Never Tell

by Alafair Burke

  “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

  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

  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.”