Free The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese: The Truth Behind the Headlines by Daleen Berry, Geoffrey C. Fuller Page A

observers, it seemed like Mikinzy 3 was doubting his girlfriend for the first time.
    ***
    The minute the Shoafs’ front door closed behind her, Colebank knew the two girls were lying. She and Spurlock had talked with Rachel for about an hour and a half and they knew little more than when they arrived. The interview—and Mikinzy’s reaction—told her Rachel was stonewalling as much as Shelia.
    Colebank just couldn’t figure out why, or what they had to lie about. Nonetheless, their behavior and attitudes turned her initial frustration into anger. She was angry that Skylar was still missing. Angry that she wasn’t getting answers. And angry that Rachel’s and Shelia’s parents seemed more concerned about their daughters’ rights than about finding out what happened to Skylar.
    It also bothered her that Shelia seemed to be asking more questions than anyone in her situation should be. “Anytime I talked to Shelia,” Colebank later recalled, “she’d say, ‘What have you figured out? What do you know?’”
    Shelia didn’t call Colebank or seek her out, but whenever the officer called to set up an interview, Shelia immediately wanted to know how the investigation was going. She didn’t seem intimidated by the constant questioning. Colebank thought she seemed amused.
    Colebank’s concern over Shelia’s motives turned to alarm when she learned that Shelia was asking Mary and Dave the same questions. She told them to stop telling Shelia or Rachel anything.
At all.
    “They’re wanting to know where we’re at in the case,” Colebank warned them.
    Both Mary and Dave waved her concern away, defending the teens as good friends who were simply worried about Skylar. Mary and Dave had known Shelia for many years and were confident that if the teen knew anything useful, she would say so. They didn’t know Rachel well, but they automatically felt protective toward her. They were afraid cutting off communication was the worst approach. After the tragedy of Skylar’s disappearance, the Neeses also felt like they needed the teens as much as the teens needed them.
    Colebank disagreed. She suspected Shelia’s “concern” was not at all what Mary and Dave thought it was. She suspected Shelia was doing something she’d seen other people do before—trying to insert herself into the investigation. Shelia could be doing it for the thrill of being on the “inside,” but Colebank was afraid that wasn’t it at all. Whatever Shelia’s real reason was, the young investigator was determined to find out.
    So Colebank grew more and more suspicious of Shelia’s continuous desire to know what was going on. At the same time, she also wondered what Rachel was hiding. Whereas Shelia probed for information, Rachel was wide-eyed and solicitous. Plus, the teen actress kept claiming she had been too drunk and stoned to remember anything.
    Looking back, Colebank realized how different the two teens’ demeanor was. Shelia was crafty. Rachel, though, came across as wanting to say the right thing. “It was a little more sincere, I guess you could say. You could sense shame or … a lot of it was fear. We got fear.”

Chapter 14
A Spy in the House?
    Officer Colebank wasn’t the only person who was frustrated and angry. Mary Neese was growing more frustrated by the day. Dave wasn’t far behind his wife. By the time Wednesday, July 25, rolled around, Skylar’s parents were addled and exhausted from worry, fear, and the slowly dimming hope their daughter was still alive. It had been three weeks since that horrible first weekend and they found themselves reacting like robots to one strange event after another. A rumor here. A sighting there. Along the way, they continued to help hang even more posters, walk the rail-trail yet one more time, and search continuously for any sign of their missing daughter.
    They still tried to go to work, even though they couldn’t always manage it. The constant, overwhelming sorrow made it difficult to get