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drove off and the scene was empty again.
    It was as if they watched Skylar vanish, right before their very eyes. It was all Mary and Dave could do to keep from reaching out and trying to pull their precious daughter back—back into the picture, back into their lives.
    For several long seconds, silence filled the small room. Finally, Jim spoke up. “I think that looks like an SUV,” he said. On the video, the car had been blurry and indistinct. Officer McCauley agreed it could be an SUV. Shelia said nothing.
    Dave asked her if she knew anyone with a similar vehicle, but Shelia said she didn’t.
    “Do you know if any of Skylar’s friends have cars like this?”
    “No,” Shelia said, shaking her head back and forth.
    McCauley took Shelia’s statement that evening, so her word became the official story. His handwritten notes were the first recorded in the case. Shelia told McCauley she and Rachel picked Skylar up at 11:00 p.m. and dropped her off at the end of the street about 11:45. That meant, according to Shelia, that she and Rachel were home and in bed by midnight. That was possible, given that the three teens lived so close together. Everyone watching the video that night believed the vehicle on the video had to be someone else’s. It couldn’t be Shelia’s, because she drove a sporty silver Toyota Corolla—the one her stepfather had purchased for Tara before they got married.
    That left only one logical explanation—but it was the last one that Mary and Dave wanted to hear. After her friends dropped her off, Skylar had left in a second car. But who could she possibly have left with?
    People believed this theory for months; it became the basis for a general timeline of Skylar’s disappearance:
11:00 p.m.:
Skylar sneaks out of the house to joyride with her friends.
11:45 p.m.:
Skylar’s friends drop her off at the end of her road to avoid waking her parents.
11:45 p.m.–12:30 a.m.:
Skylar’s activity is undetermined.
12:31 a.m.:
Skylar is seen getting into the backseat of an unidentified gray SUV.
    For almost two years, people who have seen the video replayed online at various news sites have asked the same question: Why did no one recognize Shelia’s car as the one in the video? More important, why did no one realize that Skylar was never seen leaving the first time, with Shelia and Rachel? Why did it take trained law enforcement as long as it did to come to these same conclusions?
    These questions seem obvious now, but at the time no one wanted to believe that Skylar’s best friend would lie about the timing, especially not Mary and Dave. That soon after Skylar’s disappearance, Shelia was still simply a trusted teenager.
    No one suspected the manipulative liar she would turn out to be.
    ***
    That first weekend was a blur for Mary and Dave. Watching Skylar vanish on videotape had been harder than they realized. Worry, hope, fear, and despair filled the atmosphere of the apartment. They both felt the urge to do something,
anything
, to find their only daughter. At the same time, they felt too trapped and helpless to come up with an effective course of action. All they could do was cling to what the Star City police told every parent of a missing child. Trying to reassure Mary and Dave, the police told them not to worry because Skylar had probably gone on some kind of crazy summer getaway.
    Even though they knew Skylar would never be that irresponsible, Mary and Dave tried to talk themselves into believing she had. The only alternatives were too grim. “They said teenagers do this,” Mary said later, referring to what the Star City Police had told her initially. “They said we should give it the weekend.”
    They almost convinced themselves that Skylar would be home Sunday night. Almost. At the end of the weekend, she would magically appear. Her reckless, impromptu beach visit would be over, and their beloved daughter would be all apologies.
    The weekend was torture for Mary and Dave. They sat. They