Chapter 35
THE RING INGRID LARSEN WAS found wearing is Kylie’s.
Barb stares at her phone, where Cameron’s brief text has just confirmed that the initials KK are indeed engraved on the inside of the band. Somehow, one missing woman’s ring ended up on another missing woman’s finger. Ingrid Larsen is dead. Does this mean Kylie Kahl is dead, too?
Over the years, the subreddit thread dedicated to Kylie’s disappearance has produced a myriad of theories about what might have happened to her.
A small percentage still believes her husband, Freddie Tan, hired a hitman to kill her.
An even smaller percentage thinks Kylie ran away to start a new life somewhere else, with someone else.
But the rest have mostly reached a consensus: Kylie had to have been kidnapped by someone who watched her videos, staked out her hotel in Seattle, and then followed her as she drove south toward a hiking trail on the north tip of Seaside.
Her kidnapper must be one of her followers.
The only problem with this? She had ten million of them.
Barb can imagine that it must be easy to forget people are watching.
While social media can be a gateway to show your followers the kind of person you are (or at least the kind of person you want them to think you are), it’s also an open door for the uninvited to walk in. You can’t have one without the other.
Kylie’s final videos were all shot in Seattle.
She’d made a point to say that she was in the Emerald City for work, but offered no other details, and she never once mentioned the name of the hotel where she was staying.
When filiming in her hotel room, she was careful not to show anything that had the hotel’s name or logo on it.
But behind her to the left, her room’s large window framed the Space Needle, along with two other tall Seattle landmark buildings.
And in every video, on her right hand, she’s wearing the peridot ring her sister gave her.
In her videos filmed outside the hotel, Kylie’s followers got to watch as she drank cappuccinos in indie coffee shops, tried on shoes at a boutique that was “only a five-minute walk” from her hotel, and browsed a nearby bookstore that the concierge recommended.
With all this information, how hard would it really have been for someone motivated to pinpoint Kylie’s approximate location?
Not very hard, according to Reddit. Kylie’s TikTok was like an invitation to be kidnapped.
And then there’s Ingrid Larsen, who wasn’t on TikTok, but had two hundred thousand followers on Instagram.
Her last post is a video of her dog, Penelope, running happily on the trail in her neighborhood the day before she went missing, and there are at least a dozen more like it.
While Ingrid never tagged her location, her Cold Creek friends often tagged her in their posts, and they all hiked the same trail.
It wouldn’t have been hard to figure out where Ingrid liked to go.
Up until now, Barb’s theory was that whoever had taken Kylie and Ingrid must have been following them on social media.
But that theory falls apart when it comes to the newest missing reality star, Sydney Carlisle.
While she appears on many media sites because of her time on TV—Reality Bitch being one of them—the young woman has no TikTok, no Instagram, no Facebook, no Snapchat, no Twitter or X, not even a neglected LinkedIn profile.
Unlike Kylie and Ingrid, Sydney has no social media footprint whatsoever.
Kind of unusual for a twenty-five-yearold professional dancer who spent two seasons starring on a show called Showgirls.
It’s a day of phone calls for Barb, and this is what Axel Larsen must have meant when he called her a “pesky reporter.” Since Seaside PD has technically already investigated Sydney Carlisle’s disappearance, all Barb can do now is repeat the work that’s already been done by a police officer who isn’t happy to have a “pesky reporter” scrutinizing her efforts.
Barb looks through the copy of the case file that Officer Evans reluctantly handed over. Sydney has been missing for a week, and nothing’s even been done for the past three days. While Barb doesn’t agree, she’s aware of PD’s reasons for relegating her case to the backburner.
One: Sydney’s not from Seaside.
Two: PD can’t confirm exactly where she went missing.
Three: Unlike with Ingrid Larsen, there’s no dead body. Without a body, there’s no way to be certain a crime has even been committed.
And four: There’s no evidence that she didn’t disappear by choice. People walk away from their lives all the time, and at twenty-five, Sydney Carlisle is an adult who’s free to go wherever she pleases without notifying anybody.
Mind you, her mother would disagree.
“The officer actually suggested my daughter may have disappeared because she wanted to,” Sandra Carlisle tells Barb now over the phone. “I couldn’t believe she would say that to me. Sydney would never do that. Never.”
The missing person report was officially filed by Sydney’s friend Jasmine Hugo, and Barb scans it over as she continues her conversation with Sydney’s mother.
According to Jasmine’s statement, she was meeting Sydney and another friend in Seaside for a girls’ weekend.
There was to be plenty of pool time and a visit to the all-new Wonderland.
But Sydney never made it to the motel.
“When I saw Jasmine’s number on my phone that night, I instantly knew something was wrong,” Mrs. Carlisle says to Barb.
Her voice is dry and raspy; she’s either a smoker, or she’s been crying.
Barb is guessing the latter. “It’s the call no parent wants to get.
Dammit, I knew that bus wasn’t safe. But she’s stubborn as hell. Do you have kids?”
“No, I don’t,” Barb says. “But I was twenty-five once, and I’m still stubborn as hell. Just ask my therapist.”
Mrs. Carlisle explains that her daughter had originally planned to drive herself the three hours from Seattle to Seaside, but her old Hyundai was making a strange rattling noise.
Not wanting to miss out on her girls’ weekend, she opted to take the bus.
For only twenty bucks, there was an express bus that went straight from Seattle to Seaside, a steal.
“It was bad enough when she told me she was going to drive the three hours in the dark by herself,” Mrs. Carlisle says.
“But the Wonder Bus? Why is it so cheap? What kinds of passengers does that attract? What if she falls asleep and someone robs her? Or, worse, sexually assaults her? I told her to sit up front near the driver and stay alert.”
“Good advice,” Barb says.
“I dropped her off at the bus terminal at six that evening,” Mrs. Carlisle continues.
“I saw her get on, and she waved to me from the window. But I hated that she was going to Seaside. Given everything that’s happened there, I couldn’t understand why the girls had chosen it for their weekend getaway.
I’m sorry, I hope that doesn’t offend you. ”
“No need to apologize.” Barb has no desire to defend her hometown. She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. “Your concerns are valid.”
“Sydney was supposed to call me once she got to Seaside. But it was Jasmine who called later that night, to tell me Sydney never made it to the motel. Her phone was going straight to voicemail. So of course I called the bus company.”
“Were they helpful?”
“Not in the least, because nobody answered,” Mrs. Carlisle says. “So then I looked up the bus route online, and saw that they make one scheduled stop about halfway, at a rest stop.” She makes a sound of disgust. “A rest stop at night? How is that safe?”
Barb is beginning to understand that there are a lot of things Sydney’s mother doesn’t think are safe.
“The police told me they can’t be certain where Sydney disappeared, but obviously it has to be the rest stop. I feel like rest stops are where serial killers hang out, just waiting for some unsuspecting woman to pounce on,” Mrs. Carlisle says.
According to the case file, the rest stop was the last place Sydney used her cell, which was an old-school Motorola flip phone that had no texting capability. The police found it the following day, in a wooded area about a hundred feet away from the rest-stop bathrooms.
There was no way to know exactly how it ended up there.
Had Syndey taken a little stroll after using the facilities and accidentally dropped it?
Or had someone grabbed her and tossed it there?
Officer Evans noted that the rest stop has no cameras, and neither does the bus stop in Seaside where the Wonder Bus drops off.
Installing new CCTV cameras in that area is part of the deal Wonderland’s new owners made with the town when they took over the park, but somehow they haven’t gotten around to putting them in yet.
Barb makes a note to ask Cameron Wallace to pull the passenger manifest from the Wonder Bus that Sydney was on.
“I know I can be overprotective, but it’s always just been the two of us. And Sydney went through such a hard time doing the reality show. Showgirls was the worst thing that could have happened to her until now. It nearly broke her.”
Barb frowns. “What do you mean?”
“They call Las Vegas ‘Sin City’ for a reason. Of course I didn’t want her to go, but that’s probably exactly why she did,” Mrs. Carlisle says with sigh.
Barb couldn’t agree more, but she keeps that to herself.
“Two years of being on that show with strangers on the internet judging every inch of her face and body—it was terrible. When Sydney got back home to Seattle, she barely left the house for a month. She’d just lie around all day, glued to her phone and reading every damn thing about herself.
It wasn’t healthy. I convinced her to see a therapist, and after a few months—and a mild antidepressant—she started coming back to life.
Got a job at her old dance studio, moved into her own apartment, and deleted all her social media accounts.
Then she sold her iPhone and bought one of those ‘dumb phones’ so she wouldn’t be tempted to re-download any apps. ”
“Wow,” Barb says. That explains Sydney’s lack of social media. “For a twenty-five year old, that’s a big deal.”
“It’s my fault,” Mrs. Carlisle says, her voice choked. “I should have tried harder to talk her out of doing that show.”
“I’m sure you did the best you could,” Barb says. “You couldn’t have predicted what her experience would be.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be overstating to say that Sydney hated it at the end. All those keyboard warriors writing cruel comments every day—I’d like to see them say those things to her face.”
“They never would.”
“Trolls, all of them. There’s this one site, Reality Bitch, that does a poll every year ranking all the girls on Showgirls from most beautiful to least. Her second season on the show, Sydney came in last.” Mrs. Carlisle scoffs.
“Last? My Sydney? She was always the prettiest girl in every room she was in. Who are these awful people writing these awful things? All they do is tear others down. And let me tell you, they nearly succeeded.”
Barb swallows. She isn’t the freelancer who recaps Showgirls, but the polls on Reality Bitch—which get a lot of traction—aren’t conducted by the writers. The polls are all Glynnis, and their entire purpose is to compare women to other women and identify all the ways in which they fall short.
“I just don’t understand why people are so hateful,” Mrs. Carlisle says. “Imagine it’s your job to be deliberately cruel to people, to write the worst things you can think of about them. How could you even live with yourself?”
Barb’s heart sinks all the way into her stomach.
Sandra Carlisle is absolutely right. Reality Bitch might be Glynnis Glenn’s site, but Barb has happily contributed to it for years with her own cruel recaps of Trophy Wives.
She’s one of those awful people writing awful things, and now here she is, hearing how it actually hurts people. Why does she do it?
Oh, no reason, other than she’s an asshole, and it makes her feel better about her own pathetic life.
She is the very definition of an internet troll.
“To think she pulled herself out of the hole she fell into because of that show, only to have this happen,” Mrs. Carlisle finally says, her voice breaking. “But I think it’s because of that show that this happened.”
A few seconds of silence pass, and then a few more. After ten more seconds, Barb is beginning to wonder if they got disconnected. But then she hears a faint whimpering sound, and realizes that Sydney’s mother is crying softly in the background. And there is nothing Barb can say to make it better.
What she can do is not hang up. And so for the next ten minutes, even though there’s nothing more they need to discuss, she sits silently on the other end of the line and witnesses Sydney’s mother’s pain.
When they finally disconnect, Barb makes a decision right then and there. Her time at Reality Bitch is absolutely over.
She types out a text to Glynnis Glenn and hits send before she can over-think it.
G, I’m sorry, but I can’t write for the site anymore. It doesn’t align with who I want to be going forward. But thank you for everything.
Almost immediately, her screen lights up with a FaceTime call from Glynnis.
Barb doesn’t pick up. Texting her resignation isn’t cool, but hey, at least she’s not ghosting. She knows she owes the woman a conversation, and they’ll have it, but . . . not today. Today she has more important things to do, like finding out what happened to Sydney, and Ingrid, and Kylie.
See, Dr. Leto? I’m breaking the pattern. Maybe there’s hope for me, after all.