“Tell us again how you learned about what your sister was doing,” Lieutenant Cowan began. They were looking at me like doctors searching for the symptoms of some Third World disease or something.
But I wasn’t nervous. I certainly didn’t want to look nervous. “What’s happened to Kaylee?” I asked, instead of answering.
“Just tell them what they want to know, Haylee. Please,” Daddy said, standing to the side, his arms folded across his chest.
“I can’t remember the exact day, but one afternoon when we got home from school, she came into my room very excited to tell me she had met someone she liked. I was surprised, of course. My sister and I rarely did anything apart from each other, and if she had been with a boy from our school or even from another school, there wasn’t much chance I wouldn’t know anyway.”
“She said ‘met’?” Detective Simpson stressed.
I shrugged. “Yes, ‘met.’ Before I could ask her anything, she started talking about him, how mature he was, how sensitive and sweet. I remember she said he was polite and timid. Before he asked her anything, he would say, ‘May I ask you something personal?’ Then she said she had been talking to him for days, almost a week, I think. You can imagine how surprised I was to hear that.”
“And all this was conducted on her computer?” Lieutenant Cowan said.
“That’s what she told me.” I glanced at Daddy and then looked back at them. “Of course, I warned her about having contact with any stranger, especially a man, on her computer, but she tossed off my warnings as if I didn’t know half of what she knew and just kept talking about how mature he was and how he would tell her very personal things about himself.”
“How personal?”
“She just said personal. Oh, like he had never slept with a woman. He was a virgin, because he believed relations between a man and a woman were something holy, just like we were taught. I told her that he was probably lying, but she wouldn’t hear of it. How could I say such a thing without knowing him like she did? Then she told me that the relationship was her big secret, and if I ever revealed it, she would hate me to the bone. I remember her saying that, ‘to the bone.’ We shared secrets, of course. She knew things about me that I didn’t want anyone to know, so I promised, but I kept trying to get her to stop.” I looked at Daddy again.
“And you never saw her on her computer carrying on with him?” Detective Simpson asked.
“No, sir,” I said. “She didn’t want me in her room when she talked with him. She wanted that to be her own thing. Privacy was not something we had enjoyed very much of, so when we finally had it, we respected each other’s. For most of our lives, we were practically conjoined twins. My father can attest to that, right, Daddy?”
He looked at me and then turned to them. “They weren’t allowed to have their own rooms until they were nearly thirteen,” he said.
“Nor could one of us do something without the other. We were just used to it, but when we got older . . .”
“She never said she had any other contact with him except through her computer?” Lieutenant Cowan asked. “You’re absolutely certain of that?”
I shook my head. Of course I knew why, but I asked, “Why?”
“Nothing was found on her hard drive that would trace to anyone talking to her on any of the usual websites or private chat rooms. We have some very sharp computer geeks working for us,” Lieutenant Cowan said. “Any one of them could work for the CIA. Her computer is clean.”
“What does that mean?” I looked at Daddy and then at Detective Simpson. Were my eyes big enough?
“She didn’t have contact with any man over the Internet using her computer,” Detective Simpson replied. Good, I thought. I’d rather be talking to him.
“She lied about that?”
“She
obviously met him somewhere, somehow,” Detective Simpson said. “Can’t you think of anything she might have done or a place she might have gone without you?”
I looked down just the way anyone trying to remember might. Then I looked up at Daddy guiltily.
“What?” he said. “This isn’t the time to hold anything back, Haylee.”
“I’m just so surprised that she lied to me, but maybe she was afraid I would say something, and you or Mother would have her computer taken and studied just the way the police did.”
“So?” Daddy demanded. “Talk, Haylee! Answer the question. Where else would she start a relationship with someone?”
“There were times we weren’t together after school,” I said, in the tone of a confession. “If Mother would have found out, or even if she finds out now . . .”
“Tell them everything, Haylee. A lot of valuable time and energy has been wasted.”
“Well, not because of me!” I wailed. “She lied!”
“Just make sure you tell the truth. All of it, and now,” Daddy stressed.