"You don't just see, Ella. You have to look." The memory of Keira saying that hit me. I used to take care of her when her parents were too busy to do the needful for their nine-year-old daughter. She was neglected. She was mistreated. And now—she's gone.
Dead? I don't know. Kidnapped? I don't know.
I woke up in the morning three days ago. I was to take Keira on a trip to the zoo that day. We had plans. She liked animals. She always seemed happy around them. The random cat or dog we see around our neighbourhood; Keira was always there to feed them. I walked the two blocks to the front door of her trailer house where she always met me, but that particular day—she wasn't there.
I waited outside for an hour thinking she would come out, but she didn't. Biting my tongue, I entered the trailer uninvited. It was not something I would have willingly done with Keira's unemployed, alcoholic father and abusive mother being around all the time.
It was unusually quiet. No screamings or vulgar arguments that I always hear. That should have been the first sign. I heard none of it when I got close to their trailer, while every other time I always did. That should have been the first sign. I screamed in my head.
I had never been inside Keira's trailer before, so I wasn't sure if the mess was normal or not, but there was something off about it. It looked like someone had looted the place. The couch was toppled. The kitchen knives were amiss. There were broken glass all over the lounge floor. "Keira!" I called out. It was only silence that answered. I walked further in and came into what looked like a child's bedroom. "Keira!" I called out again a little softer. "Are you in here?" She could be hiding. But she wasn't.
I walked back outside and looked around. Like a sign sent down I heard Billy bark. How did I know it was Billy? He had a bark that was an in between of a woof and a human coughing. He always tagged behind Keira, like she owned it.
I followed the bark taking me a few yards away from the trailer. "Billy!" I called when I saw it and watched it run toward me and dropped a shoe at my feet. I bent down to examine the shoe only to realize it was Keira's favourite pink sneaker. I gifted the pair for her birthday. "Where'd you find this, Billy?" I asked the dog like he would understand me. It sniffed the shoe and started whimpering, picked it up and ran the opposite direction. "Billy!" I screamed and took off behind it. He stopped near a tree on the path to Widow's Creek and started digging as if to bury the shoe. This is such unusual behaviour for an animal. I told myself. Something is definitely not right.
I ignored Billy and walked further into the trees along the path. I'd walked this way so many times with Keira. And there it was. All I needed to confirm my suspicions. Just beneath one of the shrubs was Keira's other shoe with a trace of blood on it and a black handled knife lying beside.
I knew better than to touch it, so I ran back to the trailer and into the kitchen where I saw the knives. I looked at the holder and found five empty spaces but only four black handled knives on the bench.
I pulled out my phone and dialled the first person that came into mind. "Jordan!" I cried into the phone when he answered. Jordan lived next to my house and worked at the Police Department.
"Ella? What's wrong?"
"It's Keira! She's not here. Her shoes—" I took a deep breath followed by a heavy sob. "Billy found her shoes near the creek."
"There's bl—" I felt my eyes getting heavy.
"Speak up Ella!"
"Knife." That was all I remember saying before I blacked out.
I woke up later in the emergency room and saw Jordan speaking to an officer up front. I got off bed only to get dizzy and I held on to the bed post before I fell. Jordan ran to me. "Ella you need to rest." He held me and helped lay back on bed.
"What happened? Where's Keira? I need to see her." I tried pushing Jordan's arm away and get up but he didn't let me.
"She's missing, Ella." He spoke the words I dread to hear. When all I gave was a shocked look he continued. "Everyone's out looking. We've got the search dogs out there too. We can't confirm anything until we find her."
"The blood. There was blood on her shoe. And the knife. You couldn't find anything? There has to be something." I spoke without a pause. I need to know where Keira is. She was like my own.
"It was not hers. The blood, I mean." Jordan explained. "It was animal blood. And we couldn't recover any prints off the knife."
"How long was I out for?" I asked.
"Long enough." He replied.
"I need to get out of here." I told him feeling a tear creep out of my eye. "I need to find her, Jordan." He pulled me into a hug when I couldn't stop the rest of my tears.
"Ssshh! We are going to, Ella. I promise you."
Turned out I was dehydrated and the anxiety of what might have happened to Keira took a toll on me. It was dark outside when Jordan and I left the hospital. Quarter past ten to be precise.
"Where are her parents, Jordan?" I asked on the drive back home.
"We're trying to track them down. Right now they are our primary suspects."
I was always so disgusted by the thought of Keira's parents. She was treated like a slave. Every morning she would have a new bruise on her face or arms. Result of being beaten by her father. I never liked dropping her back home. I even insisted that she come stay with me. "That's my home, Ella. And they are my parents. Doesn't matter if they don't treat me as their child, but I need to treat them as my parents." She had replied. She was only nine, yet so wise.
Jordan dropped me home and headed back to the department. He was taking charge of this case since he knew how much Keira meant to me.
I couldn't sleep that night. My thoughts and dreams were all Keira. I hope she's okay. I thought about her and felt myself drown in anxiety all over again. I walked out into my balcony and looked up at the stars.
"You don't just see, Ella. You have to look." It was Keira's all famous sentence.
Keira and I used to always watch the stars together when she was over for dinner. Making jokes and telling each other really bad ghost stories. Sometimes we played a round of three-word-story and we got really creative building up the most ridiculous story known to mankind.
I laughed thinking about all that time we spent together. She never disappointed me and I made sure I never did either.
It's been just over seventy-two hours and there still is no sign of Keira. Her mother came home the following day finding the house under surveillance and her daughter missing, threw her hands up in the air screaming and bawling when she received the news. The police had ruled her out as a suspect as was Keira's father.
They had been out of town with Keira's sick grandfather and they had a strong alibi. With them out, the police were having a hard time with this case. Jordan contacted me every day even though they were getting nowhere close to finding Keira. He never told me that, but it was pretty clear to me. Anxiety was taking over me and I was not doing very well. I started a search party and we looked in so many places covering the towns on either side of ours as well. Walking into houses, speaking to people, but nothing helped. We were hitting a brick wall.
Come on, Keira. Where are you? I thought to myself feeling the scream that followed inside my head. I was up on Widows Creek walking through the overgrown grass and peaking over the railing watching the water flow. There's no way we can't find you. What am I going to do without you? I fell to the ground and clutched my head between my hands and laying them on my knees. Billy sat next to me pawing my hand as if he were comforting me.
"It's alright. We'll find her." I raised my head and started petting him giving back the same comfort I received. He was starting to grow on me. "Come on, Billy. Let's head back." I stood up and started heading down the path toward home, but Billy decided to run the other way. "This way, Billy!" I exclaimed, but he didn't listen. I ran behind to keep up with him until he stopped at a point, stared at the water and started barking.
I turned the direction he was facing and wondered what the dog was barking at. "What do you see, Billy?" I asked in a whisper more to myself than Billy. He barked in between pauses like he was trying to tell me something. There's no way for me to understand, Billy.
"You don't just see, Ella. You have to look." Keira's voice spoke in my head. Right now, I was seeing. I focused on the environment. The water running in the creek. It was black today, when sometimes it's green. The trees barely had leaves in this autumn weather. The cold breeze was making the branches sway and the few leaves it held were being blown off. I could hear a cricket in the distance, but couldn't see it. A bird chirped and flew onto the moist slope on the opposite side. It was pecking on the fallen leaves. Probably to find a lone worm it could use for dinner.
Hop. Hop. Peck. Hop. Hop. Peck. It continued. Hop. Peck. Peck. Peck. Peck. Some of the leaves slid down into the water for the force of its beak.
Billy went crazy with his barking and was not soft either. I looked at him and his gaze had moved away from the water and a little higher instead. I looked back to find the bird, but it would have flown away with fear of the dog's bark.
Billy had not stopped barking. Focusing on the opposite side, to where I saw the bird last, I strained my vision to as far as I could and there it was. "You don't just see, Ella. You have to look." A hand. I saw the fingers and the wrist. It was not moving. I thought I was seeing things so I squinted trying to have a better look. That's definitely a hand. And it explains Billy's bark.
I dialled Jordan, my go-to. "Jordan! You've got to get to Widow's Creek now. I see something." I explained to him the little that happened.
"Wait there, Ella. And don't panic. I'll be right with you." He ended the call and I looked out again to confirm what I saw was real. Billy was still barking. And the hand was still there.
"I'm not leaving, Jordan." My lips started trembling. "I'm not leaving." the last of my words broke.
It took a couple of hours for a team to get to the creek and examine what I had seen. I watched as the men on the other side pushed the fallen leaves aside and draped a cover over the dead body. Billy was still agitated and running in circles, continuously barking and whimpering from time to time. I nervously bit on my nails while Jordan was giving orders to his team. I felt a tear fall out of my eye. I knew what was happening and what was about to happen.
Jordan turned to me giving a dejected look. He then walked up to me and shook his head. The unspoken words circulating around us hit me and I jumped into his arms. "It can't be! It can't be." I cried out repeatedly.
He rubbed the back of my head soothingly. "I'm sorry Ella, I couldn't keep my promise."
I pulled away from him, rubbed my eyes and wiped my nose. "But you did Jordan. You promised to find her. Not save her." I blinked away my tears. "Are you going to find out who did this?" I spoke out with a hint of anger in my voice.
"We will!" Jordan exclaimed. "I'm not letting it go. What was done to her ̶ " giving a long pause he exhaled heavily.
I could hardly imagine the brutality of what had been done to Keira. It took a few minutes for Jordan to tell me what they had discovered so far until I closed my ears for I simply couldn't listen to his forced words anymore. I cried a little harder. She was just a little girl.
"An autopsy still has to be performed and further examinations as well, Ella. I'll drop you home before heading back to work. Will you be okay?" He asked concerned as I nodded while wiping away the endless tears out of my blurry eyes.
I spent the next few hours in a state of deep awe. I was hardly aware of what I was doing. I found myself putting my worn clothes back in the closet. And when I meant to put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, I was opening the bin instead.
What am I doing? I asked myself. I went out to the deck where I found Billy asleep. Sensing me he lifted his head looked at me and started whimpering. "I know, Billy. I feel the same." I patted his head and watched him drop his head back on the ground and close his eyes.
Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Keira was buried a few days after she was found. The entire town was present. Everyone having something nice to say about her. To have known that Keira had touched all their lives even in smallest of ways made me smile.
Keira was nine and murdered in cold blood. Assaulted by family and ruined of a childhood. She loved dearly and was kind. She was a joyful little being just looking to be a child. But it was all taken from her.
Keira was nine and what happened to her should never have happened to her or anyone. What happened to her was an act of a mindless creep. What happened to her was not her fault.
Keira was nine and now buried ten feet under. Her parents unable to face the world and her uncle behind bars.
Keira was only nine, and the world had lost her and what she would have been.