Berry immediately liked Gaskins, his new partner. Both men were second-generation law enforcement. At one time Gaskins and his father were the only father-son state trooper team working the same West Virginia Detachment. While their personalities were like day and night—Berry, talkative and excitable; Gaskins, reserved and thoughtful—both men were driven. They also shared the same family tradition, which made for a good working relationship.
This was Gaskins’s and Berry’s second visit to the Huntington National Bank, Blacksville branch. The same bank had been robbed five weeks earlier, one month to the day before Skylar disappeared. Neither one of them yet knew that the bank robberies would draw them into the most complex case of their careers.
Chapter 12
Digging a Hole
Colebank sensed they were being watched.
She’d gotten that sensation as soon as she pulled her Star City Police cruiser into the Shoafs’ driveway just a few moments earlier. Sure enough, within seconds, a blonde woman appeared at the entrance of the house next door. Once she made eye contact with Colebank, the woman bustled down her walkway.
Still behind the wheel, Colebank grabbed her notebook and motioned to her male passenger. “Let’s do this,” she said, opening the car door. FBI Special Agent Morgan Spurlock followed her lead. In a suit and tie, Spurlock looked like a classic FBI agent—until he hoisted his ever-present backpack over his shoulder. Instead of briefcases, today’s federal agents carry backpacks.
Once outside the car, Colebank turned toward the blonde woman she thought might be Rachel’s mother.
“We’re here to see Rachel,” Colebank said.
“Oh, I’m not Patricia,” the woman said. “I’m a neighbor, Kim. Her mom’s not here. Can I help you?”
It had been almost two weeks since Colebank had spoken with Rachel at church camp. Colebank was eager to talk to her again, but the teen had never showed up at the station as she’d promised. The officer wondered if her first face-to-face with Rachel would make her as uneasy as when she’d met Shelia.
“Yes, Star City Police.” Kim had already pulled out her cell phone and was now talking to someone. “It’s about Skylar, I guess. They wanna talk to Rachel. You need to talk to them or come home. Okay?” Kim nodded, eyeing the officer and the agent.
Then she held the phone out to Spurlock. “Patricia wants to talk to you. She left for Virginia about a half hour ago.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” the FBI agent said, taking the phone.
Colebank listened as he introduced himself and gave Rachel’s mom their agencies. She heard Patricia’s reply, too: “Ask her whatever you want. We’re trying to help here.”
The last two days, Colebank and Spurlock had pulled video from the Circle K convenience store at one end of tiny Star City and from the Sheetz convenience store at the other. The recordings they requested from corporate headquarters wouldn’t arrive for at least a few days, but in the meantime they planned to scout the area for any vehicles resembling the one captured on the landlord’s surveillance video.
Colebank hadn’t conducted many interviews and was eager to pick up a few techniques from Spurlock. He was whip-smart, and Colebank expected that she would learn a great deal from working with an FBI agent. Even though Spurlock looked like he was in his early twenties, she knew he had extensive training in criminology and accounting, so he must be older than that. What she didn’t realize was that Spurlock had only been out in the field a couple of months.
By the time Spurlock returned Kim’s cell phone, she had already grabbed Patricia’s hidden key. Kim unlocked the front door of the Shoaf home and yelled up the stairs. “Hey, Rach! Star City Police are here to see you!”
The house was dimly lit, and Colebank could just make out the figures of two older teens who hung back, watching as Rachel walked over to the officer and the agent. Colebank didn’t recognize Kelly Kerns’s name, but she immediately knew the guy’s name sounded familiar. He was Mikinzy Boggs, Rachel’s boyfriend.
***
Rachel and Mikinzy had recently started dating—again. The two had first gotten together at the end of the previous October, drawn together by a mutual love of the stage. Rachel was a rising star in UHS drama circles. She had already played the lead in a couple of school productions, which was rare for a sophomore. Mikinzy wrote songs, played guitar, and sang lead in a band christened “Call Us Next Tuesday,” a name presumably chosen for its deliberately shocking acronym.
Mikinzy’s band mostly played house parties. Slender, with prominent nose and teeth, Mikinzy gave the impression of a young man not yet grown into his face or body. But he was the front man in a band, and as anyone who’s attended high school in America knows: That. Trumps. Everything.
Their school friends knew Rachel and Mikinzy’s relationship was rocky. They were always on-again, off-again. Some students said it was because Rachel used weed—Mikinzy was said to be an outspoken critic of drugs. Others said it was because he tried to control Rachel. Either way, by the time they were firmly committed to the relationship, Mikinzy’s stance on drugs had softened considerably. Perhaps it was because Rachel enjoyed frequently getting high with Shelia and Skylar.
Now they were newly reunited, and their bond seemed stronger, almost unbreakable. Almost.
***
Several minutes into the interview with Rachel, Colebank felt she was getting nowhere. “So when you dropped her off—I’m sorry, Rachel, I just want to make sure we have this right. Tell me again, where did you drop her off?”
The three of them, Rachel, Colebank, and Spurlock, were talking in the upstairs living room of the Shoafs’ split-level house. Rachel and Colebank were sitting together on the couch. Spurlock sat alone in a chair. Mikinzy and Sabrina were downstairs in the family room.
“I told you, at the end there,” Rachel whined, as if she was annoyed at having to answer the same questions again. “University Avenue. Skylar got angry and told us she didn’t want us to take her all the way to her apartment.”
“You dropped her off,” Spurlock said, “after riding around smoking marijuana?”
Colebank broke in. “Look, Rachel, we don’t care about the weed. We care about where Skylar’s at. Where did you guys drive around?”
Rachel looked thoughtful, then shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m not really sure where we drove around exactly. I was pretty messed up. I think we drove down Patteson Drive.”
Patteson was the main artery leading up to the WVU Coliseum, a basketball and athletics facility, where it formed a T intersection with Beechurst Avenue at the top of the hill. Colebank realized that if the girls had turned right, they would have gone right by the State Police Detachment when they headed down the hill and into Star City. A left would have taken them along the river, into downtown Morgantown.
“Thanks.” Colebank looked over at Spurlock, nodding her head. “There should be cameras.”
Many businesses along that stretch of Patteson had video cameras, but most focused inside the establishment, on the doors, and on parts of the parking lot. None really showed a clear view of traffic. But Colebank suspected Rachel wouldn’t know that.
“Yes, check the cameras,” Rachel said, “but I don’t know if you’ll see much. We stayed on side streets as much as we could.”
“Do you know the names of any of the side streets?” Colebank asked, masking a grin. She knew it was impossible to drive along Patteson and the side streets at the same time. She also knew that people who are lying often stall by repeating the question.
“The names of the streets? How am I supposed to know that?” Rachel looked bored. “They were just streets. With houses. Like a regular neighborhood. I wasn’t driving. Ask Shelia.”
“We have.” Colebank let the silence draw out as she intently focused on Rachel. At the same time, Rachel’s neighbor was repeatedly pacing around the area—visiting the kitchen, perching on the steps, sitting on the downstairs couch—as if unsure of what to do with herself. Colebank fought a mat
ernal urge to tell Kim to take a seat and stay there.
***
The young officer didn’t know it, but the same day she was interviewing Rachel, the two state troopers were paying their first visit to the Conaway place. When they pulled up, they saw a man digging in the backyard. As they walked toward the front door, the man came around the corner carrying a shovel. They recognized him from his police mug shot.
Darek Conaway held the shovel out from his body by the tip of the handle, the muddy blade waist high. Bare-chested, Darek was clean-shaven, his hair sweat-caked to his skull. The man was ripped, all corded muscle. He glared at the two troopers. Neither trooper was easily spooked, but they tensed when they saw Darek.
“Hello, Darek,” Gaskins said. “I’m Corporal Gaskins and this is Senior Trooper Berry. We’re here to chat with you a few minutes.”
Darek’s shovel blade lowered a little and he shrugged. “Okay.”
Neither trooper wanted to square off against an angry man with a shovel, so Gaskins and Berry tried to defuse the tension.
But then Gaskins asked lightly, “What are you digging back there, Darek?”
“Oh, I ain’t digging anything,” Darek said.
“You ain’t digging? You trying to hide a dead body or something?” Gaskins meant it as a josh, but that’s not how Darek took it. He drew himself up, his eyes large, and Berry could sense his heart hammering away.
Gaskins and Berry exchanged a look.
“I’m just joking with you, Darek,” Gaskins said.
Just then an elderly woman poked her head around the open front door, before slowly stepping out of the shadows and onto the porch.
“Hey, Grandma, it’s okay,” Darek said.
Chapter 13
We Got Fear
She walked down the steps to the front yard, clearly suspicious.
“What do you want?”
Gaskins spoke up. “We’re just out talking to people about those robberies. If people saw anything, heard anything. We’d like to come in to talk with you all for a few minutes.”
“I guess that would be okay,” she said and turned toward the house, but Berry didn’t move.
“Before we go inside, ma’am, just to make me feel safe, I need to ask you a question. There any guns here at the house?”
Grandma looked at him and chuckled. “Heh, this is Blacksville. There’s guns in all the houses around here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Berry said. “I grew up over on Jake’s Run. I just like to ask. I’m not saying you’re going to blow me away or anything, but where’s the closest one you got?”
“In my daughter’s bedroom.”
Berry grinned. “Oh, really. What kind you got?”
“Revolver,” she said, heading back up the steps.
“I love revolvers!” Berry glanced at Gaskins like a kid with a new toy. The gun that had been used in the bank robbery was a revolver, a type of gun that was increasingly rare. “Can I see it?”
“Sure, come on in.”
Berry went inside with Grandma while Gaskins waited in the yard with Darek. A few moments later, Berry came back holding a black revolver. The weapon looked just like the one from the bank security video.
***
Within a few hours, Gaskins and Berry returned with a search warrant. They wanted to confiscate the gun before Darek had a chance to ditch it. They brought along a State Police Special Response Team, a tactical team, in case Darek got squirrelly. He didn’t.
Hours later, the thirty-member team had confiscated not only the revolver but several other firearms and items of clothing they believed matched those worn by the bank robber. Even if the search turned up nothing more, Gaskins and Berry were convinced they had unfinished business with Darek Conaway.
***
Even as the two troopers believed they were close to solving the bank robberies, Rachel’s interview with Colebank and Spurlock was still in progress.
“I want to help find her, I really do,” Rachel said, “but I was really loaded.”
Colebank felt herself getting frustrated, but she managed to keep her voice calm. “You can’t drive on Patteson Drive and stay on side streets, Rachel.”
Colebank and Spurlock had decided to focus on the contradictions in Rachel’s story. With them as leverage, Rachel might be convinced to explain what had really happened. From the start, Colebank had been certain something bad had gone down—an accident, an overdose, something. She was equally sure Shelia and Rachel knew what it was.
“Just tell us exactly what happened, and we’ll take it from there,” Spurlock said. He pulled a map of Star City from his backpack. “Maybe this will help. After you dropped your friend Skylar off—at eleven thirty, right?—after that …”
Kim shook her head in disgust. She turned and went down the stairs. While Colebank tried to catch every word that passed between Rachel and Spurlock, Kim was downstairs talking to Mikinzy.
He was lying on the carpet, hands over his eyes. “The story was always she was home by 11:45,” he kept repeating.
“Let me tell you something, Mikinzy Boggs,” some of Kim’s words carried up the stairwell. “You don’t sneak out and get back home at 11:45. Okay? I snuck out plenty. You don’t sneak home at 11:45. You sneak out at 11:45.”
“She told me she didn’t,” Mikinzy kept repeating. He seemed confused.
So did Kim. She and Sabrina exchanged a long glance. “You know what, I’m—that doesn’t even make sense on any level.” She stomped back up the steps.
To observers, it seemed like Mikinzy3 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 Shel
ia’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 out of bed in the morning and to go to sleep in the evening. Their days had become nothing more than a string of minutes or hours, allocated to whatever needed to be done next. Maybe Dave had to give another interview, or Mary had to chase down another Facebook lead. Or they had to meet with police. Before long, they weren’t even sure what day of the week it was.
One day Star City cops again told Mary and Dave they had received word of several Skylar sightings in the Sabraton area. The Morgantown police, a much larger force, had been monitoring the tips, but Dave felt the need to do something. Anything.
The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese: The Truth Behind the Headlines Page 6