Never Tell

by Alafair Burke

  “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

  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.
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br />   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

  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 Langs
ton’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.