like a hotel than a home to me.
That Christmas Eve, I stood by the decorated tree in the living room while Isabel, the star of Alchemy and Broken Bones, chatted with my mother about mashed potato recipes. On the couch, Matthew and Giles sipped cocktails and discussed the latest film Matthew was directing. The room was bright with laughter and tasteful background music.
I watched the scene as if it were something out of a movie. This is my family, I told myself. And I waited for it to feel real. But none of it did, none of it except for Allie. She was curled up in one of the oversize armchairs on the other side of the room, texting someone and looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. If only she’d looked up, we could’ve exchanged glances, and suddenly I would’ve felt at home in my own skin again. But she just kept typing, her eyebrows drawn together.
So I turned to the fireplace, trying to act as if I was suddenly fascinated by the pictures on the mantelpiece. My favorite of these was a framed photo of Giles and Matthew, taken the year they were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Golden Globes. The photographer had captured them at some after-party: dress shirts rumpled, cigarettes dangling from their mouths. I often studied that picture—the way Matthew’s dark hair fell over his forehead and Giles’s drink had been caught in mid-slosh. They looked so young, so handsome, teetering on the edge of success.
