Killer Content

by Olivia Blacke

  Izzy jumped up and ran her hands along the walls. “What are you doing?” I hissed. I don’t know why I felt the need to keep my voice down. It wasn’t like we were in a library or something.

  “Looking for an observation window. I was hoping for two-way mirrors but I guess they’ve gone high-tech. What do you think? See-through paint? Porous walls? Or old-fashioned hidden cameras?”

  “I wish.” We both looked up as a plainclothes officer filled the doorway. “Captain’s so stingy, we have to buy our own bullets. What makes you think he would spring for cameras, hidden or otherwise?”

  The median age for police officers in Piney Island was somewhere between seventy and dead. Every once in a while, a new uniformed officer would come in, fresh from the academy and still wet behind the ears. They might stay six weeks before transferring to Shreveport or New Orleans, where the real action was to be found. As a result, I’d only ever seen cops that didn’t need orthopedic shoes or used Clearasil in procedural law dramas on television.

  The man standing inside the doorway was around my age, give or take a few years. He wore dark indigo jeans with an off-white button-down shirt under a gray waistcoat. His hair was buzzed almost to his scalp but his warm sable-colored eyes, flecked with gold, were framed by long, almost black lashes. He looked like he’d be more comfortable in a J.Crew commercial than behind the wheel of a police cruiser.

  In other words, I wouldn’t complain if he pulled me over for speeding.

  “Detective Vincent Castillo,” he said with a hint of a Spanish accent, closing the door behind him. He dragged the chair back to the table. One leg scraped the ground, making a sound akin to nails on a chalkboard, only worse, because it echoed painfully in the small room. “You ladies have information about the young woman whose death in Domino Park is all over YouTube?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, at the same time as Izzy said, “Nope.”

  “Start from the beginning.” The detective sat down across the table from us. He pulled out an antiquated electronic tablet and slid a stylus out of a slot on the side. “Names?”

  “Isabelle Wilson,” my friend said, in a much quieter voice than usual. Izzy was vivacious, friendly, and upbeat. She was the complete antithesis of what I thought New Yorkers would be like, and yet the more people I met, the more I realized that was just another misconception of the big, bad city. I’d never heard her so subdued before, and when I glanced over at her, I realized why. Her eyes were sparkling and she was all but drooling as she ogled the dapper detective.

  I kicked her under the table.

  “Ow!” She jumped in her seat and glared over at me. “What’dya do that for?”

  I gave her a tight smile while widening my eyes, trying my hardest to psychically remind her that we were on a mission, one that didn’t involve flirting. I returned my attention to Detective Castillo. “Odessa Dean.”

  “Could you spell that please?”

  I swallowed and forced myself to enunciate each letter. “O-d-e-s-s-a D-e-a-n.”

  Personally, I didn’t think I had an accent, or if I did, it was barely perceptible. I certainly didn’t have the sleepy Southern drawl that everyone else in my family did. And yet, since coming to Brooklyn, more often than not people had to ask me to repeat myself, or simply stared at me like I was speaking Elvish or something. In return, I found myself saying, “Huh?” more often than my nearly deaf grandpa when he left his hearing aids at home. It wasn’t that I couldn’t hear what people were saying as much as they talked so quickly I couldn’t understand them.

  “Where are you from, Odessa Dean?” he asked, and I liked the way he pronounced my name. He spoke as quickly as the other New Yorkers I’d met, but with a lyrical quality to his voice.

  “Piney Island, Louisiana,” I told him.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “No one ever has. Sneeze and you’d miss it.”

  “And what brings you two ladies in today?”

  “It’s nothing,” Izzy said.

  I was tempted to kick her under the table again, but instead, I corrected her. “It’s not nothing. We need to know what happened to Bethany.”

  4

  Dizzy Izzy @IsabelleWilliamsburg ∙ June 24

  feeling V down. send cute gifs #sad

  BETHANY?” DETECTIVE CASTILLO asked, cocking his head to one side. Even in the harsh, sterile lighting of the police station, his skin had a bronze glow that I couldn’t seem to achieve no matter how long I stretched out on a lounger in the backyard back home.

  “Our friend, Bethany Kostolus. The woman who fell off the walkway in Domino Park this morning in that viral video?” I explained.

  “And what makes you think that this Bethany Kostolus is the woman from the video?” he asked.

  “See? I told you so,” Izzy hissed. “It’s not Bethany. It can’t be.”

  I tugged at the uncomfortable collar of my polo. “She had on one of these, didn’t she? And I saw her tattoo.” I clasped my hand to the underside of my left wrist, where Bethany’s tattoo had been. “The cute little turquoise owl? Plus, she left work today, right before that video was shot, saying she had some business to take care of in Domino Park. Said it was a matter of life or death. She never came back.”

  “A matter of life and death, you say?” the detective asked. “Care to elaborate?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “That’s all she told me. To be completely honest, I assumed she was exaggerating so I would cover for her while she ran an errand.”

  He scrawled notes with his stylus as I talked, never breaking eye contact with me. “I saw you in the park earlier, you know. You’re hard to miss in that shirt. Tried to talk to you, but I lost you in the crowd. Mind explaining exactly what you were doing in Domino Park?”

  “I watched that video, the flash mob proposal video, shortly after it was first posted. I saw that girl fall, and recognized the shirt as one of ours. I came running, thinking I could maybe help or something.”

  The detective pursed his lips in thought. “But you didn’t stick around.”

  “I went back to work, to tell Todd.”

  “Todd?”

  “Todd Morris, the manager at Untapped Books & Café. I figured he’d know what to do.”

  “And?” the detective prompted.

  “And nothing. He didn’t believe me. He left a voicemail firing Bethany for running out in the middle of her shift and threatened to dock my pay if I didn’t get back to work.” I took a deep breath. “Please, Detective, talk to us. Everyone thinks I’m bonkers, even Izzy. Just tell us that it was someone other than Bethany that you found in the park, and we’ll get out of your hair.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Dean, but I can’t do that.”

  My heart sank. I’d spent the last several hours of my shift second-guessing myself until even I was starting to doubt what I’d seen in the park. I’d wanted to be wrong so bad I’d half convinced myself that I was.

  Now, all hope of Bethany being alive—unemployed, sure, but alive—was squashed.

  Beside me, Izzy made a strangled noise and I turned to her as tears flooded her eyes and began to overflow down her cheeks. I threw my arms around her and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry, Izzy.”

  “I should let you ladies have some privacy,” the detective said, scooting his chair backward against the hard floor.

  “No,” Izzy said, sniffling and pawing at her tear-filled eyes. She pulled herself upright, then grabbed my hand and squeezed, holding on for dear life. Her eyes were red and a clump of mascara clung to her cheek, but other than that, it could have been any normal day. It was hard not to envy her. At the end of a long, busy shift, I probably looked like something that normally hid in the dumpsters behind the café. And when I cried, my eyes didn’t merely glisten. I got red-nosed, with snot dripping down my upper lip. I was not a pretty crier. “How can we help?�
�

  “Sorry to waste your time, ladies, but unless you have something more to offer, I don’t see how the NYPD needs your help in this matter. We’ve pulled all the cell phone pictures and videos before and after the incident, and I’m reviewing them, along with the surveillance footage and witness statements, personally. The flash mob drew in quite a crowd, and they were all filming, which means we have a lot of angles. Several people caught her falling, but no one saw her go over the footbridge.”

  “Kinda convenient, wouldn’t you say?” I asked. “All those witnesses, but they were distracted by the flash mob.”

  “I didn’t even know that flash mobs were a thing anymore,” Castillo mused.

  “I said the same thing! Makes it all that much more suspicious, don’t you think?”

  He shook his head. “So far, there’s no indication that Ms. Kostolus was with anyone else, and no signs of foul play. Unless something comes back in the ME report to indicate otherwise, it appears your friend’s death was an unfortunate accident.”

  Beside me, Izzy slumped in her chair.

  “What about her medical alert bracelet? Did you find that at the scene?” I asked.

  “Ms. Kostolus had a medical condition I should know about?” the detective asked, sitting forward with his stylus poised over the tablet in anticipation of my response.

  I shook my head. “No. It wasn’t a real medical alert bracelet, just one she wore all the time.” I described it, and told him the inscription. “It was like a joke.”

  “Not a very funny joke if you ask me,” he replied.

  I didn’t disagree. “In any event, she never took it off, but I didn’t see it on her arm when the paramedics wheeled her away. Did you find it or not?”

  He looked down, tapped a few buttons, and then frowned. “Not that I know of. Didn’t find a phone, either. I’m assuming Bethany owned a cell phone.”

  “Of course,” Izzy said. “I’ve been calling it all day, but it goes straight to voicemail.”

  “A lot of people were on the scene. If she dropped her phone or bracelet, they could be anywhere. I’ll send a uniform to look for them, but like I said . . .”

  “I know, I know,” I interrupted him, annoyed that he was so quick to jump to conclusions. Sure, I couldn’t prove anything, but would it kill him to take a harder look before closing the case? “Looks like an accident. Don’t you think that maybe you’re relying a little too much on tech to do your job for you? Since when did police crowdsource crime scenes?”

  “See here, lady,” he said, and I could tell by the way a sharp edge had replaced the musical lilt in his voice that I’d hit a nerve. “There can be a hundred witnesses, and they’ll all see and hear something different.” He touched a finger to his temple. “Within minutes, their minds scramble the details, and by the time we interview them, they’re already remembering what they think happened, not what really happened. But cell phone vids tell the story how it happened, not how people perceived it.”

  I still didn’t like it. “Just because you don’t have a video of someone pushing her . . .”

  “Ms. Dean,” the detective interrupted, placing both hands on the table palms down and leaning forward, “if it looks like a duck . . .” He let his voice trail off.

  Fine. Whatever. I could take a hint.

  I pushed my chair back, letting the legs squeal against the floor, picked up my messenger bag, and tugged on Izzy’s shoulder. “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned police work?” I asked her, ignoring the still-seated detective.

  “If you think you can do a better job, be my guest,” he said with a nod of his chin. He picked up his tablet and got up to hold the door for us. “I am sorry about your friend, ladies. But trust me, her death was a freak accident. Nothing more.”

  We left the station and headed west, away from my aunt’s apartment. “Odessa, thanks for everything you’ve done today. I mean, you barely even knew Bethany, and yet you’re going out of your way for her and everything. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

  “I hate seeing you upset,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulder.

  “I’ll be okay. You don’t have to walk me all the way home.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t . . .” My voice trailed off. I didn’t want to sound insensitive. To be honest, I hadn’t realized we were headed toward her apartment. Izzy and I had hung out several times, but I hadn’t been to her apartment before. “I want to make sure you get home safe, that’s all.”

  Izzy stopped and looked at me, her head tilted to one side as if she were a bird trying to figure out a complicated puzzle. “You weren’t walking me home, were you?”

  “Well, no, not really.” My parents had taught me some valuable life lessons. How to fish. How to drive. How to keep a little bit of cash stashed away for a rainy day. And how to never lie unless you really, really had to. I saw no reason to lie to Izzy now. “I was thinking about swinging by Domino Park to take a look around. See if maybe I can find Bethany’s bracelet.”

  “Why is this such a big deal to you? I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but you barely knew Bethany. You’re so sweet but she’s, well, she was a little judgmental at times. I caught her making fun of your accent one day, right after you started. I told her to cut it out before you overheard and got your feelings hurt.” Izzy sighed. “I shouldn’t have told you that. Bethany was a good person at heart.”

  “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “No one’s perfect.”

  “But why are you so determined to figure out what happened to her?”

  I shrugged. My mom always said that I had such an inquisitive mind. If my dad hadn’t shattered his knee my senior year in high school, I would have gone to UT on a full scholarship. The world would have been my oyster. But instead, I stayed home to help Mom take care of him. Besides, even with a scholarship, college was expensive and we couldn’t afford it, not with Dad out of work and everything.

  There wasn’t much to do in Piney Island, besides sitting on the tailgate of someone’s beat-up Chevy pickup watching the sunset or trying to catch crawdads in the stream. The closest movie theater was all the way in Shreveport. We had satellite internet and cable, but it went out when it rained. And it rained pretty much always in Louisiana.

  I’d gotten into listening to true crime podcasts to pass the time, and the next thing I knew, I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough of them. In all the best real mysteries, little clues were hidden throughout. Clues a listener might miss if they weren’t paying close enough attention. I was convinced that Bethany’s missing bracelet was one of those clues.

  “I have this feeling that the cops are missing something. Look around.” I spread my arms wide, almost hitting a woman struggling to walk half a dozen dogs at the same time, the leashes in a hopeless tangle. “Oof,” I said. She muttered something rude and gave me a nasty hand gesture, but kept walking.

  A steady stream of pedestrians flowed around us, heading home from work or out to the gym. People were meeting friends, picking up dinner, going out on first dates. They were taking a jog or pushing a stroller. They were going to the park or the grocery store.

  Beside us, cars sped by on Division Ave, barely noticing the bikes weaving in and out of traffic. A siren wailed in the distance. The faint smell of barbecue wafted out of a nearby restaurant.

  “Yeah? What about it?” Izzy asked, tired of waiting for me to make my point.

  “There’s what, eight, nine million people in New York City? Almost three million of those live right here in Brooklyn. You really think the cops are gonna put any effort into investigating a death they’re already convinced was just an accident?”

  “You heard Detective Castillo. When the ME’s report comes back . . .”

  “That will be weeks from now. Months, maybe. In the meantime, if there is any evidence at Domino Park, it will be long gone by then.” Then it hit me. In a few
months, I’d be gone, too. As soon as Aunt Melanie returned, I was going back to Louisiana. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I still felt like a fish out of water half the time, but the more I got to know the people of Brooklyn, the more I loved it here. It made me sad knowing I would be gone by the time the ME published an official finding about Bethany’s death.

  “What difference does it make if you do find Bethany’s bracelet? She’ll still be dead.” Tears sprang into Izzy’s eyes and I felt like the worst friend in the world. I was trying to help, but I was making things worse.

  “You know what? You’re right. How about we go get a nice glass of wine somewhere? Or maybe a whole bottle of wine? We can watch a stupid movie on Netflix. Or, aren’t you always telling me you want to take me to see that local punk band you like so much? Deep Fried Cigarettes? Maybe they’re playing tonight.” I pulled out my phone, but before I could unlock it, Izzy put a hand over mine.

  “Raincheck? I really need to be alone right now, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course it is!” I kicked myself. I shouldn’t have been so pushy. I was doing everything all wrong, wasn’t I? “Call me if you need to talk.”

  “I will,” she promised. “See you at work tomorrow.”

  I frowned, trying to picture the schedule in my head. “I’m not scheduled to work tomorrow, but Todd might call me in to cover Bethany’s shift.” As soon as the words came out, I bit my lip. If I put my foot any further in my mouth, I’d choke on it.

  If Izzy noticed my faux pas, she ignored it. “Okeydokey, then. Later.”

  She turned south, presumably toward her apartment, and I continued heading due west, toward the river. The sun was low enough on the horizon that I had to squint to keep from being blinded. By the time I reached Domino Park, I’d missed the gorgeous sunset over Manhattan, but the park lights were bright enough that it might as well have been the middle of the day. Heavy clouds hung on the horizon. The weather app on my phone predicted storms tonight.