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“I did, but I didn’t have access,” Sadie admitted. “And I asked to see it, but she never let me in.”
The cop nodded thoughtfully. Perhaps, he said, that was becauseGillian was quite brutally honest on the account. Often, Gillian talked abouther.Apparently, Gillian said Sadie acted erratically.
“Erratically?” Sadie blinked hard.
“Can you think of what she might mean?” Diaz asked.
Sadie swore up and down that she always treated Gillian kindly, but it didn’t matter. Because there was a second piece of evidence: An anonymous call had come in; someone had seen Gillian on the trail that morning…and Sadie, too.
“Me?” Sadie squeaked. “Who said that?”
Diaz smirked. “There’s a reason it’s called ‘anonymous.’ ”
Lenna. So she’d come forward after all.
Still, she swore she wasn’t there. She reiterated her alibi about Mrs. Rosen—not because she thought it was a good alibi, but because it was what she had blurted out at first, and maybe it would be worse if she changed her story now. But because of this, she demanded a lawyer. She didn’t know if that made her look guilty, but she feared saying something she’d regret or getting caught up in twisted questioning.
The deck seemed stacked against her when she finally gained access to Gillian’s private posts, too. It had been a fluke, discovering a way into the account: Gillian had a little book in her desk where she wrote down a whole bunch of passwords to accounts; miraculously, the Instagram password for @GillianAnxietyBabe was there. Sadie figured logging in to Gillian’s Instagram on her own phone would raise some flags. She questioned if there was some IT expert at the police station watching and waiting foranyoneto sign in to the account, thinking it might be a lead. But she took the gamble anyway, buying a burner phone at Walmart and entering Gillian’s credentials. When she was in, no alarms sounded, and no one came for her.
But the posts didn’t give her any peace. Gillian wrote to herfollowers that Sadie was unstable and unhinged. She said she threw shoes at her—which hadneverhappened. She said Sadie wanted her out of her life—which, okay, was definitely her mindset that last night, but Gillian implied that Sadie hated her from the get-go. A reaction to her baby decision, surely. But still…
There were so many posts that Sadie couldn’t wade through all of them. She had to assume the account was a lie…but then Gillian admitted, on the page, to faking her job. She also truly did have eleven thousand followers. They actively commented on Gillian’s posts, cheering her on and expressing sympathy. They also sent her a lot of DMs, quite a few of them unread. It was too much for Sarah to weed through. On both her second-to-last and last posts, the comment sections were jammed with people begging for an update, puzzled about why she hadn’t posted again. Then, someone leaked the news that Gillian was missing. Then there were a barrage of sympathetic comments once people learned the news—as well as suspicious ones.Does anyone else think it’s weird that S caught her in a lie and now she’s missing?AndJustice for @GillianAnxietyBabe!AndCops need to talk to S. She’s hiding something.
They weren’t wrong.
The commenters—and the police—were also interested in two other people Gillian’s posts made reference to: L and R. It seemed she desperately wanted to befriend them.Someone needs to question them, too,one person wrote.This poor girl was all alone—people were treating her like shit, even those she thought were friends!One of the women might be Lenna, Sadie figured. But who was the other? She told the cops she didn’t know.
“But I thought you were roommates,” Diaz said.
“We didn’t tell each other everything.” Wasn’tthatthe truth.
“The way she puts it, you two disagreed about something,” Diazpushed, again and again. “Was it about L and R? What lie did you catch her in? Are yousureyou weren’t on that trail?”
Her lawyer told her not to answer. Sadie thought about the fight, the triggers. Had Gillianactuallytampered with her meds? Because the more she thought about it, the more she wasn’t sure Gillian could have. After she gave herself the shots, she sometimes would slip into the bathroom for a moment, leaving the meds unattended—but only a moment. When she came out of the bathroom, it wasn’t like the meds had been moved, and it wasn’t like Gillian was standing over them or something. She couldn’t think of an instance where Gillian was even near the kitchen when this all went down. Had Gillian just blurted something out the way she sometimes did, not really thinking through the consequences, just to get a rise out of her, a messy way of stating how hurt she felt?
Except then she’d taken it one step further. She’d also said that nasty comment about Sadie’s assailant. Andlaughedabout it. She’d found Sadie’s most open, festering wound…and plunged in the knife. Sadie wasn’t sure she could square that part in her mind.
She was released from the station while the cops gathered more evidence on the case, but for a few weeks, she was a person of interest. Her lawyer didn’t seem interested in whether Sadie had actually killed Gillian—in fact, he asked that she not eventellhim. All he was looking for was someone else they might be able to pin it on.
“These friends, L and R,” he said. “I’d love to find them.” He held up his phone; Gillian’s account was on the screen. “Even her Instagram friends have theories that they were behind it.”
Right around this same time, the boss at the hospital group Sadie’s practice was affiliated with called. Sadie didn’t even know being implicated in a crime could threaten one’s license, but all of a sudden, she was asked to transfer her patients to one of the other doctors in the practice. Just for visibility reasons, it was said, untilthis blew over. Sadie was crushed, and then angry. Whatelsewould Gillian take?
It was Tuesday morning. Over three weeks after that morning at the canyon. Sadie felt like she was drowning. If she had no job for much longer, she wouldn’t be able to afford her house. And forget fertility treatments. Tears streamed down her face. She felt so freakingalone.It only occurred to her after Gillian was gone how much time they actually spent together; Gillian had become the only person Sadie really saw when she wasn’t working.
As she stepped into the bathroom, a number popped up from the LAPD. Bile rose in her throat. Her voice cracked when she answered hello.
“Checks out,” a man’s voice said on the line.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, sorry, Ms. Wasserman—it’s Detective Diaz. I mean your alibi. We finally talked to Mrs. Rosen—she was out of town with her daughter and hadn’t really turned on her phone. She vouched for you on that morning, and there’s no video evidence putting you at the scene at the canyon.”
Sadie nearly dropped the phone. She stared at her slack face in the steamy mirror.Mrs. Rosen vouched for me?she thought.
“So the case against you is dropped. To be honest, I don’t think this was foul play anyway. Some of your friend’s items were found in the canyon: a key chain you described, an earring matching ones she was wearing in an online post…”
“Oh,” Sadie whispered.
