by Zara Lisbon
“Sure.”
“You say there’s a mechanism that tracks when the cabinet is unlocked and relocked, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And according to the records from the night of July sixteenth, the cabinet was unlocked between 11:00 P.M. and 4:22 A.M.?”
“Yes.”
“Does this ‘tracker’ system come with a camera?”
“A camera? No…”
“So then, we don’t have any evidence that it was Justine who unlocked the cabinet and not somebody else?”
“No, but—”
“All we have is proof that somebody was there to unlock the cabinet at 11:00 P.M., but no proof that it was your daughter, Justine?”
“There’s no camera, but I’m sure you’d find her fingerprints there if you checked.”
“Right.” Melinda smiled. “She’s lived there her whole life so I’m sure we’d find her fingerprints. But is there a way to prove her fingerprints were there from that night? Do her fingerprints prove that she was the one to open the file cabinet that night?”
“She’d never opened it before that night.”
“And you’re sure about that?”
“Well.” My mom deflated. “I can’t be entirely sure. No.”
“No further questions, your honor.”
CHAPTER 20
JUSTINE CHILDS—HAS SHE LOST HER MIND?
“It’s like a chess game from hell,” I said to Jack, clutching my stomach back in our private room. “We’re just going to go back and forth like this forever, nobody really proving anything, and it’s going to kill me. I can’t stay calm for too much longer.”
I bit a piece of dry skin on my thumb and ripped it off. My insides felt scooped out, like a pumpkin on Halloween. I thought of how we used to carve a jack-o’-lantern, pulling the pumpkin guts out with our bare hands, for what felt like hours, until it was finally empty. I saw myself as that pumpkin, gutless, eyes cut out in crooked triangles, jagged candlelight shining through.
“It’s good, Justine,” he told me. “It means there’s not enough evidence either way.”
“Okay, so, what, it’s like a tie?” I knew how ridiculous I sounded.
“Well, no … the jury is still going to have to find you guilty or not guilty. And then the judge will enter her judgment on the verdict.”
Guilty. Judgment. The words swarmed in my stomach, buzzing and acidic.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this.” I tried not to whine, but the words came out frantic and entitled anyway. “The judge thinks I’m a sociopath, I can tell. I can tell she doesn’t like me. Right? It’s bad. Is it bad? It’s bad, isn’t it? I can’t tell. What’s going to happen?”
“First of all, breathe.” He put his palms on my triceps. “This is almost over, and whatever the verdict, we will get you through this. I sincerely urge you to—”
“I have to testify,” I said then, cutting him off. In the tornado of my thoughts, this was one I could grab on to. “They have to hear my side of the story.”
“No, no,” he insisted. “That’s my job, not yours. That’s literally why I’m here, Justine, to tell your side of the story. To defend you.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.” I ran my hands through my hair. “They need to hear it from me. How can anyone really believe in my innocence if they don’t hear me claim it?”
“Justine, listen. It’s not a good idea.”
“You can’t stop me, can you? Isn’t it my right or something?”
* * *
The witness stand wasn’t all that high up, but I felt wildly, fantastically elevated. The audience watching me down below seemed very far away, their faces blurred and blank. A wave of dizziness swept over me and I tried to remember when I’d last eaten, but it wasn’t easy. The day before, my mom had brought toast and jam to me in bed. I’d nibbled at the flaky crust, then the strawberry-logged bread, forcing myself to swallow bite after bite until it was all gone. It had taken me an hour to get it all down. My stomach was like a clenched rubber fist.
“Miss Childs, will you please spell your name for the court?” Jack asked. He faced me, a safe distance of five feet between us.
“J-U-S … T-I-N … E,” I wavered, wiping my forehead with the back of my palm. “C-H … I-L-D-S.”
“Thank you, Miss Childs. How was it that you came to meet Eva-Kate Kelly?”
“I, uh … she, she moved into the house across from where I live.”
“Is that the house you’ve lived in with your mother and father since you were a child?”
“For my whole life, yes.”
“I see. And when you first met Eva-Kate, did you know that she was a patient of your mother’s?”
“No. I had no idea.”
“And she didn’t tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me,” I repeated.
“So, then, she probably didn’t tell you that she didn’t only know your mom, but she also knew you?”
“No, she didn’t. I mean, she didn’t tell me.”
“But you found out later on that in fact she had known your mother and known of you for many years, is that right?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“How would you describe the nature of your friendship with Eva-Kate as it unfolded over the course of the summer?”
“Um … it was fast. She was extremely nice to me right away. I was surprised by how welcoming she was. I felt, or, I mean, it seemed like we just connected. We just started hanging out all the time. She invited me everywhere.”
“At what point did she invite you to move in to her home?”
“Uh, well … I think just two days after we met.”
“Did you ever think—and I mean no offense whatsoever—that it was odd for somebody as rich and famous as Eva-Kate Kelly to be taking an interest in someone who, by all appearances, is just an average girl next door?”
I knew what he was doing but it stung anyway. Even knowing, as I did now, that Eva-Kate Kelly was jealous of me, I still wanted the world to look at me and see her equal.
“I did.” I told the truth. “I wondered about it all the time. I wondered why me? It never made sense.”
“Until you found out through your mother’s notes that Eva-Kate had been watching you for years.”
“Objection. Testifying.”
“Sustained.”
“Apologies,” Jack said. “Justine, did Eva-Kate’s interest in you make sense once you read your mother’s notes?”
“Yes. It made a bit more sense then. I still don’t understand it completely, but I don’t think I ever will. Especially with Eva-Kate not around to explain it. What she saw in me, I mean.”
“Let’s talk about the night Eva-Kate died.” He took a few steps back and pressed his fingers together until his hands formed a diamond shape. “Did you see her that night?”
“Yes. We came back from San Luis Obispo around nine. I was with her.”
“What happened then?”
“I went upstairs soon after we got home and I heard a voice mail being left on her landline.”
“And what did you hear on the voice message?”
“It was my mom … calling to schedule an appointment with her. With Eva-Kate.”
“But, up until that point, you didn’t know that Eva-Kate was a patient of your mother’s?”
“Yes. That’s right. I didn’t know.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Um … kind of creeped out? It was like this thing was hiding in plain sight but I never saw it. It’s spooky, you know, when you can’t see what’s sitting right in front of you. I kept thinking I should have known, and I kept wondering why she didn’t tell me.”
“Okay, so, what did you do?”
“I confronted her about it and she shrugged it off like it was nothing. She, uh, she said she’d told my mom that she was planning to buy the house, but that seemed like a lie to me.”
“What made it seem like a lie?”
“My mom is, well, she has been really protective of me for as long as I can remember. She’s never wanted me to get into trouble. And if she was Eva-Kate’s therapist, then she knew about her party girl reputation, right? So if she had really known Eva-Kate was moving in, she wouldn’t have left without warning me to stay away from her.”
“I see. What did you do next?”
“I didn’t feel safe there anymore. I didn’t trust her and felt like something bad would happen if I stayed. So I went home. That had to be around nine thirty or ten.”
“Okay, so, you went home. You found your mom’s notes outlining her many years of work with Eva-Kate. How long were you at home going over these notes?”
“Hours,” I said. “I stayed there until early morning, when I decided to go to a hotel.”
“Did you leave your home at any point?”
“No. Not until I left for the Ace.”
“Which, according to your Uber driver’s testimony, was at four forty in the morning.”
“Right.”
“So, from approximately nine thirty at night to four thirty in the morning, you were at home?”
“Yes, that’s correct. I had like eight years of notes to go through. And they were enthralling, to say the least.”
“How did you get into the cabinet? Wasn’t it locked?”
“It was locked, but I guessed the code.”
“And what was the code?”
“Uh … it was 061300.”
“Did those numbers mean anything to you?”
“Yeah. Yes. It’s Eva-Kate’s birthday.”
“Did you think it was strange that your mother would use Eva-Kate’s birthday as the code to her locked cabinets?”
“Uh…” I hadn’t been expecting him to ask me this, so I stumbled. What was he getting at? Was he trying to cast suspicion on my mom? “Yes, I thought it was kind of strange.”
“Thank you, Justine. I only have one more question. How did your fingerprints end up on the athame?”
“One night, I was with Eva-Kate and she showed it to me. She told me to hold it. She said that holding it would feel empowering.”
“And did it feel empowering?”
“No,” I lied. “It didn’t feel particularly special. It didn’t really feel like anything.”
“No further questions, your honor.”
* * *
“Hi, Justine.” Melinda stood up and buttoned her blue blazer so that it cinched her already slender waist. “How are you doing?”
“Um … not ideal, but I’m … fine. Thanks.”
“Good,” she chirped, uncharacteristically upbeat. “According to your testimony, Eva-Kate knew you before you knew her, but didn’t tell you. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“When you met Eva-Kate, isn’t it true that you also knew who she was, but didn’t tell her?”
“Yes, but that’s different. She’s a celebrity. Everyone knows her.”
“But you knew who she was and acted as if you didn’t?”
“Sure. Yes.”
“And yet you claim you were disturbed to learn that she had done the same exact thing?”
“Again, it’s not the same thing.”
“Your testimony, as well as your mother’s, paints Eva-Kate as a girl obsessed. She hunted you down, picked you out, stalked you. According to the way you put it, she was unstable, and you were just a ‘regular girl’ she fixated on, is that correct?”
“It does seem unstable to me to go so far as to buy a home across from mine.”
“Interesting. Are you stable?”
“Excuse me?”
“You have a history of mental health issues, isn’t that right?”
“Uh.” I felt my throat start to tighten and my heart speed up in response. “I guess.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
I swallowed again and again, trying to loosen the tubing, but it was as if a piece of bread were lodged inside, expanding.
“Yes,” I managed to get out. I dug a fingernail deep into my thigh once and then again on an angle to make an X.
“Isn’t it true that in 2015 you were committed for three weeks to the Bellflower Psychiatric Hospital in Long Beach?”
“Yes.”
“And the Bellflower Psychiatric Hospital is an institution for patients suffering from severe psychosis, is that correct?”
“I guess.”
“Is that a yes or a no, Miss Childs?”
“Yes.”
“Are you aware that in order to be committed to Bellflower you have to be considered a danger to yourself or others?”
“Sure. Yes.”
“So which were you?”
“Excuse me?”
“The night your parents had you committed, were you considered a danger to yourself or to others? Or both?”
“Myself,” I said. “Never in my life have I been a danger to others.”
“I see. Is it true you had a knife and were planning to commit suicide?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t—”
“You weren’t in your right mind, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Objection, your honor, relevance?” Jack tried.
“Your honor, this information is highly relevant. It speaks to whether or not Justine Childs could have entered an altered mental state in which she felt it acceptable to commit murder.”
“I’ll allow it; continue,” Judge Lucas said.
“Is it true that you were having the psychotic delusion that”—she paused to read off a piece of paper—“you were the physical manifestation of evil and that the sun would never rise again unless you removed yourself from the planet?”
“Yeah … yes. How do you know that?” She ignored my question, and I guessed my mom wasn’t the only one sharing confidential medical records.
“So then, it’s safe to say you have had your share of instability in this life, yes?”
“Sure. Yes.”
“Let’s jump ahead a few years to this past summer, the summer of 2018, on the night of July sixteenth. How stable were you that night?”
“Uh … I was stable. It’s been three years since my incident and I’ve been on regulated medications since then.”
“Is it true that the previous night you had been drinking and ended up staying awake until morning?”
“Pretty much…”
“And these medications you’re on, they don’t mix well with alcohol, do they?”
“No.” I cringed. “No, they don’t.”
“But you chose to drink on these medications anyway, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very stable decision to me; does it to you?”
“No, but—”
“So, with your history of mental illness and the poor decision to mix medication with alcohol, you went back to Eva-Kate’s house that night and found out that, for years, Eva-Kate had been going to see your mom for therapy and nobody had told you. That made you feel betrayed, didn’t it?”
“Actually, yes.”
“So then you confronted her about it, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And is that when you decided to kill Eva-Kate?”
“Are you kidding me?” I gawked. “Absolutely not.”
“A witness, Josie Bishop, saw you take the athame and follow Eva-Kate outside, so did you plan to kill Eva-Kate or did you just snap in a moment of rage?”
“Neither! I didn’t … what Josie says she saw … that didn’t happen.” I struggled, my tongue feeling thick and limp. “I didn’t take the knife, I didn’t kill Eva-Kate. I went home.”
“So you say. And yet, there’s nobody to corroborate this story.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “The locked files recorded me using them until after four in the morning.”
“No, not quite.” DA Warren tilted her head, cutely feigning curiosity. “As I established earlier, the files recorded somebody opening them, b
ut they didn’t record you.”
“It was me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I am.”
“Like the time you were sure we’d never live to see another sunrise unless you ended your own life?”
“This is completely different! I was … I was experiencing psychosis when … when I thought that about myself. I hadn’t slept in days, I wasn’t in my right mind.”
“Didn’t you just testify, Justine, that on the night of Eva-Kate’s death, you had been sleep deprived, drinking, and taking medications incompatible with alcohol?”
“Yes, but—”
“So, then, isn’t it possible that your version of where you were or what you did that night might not be the most … reliable?”
“But I—”
“Isn’t it possible that you, in fact, slipped right back into a state of psychosis that night and out of fear, or jealousy, or some combination of both, decided Eva-Kate had to die?”
“No.” I glowered, cheeks hot, heart pumping in my throat so hard it made my jawbone rattle. “It’s not.”
“No further questions, your honor.”
CHAPTER 21
A VERDICT FOR JUSTINE CHILDS
On the day of closing arguments, Judge Victoria Lucas wore her stringy strawberry-blond hair in a bun, and a pink silk scarf tied around her neck. It was still raining, and I hoped it would never stop. For the first time in months I’d slept peacefully through the night. I didn’t know if I’d go free or spend years behind bars, but I knew that soon the anticipation would be over and I could start to put this behind me.
“Eva-Kate Kelly was a celebrity,” Melinda Warren began, rising from her desk like an effigy. “But she was also a teenage girl. Evelyn Kathleen McKelvoy liked spending time with her friends, watching movies, swimming, traveling. She had a mother, a stepfather, and a twin sister who loved her very much. But she won’t be spending any more time with her friends, and her family won’t get to tell her they love her ever again. Because she’s dead. She’s dead through no fault of her own. She’s dead because a girl named Justine Childs had a twisted obsession and a wild jealous streak that she couldn’t keep under control. She is dead because Justine Childs decided she shouldn’t be alive anymore. She’s dead because on the night of July sixteenth, 2018, Justine Childs found out that her own mother had been seeing Eva-Kate as a therapy patient and that neither of them had ever told her. See, Justine’s mother, Nancy Childs, is a therapist to the stars. Justine was raised glorifying celebrity, seeing time and time again how her mother gave celebrities her undivided attention, something Justine herself couldn’t seem to get. Justine’s new best friend, Eva-Kate Kelly, had everything Justine wanted and always had to live without—money, beauty, fame—so, when she learned that on top of everything else, Eva-Kate had her own mother’s attention, the attention she believed she deserved, she lost it. Eva-Kate Kelly is dead because in that moment, Justine Childs hatched a plan. She is dead because Justine followed through on that plan, taking the athame from the bedroom and asking to talk to Eva-Kate outside. She’s dead because some time between midnight on July the sixteenth and 4:00 A.M. on July the seventeenth, Justine used that athame to stab her to death. Justine wants you to believe that she was at her mother’s house during that time, but she can’t prove it. No witnesses, no proof, only her word. What we do have is her fingerprints on the murder weapon, an eyewitness, and a history of being considered a harm to herself and/or others. Justine Childs has composed herself for court; she’s dressed conservatively, smiled politely, and told you a well-crafted story in which she is the victim. Do not be fooled. Justine Childs is not a sweet girl, she is a killer, and should be convicted as such.”
