Never Tell
Alafair Burke
A nail biting thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat.When prep school junior Julia Whitmire is found dead in the bathtub of her family’s Upper East Side apartment, her left wrist slashed and suicide note resting on her dresser, Ellie Hatcher and her partner, J.J. Rogan initially write the case off as a suicide.Julia’s parents insist that their daughter would never take her own life, but Ellie knows all too well that family members can be the last to accept the truth.But when Julia’s mother appeals to her with the evidence – including a hand-written suicide note she believes her internet-obsessed daughter would never have composed – Hatcher is confronted with the possibility of a troubled young girl's murder.
ALAFAIR BURKE
Never Tell
Copyright (#ulink_a358e939-3f79-52aa-8f6e-99370ae310ec)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in the U.S.A. by
HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, NY, 2012
Copyright © Alafair Burke 2012
Alafair Burke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Version 1
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9781847562562
Ebook Edition © August 2012 ISBN: 9780007488612
Version: 2018-06-29
For my mother-in-law,
Ellie Hatcher Simpson.
Thank you for your name and
your son (not in that order).
Table of Contents
Title Page (#uf9b96243-4900-5336-a9c6-6961e6e0f7f5)
Copyright (#ud8687914-aa7c-5bbf-a78a-0dd539874a76)
Dedication (#u63f5d8ba-8f19-54ab-9ff9-ea055eaca5aa)
Part I: Julia (#u66b379fe-7ce5-528d-b22d-242aea7250b6)
Chapter One (#u79c7208d-6c56-5455-9637-828f6da9d8a9)
Chapter Two (#u49c350c4-cbfb-5426-9246-7b04be07f007)
Chapter Three (#uccbf2f9d-5226-5d58-be6b-0ec610122653)
Chapter Four (#u78d989b3-754f-5968-b1a6-9bb5ed671280)
Chapter Five (#ucb824a86-29e5-5c70-b200-c89f7be25ec4)
Chapter Six (#u0b848304-83f5-5394-a46e-21da0c790da7)
Chapter Seven (#ua9f5aa97-5d1a-5187-9f26-9f131744220e)
Chapter Eight (#u02899f17-3fbf-5493-a080-f0b9e95bbbdf)
Chapter Nine (#ude1bbfe0-0939-545f-935e-094b3cd7143e)
Chapter Ten (#u7c7ebbc7-8b2d-5c21-bc8e-662bc9d0e662)
Chapter Eleven (#u263789ba-df13-5491-a9e7-a5a7218bd668)
Chapter Twelve (#ua769d9a4-e9cd-5f55-870f-3c465106097c)
Chapter Thirteen (#u4543401d-e9c8-5592-8e7a-709994e36f68)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Part II: Ramona (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Part III: Casey (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Part IV: Adrienne (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Part V: James Grisco (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Part VI: Four Weeks Later (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
A Special Note to My Readers (#litres_trial_promo)
By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PART I (#ulink_b2b40214-3841-553b-91ee-5a1b7bc40cfa)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_fd7eca20-77a2-52da-be9b-6768b161605b)
Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor
“3:14 IN THE MORNING”
It has been twenty years, but at three-fourteen this morning I screamed in my sleep. I probably would not have known I had screamed were it not for the nudge from my husband—my patient, sleep-starved husband, who suspects but can never really know the reasons for his wife’s night terrors, because his wife has never truly explained them.
I could see the uncertainty coloring his face this morning as he sipped his coffee, already going cold, while I poured a fresh cup for myself at the counter, carrying the carafe to the breakfast table to top off his cup. Not uncertainty about my reasons for screaming—that was ever-present—but uncertainty about whether even to raise the subject. Should I ask her? Are some subjects better left in the subconscious?
I loved him so much in that moment—for loving me enough to care, for caring enough about me to let the unspoken remain so. And so, even though I would have preferred we peruse the newspaper together, sharing headlines with each other before he had to dash to work, I told him.
I screamed at three-fourteen in my sleep this morning because twenty years ago—more than half my lifetime ago—a man walked into my bedroom and changed my childhood forever. I did not hear him open the door but somehow I knew he was there. Maybe it was the sliver of light that penetrated the room from the hallway along with his footsteps. Or maybe it was simply because I had known for months that this moment—at some point, on some night—would eventually come to pass. When I opened my eyes, he was there, closing the door behind him. Unwelcome, but not unanticipated.
I remember expecting him to say something, to offer some flimsy excuse for entering my room, or maybe even to try floating some corny, flirtatious line, pretending like we were some kind of illicit couple. But he didn’t say anything. He took the four steps from the door to the foot of my bed in silence. I apparently wasn’t worth the expenditure of words.
I remember wanting to scream. Wanting to beat the shit out of him until he was dead. But it was as if some other part of my brain had already made the decision for me—no, at the time, it felt more like the decision had been made for us: the me in that room and the real me watching from afar. Neither of us would be screaming. We would not be defending ourselves. We would simply watch the bedside clock and wait for this night to be over.
I remember looking at the readout of the display, thinking about the squareness of those red numbers, how each digit could be formed by illuminating various combinations of seven straight lines forming two stacked squares. And the numbers on the readout at that one moment read 3:14—three-fourteen in the morning.
I saw those same numbers taunting me from my nightstand last night after my husband nudged me in our bed. They made me wish he had left me to scream in my sleep, unaware that my body and thoughts still, to some degree, belong to that man, and to that night, all these years later.
It has been twenty years since I stared at that old clock. Ten years since I married a man who was willing to look past my occasional tendency to burst out in tears during lovemaking. Seven months since I believed I was recovered enough to start this blog. One hundred and forty-three posts about my experiences as a survivor. Seventy-two thousand, eight hundred, and ninety words, not that I’m counting.
And with one scream at three-fourteen this morning, I felt once again like a victim.
But to my dear, sweet husband who was finishing his coffee before work, all I could say was, “I had a bad dream, babe. I think it was about those things that happened when I was young.”
And then after I kiss him goodbye and watch him make his way down the steps of our townhouse, briefcase in hand, I walk upstairs to sit at this desk and write down the truth that I still cannot speak aloud to the people who love me, even twenty years later.
Just like the woman said, it had been seven months since she’d first started the blog. “Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor.” Even the title reeked of self-indulgence.
It wasn’t surprising that she’d gone to the trouble of counting the individual posts and even the number of words. She was exactly that type. She was that prideful. High and mighty.
The blog had started out as an anonymous project, but this particular reader knew precisely who had authored the past seven months and, apparently, 72,890 words of this self-involved, self-help-through-writing garbage. The reader scrolled down to the comments section at the bottom of the screen, bypassing the predictable remarks from the undoubtedly overweight, housebound trolls who followed this woman’s crap: “Hang in there, girl.” “One day at a time.” “Thank you for your honesty.”
Those were the comments that were most disgusting—the posts that thanked this woman for deluding herself into thinking she had any kind of insight into her current existence and for enticing even more pitiful souls to read and admire her.
The reader contemplated the blank text box on the computer screen, then began typing:
“If you thought that night twenty years ago was bad, wait until you see what I have planned. You won’t remember a single time on the clock. Maybe a day on the calendar if you’re lucky. Maybe a week. Or maybe I’ll keep you busy for a month. One thing I know for certain: You will not live to write about it.”
The tapping sounds against the keyboard were so quick and intense that the typist did not hear the approaching footsteps until a second face appeared, reflected in the laptop screen.
It was too late.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_c37d6cdc-9e77-59f0-9518-df32526361d2)
Ellie Hatcher had arrived in New York City with certain expectations. Influenced by iconic images of Times Square, the Plaza Hotel, and the Empire State Building, she anticipated bright lights, rows of towering skyscrapers, wide sidewalks filled to capacity with suit-clad businessmen and their briefcases, and a perpetual soundtrack of car horns, sirens, and construction equipment.
But now that she’d lived here for more than a decade, Ellie knew that those iconic images painted a tourist’s picture of New York City. Outside the movie version of this city, most New Yorkers lived quiet lives on peaceful streets, venturing into the madness only as necessary.
This morning found her on Barrow Street, among the narrow, tree-lined diagonals that formed the West Village. Nestled between Washington Square Park and the Hudson River, this was Ellie’s dream neighborhood, removed from the commercial worlds of the Financial District and midtown, protected from the fumes and sounds of frustrated commuters lined up at the bridges and tunnels.
But today a different kind of chaos had found its way into that charming neighborhood. It was a form of chaos to which Ellie had also become accustomed over the years: marked cars, fleet cars, uniforms barking into shoulder-mounted radios, plainclothes and techs gathering physical evidence, even a fire truck and an ambulance. It was the chaos and energy of a crime scene, complete with the yellow tape that separated the normal from the aberrant.
She overheard the murmurs among curious pedestrians as she and her partner, J. J. Rogan, made their way toward the taped perimeter.
“What’s going on? They’re filming?”
“Law and Order, I think. Not the regular one. That got canceled. But SVU still films here. Or maybe it’s that new show—that one with the blonde in the hat. Or was that one canceled too?”
Another bystander noticed them flash their badges to cross the perimeter. “You see that? It’s for real.”
“I thought that was Gwyneth Paltrow’s house.”
“No, she was on Fourth Street. And she sold it a few years ago.”
Ellie could understand the source of the real estate gossip once she had a chance to take in the townhouse to which they’d been summoned. Four floors that she could count above ground, plus what looked like a basement. Twice as wide as the other single-family houses on the block.
Through the etched glass of the front door, she was struck by the spaciousness of the entryway. Larger than her entire living room, the area was empty but for a round table topped with a vase of what appeared to be five dozen fresh tulips and, in the back corner, a sculpture that looked like it belonged in the Metropolitan Museum. A fireplace and Prius-sized chandelier completed the look.
“Damn,” Rogan said.
In short, the place was nice enough to earn a “damn” out of Rogan, who wasn’t as easily impressed as his partner.
The woman who made her way down the curved staircase seemed born and bred to live in this kind of home. Black slacks and an asymmetric tan jacket, for a look that was simultaneously casual and sophisticated. Salt-and-pepper bob, fresh from a salon blow-dry. But when she opened the door, the redness of her eyes reminded Ellie that they weren’t here to admire her lifestyle.
The woman’s gaze seemed to fix on their clothing. “Who are you?”
“Detectives from NYPD, ma’am. Ellie Hatcher.” She offered her hand, but the woman surprised Ellie by grabbing her forearm.
“Thank God.” Ellie assumed she was being pulled to the staircase, but the woman guided them instead into an elevator. It was decorated with photographs of defining moments of New York City from the seventies and eighties. A bar owner writing on a storefront sign during the blackout of 1977: No Lights, No Food, but Plenty of Booze. The Ramones playing at CBGB. Transients lined up outside the Bowery Mission. John Lennon in a crowd in Central Park. The final Simon and Garfunkel concert. Forty-second Street back when it was fleabag hotels and porno theaters. A graffiti-covered 6 subway train. It was a New York Ellie had never known.
The woman pushed the button for the fourth floor and the elevator began to creak its way up.
“You have to do something. It’s my daughter. I found her. In the bathtub. The blood. The water was so red. Her face was—so white.”
“I’m very sorry, ma’am, but why are you still here?” Ellie realized her response sounded cold. “I mean, we usually separate the family from this kind of chaos.”
“They’re up there already, but they’re not doing anything. I heard what they said. They didn’t think I could hear them talking, but I’m not deaf. They don’t believe me. They’re saying she did this. To herself.”
When the elevator doors opened, two uniformed officers were waiting—one short and fat, the other tall and lanky, very Laurel and Hardy. They looked alarmed, and then resigned, when they spotted the badges clipped to the waistbands of the latest arrivals in the hallway.
“Crap.” The skinny one spoke first, trying to explain their presence upstairs while a civilian roamed freely through a crime scene. “We were heading down. Waiting for the elevator. Guess she beat us to it.”
Rogan clicked his tongue as the two officers stepped onto the elevator. Ellie could tell he wanted to clunk their heads together. “Get the hell outside and help protect your scene,” he said. “Hatcher and Rogan. Arrived at eleven-twenty-seven. Write it down.” He jabbed his index finger against the fat cop’s breast pocket for emphasis.
The elevator began its creaky descent. “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” their hostess said. “They’re not taking this seriously. Please listen to me. My daughter did not kill herself.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ec43f112-296f-5867-889f-1b2817e7a72b)
The top floor of the townhouse served as a separate residence, complete with its own dining room, living room, kitchen, and long hallway leading to the back of the building. The decor was white-on-white-on-white. Gleaming white high-gloss floors. White sheepskin rugs. White Lucite furniture. White throw pillows on the white furniture. Swank digs for servants’ quarters.
“Julia’s room is back here.”
From the rear of the apartment, Ellie heard footsteps. Voices. The clicks and squawks of radios.
“And you are?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Detectives. My name is Katherine Whitmire. Julia’s mother.”
“And no one has told you that you can’t be here?”
“This is my home, Detective. My daughter. I said I wouldn’t leave until homicide detectives arrived. I heard what they were saying about Julia, but I’m telling you: My daughter was murdered.”
The callout had come to them as a suspected suicide. When they had pressed for an explanation as to why the case required two homicide detectives, none was forthcoming. Ellie had a feeling she was looking at the numero-uno reason.
“We’re here now, Mrs. Whitmire. And I know you’re hurting. But you can’t be in this house right now, especially if you’re right about someone doing harm to your daughter.” Ellie caught sight of a uniformed officer on the spiral staircase and waved him up. “This gentleman’s going to take you outside. You can wait in one of the cars if you’d like, or he can take you to the precinct if you’d be more comfortable there. We just need to take a quick look around, and then we’ll need to talk with you in more detail.”
She could tell the woman wanted to argue but then seemed to think better of it and nodded. “I’ll let you go back and see for yourselves. I can’t look at her again. I can’t. I just—can’t.” She led the way down the stairs, the uniform following her awkwardly.
The noises Ellie had heard were coming from behind a closed door at the end of the hallway. She opened it.
“Why is this door closed with a civilian running around the crime scene?”
“Because it’s not a crime scene, and that crazy bitch slammed the door before she ordered us not to touch her daughter’s body.”
The two Emergency Medical Technicians were young, one with a crew cut, the other with too much gel worked through his spiked hair. They stood passively by the bedroom windows, placing themselves as far as possible from the white marble floor of the en suite interior bathroom they both eyed unconsciously. It was the spiky-haired one who was doing the talking. From his colleague’s shrug, Ellie could tell that he was also the one who’d gotten into some kind of confrontation with Katherine Whitmire.
“So some rich lady in a designer jacket gets a little irate about her daughter being dead, and the two of you decide to just stand in here, scratching each other’s balls? What the fuck is going on here?”
“You got the same callout we got. Sixteen-year-old girl, slit wrists in the bathtub. We came up. Probably only beat your two guys by a minute or so. And it was obvious what we were looking at.” He lowered his voice. “It’s a clear suicide, all right? The blade’s in the tub on the right side of her body. A couple hesitation marks on the left wrist, then a clean cut through the radial artery. The girl even left a note, right there on the bed.”
Ellie saw a lined sheet of yellow notepaper propped neatly against the throw pillows on the low platform bed.
“So tell me again why you’re calling this girl’s grieving mother a crazy bitch?”
“Because I guess she heard us talking and wigged out on us. I was about to go downstairs for the gurney. We were all in the bathroom, making that initial assessment, you know—the hesitation cuts, the clear slice, the note—and the next thing I know, she’s screaming at me to take my hands off her daughter’s body. Yelling at us not to touch anything at all if we weren’t going to investigate what happened. You’ve seen this place. These people obviously have some grease. So, yeah, we decided to stand in here and—what’d you say? scratch our balls?—until someone higher on the pay grade showed up. When we heard that doorbell, your guys went running out to cover their asses, but here we are, still scratching. I’ll stand here and scratch all day until the ME makes the call. I’m not taking on some rich, crazy bitch. How about you, Andy? You need any help over there, or are you all squared away?”
Another shrug from the quiet one.
Rogan was already making his way to the bathroom. It was spacious enough for the two of them, plus the two Emergency Medical Technicians and a few linebackers, but she was the only one who followed. She heard Spike call out behind her. “If you need me to explain how I know the girl’s bulimic, let me know. We aren’t as magically astute as you cops, but eating disorders go with depression. Suicide notes go with suicides. There’s nothing for us to do here.”
She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “Go save lives, guys. We’ll wait for the ME.”
Rogan looked back at her from the bathroom, hands on hips. “Real sensitive for a guy who spends his days helping people.”
“Some people would say that about you, Rogan.”
“You didn’t want to take him up on that bulimia thing? To me, she looks as skinny as every other white girl these days.”
When people imagine a woman soaking in a tub, they picture those cheesy commercials with a bath full of frothy bubbles, the woman’s hair tucked into a loose bun as she runs a loofah across her pampered skin, pausing to take a sip of wine in the candlelight.
There was nothing pampered about Julia Whitmire’s death scene. There was wine, but it was an empty bottle toppled on the floor next to the toilet. She was nude, but there were no bubbles or loofahs or candles. Just clear pink water, a few smears of dark red on the edge of the white ceramic tub, blood that had streamed from her left wrist. The straight razor had fallen into the tub on the right side of her body.
Ellie leaned forward and saw two superficial lacerations next to the source of the leaking blood. Slitting a wrist takes fortitude. Some people try for years before they can bring themselves to go through with it. This girl only took two practice strokes.
Rogan was seeing the same scene, drawing the same conclusions. “Looks like she held the razor in her right hand and pulled her left wrist across it. Right arm falls into the water with the razor. Left arm doesn’t quite make it back to the side.” Julia’s left hand was draped across her pubic area, as if trying to protect her privacy in death.
Ellie didn’t need an Emergency Medical Technician to explain the signs of this girl’s eating disorder. “Her skin’s loose. That’s one of the things the Emergency Medical Technician was probably seeing.”
“She’s dead. Skin gets loose.”
She peered between the girl’s parted lips. “No, it’s more than that. See how her face is bloated even though she’s gaunt around the eyes? And her teeth are gray. This girl was definitely making herself sick.” She walked out of the bathroom and over to the bed, bending down to read the hand-scrawled note, filled with scratch marks and second attempts, propped against the pillows.
She took in every scribbled word, but a few lines summed it up.
I know I should love my life, but sometimes I hate it … I’m constantly being told how lucky I am, but the truth is, my so-called privileged life hurts … It hurts to believe that I can never amount to the person I’m supposed to be. It hurts to feel so alone every second of the day, even when I’m surrounded by other people.
Poor little rich girl.
The final sentence said it all:
And that is why I have decided to kill myself.
She left Rogan to read on his own as she did a quick walk-through of the upper-floor residence. Medicine cabinet filled with high-end hair and skin supplies, but no prescription drugs other than a birth-control packet made out to Julia Whitmire. Hairclips and magazines in the nightstand. Top dresser drawer filled with expensive La Perla lingerie, more suitable for a soft-core porn shoot than a high school girl’s bedroom. No food in the refrigerator except two bags of baby carrots and a bottle of nonfat ranch dressing. Cabinets filled with liquor. Wine rack stocked with bottles.
Rogan trailed into the kitchen behind her. “So what do you think?” he asked.
“Looks like making herself throw up wasn’t quite enough self-inflicted damage for her anymore.”
“What were you saying about sensitivity?”
“Hate to say those tools were on to something, but this looks pretty clear-cut to me.”
“The note even had tearstains on it,” he said.
“And yet I noticed you didn’t touch the letter. Neither did I.”
“Don’t need to. Got that LASIK shit. These eyes shine like diamonds and focus like laser beams.”
She rolled her own, un-LASIKed, eyes. “You know what I’m getting at. Those idiots had a point about people who’ve got—what did he call it—grease? I don’t know who that woman outside is, but she’s clearly rich enough to have a setup like this, and she’s apparently powerful enough to set her own terms about where she’ll stand and what type of detective will be sent to her home.”
They were interrupted by a towering bald man in medical scrubs. Rogan squinted at Ellie, a sign that he recognized the new arrival’s cue ball but had forgotten his name.
“Ginger,” she called out with a smile. Cue ball had called her “Blondie” during a tense moment when they’d first met. Instead of making an obvious bald comment in response, she’d called him Ginger. Since then, he always returned her calls in record time.
“It’s Blondie and her stoic partner.”
Apparently Rogan wasn’t the only one in the room who struggled with names. “Bob King, you probably remember J. J. Rogan.”
“I’m told there’s a tearstained note,” King said.
“Our guys or the Emergency Medical Technicians?” she asked.
“Your guys. Two of them cowering on the front porch like bitch babies. I take it they’re a-scared of the mama grizzly out in the living room. Or the parlor. Whatever you call that big useless room down there.”
So much for telling Katherine Whitmire to wait outside.
“Yeah, there’s a note,” she verified. “Body’s in the tub.”
She noticed that he stooped slightly beneath the doorway as he crossed the bathroom threshold, a habit of the tall, she supposed.
While he was inspecting the body, Ellie rifled through the bright-orange Hermès handbag on the kitchen counter until she found an unlabeled vial of pills. She unscrewed the cap and held an orange-and-white capsule up to the light. “Bingo.”
When King stepped from the bathroom, she threw the capsule in his direction. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Adderall’s prescribed for depression?”
“Nah, more for ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—but, yeah, it’s a stimulant. Your extra-special law-enforcing eyes seeing anything that my awesome medical training is missing?”
They shook their heads.
“Haven’t seen slit wrists in a while,” he noted.
Despite the well-worn paradigm, Ellie knew that a cut wrist was a surprisingly ineffective method of death. The vessels in a wrist just aren’t that big. And bodies fight to survive. The vessels usually close before death occurs. That’s why cut wrists are often followed by cut chests or necks. But, in this case, Julia had the bathwater to help keep the blood flowing. The empty bottle of Barolo on the marble floor indicated some alcohol-related assistance as well.
Ginger placed his hands on his hips. “Well, I don’t know about you two, but I get paid the same whether I’m here or back at Twenty-sixth Street. If this were a subsidized studio at the Patterson Projects, I’d be heading back to the office. But for Mama Grizzly out there? I plan on doing everything I’d do if you told me this was fishy. Better the taxpayers’ dollars than my ass.”
“Then it’s unanimous,” Rogan declared. “Let’s do it.”
“Yoo-hoo.” Ellie waved a hand. “Not unanimous yet.”
“What’s the big deal? We’ll get CSU to work the place up. Talk to a few of the girl’s friends. Canvass the neighborhood. Make sure we’re not missing anything.”
“Or we could get the hell out of here and eat lunch.”
“Again: Sensitivity and what not?”
“I don’t know. A hamburger sounds pretty good right now. Or does your girlfriend still have you watching your cholesterol, old man?”
Rogan shook his head. “I never should have mentioned that shit to you. Like riding with my moms. A whiter, blonder, more freakily intuitive version of my mother. It’s not like you to walk away from something so quickly, Hatcher.”
“I walk away when I know my time’s being wasted. You two stay up here if you want, but I’ve got a court appearance to make. I’m going to talk with the mother, then I’m out of here.”
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_e6734a17-7543-5edb-bfe4-7e18df00dad9)
Ellie found Katherine Whitmire perched on an upholstered banquette at the bottom of the stairs, a cordless phone to one ear. The officer who was supposed to have accompanied her outside stood by. “I’ve been with her the whole time,” he offered as a consolation.
Ellie was beginning to wish she possessed whatever power this woman seemed to exert over others.
Katherine used her free hand to wipe away smears of black mascara when she noticed Ellie approaching.
“I have to go, Bill,” she said into her phone. “One of the detectives just finished up in the bedroom. She might have some news. But you’re heading back into the city, right? Immediately?” She muttered a soft thank-you before clicking off the line.
“My husband,” she explained. “He’s getting a helicopter back from East Hampton. He was talking about a meeting out there. I think he’s in a bit of shock.”
“It’s not unusual.”
“Right. I guess you’re used to dealing with these sorts of things, aren’t you?”
“You never get used to it. Tell me about your daughter.”
“She would never do something like this to herself.”
Everyone thought they could spot suicidal tendencies. Ellie knew better. Some people advertised their misery with unshowered days spent self-medicated in bed, but just as many kept up appearances as workers, students, neighbors—fathers. It had taken Ellie nearly twenty years, but she’d come to the truth the hard way.
“So tell me about her.”
“I don’t understand, Detective. What is it that you want to know?”
She wanted to know how this woman saw her daughter. Mostly she wanted this woman to feel like she had been given the opportunity to speak before Ellie left her to deal with the long and messy aftermath of a suicide. “I know you overheard a couple of the police officers talking to the Emergency Medical Technicians. Obviously you believe they jumped to the wrong conclusions. So tell me what you want us to know about Julia, so we can have the whole picture.”
Ellie followed the woman to the living room, where she removed a framed photograph from the mantel. “This was two Christmases ago.” Katherine Whitmire had not changed since the family portrait, but her daughter looked much younger with no makeup, plump cheeks, and pink lips struggling to cover her metal braces through a smile.
“Is that your son?” Ellie pointed to the preppy-looking boy seated next to Julia.
“Billy. Bill Jr., yes. He’s a freshman at Colby now. And that’s my husband, Bill. I haven’t called Billy yet. I—I don’t know how to. He doesn’t handle change well. He’s very regimented, very planned—like his father. Not like Julia at all.” She smiled sadly. “Julia’s more like me. Or was. Independent. Free-spirited. Stubborn as all hell, but so tolerant and accepting and loving of every person she ever met. She had the kind of heart that wanted to save us all.”
“Did you need saving?”
Her wistful expression was replaced by an intense stare. “I didn’t mean myself personally, Detective. I meant—you know—society, the world. She wanted to save the world. I warned her. I told her that some people just couldn’t be saved. They might have been decent people under other circumstances, but that kind of poverty, living on the streets—it makes people desperate. It makes them dangerous. That’s what happened here. One of those—animals—killed her. They probably stole a few bucks from her purse. That’s what this is about.”
The words were tumbling out too quickly to follow.
“You sound like you have someone in mind.”
“They’re kids from the street. I found them here with her—maybe two months ago.”
“And who were these kids?” In the world of the Whitmires, kids from public school might be considered bad influences.
“I don’t know if they’re orphans or in foster care, or maybe they’re just homeless. I don’t know their names. There were maybe three of them here—two boys and a girl, I think. Ramona would know. Ramona Langston. She’s Julia’s best friend. I told Julia not to have those people over again, but, God knows, my daughter never did listen to me. Bill said she’d only hold on to them closer if I tried to push them away. What can you do, though? She was all grown up.”
“I was told she was sixteen?”
The woman blinked as if Ellie’s response was a non sequitur.
“So these kids were here two months ago?” Ellie asked. “You didn’t see Julia with them since then?”
“I’ve only been back once since then.”
“I’m sorry. You told us when we arrived that this was your house?”
“It is, but Bill and I only come in about once a month or so. We’ve been going back and forth between here and East Hampton for years, but we’ve tapered off our city presence. When Billy went to college, Julia moved upstairs.”
“And before Billy was at school?”
“Then the two of them would be here. Oh, they were inseparable. I don’t even know how to tell him what’s happened. Julia followed Billy everywhere. She has never liked being alone. That was probably why she befriended such desperate people. You know, I was here more often before Billy went to school. She had me. She had him. Now—”
“So, I’m sorry—Julia was basically living here alone?”
“Most of the time. That’s right. She preferred the city. Her school. Her friends. Everything is here.”
And this woman had called the street kids the orphans.
What else would a good, thorough, concerned detective ask? “Did she have a boyfriend?”
“A boyfriend?” Like the word was foreign.
“A guy in her life?”
“Well, my daughter certainly dated, I’m sure. But no one special I know about.”
“I found birth control pills in your daughter’s medicine cabinet. I thought that might indicate she was seeing someone regularly?”
“Oh, those? She’s been on the pill since she was fourteen. Bill’s idea, actually. Better safe than sorry.”
There was something about Julia’s father’s name that felt familiar to Ellie. Whitmire. Bill Whitmire. She couldn’t quite place it.
“What about other prescriptions? We found Adderall in her purse.”
“Adderall? I’ve never heard of it. I mean, she would get headaches. Maybe—”
“It’s a prescription stimulant used for ADHD.”
Katherine shook her head. “She didn’t have anything like that.”
“Did she see a psychiatrist?”
“No. Lord knows I do, as do a lot of her friends. But Bill thinks therapy and antidepressants and all of that are overused by overindulgent rich people. I suppose to you we might seem to fit that description.”
“Your husband’s name sounds familiar to me. Do you mind if—”
“CBGB.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t tell me you’re so young you don’t know about CBGB?”
Ellie and her brother, Jess, had probably logged a couple thousand hours at the celebrated music venue before it succumbed to escalating rent prices. “Of course I know it.” Then the light clicked. Bill Whitmire was the famed producer behind bands that had played with the Ramones and Blondie.
“It’s a John Varvatos boutique now,” the woman said sadly. “Can you believe that?”
Ellie stayed with the woman in the living room while CSU officers came and went. She heard about the school Christmas play Julia wrote in the fifth grade, where Santa Claus went to a doctor named Cal Q. Later to lose weight so the reindeer could still fly with him in the sleigh. She learned that Julia had been the one to write her older brother’s college admission essays. She found out that Julia had organized the first chapter of Amnesty International at Casden, her Upper East Side prep school. That she loved dogs but was allergic. That she once met Bono through her father and got his autograph—not for herself, but to donate to a charitable auction for an animal shelter.
Ellie interrupted on occasion to voice aloud the questions raging in her head.
Didn’t you notice your daughter had an eating disorder? Why would you ask that? She’s naturally thin. Right, despite that chubby adolescent picture on the mantel.
Did it dawn on you your daughter might have reasons to feel lost? Have you heard anything I’ve been saying to you, Detective? Have you been listening to yourself?
I assume this note is in your daughter’s handwriting? Handwriting can be imitated. You must have learned that on CSI.
And though she pontificated about her daughter and their family for well more than an hour, Katherine Whitmire never once mentioned the fact that her sixteen-year-old bulimic daughter died in her bathtub from a slit wrist, leaving behind a suicide note propped against her overstuffed down pillows.
Sometimes it was easier to deny undeniable facts than to acknowledge a painful truth. Ellie knew that better than anyone.
She took a deep breath of fresh air once they left the townhouse, as if freshly oxygenated blood could wash away her unwanted thoughts, imagining what it had been like to grow up with Bill and Katherine Whitmire for parents.
“Some house, huh?” Rogan had been spared all but a few sentences of the conversation with Katherine and was still looking up with envy at the four-story abode.
“Her dad’s Bill Whitmire. The music producer.” She rattled off a handful of the projects he’d backed.
“You and that loud white-boy music. Give me Prince any day. I wanna be your … lovah!”
“Hurry it up, will you?” She looked at her watch as she continued her march to the car. “I’ve got that hearing scheduled. Told you I’d make it in time, but only if you drop me by the courthouse straight from here.”
“I thought you said when we got the callout your testimony wasn’t that important. You said the DA could get by without you if necessary.”
“Well, I don’t see anything here that counts as necessity. You said yourself no one reported anything out of the ordinary here over the weekend.”
“We’ve still got uniforms canvassing the neighborhood,” Rogan said.
“They haven’t found any witnesses, and they’re not going to.”
“You know what’s going to happen if we blow this off, right?”
“Katherine Whitmire will huff and puff and blow our house down?”
“Seriously, Hatcher, what is up with you? We’ve worked cases before that we knew weren’t going anywhere. We don’t usually walk away.”
He was right, of course. How many hours did they waste a year on gang shootings where there was no such thing as a witness? But those cases were different.
“It’s just pathetic, Rogan. Some people have kids just to satisfy their own fucking egos. That girl was sixteen years old and was expected to be all grown up because her parents were too cool and too impatient to have children in their lives. On the pill for two years already. Obviously bulimic, and her mom doesn’t even notice. Apparently hanging out with street kids just to get some attention from her parents.”
“Shit, you’re confusing me. Now you’re saying we’re missing something?”
“No, Rogan, none of that’s suspicious. It’s totally, completely, one hundred percent predictable, and it all adds up to a reason why she’d kill herself. This girl slit her wrist as a final cry for help, and her mother refuses to see it. You do what you want, but I’m going to the courthouse.”
They’d wait for the medical examiner’s report. An autopsy. Forensic findings. Science. It would all sound more official and indisputable than the experienced instincts of cops and EMTs. But there was no doubt in Ellie’s mind that by the end of the week, Katherine Whitmire would be informed with all finality: her daughter killed herself. Maybe then she’d look in the goddamn mirror and start facing the truth.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_c83190ea-899c-5588-a1c3-4f84c9dec064)
Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor
“FORGIVENESS”
Forgiveness. Such a simple word, but one of the hardest things to find within oneself and give to others.
I have heard people say that it is impossible to heal without forgiving those who have hurt you. But it is not my place to forgive the man who raped me. Shouldn’t he be the one who is expected to look into himself to understand why he did what he did? Shouldn’t he be the one who has to ask himself how he could take from me everything he stole—not just the physical act, but the trust, my power, my agency, my sense of self?
Maybe he should be the one who has to try to forgive himself. That is not for me to do.
One of the things he stole from me was my mother. I remained silent for so long—allowing that man to come to my room night after night—because of my fears for her. My loyalty to her. My utter dedication.
She had always been my only parent. Dad left before he could make any kind of impression that stayed with me. My mother was alone for long and frequent periods. Not completely alone. She had me. But alone as a woman. Now a man she had learned to love—whom she had brought into our home—was coming to me at night and threatening to kill us both if I said anything.
But I never blamed her for his presence in my life. She couldn’t know, I told myself. He put on such a kind face for others. How could she possibly suspect he carried a monster inside of him?
No, it wasn’t the abuse that took away my mother. Ironically, it was my absolute, unquestioned faith in her that eventually trumped the fear he had instilled in me. I waited until he was working late at night. It was just the two girls at home together, like the old days. We ate those silly finger sandwiches we used to make when I was younger. They were chicken salad on cut Wonder Bread, but for some reason the dainty size and funny name brought me so much joy. (Who would eat a finger sandwich? I used to squeal.)
As the hours passed, I started to feel the darkness of his imminent return. Girls’ night would soon end. He’d hug my mother and say how happy he was to be home. As she fell into sleep, he’d say he was still restless. I’m going to read downstairs. I don’t want the light to bug you, honey.
It had happened often enough that I could picture him entering my room. I was even beginning to note certain patterns. If he was drunk, he was clumsier. It usually hurt less, but took longer. If he was tired, he’d be in a rush to make it happen. Choking me with his belt seemed to help him go faster. I’d also learned by now that my period wouldn’t stop him. He would leave me there on a bloodied sheet, admonishing me to clean up the mess before morning.
So I told her.
I still remember the expression on her face as she raised that stupid Wonder Bread stick to her mouth. She halted midway and returned it to the fancy platter we’d taken out for the occasion, a gift I’d received from the neighbors for my confirmation.
“Maybe you had a dream.”
“Mom, I think I know the difference between reality and a nightmare. And it’s not just one time.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I can tell the police. Maybe they can protect us.”
“That’s not what I meant. What are we going to do with you?”
“Mom” I’m not sure what punctuation to include after that single word but I can still hear my own voice in my head. Part observation. Part scream. Part question. Period, exclamation point, question mark?
And then she’d picked up the platter and dumped the remaining sandwiches in the trash. “I had no idea you hated me so much. Making up these kinds of lies. I forgive you, but don’t ever tell these stories again.”
She forgave me.
You might think I hate my mother. I don’t. I never did. I simply lost her along with everything else I lost because of that man. And without making excuses for her failures as a mother, I choose now to blame him, not her. I choose to believe that, just as he broke me, he broke her. We were both his victims.
I also choose to believe that, even though it is too late to tell her, my mother knows I have forgiven her.
Forgiveness. Such a simple word.
The reader looked around to make sure no one was watching. After the last time, more caution was necessary now. Today’s screen was the public computer at a crowded luxury gym on Broadway. The distracted employees at the front desk hadn’t stopped the few people who had breezed by on cell phones with a quick wave of acknowledgment, a gesture that was easy enough to mimic. In a worst-case scenario, a cover story about forgotten running shoes would provide a nonmemorable escape.
Time to type a comment to reward the most recent posting.
“Did it ever dawn on you that your mom hated you for driving away your father and making her a single mother? Did it ever dawn on you that your desperation to have a father figure is what drew that man to your bed? He should have choked you harder. He should have made you bleed more. Keep writing. I’m reading. And I’m coming for you.”
Five minutes after the comment appeared online, a phone call would be made to Buffalo, New York. “I’m calling about a prisoner named Jimmy Grisco. James Martin Grisco.”
That phone call would change everything.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_fbf4780b-d429-5a63-b9a1-720ffa383b48)
Katherine Whitmire bolted the door after the last of the strangers finally left.
The house was quiet. It felt strange to be surrounded by silence in this house.
The Whitmires were a family that liked living with noise. Bill—on those rare occasions when he was there—was always listening to newly recorded tracks or blasting through demos in search of undiscovered talent. The kids had inherited his constant need for sound.
With Julia, it was usually music, but lately she’d developed a penchant for old-fashioned suspense movies. Billy, on the other hand, was a 24/7 news junkie, flipping incessantly between CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, the latter bringing him to frequent bouts of shouting at the television. Then, of course, there was the yelling between the townhouse floors. Despite Katherine’s efforts to persuade her family members to use the room-to-room intercom system, the rest of the Whitmires insisted on communicating with one another through screams: Did you erase my shows off the TiVo again? … Is anyone else hungry? I’m calling in for sushi! … Julia, get down here. Tell me what you think of this tape. … How many times do I have to tell you not to call it “tape” anymore, Dad?
Now the house was silent in a way she could not remember since those first months, back when she was overseeing the renovation. It was quiet like this during that short period when the construction was finally done and the painters had removed their ladders and tarps but the movers had not yet arrived.
Julia was just a baby then, not even babbling yet. Billy had just celebrated his third birthday at a party only his father could have planned—twenty toddlers and their parents for a private afternoon concert at Joe’s Tavern featuring a live performance from Hootie and the Blowfish. She remembered standing in this same foyer, admiring the feel of the clean, smooth marble against her bare feet, foreseeing the life her happy family would enjoy in this spectacular home.
She’d felt so lucky back then. Bill Whitmire had lived an amazing life filled with talent, celebrity, travel, music, and beautiful women. Katherine was not his usual fare. Neither a model nor a singer ingenue, she was already in her early thirties when she met Bill. An architect with a modest career, she’d landed her biggest contract yet with the remodel of a Tribeca loft for the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins.
She’d been on her way out, blueprints in hand, when Bill showed up for a coffee. Coffee turned into cocktails. Cocktails evolved into dinner. And, much to her surprise, she’d woken up in his bed the next morning.
She expected it to be a one-night stand, her first—and probably only—in a lifetime. But Bill called her three days later, and three days after that. Within two months, she started to wonder if they were actually in a relationship.
And then one day, to put her mind at ease because she was nearly two weeks late for her period, she peed on a stick. And then another, and another. With the trilogy of pink plus signs lined up on the top of her toilet tank, she saw the quick end of her exciting new romance. Bill was fifty years old and had never been married. This story could not have a happy ending.
She gave him the news, fully expecting him to ask when she’d be getting it taken care of. But then, once again, Bill Whitmire surprised her. He smiled and hugged her, and then he cried and said, “Thank you for this.” He held her hair when the morning sickness started. He rubbed vitamin E lotion on her belly every night, promising to love her even if her entire abdomen ended up striped with stretch marks.
Six months into the pregnancy, he asked her to marry him, so they “could be a real family.” They exchanged vows on the beach at Montauk. Elvis Costello officiated with a minister’s certificate from the Internet. Their wedding announcement was placed prominently in the New York Times Sunday Styles section. She changed her name.
When she became pregnant a second time, with Julia, it was Bill who proposed buying a townhouse with ample space for the children to play. The top floor could be an apartment for a live-in nanny to help Katherine juggle the additional chaos that would accompany another child.
Bill Whitmire had settled down. He was a good father. And he’d chosen her to do it with. She remembered actually spinning around with glee on this marble floor that quiet day, staring up at the bright white molded ceiling so far above her, feeling like she’d won the love-and-marriage lottery. She was living a fairy tale, and Bill was her Prince Charming.
Two months later, the house was no longer empty. Billy with his Toy Story bedspread. Julia with her moss-green, elephant-themed nursery. Katherine’s custom closet was bigger than the apartment she’d last rented as a single woman.
Mira, the full-time nanny, had her own living space upstairs.
To this day, Katherine still wondered how long it had been going on—right beneath, or above, her nose—before she realized. She’d come home one afternoon to find the familiar sound of Bill’s music emanating from his study, but no Bill. The elevator parked on the top floor. No sign of Mira, either.
She’d taken the stairs so they wouldn’t hear the elevator. If she was wrong, she could always tell Mira she was just slipping in some extra exercise.
But her suspicions had been right. Bill was the one slipping something in.
Now, more than sixteen years later, she had watched her daughter’s body being wheeled out of that same top-floor apartment. The detectives she had insisted upon were gone. Everyone was gone.
She walked to the bar cart in the sitting area and poured a crystal highball glass full of Bill’s vodka. She hated herself for thinking about his first (known) infidelity when she should be thinking about Julia.
But in many ways, that moment was inextricably entwined with this one. When she saw Bill—panting and sweaty behind the bent-over nanny, his unzipped, age-inappropriate designer jeans clumsily dangling—everything had changed. She should have left him then. She should have taken what the prenup had to offer and made a normal life with her two, still happy children.
But by then, being Mrs. Bill Whitmire had become the very core of her identity. For their marriage to fail would mean that she was nothing but a cliché, the glamorous carriage having turned back into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight. It would mean that Bill had never really chosen her. She would be just one in a long string of women—the one who’d gotten knocked up.
And so watching and monitoring and controlling her husband became her full-time job. If Bill said he was meeting a reporter at Babbo, she would walk him there—and step inside to say a brief hello, supposedly “on her way” to some errand or another. If he had to fly to California for the Grammys, she accompanied him—even if the ceremonies coincided with Julia’s first piano recital. When he announced that he was more productive at the in-home studio out in Long Island, she chose to believe that Julia and Billy were mature enough to stay at the townhouse on their own.
She felt the vodka burn its way down her throat. She held in the sting, wanting it to burn, wanting to feel something. She’d seen the way those detectives looked at her. Judging her. Casting her squarely inside whatever stereotypes they held about superficial women who valued their looks, handbags, and silverware above the things that actually mattered.
She knew she deserved every last bit of their scorn. She should have been here with her baby girl. She should have been here to protect her. The least she could do now was to find out who did this to her daughter. The police might be gone, but no way was this over.
The silence was disrupted by the sound of keys in the front door. She knew who would be walking in, but part of her wished it would be her son instead. She’d called Billy at school with the awful news, but even if he made it onto the last flight to New York, he wouldn’t make it to the city before nine tonight.
“Kitty?”
Bill’s eyes were red and damp. He rushed to her and wrapped his arms around her.
“My God. Our Julia. Our baby—” His voice broke.
How many times had she wanted him to run to her like this? To need her. To hunger for her love and loyalty like an addict craving the next hit. She felt tiny and fragile against his smothering embrace.
“It’s going to be okay, Kitty. We’re going to get through this. Together.”
He grabbed her even tighter, palming the back of her head and pressing her face against his cashmere overcoat. She smelled the sweet floral scent of Cartier perfume on his collar and, for the first time in nineteen years, found that she did not care what became of this marriage.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_18e06d12-e071-54bf-b74b-be2f894acbb0)
Usually, Ellie enjoyed her time in the Criminal Court Building. She’d heard it described as “hurry-up-and-wait time.” She understood the term all too well.
Other people—usually the lawyers—ran up and down the hallways, struggling to herd witnesses like cattle. They negotiated last-minute deals, always in shorthand. ROR—release on recognizance. JOA—judgment of acquittal. SOR—sex offender registration. Stip-facts bench trial—stipulate that the facts offered in a bench (no jury) trial establish the material elements of the offense. Meanwhile, she sat and chilled on a courthouse bench, usually with some lawyer’s discarded newspaper in hand, collecting her pay—overtime if she wasn’t on shift.
But on this particular day, waiting in the hallway outside Judge Frederick Knight’s courtroom, her thoughts kept jumping back to Rogan’s look of helplessness as she’d shut the car door on him mid-sentence. She could tell her partner was pissed. The last words he said to her before she walked away were: “Should we place an over-under on how long it is before Tucker gets a phone call?”
He was probably right. The Whitmires would call their lieutenant. Or have the commissioner call their lieutenant’s captain to call their lieutenant. Or have the mayor call the commissioner—however those kinds of people managed to pull the strings that were beyond reach of the rest of the population.
But Ellie was the last person on earth who was going to make it easy for them. Nothing about their celebrity or money could change the fact that they’d raised a sad, screwed-up kid who ended it all, drunk and naked and bloody in a bathtub.
“Hey, you. I thought you said you had a callout.”
She had texted Max Donovan, the assistant district attorney handling today’s motion, on their way to the scene on Barrow Street. She wasn’t on a texting basis with most prosecutors, but this particular ADA was her boyfriend.
“Turned out to be a quickie.”
“Wasn’t aware we had quickie murder investigations these days. Oh, there was that case on Wooster last year where a guy thought his neighbor was murdering a woman, but the woman turned out to be a girlfriend doll.”
“This one had a real body, but it was a clear-cut suicide. Well, clear-cut to everyone but the family.”
The amusement fell from his face. “And you’re okay with that?”
“Any reason I shouldn’t be?”
“All right. Forget I said anything. I’m glad you could make it. Maybe time for a quick lunch when we’re done here?”
“That’d be good.”
Owing to their work schedules, they hadn’t seen each other for four days. Given the consistent routine they’d developed over the last year, four nights apart was practically a long-distance relationship.
The bailiff stuck her head out of the courtroom door. “The judge is ready.”
Ellie’s testimony took all of sixteen minutes. She was there to defend against a murderer’s postconviction motion for release. The defendant alleged that his attorney had offered ineffective assistance of counsel by allowing Ellie to interrogate him about the death of his girlfriend. The necessary information was straightforward. The defendant had been the one to call the police, claiming he’d come home and found her bludgeoned on the kitchen floor of their shared Chinatown apartment. He wasn’t in custody. He wasn’t even a suspect. His alleged “counsel” was a real estate lawyer who lived in the apartment next door and came over to offer friendly support.
It wasn’t the lawyer’s fault that Ellie noticed the tiny lacerations marking each blow on the victim’s body, or the sharp, raised edge of the defendant’s pinkie ring, or the red marks on the defendant’s knuckles. Just a single, plainly phrased question about a possible explanation for those three circumstances had been enough for the defendant to break down.
It would have been a straightforward hearing if it weren’t for the fact that Judge Frederick Knight was known throughout the New York criminal justice system as the Big Pig.
Maybe the term was unfair, a reference to his considerable weight of at least three bills. But Ellie suspected the nickname would never have come into play if the man did not strive at every second to out-misogynize Andrew Dice Clay.
The nonsense began as she rose from the witness chair after testifying.
“I know you.”
If Ellie had been at a nursing home in Queens, she would have expected the line from a patient—the really, really old one, who didn’t know anyone anymore.
“Ellie Hatcher, Your Honor. This is my fifth time here.” She rattled off the defendants’ names. She always remembered them. She could tell you the dates of the arrests, too. Probably their dates of births as well. Ellie’s brain was weird that way.
It was all a blur to Judge Knight, who shook his head with her mention of each case. “Only five times here, and I remember you? Take that as a compliment, Officer.”
Detective.
“You keep yourself in shape. That’s good. Pretty girl there, right, Donovan?”
Max didn’t miss a beat. “No one’s as fit as you, Your Honor.”
Corny, Ellie thought, but what was the right response to that question, under the circumstances?
“And what do you, Mr. Donovan, think about your witness’s attire today?”
“Your Honor?” Donovan asked.
“Off the record for a moment,” he said to the court reporter. “Only five visits to the courthouse and yet I remembered this witness. And let’s be clear here. We all know what it is about her that would have stood out in my recollection. And now here she is in these butch pants—trousers, let’s say.”
Part of Ellie wanted to tell this man that beneath her simple gray flat-front pants she wore a black thong bikini, but she dressed for court this way for a reason. She dressed this way because most judges and jurors had expectations. And they weren’t the same as Knight’s expectations.
Knight wasn’t interested in her inner monologue. He was on his own roll.
“When I first joined the bench, I heralded the first wave of lady litigators. They always wore skirts. High heels. Silk blouses. And then came the menswear trend, and these women started showing up in trousers and oxford shirts. Now the gals have it back to the way it was. Dresses. Skirts. Legs. Heels. Except for you, Officer. Hatcher, you said? You’ve got your best assets covered up. You look like a boy. Not to mention, my clerk tells me that you and Donovan here are quite the item. I mean, what if Donovan showed up here tomorrow in a dress? How would you feel about that?”
She saw Max looking at her. Willing her. Begging her. Don’t. Do. It.
“I would like to see that, Your Honor. But ADA Donovan was just telling me he wore out his best red silk number modeling it for you.”
Max was doing his best in the hallway to appear annoyed, but he couldn’t help breaking a smile.
“Red silk? Really? Seems a little hoochie-momma.”
“Oh, you’d be much classier as a lady fella, I’m sure. Brooks Brothers. Burberry. All those blue-blood labels. Sorry, I sort of lost it with the Big Pig.”
“Whatever. The motion’s a slam dunk. Even the defendant’s own allegations make clear he was playing the grieving boyfriend at the start. Besides, there’s no way for the state not to be all right with Knight. He sides with the prosecution like he’s on autopilot. I could tell him the court should enter an official finding of alien invasion, and he’d do exactly as I said.”
“I’m praying I’ll still get home at some reasonable hour tonight. You?”
He let one hand wander to her waist. “As soon as I’m done here, I have to go out to Rikers. Gang shooting. Guess a few weeks in a cell has someone second-guessing his loyalty to a coconspirator. I’ve got to hammer out the cooperation details.”
“Could the good citizens of New York please stop fucking killing each other for a night?”
“Do you at least have time for that lunch? I’ve got a few minutes.”
“Depends. You still got that red silk dress?”
“Those pants are a little butch.”
“Not underneath,” she said. He returned her smile. When her cell phone buzzed at her waist, she tensed up at the sight of Rogan’s name on the screen. He had predicted a shitstorm to follow their walking away from the Whitmires’ townhouse. Apparently it had taken little more than an hour for Julia’s parents to work their way through their network back to her cell phone.
She held up a finger while she took the call. “Yeah?”
“We shouldn’t have left. You told me yourself Donovan didn’t really need your testimony.”
“I take it Tucker tore you a new one?”
“It’s not just the Lou. We should have at least gone through the motions. Like I said: Protect the crime scene, talk to the friends, do what we do.”
“Like I said, it’s a waste of time.”
“That’s why I let you convince me to leave. But we screwed up.”
“And how exactly did we do that?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there. Meet me out on Centre Street. I’m three minutes away.”
Neither one of them said goodbye.
Three hundred and seventy-five miles northwest of the city, in Buffalo, New York, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sugarman took a call from the front desk. “There’s a James Grisco here to see you.”
“Okay. Send him back.”
She had heard all the terms used to describe the other stars in the office. Dan Clark was a natural born trial lawyer. Joe Garrett was a genius in front of a jury. Mark Munson was a courtroom machine.
Munson? Really? She’d popped in on him in trial one day to see what the fuss was all about, only to hear him argue that the defendant’s story was all an “elaborate rouge.” He even touched his fingertips to the apple of his cheek, just in case she was wondering if she’d misheard the word that was supposed to be “ruse.” An elaborate rouge. What an idiot.
Jennifer Sugarman? Ask around the office, and they’d say she was a hard worker. Diligent. Detail oriented. Conscientious. Burns the midnight oil. When men were good, they were born that way. If she was just as good—better, even—it must have come by way of tremendous effort.
She didn’t mind those descriptions, though. She’d made it out of misdemeanors into felonies faster than any ADA on record and was now first-chairing murder cases after only five years in the office. Rumor was she’d be named a unit chief in the next round of promotions. And when the big boss finally retired, her reputation for working hard would come in handy. Voters liked to know they were getting their money’s worth with public employees. She planned to be Erie County’s first female district attorney.
And she was, in fact, harder-working than most. Take the call she got from the jail this morning about Grisco, for instance. Most of the ADAs would have blown it off. At most, they would have passed the information on to the parole officer and forgotten about it.
But she had been the one to negotiate Grisco’s release from prison, and she knew ex-cons feared the official power of a prosecutor much more than they feared the often-empty threats of parole officers. If there was some reason for a person to call the prison inquiring about Grisco’s whereabouts, she wanted Grisco to know she hadn’t forgotten about him. She wouldn’t hesitate to pull his ticket if it came to that.
He removed his baseball cap when he entered her office. It was a good sign he knew who was in charge. She told him about the call that had been made to the prison that morning. She reminded him of his release conditions, going so far as to read them aloud from his file.
“You don’t need to remind me, ma’am. I got no plans of messing this up.”
“Good to hear, Jimmy. I stuck my neck out for you.”
“Yes, ma’am. I appreciate it.”
She shook his hand and walked him to the hallway. As she watched him make his way toward the exit, she found herself hoping he might actually find a decent life for himself. He wasn’t even forty yet.
It wasn’t until she returned to her office that she realized she should have covered up the note pad on her desk, the one on which she had scribbled the information she’d received from the prison. It was a stupid mistake, but Grisco hadn’t seemed to notice. His eyes had remained on his shoes the whole time, anyway.
She flipped the pad to the next page. It was nothing. She was certain of it.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_4f739408-8289-530c-80aa-e8553cb03a77)
As Casey Heinz jogged up from the 6 subway train at Bleecker, he was thinking that, all in all, it had been a good day.
Ramona’s school had some kind of teacher in-service Monday, so she’d been able to spend the day with him, starting with a snack at AJ’s. On a day without Ramona, he might have had only a chocolate-chip muffin, forcing himself to chew slowly, careful not to show his hunger. The fact that he was getting sick of that particular food option would have helped to slow the pace of his eating. He was tiring of nearly all the choices at AJ’s, one of the only places left on the Lower East Side that allowed them to hang out without buying too much. A cup of coffee first. A couple hours later, a muffin. Sometimes Brandon or Vonda would drop in with enough collected change for another cup of java.
AJ’s was starting to feel like home.
But, today, time wasn’t a problem, because Ramona was there. Girls who carried themselves like Ramona were never asked to leave, no matter who they consorted with.
Cost wasn’t an issue, either, when Ramona was around. He appreciated how Ramona paid. Not just the fact that she paid. Of course she would, given their different circumstances. But it was cool how she did it. Always ordering something for herself, too, even when Casey knew she wasn’t hungry enough to finish it. And she always seemed to order the things that Casey liked. Today it was chicken breast, mozzarella, and basil on a baguette. She’d picked off a bite or two, then, when Casey had finished his muffin, she’d pushed the sandwich toward him, insisting, “I’m so full. Here, can you finish this?”
As they had walked through SoHo after lunch, he had studied her profile. He’d never known a girl as pretty as Ramona. She wasn’t classic pretty. Or even cute pretty, the way most straitlaced high school girls were, with their misplaced confidence and upturned noses. Ramona was actually sort of funny-looking. Her nose was a little too long and flat, and he knew from memory that one of those big eyes of hers fell a little lower than the other. And her lips were on the thinnish side, her smile a bit crooked. But all of those features together? Ramona was, by any definition of the word, a stunner.
Even cooler was the fact that she didn’t try to be pretty. No highlights in that short jet-black hair of hers, the ends chunky as if cut with a razor. Plus, she wore way more vintage clothing and black eyeliner than acceptable among Upper East Siders. Plus, she hung with the likes of Casey.
Usually, they goofed around the neighborhood, making fun of the pretentious, surreal art galleries and the wannabe punk kids. And usually one of them had someone in tow—he with Brandon, or her with Julia. But today it had been just the two of them.
And they hadn’t just goofed around. Today, Ramona had really talked to him.
“I’m worried about my mom. I think she’s depressed or something.”
Casey couldn’t imagine what Ramona’s mother could possibly be depressed about. From what he could gather, her full-time job was to shop and work out, but he held his tongue.
“I called Julia last night. She thinks I should talk to my dad. Tell him that she’s spending so much time holed away in her room all day.”
“See this?” Casey had pointed to his own face. “This is a look of pain and humiliation that you talked to Julia about this before me.”
“Sorry.” She had leaned over and grabbed his shoulders from behind in a quick half-hug. “She’s just constantly in contact, you know, with text and IM and everything.”
Texting and instant-messaging. Two other conveniences of a normal life that Casey did not enjoy. At Promises, there was a fifteen-minute limit on computer use unless it was related to a job search, and residents didn’t have their own phones. Anyone who wanted to contact him had to leave a message at the front desk. Or with Joy, who worked the register at AJ’s from noon to five on weekdays. She was a sweetheart that way.
The pain and humiliation were feigned, in any event. Ramona and Julia Whitmire had known each other since the single-digit years. Casey’d met Ramona only last December, when they were both hanging out in Washington Square Park. Casey would probably never be Ramona’s best friend, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t his.
Julia was supposed to meet them today at AJ’s but had once again been a no-show. In her absence, he made a few comments at her expense.
“Julia thinks you should tell your dad because as much as she bitches about those parents of hers, she’s a daddy’s girl. She’d love nothing more than a chance to tattle on her own mommy to get a few brownie points from her dear, distant dad.”
“Harsh.”
“Not harsh. Just true. You know I love that girl. Almost as much as you.” Then he’d felt awkward, but Ramona didn’t seem to mind the comment.
After the stroll through SoHo, they headed west and hung out on the High Line, then they walked store to store in the Village. Maybe if Julia had ever shown up, she would have forced them to buy something. Not Casey, of course, but Ramona.
When Ramona announced at two o’clock that she needed to go home, he wondered whether she would have stayed longer if Julia had been there. Then he wondered whether he’d ever stop having those kinds of thoughts. He hated realizing how insecure he was at heart.
But then he’d bumped into Brandon on Eighth Street, holding his latest cardboard sign. “Trying to get home to Louisiana. Need $55 for a bus ticket.” If Casey had a hundred dollars, he’d bet it all that Brandon had never been south of D.C. Brandon was cockier than Casey. Bolder. Undoubtedly a little shady. Casey had been careful to keep his distance those few times while Brandon did hand-to-hand sales in the park. Casey made a point never to challenge Brandon, though, or to show that he was worried. Brandon was the only guy Casey had met on the streets who was willing to accept him.
It had been a good day.
By the time Casey made it back to AJ’s, it was just shy of five o’clock, so Joy was still there. As usual, she snuck him some food with his coffee. Sometimes it was pumpkin or zucchini bread—whatever they had the most of and would likely have to throw out at closing—but today he scored with a piece of lemon cake.
“Got a message for you, too, hot stuff.” Joy was only twenty years old and had a bleached white pageboy haircut and a sleeve tattoo on her right arm, but she liked to talk like a 1960s waitress slinging hash in a Waco diner. “Your favorite little lady called.”
“Natalie Portman’s finally seen the light, huh?”
“You know which one I mean. Little Missy Ramona’s sweet self. She said to call her faster than green grass through a goose.”
Casey was pretty sure that was Joy’s choice of words, not Ramona’s. He made a show of taking his time leaving AJ’s, then hightailed it to one of the neighborhood’s last remaining pay phones, at the corner of Lafayette and Bleecker. After four rings, he heard Ramona’s familiar outgoing message: “Hey, there. It’s Ramo—” Typical. Ramona had a habit of leaving her cell phone silenced, in her purse, and otherwise ignored. Any other person his age could leave a message and expect a call back on his cell within an hour, but Casey didn’t have that luxury. He fished through his wallet for his list of contacts, dropped fifty more cents, and dialed another number.
Ramona’s father answered. Damn it. “Hello, Mr. Langston. This is Casey Heinz. May I please speak with Ramona?”
Casey had met Ramona’s parents only once, that night when they walked out during intermission—some play they called a “cheap Albee rip-off”—and came home early to find Casey and Ramona watching a marathon of Arrested Development. They didn’t know the details of Casey’s living situation, but it hadn’t taken them long to infer from his appearance and vague responses to their questions that he was not from Ramona’s usual social circle. He made a point of using his best manners on the rare occasions he called her house.
“Ramona is—well, she’s very upset right now. She’s in her room. I think her mother’s trying to talk to her.”
“Did something happen? I got a message from her and it sounded urgent.”
“She wanted to speak to you, huh? Well, I guess I should let her know you’re returning her call, then. Just a moment, Casey.”
He heard murmuring in the background, and then Ramona was on the line. “Casey, oh my God, Casey. Please come over. Please. I need you here.”
I need you. How many times had he fantasized about Ramona saying those words? But in his imagination, her voice had been soft and vulnerable. Now she barely sounded human, the syllables coughed from her throat between rasped sobs.
“It’s Julia. It’s Julia. She’s gone, Casey. Julia’s dead. She killed herself.”
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_b9a5208c-6943-5c6d-bdd3-413900f463fd)
Ellie was sitting on the front steps of the Criminal Court Building when she spotted Rogan pulling a U-turn to meet her at the curb. He greeted her with a frustrated shake of his head before tearing up Centre Street.
“So where have we been summoned to now?” she asked as she snapped her seat belt in place.
He remained silent for another six blocks before he finally spoke.
“Don’t try to pretend that what we did today was good work, Ellie.” He rarely used her first name. “We were in and out of there faster than a straight-to-cable movie, and we spent the whole time looking to prove the conclusion we came to within a minute of entering that house. We’re no different than those lazy uniforms and smart-ass EMTs. We assumed the spoiled little rich girl slit her own wrists, and we made sure not to notice anything that might pull us in another direction.”
“You seemed fine when we left.”
“And that’s on me. I deferred to you, but I should have realized you’re the last person who should’ve made the call on this.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I made the same call as everyone else there—except that girl’s mother, who’s not exactly objective.”
“We both know it’s not our job to make calls that fast. You mean to tell me nothing else is going on here?”
Ellie looked out the window, as if that could buy her some space.
There were days when she was grateful that she and Rogan could navigate their way through an interrogation with only exchanged glances. She had even learned to accept the fact that Rogan could tell she was PMS-ing before she could. But if there was some way to lobotomize the part of his brain that knew about her father, she’d saw open his head personally.
Ellie had never talked about her father to anyone at the NYPD, not even Rogan. But she couldn’t help that other people knew her background. After police in Wichita had finally arrested William Summer and named him as the College Hill Strangler, she had decided to go public. She thought the pressure would convince the WPD to reverse its decision and finally award her father’s pension to her mother. Turned out to be a shit idea, but she had to try.
Now, because her face had been on Dateline and in People magazine, everyone knew that—despite what she appeared to be now—she had once been the little girl who could never accept the fact that her cop-daddy blew his brains out. She wondered if that was all people saw sometimes.
As Rogan pulled next to a fire hydrant in front of the Whitmire townhouse, she knew that even her partner suspected that, maybe—just maybe—a cold night at the side of a rural road in Wichita was the real reason why Ellie had been so quick to chalk up Julia Whitmire’s death to suicide.
But Ellie knew her true motivations. She was being rational. She was acting on evidence, not emotion; on reality, not old memories. Julia had killed herself, and her parents needed to come to terms with that fact.
She noticed the engine was still idling. “So are you going to tell me why we’re here? Who’d the Whitmires call?”
“Everyone, from what I can tell. I did, in fact, get an earful from the Lou. So I asked myself whether we might have missed something.”
“I know, you told me that on the phone. So what is it? What did we miss?”
He turned off the engine, only to turn it right back on. “You know what kills me? This is exactly the kind of thing that you would notice. Think, Hatcher. Think about what we saw today.”
“Are we playing twenty questions? Is it bigger than a bread box? Animal, mineral, vegetable? Oh, wait, I know: it’s a screwed-up kid in a bathtub. Will you hurry up and tell me before we knock on that door again? Because we better have a damn good reason if we’re going to disturb that woman just as she probably finished downing her third Valium to try to get some sleep after watching her daughter’s body hauled away.”
Rogan turned off the engine again, and this time took the keys out of the ignition. “You were the one who spent the most time in her room,” he said. “The girl was a junior in high school—a member of her generation in every way, with every gadget in the world at her fingertips.”
“Yep, every luxury money could buy, and what did it do for her?”
He shook his head once again. “You still don’t see it? Ellie, you really got to get yourself right on this one.” He didn’t wait for her to get out of the car before making his way to the front door.
Katherine Whitmire started talking as soon as she opened the door. “It’s about time. The EMTs. The medical examiner. The two of you. Your lieutenant. I lost count of the number of times I heard the word suicide today and the number of people who used it. All of you were lining up to tell me and my husband that our daughter did this to herself. And every single time, I believed it even less. I tried. I begged.”
A man came up behind her and placed a protective arm around her shoulder. “I’m Julia’s father, Bill Whitmire. Please, come in.”
As she took the seat offered in the parlor room adjacent to the foyer, Ellie found herself distracted by the man’s appearance. He was more than twice her age, but still handsome with longish salt-and-pepper hair, a strong jaw, and the kind of wear and tear considered distinguished on a man.
But Ellie kept seeing the man he’d once been—the man photographed so many times with famous musicians from her childhood, at spots like Studio 54, with then-starlets like Ali MacGraw and Carrie Fisher. He still carried himself with a rock-and-roll edge that looked out of place in this sterile townhouse. Ellie suspected the man spent little time here and had nothing to do with a decorating plan whose only reflection of his personality was relegated to photographs in the elevator.
“I’m sorry about that outburst at the door,” Katherine said, “but we’re just … we’re … our daughter—she’s gone. And I’ve had to spend the entire day on the phone arguing and fighting and twisting arms. But you’re back now, right? You’ll be listening to what I’ve been trying to say? You’ll be treating Julia’s death as a murder?”
This was exactly what Ellie had been afraid of. They were getting these people’s hopes up for no apparent reason. She was going to let Rogan handle this one on his own.
“We can’t imagine what you’ve been through today,” he offered. “We want to be absolutely sure that we didn’t miss anything before—”
“Before you shut the folder on my daughter and move on to your next statistic.” Bill Whitmire wiped away a drop of saliva that stuck to his lip as he’d hissed the words. “You write case names on a whiteboard, don’t you, Detective? Like on television? Have you crossed her name off the board yet?”
“Mr. Whitmire—”
“You say you want to be sure you didn’t miss anything, but we all know the first twenty-four hours of an investigation are absolutely critical.” Apparently the record producer spent a lot of time watching crime TV. “You should be talking to our neighbors and her friends, checking sexual offenders released nearby, doing whatever it is you people do to find whatever monster came into our home and did this.”
Uniformed officers had already knocked on the doors of the other townhouses on the street, but no one reported seeing anything out of the ordinary.
She wished Rogan would cut to the chase, but he was still trying to manage the parents’ expectations. “The initial evidence, as we explained earlier today, indicated that your daughter was alone in the bathroom and was the author of the note we found on her bed.”
“Well, at least this time you avoided the S-word, but I think my wife and I heard the same message enough times today.”
Katherine placed a hand on her husband’s knee. “Please, let the detectives speak. They’re here for a reason.”
Rogan paused before continuing. “When we were in your daughter’s room earlier, I noticed that her homework all seemed to be printed out. Did she usually do her schoolwork on a computer?”
Ellie noticed the blankness in Bill’s face as he looked to his wife for the answer. Katherine nodded. “That’s all kids do now. They take laptops to school for note taking. Seems recently she was even getting by just with her iPad. Kids can’t even spell or print correctly anymore without a computer there to help them.”
“So if she had to write a letter of some kind—”
“She doesn’t write letters. No one her age does.”
Ellie now saw what Rogan had been trying to get her to realize on her own in the car. Julia’s suicide note had been handwritten, on paper. And not just written on paper, but drafted on paper, with false starts and crossed-out words.
Julia’s mother saw the point as well. “Julia wouldn’t have written that ridiculous note on her bed. Even if you could convince me that my daughter authored that note, I simply can’t imagine her putting a pen to paper in order to do it. She would go to her computer. Even if she wanted us to have a handwritten version, she’d draft it first on the screen, then write it out afterward.”
“That’s why we’re here. The note had scratched-out words and other scribbles on it, like Julia had started fresh, with a blank page, when she sat down to write.”
“No, not Julia.”
“What about the paper? The letter was on yellow lined paper, with holes punched on the side. I don’t recall seeing a notebook like that when we went through her room. Do you keep yellow legal pads around the house?”
This time it was the wife who looked to her husband. “No, not to my knowledge,” he said.
“So that means she didn’t write the note.” Katherine sounded hopeful for the first time since they’d encountered her. “That proves she didn’t kill herself.”
Ellie finally had to cut in. “It’s always possible she got the paper somewhere else. We’re here because we didn’t want to jump to conclusions.”
But like his wife, Bill Whitmire had already reached his own verdict. “Based on your experience, Detective, do you really believe this scenario makes any sense?”
“We’d like to take another look around if you don’t mind.” Rogan was already on his feet, heading for the stairs.
They searched through every drawer, cupboard, box, and bag of the four-story townhouse, but nowhere did they find a yellow legal pad matching Julia’s supposed suicide note.
“You mentioned your daughter’s friends, Mrs. Whitmire. Who knew Julia best?”
It was a simple question, but Ellie recognized the look of determination on Rogan’s face. They were going to rework this case from the beginning, whether she liked it or not, and he blamed her for the crucial hours they had already wasted.
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_46982793-24a6-52d5-b651-b91a416a6a94)
When asked who knew her daughter best, Katherine Whitmire hadn’t hesitated. Answer: Ramona Langston. And they wasted no time, heading straight to Third Avenue for the drive to the Upper East Side.
If the day had been about developing an opinion of wealthy Manhattan mothers, Ramona’s mother helped clear Ellie’s palate. Where Katherine Whitmire was cold, aggressive, and uptight, the woman who answered the door at the Langston household came across more like an organic earth-mother type. She introduced herself as Adrienne—first name only. Given the woman’s long, loose natural waves, Columbia Sportswear pullover, and blue jeans, Ellie could not imagine her fitting in with the other Upper East Side mothers at Casden, the ultra-elite private school where Julia Whitmire and her best friend, Ramona, were juniors.
Even the apartment felt warmer—more lived-in—than the townhouse where Julia’s body had been found earlier that morning. Whereas the Whitmire house was adorned with Edwardian-era settees that were more impressive than comfortable, this place was filled with oversize sofas, plush rugs, and throw pillows that looked like you could actually use them. By the Whitmires’ standards, the apartment might even be considered modest.
The man who walked into the living room after Adrienne excused herself to get Ramona seemed startled to see them. Rogan raised his eyebrows in Ellie’s direction, a signal that he, too, had noticed the man’s literal flinch at the sight of a black man in his house.
“Hello.”
They repeated the introductions they had already made with Adrienne at the front door.
“Ah, I see. I’m Ramona’s father, George Langston. Is it really necessary to pull our daughter into this? She’s having a very hard time understanding what’s happened. We finally called in one of her friends to help calm her down. I don’t want to get her upset again.”
Ellie already had this guy’s number. Just because your daughter appears calm does not mean she is calm. She knew it was a bad habit, but she couldn’t help it: Ellie formed impressions of people immediately upon meeting them. George Langston struck her as a well-meaning but rigid man, both physically and psychologically. He was very small in stature—not much taller than Ellie—but maximized every centimeter of it with perfect posture. It’s not that he was unattractive. She could imagine how some women might be drawn to his clear, blue eyes and smooth skin. But to Ellie he looked like he literally had a stick running up his ass, all the way to the base of his skull.
“George?” Adrienne had returned from the rear of the apartment. “Sorry, I thought you’d gone to bed. These are—”
“We already met. I was explaining that Ramona is as shocked by all of this as anyone. I’m not sure she knows anything sufficiently useful to warrant the disruption that will come with having police officers talking to her tonight. Maybe tomorrow—”
“Not everything boils down to cost-benefit analysis, George.”
Mr. Langston forced the polite smile of a man who was used to quarreling in public. And his wife offered what was probably a common apology for the display of conflict. “Sorry, Detectives. It’s been a rough day—obviously for the poor Whitmires, but for our family, too. There were years when Julia literally spent more nights here than at her own home. I think Ramona would very much like to speak with you.”
“Adrienne—”
He was cut off again by his wife. “She needs to feel like she’s helping. I was a teenage girl once. Trust me, George. Please.”
When George drifted from the room—no more relevant than he’d been before entering—Ellie knew which parent was calling the shots.
So did Rogan, who was already out of his chair. “So, where can we find your daughter, Mrs. Langston?”
They found Ramona Langston lying on her bed listening to her iPod, a mangled ball of tissues covering her eyes.
Despite the earbuds and Kleenex, she sensed their presence and sat up abruptly. She wasn’t what Ellie expected. Black makeup smeared both of the girl’s round cheeks. Her thick, spiky hair was flattened against her head on one side from lying on the bed. Ellie was starting to wonder whether two families had mixed the pieces of their family puzzles together. Uptight George Langston belonged with Katherine Whitmire in the townhouse full of antiques, while this girl and her mother, Adrienne, would be happier with a rock producer like Bill Whitmire.
“My mom said you’re with the police. Was Katherine right? Julia didn’t do this to herself?”
Ellie had wondered whether the girl’s bedroom would be suitable for an interview, but she’d been picturing a room like her own, with barely enough space for a queen-size bed and a dresser. Ramona Langston’s room was more like a studio apartment. She and Rogan settled next to each other on a sofa next to a full-length mirror and dressing table.
Rogan spoke first. “It sounds like your friend’s mother has already shared her concerns with you. Do you have any thoughts about that?” They’d been partners for more than a year, but Ellie was still surprised every time he transformed his voice for certain witnesses, setting aside his usual gruff bark in favor of a sweet, warm, vocal maple syrup.
Ramona shrugged. “Thoughts? I mean, yeah, I’ve been thinking about it ever since I heard, but I didn’t realize the police were actually investigating or anything. I just assumed Katherine was believing what she wanted to believe.”
Ellie was liking this girl more and more by the second. “Why did you assume that?”
“If Julia did this, that means she was in horrible, terrible pain, and felt so alone and so isolated that she would rather end it all than reach out to someone, even her mom. It means Julia was willing to hurt her mother this way.”
And her best friend, Ellie wanted to add. In her father’s case, it was a wife and two young children who had been left behind. Ellie had spent her entire life wondering which was worse: If her father had been murdered by the serial killer he spent his entire career hunting, or if he hated himself so much for failing to find the man, that he was willing to end his life before seeing his own children grow up? And then, two years ago, the Wichita Police had finally identified William Summer as the College Hill Strangler. Summer had had an ironclad alibi for the night Detective Jerry Hatcher was found at the wheel of his car, killed by his own service weapon. The truth about his death had come twenty years too late for his family.
“Do you think Julia might just do something like that?” Ellie asked.
“Honestly? I could see her doing something dramatic like swallowing half a bottle of aspirin to get her parents to pay her some fu—to pay attention to her. But Katherine said she, you know—” She made a slicing gesture across her left wrist.
“She cut her wrist,” Rogan said. “That’s correct.”
“It’s hard to imagine. I talked to her Friday night and she seemed fine. We were supposed to hang out with Casey today, but she never showed up. Now we know why.”
“Who’s Casey?” Rogan asked. “A boyfriend?”
“No, just a friend. More my friend, I guess, but Julia’s, too. He just left a few minutes ago.”
“Where’d you see Julia Friday night?”
“It was just a phone call. Well, texting at first, but then the phone.”
“How did she seem?”
“Normal. Jesus, looking back on it, I did all the talking. Me, me, me. I was such a head case, maybe she didn’t want to burden me? Maybe if I’d stopped and asked how she was?”
Rogan was still using his sweet voice. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Ramona. We still don’t know she did this to herself. In fact, let’s assume she didn’t. That leaves one other explanation—someone else did it. And there’s two different ways that possibility might play out—it could be someone Julia knew, or a stranger. Let me be blunt. The Whitmires must have a million dollars’ worth of jewelry and art in that townhouse, and yet nothing was missing. Detective Hatcher and I work a lot of cases, and, over time, you develop a feel for these things.”
“You think she knew whoever killed her?”
Rogan was only ten years older than Ellie, but sometimes the years mattered. Had he forgotten how quickly high school students could, as he’d put it, get ahead of themselves? An hour from now, the Casden rumor mill would have Julia Whitmire the victim of an ax-wielding serial killer hunting down the prep school crowd.
“All I’m saying is that if she didn’t do it, it’s unlikely this was a random crime. Strangers don’t get inside townhouses without forcing entry, they don’t fake suicides, and they don’t leave behind that kind of treasure. So what we need from you right now, Ramona, is total honesty. Your instinct right now is to remember the very best traits in your friend. You’re going to want to talk about her in a way that highlights what a wonderful girl she was. But those aren’t the kinds of details that might help us know the truth.”
“What do you need to know?”
“Everything.”
“I don’t know—”
“Don’t tell us what you want us to hear about Julia,” Ellie said. “Tell us what you think we really need to know. Can you do that for us? For Julia?”
Ramona had tears in her eyes when she nodded.
“So what did you and Julia talk about on Friday?”
“It’s dumb, looking back on it. I was freaking out about my mom and called Julia for advice. And none of it has anything to do with what happened to Julia, obviously, but I keep thinking that I should have talked less about me. I mean, it’s stupid, but I was wondering whether my mother would be acting differently if she were really my biological mother. Because technically she’s my stepmother. My mom died when I was a baby, but, whatever—yeah, she’s basically my mom. And Julia got all serious, saying that it didn’t matter whether my mom and I were related by blood or not. That she was the best mom in the world. That she’d been more of a mother even to Julia than her own mom. That kind of thing. Maybe she was depressed. What if I had called her to talk about boys and crushes and stupid stuff instead of complaining about my relationship with my mother? What if I set her off or something?”
The more Ramona wallowed, the less useful she was becoming. Ellie changed the subject. “Speaking of crushes, did Julia have a boyfriend?”
“No. Not any single boyfriend, at least.”
Ding ding ding.
“Look, you said you need to know everything about Julia, so I’ll tell it like it was. You’ve got to understand. Julia was adventurous. Fun. Crazy as hell, sometimes, but fun.” She smiled sadly at some memory only she knew. “But part of the adventurousness and craziness was her—openness, let’s say, with guys.”
“Like who?”
“Honestly? It was a lot of people. Marcus Graze was her first kiss and probably took her V-card. He goes to Casden too. They were never really together, but constantly hooking up, if that makes any sense. And there was a trainer at her gym. I don’t even know his name. And one time she”—her cheeks blushed—“she blew some guy in the parking lot of Lily Pond to get a ride back from East Hampton last summer, even though we can always call a car service. I know it sounds awful, but it’s like she wanted the bragging rights.”
“No one’s judging your friend,” Ellie said.
“But that kind of lifestyle can be dangerous,” Rogan added. “Did any of these men ever want more from her than she was willing to give?”
She shook her head. “No. If anything, Julia appeared to have calmed down the last few months. She was spending a lot more time at home. For once, I was the one begging her to go out, and she’d be the one who wanted to stay in. That’s why I didn’t talk to her since Friday. I went to the Hamptons with my parents, and all she could talk about was how much she was looking forward to a weekend alone in the city.”
Rogan moved a creepy doll with ringleted hair and a red velvet dress farther down the sofa to give himself a little more room. “Julia’s mother said something about some street kids who were over at the townhouse at least once before?”
Ramona rolled her eyes. “Of course she’d have to bring them up. That’s Casey. He went to Julia’s, like, once with a couple of friends, but like I said, he’s really more my friend. If Katherine’s trying to blame him—”
Rogan cut her off. “No one’s blaming anyone at this point. That’s why we investigate. On that note, would you mind giving us a quick DNA sample? Just a cheek swab so the lab can eliminate any stray hairs you may have left behind at Julia’s house.”
Now that they were working this case as a homicide, the lab would be busy eliminating known samples to focus in on any unidentified DNA found in the house.
After Rogan took the swab, they had Ramona run through her final conversation with Julia one more time, but the girl had no new revelations to offer, only more regrets about the unspoken feelings, which led to more crying. As they reached the bedroom door, Ramona said she was sorry she hadn’t been more helpful.
But as far as Ellie was concerned, Ramona had helped plenty.
Witnesses never seemed to realize that what seemed to them like an idle observation could make a case look entirely different to the police—or, in this particular case, could be construed entirely differently by two different police detectives.
Rogan started in on his interpretation as soon as they hit the car. “I don’t buy for a second that Julia Whitmire had calmed down recently. A weekend home alone?”
“Exactly what a depressed girl might prefer,” Ellie said.
“No way. The type of girl who bangs personal trainers and hands out blow jobs at the beach in exchange for transportation doesn’t suddenly calm down because she’s depressed. Julia’s mom said she hated being alone. If Julia had leveled out, I bet you anything she had a new man on the side—someone she was being hush-hush about, even with her best friend.”
“Either way, we’re still looking at a depressed bulimic whose parents had abandoned her. No forced entry. Nothing missing. Don’t forget the slit wrist and suicide note. On the other side of the ledger, we’ve got a missing notepad. Plus that stuff about Julia saying that Ramona’s mom had been a better mother to her than her own? One more indication that Katherine Whitmire was a cold, crappy mother, and that her daughter, Julia, wasn’t quite as tough about it as she let on. Who could blame her for drinking herself numb and checking out?”
“We still owe it to that girl and to those parents to be a hundred percent positive before we take her name from the board.”
The car fell silent once again. Ellie finally reached for the radio but Rogan blocked her hand.
“None of your new wave Devo Flock of Seagulls shit when I’m driving.” As far as Ellie could tell, Rogan thought any music by white people between 1983 and 1997 was either Devo or Flock of Seagulls.
But then the silence must have gotten to him, as well. He turned on the stereo and stopped the dial on a rap song she actually recognized. She muttered the lyrics as she looked out the window. “Ain’t nothin’ but a g-thang, baby.”
It was enough to get a laugh out of her partner. “You kidding me with that?”
“What? I grew up in Kansas, not on a commune.” She put a little more swagger into her performance, swaying in her seat. “And now all you hookas and hos know how I feel.”
“Damn, woman. You got to ruin everything for me, don’t you? I won’t be able to listen to that again without picturing your bony butt bouncing around.”
She placed a hand on her hip. “Ain’t nothing bony about this. You just want a small piece of some of that funky stuff.”
He shook his head, but he was smiling. “This mean we’re all right?”
“We’re always all right. You should know that by now.”
“But you still think you’re right and I’m wrong.”
“Yep.”
“Want to go talk to this homeless kid, Casey?”
“Nope. But I will. Last time I checked, that’s what we do.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_f0ce5c94-77cb-5d4e-8015-5f53091909c1)
Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor
“MAKE IT STOP”
I’m continually surprised at the way ordinary events trigger revelations about abuse and survivorship. This morning, my daughter awoke to the sounds of jack hammers thanks to a construction project on the street below her bedroom window. She wandered from her bedroom bleary-eyed and bed-headed, her palms pressed against her ears. “Make it stop. That’s all I want right now: Just make it stop.”
Make it stop. It’s a perfectly rational reaction, isn’t it? To want to put an end to whatever unpleasant stimuli one is experiencing? To crave the exact opposite?
Ear-shattering noise? Give me total silence instead. Blisteringly hot food? Hand me cold water. Blinding light? I shut my eyes to enjoy the darkness.
Rape? Make it stop.
But what does it mean to crave the opposite of rape? No sex? No physical contact? No men?
But rape, we must always remind ourselves, isn’t about sex. It’s about power. Our abusers want to exercise dominion over us. They want to steal our agency.
And so what do we do? We take our agency back, however we can.
I couldn’t force that man out of my house, but I could choose not to go to school. I couldn’t bar him from my bedroom at night, but I could get a fake ID and a six-pack at three in the afternoon. I couldn’t stop him from eyeing me every time my mother averted her gaze, but I could start hanging around the people my mother had always called “bad influences.” I needed to know I could make choices that belonged to me.
We have all read about some rape case that goes uncharged or unpunished because of evidence that the victim engaged in consensual sexual activity with another man (or men) immediately after the rape. Why in the world, prosecutors and jurors ask, would a woman who had just been raped go out and have sex with someone else? They assume that a desire to “make it stop” necessarily translates into a lack of interest in sex.
But, once again, I thought we all knew by now that rape is not about sex. If “make it stop” means a craving for the opposite, then isn’t it perfectly predictable that some of us respond to rape by exercising agency over our own sexual intimacy?
In my case, I couldn’t protect my body from him, but I could choose to start sharing it with someone else. And of course I chose an unacceptable “someone else”—at once too old and too immature. That decision in turn led to its own forms of damage, self-inflicted in some sense and yet, it seems to me, still wholly attributable to my abuser.
Part of survival is getting to a place where we are able to exercise true free will, not just a reaction or rebellion against the abuse. Yesterday I wrote about forgiveness, not of our abusers, but of the people who enabled them. We must also forgive ourselves for reacting to the abuse in destructive ways, harming ourselves and others in response to our loss of power. We have to learn how to accept our pasts and determine our own futures. It’s the only way to really “make it stop.”
This evening the blog was being read on a display laptop at the Apple Store in the Meatpacking District. The reader made a point to stand close to the computer, blocking the screen from view of the crowds of shoppers who provided further anonymity.
It did not take long to type a reply to the post:
“I will show you damage. I will show you loss of free will. I will show you harm. And you will never make it stop.”
The typist did not know that on a different computer, at a public library in the suburbs of Buffalo, an ex-convict named Jimmy Grisco was doing some online reading of his own.
CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_87cc8721-c3d4-5a69-a2b1-96f1343ad0a7)
Ellie loved the arch at Washington Square Park. Serving as a frame for the view up Fifth Avenue to the Empire State Building, the arch had an impressive historical pedigree, with origins dating back to George Washington, but Ellie would always think of it as the spot where Harry dropped off Sally after their road trip home from Chicago.
She also thought of it as the usual location of Marty, the city’s best hot dog vendor. They were in luck. Tonight was one of the first warm evenings of spring, and he had set up shop just west of the fountain.
After they parked on Waverly, she led the way to the snack cart. “Let’s stop here for a dog.”
“How is it that wherever we go you have a food stop within a one-block radius? It’s like you’ve got a culinary map of this city implanted in your brain.”
Actually, she did, but on this particular night, she was more interested in Marty himself than the fact that he used Hebrew Nationals, stocked Fresca in the can, and always had fresh buns. Marty had been her eyes and ears in this park back when she was on patrol.
She loaded her bun with yellow mustard and relish, while Rogan opted for ketchup only. “So, Marty, do you know a street kid around here named Casey? Male, about twenty years old? Hangs out here with some of the other homeless kids?”
“Not sure you have the right info, but I know who you mean.”
“Why do you say we don’t have the right information?”
“You’ll see for yourself. The one you’re looking for is over there.”
He pointed to a kid practicing handstands in the grass just north of the dog park. Ellie thanked Marty and she and Rogan started making their way toward Casey. Halfway there, she realized what Marty had been alluding to.
“You mind if I take the lead with this one?” Ellie asked.
“You still think you’ve got it going on for teenage boys, huh?”
“Like you don’t turn on the charm for the cougar crowd when opportunity calls. Just promise me you won’t say anything that’s going to scare this kid off. In fact, just don’t say anything.”
“Casey Heinz?”
Casey wiped his palms on his khakis and looked around as if someone else might step forward to have this conversation.
“That’s pretty good,” Ellie said. “It’d kill my wrists if I tried something like that. Probably a sign I spend too much time typing up reports at a computer. Your friend Ramona told us we might find you here.” She introduced herself and Rogan with a flash of her badge.
At the sight of Ellie scribbling his name in her notebook, he added, “Heinz like the ketchup, not like hind legs.”
“Casey short for anything?”
The pause was barely perceptible, but it was there. “Nope. Just Casey.”
“Got it,” Ellie said with a smile. “You knew Julia Whitmire?”
“I knew her. I mean, only through Ramona, and not like the two of them, but, yeah, sure, um, I’d say we all knew each other.”
“Julia’s mother mentioned meeting you one time at the townhouse. Did you go there often?”
Casey raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I can’t believe I even registered on that woman’s radar. Oh, wait, let me guess? She didn’t remember me at all. Just some homeless kid?”
“I think ‘from the streets’ may have been her phrase of choice. She said there were a few kids over that day.” She had mentioned two boys and a girl, to be exact.
“Yeah, I think it was Brandon, and this girl we see at the park sometimes named Vonda.”
“Did you go to Julia’s regularly?”
“Oh, huh-uh. I’d been there maybe four or five times, and usually it was just to swing by to meet her on a day out with Ramona. That was bad luck the one night her mom came in. Vonda was always fawning all over Julia’s clothes the couple of times we’d hung out by the fountain together.”
“Here at the park, you mean?”
“Yeah. So then Julia told me the next time I saw Vonda, I should try bringing her around because Julia had all these clothes she wanted to give away. We were just about to leave when her mom came home. She acted like we were going to walk out with the china or something.”
“That was awfully generous of Julia. Was that typical?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. But she also wanted everyone to know when she did a good deed. Sorry, that sounds mean, under the circumstances.”
“Were you and Julia ever alone?”
The kid looked panicked. “You think I had something to do—”
“No, no,” Ellie said, taking a step backward to give him more space. “Nothing like that, Casey. I only asked to get a better sense of how well you knew Julia. It might help put your impressions in context.”
“Yeah, okay. Um, we never arranged anything with just the two of us or anything. But, yeah, a few times, we’d all be hanging out and Julia and I would end up walking in the same direction afterwards. One time, everyone else had to bail early, so we walked over to see the new part of the High Line when it first opened. You know, that kind of thing. Mostly, though, I’d say we knew each other through Ramona.”
“And I take it you know what happened to Julia last night?”
“That she died? Yeah, Ramona called me and I went up to her place. She said Julia’s mom doesn’t believe it’s suicide. Is that why you’re here?”
There was no reason for this kid to know that Ellie and her partner had a split of opinion on that issue. “You seem like a pretty straight shooter, Casey.”
He squinted. “I try to be.”
“So give it to me straight. What can you tell us about Julia that her best friend might not be willing to say?”
“There’s not a lot to tell. I mean, she’s super rich. Pretty. Probably had some baggage with her parents—always fighting with her mom, talking about her dad, trying to get more time with him, feeling kind of ignored. You know. But otherwise pretty normal.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
“No, it was more like she’d just hook up. She told me she was into some guy a few weeks ago, but I never asked what happened to that.”
“Who was the guy?”
“No clue. She only mentioned it once. Like I said, we were both friends with Ramona, but not as much with each other. This was during one of those few times we were actually alone. We’d gone to this place called Black and White.” Ellie suppressed a smile. The bar was a little lounge in the East Village where her brother, Jess, and his band, Dog Park, sometimes played open-mic nights on Sundays. She’d always teased Jess that the place was overrun by kids with fake IDs, but Jess wanted to believe it was the next CBGB. “Ramona hopped in a cab uptown, and I walked Julia home. She was pretty tipsy and was saying she was tempted to drunk-dial the guy. I was having a little fun with her, trying to get her to call him. Then she said she didn’t even have his cell phone number—that she wasn’t supposed to call or something. It was a little weird.”
“Does Ramona know?”
“I’m not sure. Julia said Ramona wouldn’t approve.”
“Why wouldn’t Ramona approve?”
“You know that daddy baggage I mentioned? Let’s just say it manifested itself in Julia’s dating preferences. Ramona was always trying to get her to see a therapist about it. I just assumed when she made that comment about Ramona not approving that it was some old guy.”
“How old are we talking about here?”
“Not, like, you know, Hugh Hefner old. But I think one guy last summer was, like, thirty! Ramona kind of lectured her about it, and since then I got the impression Julia decided the less Ramona knew about those things, the better.”
In any other situation, Ellie would bristle at the thought of thirty being “old.” But to have a relationship with a junior in high school? Thirty was ancient.
“What made you think she was keeping Ramona out of the loop?”
“Ramona seemed to buy Julia’s act that she wanted more down time to read and study and stuff. Maybe I’m too suspicious but it seemed to me she was lying. One time she said she’d gone to the rooftop at the Standard with this guy, Marcus, but then later Ramona found out Marcus was at a birthday party for some girl at school the same night. Ramona blew it off, but other times Julia would tell Ramona she fell asleep watching TV, and I could just tell she was lying. When she didn’t show up today, I assumed it was another one of her secret disappearances. I feel awful now.”
“How about her friends? Would you say she was well liked?”
“Seemed like it. They’re both a little more on the wild side, compared to all the matching mean girls at their school, but I think Ramona actually got hassled more than Julia for it. Julia’s dad kind of gave her the cred to be a little off. Compared to the kids at that school, Ramona’s family’s, like, poor or something.”
“And how exactly was Julia off, or I think you said a little wild? A lot of drinking? Drugs?”
“No, nothing more than the usual drinking. Maybe a little weed. It’s hard to explain. Just, you know, more curious about the rest of the world than rich kids usually are.”
“That’s funny. Growing up in Kansas, I always thought wealthy kids in New York were incredibly worldly.”
“I don’t mean living in Paris on your summer vacation. I mean hanging out downtown. Taking the subway.” He lowered his voice. “Being friends with people of a different status. Trying not to be the spoiled brats they’ve been bred to be.”
“And where do you fall on this status spectrum?” Ellie made sure not to look at the light stains near Casey’s shirt collar or the spot on the sleeve where the fabric was wearing thin.
“Pretty damn low.” He looked down at his canvas sneakers. “I’m currently residing—if you can call it that—at Promises. It’s what they call transitional housing for at-risk young adults. It’s what everyone else in the world calls a homeless shelter.”
“Is that where the other kids who went to Julia’s townhouse with you live, too? Brandon and Vonda?”
“Brandon does, but not Vonda. I haven’t seen her in, like, a week.”
“Do you have last names for them?”
According to Casey, Brandon was Brandon Sykes, sixteen years old. Casey had seen him just that day, and he was probably heading back to the shelter that night. Vonda was supposedly nineteen, but he suspected she was younger. He did not know her last name, nor did he know how to contact her.
“And the shelter’s the best address for you?” she asked.
“Until I win the lottery, that’s where I’m at. I guess you need stuff like ages and last names and addresses for police reports.”
She rotated her wrists in front of her. “Like I said, I do an awful lot of typing in this job. And this transitional housing for at-risk young adults is really a better place for you than with your family?” Ellie was no social worker, but she didn’t feel right about leaving this kid in a shelter without at least inquiring.
“My family’s in Iowa, and let’s just say they’re not real interested in being my family these days.”
“Speaking of that report I’ll need to file, I should probably make sure to check your identification.”
“I thought you said I’m not in trouble.”
“You’re not, but I’ve got to make sure we’re not putting false information on a government document.”
Her eyes locked on his was enough to induce an actual tremble.
“I’m sorry, Casey. I’ve got to document every witness. It’s okay. We already know.”
“But—”
“It wasn’t your appearance. I noticed that pause earlier when I asked whether Casey was a nickname.”
There was a full five seconds of silence before Casey sighed and pulled a beaten brown leather wallet from his back pocket.
Iowa driver’s license. Same face. Same stoic expression, masking the softness Ellie had spotted when Casey had first come out of his handstand. All the basic information was there. Five feet, eight inches. DOB March 16, 1992. Green eyes. Full name: Cassandra Jane Heinz.
“Does Ramona know?”
He was looking at his shoes again but nodded. “Yeah. We don’t talk about it, but, yeah.”
She patted him on the shoulder, as she would to reassure any other man. “Thanks. We’ll let you know if we need anything else.”
Casey watched the police detectives talking as they walked back toward Waverly. Even from behind, he could recognize the dynamic. The male cop may have remained silent through the entire exchange, but Casey had seen the guy’s expression at the sight of the driver’s license. She was cool with everything. He wasn’t.
That always seemed to be how things went.
As he watched them drive away in their nondescript blue sedan, he wondered whether he had done the right thing. He had told them what they needed to know about Julia, but he hadn’t told them everything. Not really.
One little lie—not even a lie, just a secret—couldn’t possibly make a difference. And the one little secret, if disclosed, would only hurt Ramona even further. He hadn’t done it to protect himself, he told himself. It had been for Ramona.
He returned to his handstands, trying to set aside the terrible feeling that somehow he had made a mistake.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#ulink_ccaf8011-7ba9-5cce-9621-0c32f56a2b35)
Bill Whitmire watched his wife, who sat cross-legged on their bed, using the palm of her hand to smooth out the surface of their down duvet. He could hear her voice from the last time they’d spent more than a single night there, reminding herself aloud that it was finally getting warm enough to pack that layer into storage and replace it with the cotton coverlet she loved so much.
Since then, their visits to the city hadn’t been long enough to justify even that minor change.
She was surrounded on the bed by brochures and pamphlets fanned out in front of her like tarot cards. Her therapist had dropped them off earlier tonight. He’d heard their conversation in the foyer. Grief counseling. Group therapy. Bill—never a fan of psychotherapy—might feel more comfortable in solo sessions, with a separate therapist.
The therapist had also warned that they might require couples counseling. The sooner the better, he had said. He’d told Katherine that the majority of parents who lost a child ended up divorced within three years.
Bill had been tempted to storm downstairs and throw the man out. Using the death of their child to instill fears in Katherine about their marriage? But for some reason, he couldn’t stop eavesdropping, watching them in the front hall from his spot on the second-floor landing. He wanted to hear his wife defend herself. To defend their marriage and the family they had created. To tell him they would be just fine—together.
Instead, she’d allowed the therapist to drone on. “That’s not to say that you and Bill won’t weather the storm,” he’d said. “Some couples become closer than ever. They find a permanent and impenetrable connection in the memories of the child who was lost.” He had interlaced his fingers together to demonstrate the bond that she might suddenly form with her husband.
When Katherine had finally spoken, it was to say words he never would have expected to hear. “You’ve sat through enough sessions with me to know that Bill doesn’t form permanent and impenetrable bonds with anyone, let alone me.”
Julia—his Baby J—had been dead less than a day, and he could already feel the mother of his children slipping away from him.
It had started earlier this evening, after the police detectives left and before the therapist had arrived. She had been lying on the bed, and he had tried crawling next to her. Usually she was the one who sought physical proximity during sleep. She was the one who would back up into his body, nudging him to wrap his arms around her. Usually he would roll away to avoid the extra heat.
But today, he’d reached out for her. He’d pressed his chest against her back, wrapping his arms tightly around her. It had been Katherine who had pulled away, pretending to roll over in a sleep she had not yet actually found.
Unlike his wife, though—in fact, unlike most people—he was not the type to wallow among a stack of mumbo-jumbo pamphlets or numb himself with happy pills, all in the hope that life would somehow magically improve.
He recognized his wife’s strengths and weaknesses, and dealing with a problem was not her strength. Making decisions was not her strength. These jobs always fell to him. Even with the studio on Long Island, he had to be the one finally to pull the trigger.
He told her he worked better out there. He told her he was getting sick of the city. But he also was very clear that he would stay in the townhouse if that was what she and the kids wanted. He knew how much she loved the house. He knew the kids still had their high school years ahead of them.
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