by Steph Cha
“So, this doctor, what makes you think she’s looking for the girl?”
“Couple reasons. First, she keeps coming up. Her disappearance is the whole reason Rubina’s even worried about her cousin, and I can’t seem to untangle one girl from the other.”
“And let me guess.”
“What?”
“The second reason.”
“Sure.”
“You think you’re marked for the job.”
I had to smile. When I’d first met Chaz, I’d thought he was an oaf—he’d been tailing me, and I thought he looked like one of the bumbling stooges who got bumped in detective novels. He was bald and fleshy, and he wore high white socks with white tennis shoes every day. He acted like a textbook corny white American dad, telling bad jokes and embarrassing me at every opportunity. It was easy to forget how smart he was, and his quiet bursts of insight still took me by surprise.
“I’ve had a good break since my last gnarly case. It just seems like the universe has been a bit nice to me, don’t you think?”
“Maybe, but you’ve been unluckier than most,” he said. “We don’t catch a lot of homicides in this business.”
“I know,” I said, “but I have a feeling.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you do. Coincidentally, I think you want to go look for this girl.”
“Hey, it’s not like I’m dying for excitement here. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.” He narrowed his eyes at me and I shrugged. “But I guess I can’t say I’m not curious.”
*
I googled Nora from my desk. I didn’t have her last name, but she was easy enough to find. There weren’t too many missing Armenian Noras in the L.A. area.
I found a spate of news articles on her disappearance, dating from almost a month earlier. As I read up, the facts started to sound a bit familiar, and I thought I might have heard about this case on the radio. The story hadn’t attracted a lot of national attention, but it wasn’t hidden under any rugs, either. I wondered if it would explode if a corpse showed up.
Her name was Nora Mkrtchian. She was a twenty-five-year-old L.A. native, the daughter of Armenian immigrants who’d left the Soviet Union in the late ‘80s. She ran a Web site called Who Still Talks, a popular niche political blog devoted to discussion of the 1915 Armenian genocide. The L.A. Times called her “a firebrand Internet activist” with a strong following among young Armenian Americans. She’d started Who Still Talks two years ago, when she was a 1L at Loyola Law School in downtown L.A. When she’d generated a following, she dropped out and devoted herself to the blog, posting several times daily while applying to graduate school for genocide studies.
She was last seen on a Friday night in February, when her roommate stated that Nora had appeared “agitated” before leaving the apartment for what was supposed to be only a few hours. Her car was still missing with her, but foul play was suspected.
If the police had any leads, they were evidently not sharing them with the press, but the political blogosphere was abuzz with speculation. Nora had been the target of some serious online harassment. This had been a constant throughout her blogging career, but it had intensified in the months leading up to her disappearance.
I found a link for her Web site and clicked through. It had a simple design, with a few slight embellishments that showed an effort at departure from the standard blogger template. “Who Still Talks” was printed at the top in a thick, crisp-edged font that suggested hip professionalism, millennial savvy, minimal bullshit. Then, in the middle of the page there was Nora, middle finger extended at the top of her last post. I started reading.
Hey guys, today we’re going to talk about me. “But, Nora,” you say to your laptop, “Don’t we always talk about you?” And because I can pretty much hear you, I’ll say: Yes, we do, to an extent. This is my blog house run by my blog rules, and in my blog house, we talk about things that are dear to my heart, and as we all know, I am a raging narcissist. You all know what I care about; my screaming Armenian blood, my conflicted feelings on System of a Down. You all might feel like you know me reasonably well, and you know what? You probably do.
But I don’t talk about some stuff here. I don’t talk about my love life, my family. I could have four kids for all you guys know. (I don’t have four kids.) Believe it or not, I show some restraint. I try not to get too trivial about sharing the day-to-day shit, though you know I #can’t #fucking #resist posting pictures of pancakes from time to time. But honestly, I do think about the things in my life that might help or at least entertain other people, and despite all the random junk that gets through the filter, you guys should know that I do have a filter.
Which is why I didn’t address the harassment till now.
As some of you have noticed, we’ve had a few uninvited guests over the last month or so. I don’t always respond to comments, but I do try and read them all, and I’ve seen you guys engaging these shithead trolls. I want to say thank you to everyone who’s defended me. At first I thought it would be better if we all just ignored them, as a family, but to be honest it felt good to see you guys stick up for me so I just tried my best to stay out of it and let you all do your good work. But it’s gotten to the point where I can’t ignore this shit anymore. These people have gotten so fucking noxious that I’m just gonna go ahead and call them out right here.
Here’s what happened, for those of you who don’t read the comments. (And by the way, I know in general the rule is, Never read the comments, but that hasn’t been true of this site until pretty recently. Most WST readers are respectful, funny, etc. etc. mwah mwah mwah.) Last month, I ran a post on the anti-memorial lawsuit, condemning Thayer White for representing genocide deniers. That got cross-posted on HuffPo, and even now, when you google Thayer White, that post comes up. (Suck it, you soulless mercenary motherfuckers.) Thanks to all that attention, I got a few exuberant new readers, who took it upon themselves to plaster my comments sections in straight-up hate speech. It got ugly and personal really fucking quickly. At first I thought they’d get bored after a while, move on to the next hateable woman on the Internet. That didn’t happen. It got worse and worse, and it’s still escalating. It goes without saying that I get rape threats on the daily. I’ve actually stopped checking my e-mail because some of this comes straight into my in-box. (This is also why I made my e-mail address private a few weeks back, but once you put that shit on the Internet, I guess it stays accessible. Anyone who had it before would still have it, and could share it further.)
I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I will say that I’ve been threatened in a way that extends out of the Internet. It’s been a nightmarish couple of days.
But listen up, you horde of disgusting anonymous cum wads: Enough is enough. I’m coming for you.
The post had been reblogged thousands of times, and there were over eight hundred comments. I checked the dates—the post had gotten a reasonable amount of attention when it was first posted, but it went semi-viral when Nora’s disappearance made headlines. I started reading the comments. Most of them were positive wishes from strangers, praying for her safety.
The comments were unmoderated, with no apparent filter, because a large chunk of them was obvious spam. There were several comments in some version of English somehow both wretched and robotic, gushing about hot dates with older men, and friends who were making hundreds of dollars an hour working from home.
I scrolled through quickly, but one brief comment snagged my attention. It was written in all caps, indicating anger and ignorance, and it said, “I HOPE HE RAPED U FIRST.”
I felt a visceral stab of disgust. The anonymity of the Internet seemed to bring out the worst in people, who were assholes often enough to begin with. I wondered what kind of mask this commenter presented to the outside world.
With sick curiosity, I scanned through the rest of the comments, my eyes alert for more unrestrained hate. I didn’t have to look very hard. About a quarter of the comments were in the same malicio
us spirit, and it was starting to look like a targeted campaign. There was a lot of name-calling, with particular concern for Nora’s perceived unattractiveness and rampant promiscuity. Some commenters lamented not having the chance to rape her. Others promised to kill her if she happened to turn up alive.
All of these comments were met with condemnation and outpours of support for Nora, if she was reading, from first-time visitors to the site, as well as friends from both the Internet and the real world. The positive voices outnumbered the threats and insults, but even just a few of those remarks would have flavored the pot. As it was, the remarks were far from few, and I suspected there was some sort of organized effort to mob the missing girl’s Web site. I wondered what kind of person would undertake such a project.
I rooted around her archives to get a sense of Nora and her work. She was the sole writer on Who Still Talks, though she interviewed and cross-posted other bloggers regularly. Her posts were frequent, ending abruptly the day of her disappearance. Not every update was serious or even political. The blog had a strong personal bent, with a surprising number of selfies for a Web site with any mainstream credibility. There was also an orange cat that commanded a lot of screen time.
Nora was thin and pretty, with straight, dark hair and large, dark eyes perpetually ringed in black liner and several coats of mascara. She put a lot of evident effort into her appearance. She was in full makeup in almost every picture, and she wore beautiful, expensive-looking clothes, favoring low-cut tops that showed off a rack out of all proportion to the size of her body. There was nothing bashful about this girl.
The Web site wasn’t about her, but its writing and content emitted an easy vanity that was slightly off-putting. It would have been downright obnoxious if it weren’t also pretty insightful. Even the undisguised narcissism had a strain of womanly defiance, some of which was clearly reactive.
Nora’s main focus was on the need for universal recognition of the Armenian genocide, a topic that was still controversial in many parts of the world. She’d started Who Still Talks as a passion project to keep her going in law school, but when she attracted thousands of readers, she decided she’d found her calling. She became a powerful voice for Armenian-American youth, particularly in Southern California.
I felt some embarrassment at how little I knew about the genocide, though it was, apparently, a more obscure topic than I would have thought given the scope of atrocity. Since I was hesitant to get my facts from a blog, even one as established as Nora’s, I decided to go to my number-one source for everything from dog breeds to the lives of serial killers—the often reliable Wikipedia.
*
The facts of the genocide made my stomach turn. The death toll was almost inconceivable, as was the pure evil of a regime set on eradicating an entire religious and ethnic minority. The genocide had apparently been the answer to an “Armenian Question”—a question of this Christian minority’s place in early-twentieth-century Turkey. A ruthless answer, one that afforded human life all the respect due to dust bunnies. The genocide was minutely organized and executed with devastating cold-blooded efficacy. The Turkish government even tried to collect on life insurance policies for the Armenians it had exterminated, on the assumption that their heirs were dead, too.
By the time I emerged from this Internet wormhole, it was two o’clock and I hadn’t eaten lunch. I also hadn’t heard from Rubina, so I went for a sandwich and called her on her cell phone.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked.
It struck me that Rubina was a woman who lived in constant expectation of bad news.
“No,” I said. “Sorry, I’m at the office. I’ve just been doing some research.”
“What kind of research?”
I hesitated. “You won’t be charged for my time or anything. I had a slow morning and was waiting to hear from you.”
“Does it relate to me?”
“Sort of,” I said. “I was just reading about Nora, and I found her Web site.”
“Oh.” There was a startled flutter to her tone. “We are all terribly worried about her.”
“Do you know where the police are on her disappearance?”
“I don’t know much more than what’s in the papers,” she said neutrally. “Are you very interested?”
I bit my lip. “I’m concerned,” I said. “It seems like she has a lot of enemies.”
“Yes, she does. She’s an attention-seeker and a rabble-rouser. It’s only natural that some people don’t take to her.”
“Do you think she’s”—I paused, looking for the most delicate word—”alive?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to think so, but she has been missing for a long time.”
“Do you know that she was the victim of an online harassment campaign? These—”
“I know about that,” she interrupted. “You’re beginning to sound a bit like Lusig.”
I colored at the admonishment. “I’m sorry. It’s hard not to be interested in this kind of thing.”
“That’s okay, but let’s keep things clear. Whatever happened to Nora has no bearing on me or my baby unless Lusig lets it claim her. I’ve hired you so I can make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s all. Do we understand each other?”
“You mean, do I understand you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You asked if we understood each other, but I haven’t asked you for anything. If you’re going to reprimand me, just reprimand me. No need for the royal ‘we.’”
“I’m sorry. I’ve been told I can be condescending, but that is not my intention.”
“No problem,” I said. “And yes, of course I understand. I am committed to your case, and I won’t do anything that could impair my ability to work for you.”
“Thank you.”
“So what’s next?”
“I’m concerned about her behavior last night. I want to know if it’s part of a broader pattern. Is there a way that I can put Lusig under full surveillance?”
“Depends what you mean by ‘full.’ Are we talking 24/7, Big Brother Is Always Watching You surveillance?”
She forced a small laugh. “Is that available?”
“No,” I said. “We don’t have God powers.”
“What is available?”
“I can keep a steady tail on her within reasonable bounds. I need to sleep, eat—well you’re a doctor, so you know these things.”
“Can I hire two of you?”
“We’re a small outfit, just three investigators. I can ask Mr. Lindley and Mr. Flores to fill in some gaps, but I think it would be hard to keep two of us on this one case at all times. That being said, I won’t hold it against you if you want to reach out to a bigger outfit. Obviously, anything you’ve told me I keep in confidence, and that goes for the fact that you even walked into my office.”
“No,” she said quickly. “Believe it or not, it was difficult for me to talk to you in the first place. I’d rather proceed with whatever you can provide, as long as that’s moderately comprehensive.”
“Of course. If you want, I can even see about getting a GPS tracker on her car.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
I could tell by her breathing that she had something to add. “It won’t?” I prompted.
“I’ve already attached one.”
“Oh.” I laughed. “You’re prepared. Are you sure you even need me?”
“I don’t care particularly where she goes. It’s what she’s doing that concerns me.”
”It sounds like you haven’t bugged her phone or apartment. I wonder what’s stopping you.”
I must have sounded snider than intended, because she dropped her voice to a quiet, sheepish tenor. “You must think I’m mentally unstable,” she said.
“No, sorry, not at all. Didn’t mean for it to come across like that.”
It was true enough that I thought she was extreme, but I’d never had a client who wasn’t a bit more willing to indulge paranoia than the av
erage goon on the street. In any case, I took their money and let them use me to probe, invade, spy, whatever. Their paranoia was my cash cow.
“It’s very important to me that Lusig take care of her body. I cannot have her acting out where I can’t see her. It won’t do.” She sighed. “However, there are certain barriers I can’t cross—that is, not directly.”
“Are you worried that Lusig would find out?”
“Yes, there is always that chance, though I try not to worry excessively about things that might never happen.” She paused, perhaps catching the irony. “But even if I knew Lusig would never find out, I would feel guilty and uncomfortable about spying on her with my own eyes and ears.”
“Which is why you contacted a mercenary.” I smiled. I’d spent years romanticizing the literary private detective, but now I wore the badge, and I knew more or less what I was.
“Yes. Do you understand my position? I think all this is quite necessary, but I have no intention of betraying Lusig’s trust where I can avoid doing so. If you overhear her talking about me, or my husband, for example, you don’t have to tell us that. I only need information pertaining to her obligation to me.”
“Sure.”
“Song,” she said, pronouncing it slowly.”Is that a Korean name?”
“Yeah. So is Juniper.”
“Oh, how so?”
“Sorry, I was kidding. Though I guess only an immigrant would name her kid that. Anyway, what about it?”
“I don’t know how things are in your culture, but Armenians are very family-oriented.”
“Koreans, too.” I didn’t mention that my own family was all but entirely disintegrated.
“Of course, no one would describe her culture as nonfamily-oriented, but the standard American model is to put the individual first, and that is not the case for Armenians. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, it’s an immigrant thing.”
“Yes, exactly. In our family, at least, the lines that divide us are very fluid. And within our family? Lusig and I are bonded as strong as sisters.”
