by Kate Gable
My mom is kind of like a chameleon who takes on personas. She becomes different people or maybe she's just trying like the rest of us.
Maybe she just has her good days and her bad and that’s okay.
11
I've been dreading this moment for a while, but it's something that has to be done. I meet Luke outside of Natalie's family house. I park right behind his rented Toyota, knock on the windshield, and get in to go over what we want to ask him.
I'm not officially on the case and the fact that I'm here at all is a courtesy. I have updated him about what happened with Michael and Steven. He's unhappy with the fact that I talked to them on my own.
He is, however, eager to get back the results of the email and the IP address that it could lead to. It takes a special kind of knowledge to make your communications over email and the internet in general secret, really secret from professionals.
"Listen, I want to apologize about what happened yesterday."
"No, please don't," Luke says, going over his notes in his journal.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"Please do not. Let's not talk about that. I really need to focus and we have to get this interview right."
I nod.
"You shouldn't even be here, but I think that you might be able to elicit something from her brothers," he says.
It's pretty clear to me that he is avoiding meeting my eyes. His journal opens down the middle and fits in the palm of his hand. The pages are blank, unlined, but filled up with his unorganized scrawl.
The lettering is small and it's difficult to read, but occasionally there are spots where he kept the pen on too long, probably thinking about something and it bled through to the other side.
The energy inside Natalie's house feels different from before. Detectives and people in law enforcement in general like to pretend or like to say that their work is very objective.
The part where you talk to the victim's parents and you interview people in their life is anything but that. This involves assessing people's credibility, figuring out why they're saying what they're saying.
Are they telling the truth?
That begins with that gut feeling you get walking into a place where you've been before and feeling that somehow everything is different.
Tension seems to hang in the air, filling up the house all the way to the top of the cathedral ceilings. Natalie's mom isn't particularly too pleased to see me, but she doesn't say anything to that effect.
I let Luke do all the talking. I let him take the lead because this isn't my case at all. He takes a seat across from her at the dining room table with a big decal above the wall that reads ‘Believe’.
There are a few crosses in the living room, as well as a few other paintings, pictures, and decals that read ‘Faith’ and ‘Home’.
It's not the religious symbols that make me feel uncomfortable. It's something else. Mrs. D’Achille looks at me in that suspicious way that you do when you don't approve of something or somebody.
Usually relatives try to find people who can relate to their situation and given the fact that my sister has also gone missing, I find her reaction to be unusual and surprising.
We've already exchanged words and things were different then. There was an openness to her that is now gone. It's almost as if she blames me or perhaps Violet for what has happened to her daughter.
I give Luke and her some space when I ask if I can get a cup of water in the kitchen. She points me in the direction and that's where I see Michael again.
"I'm sorry about earlier," he says.
"No problem at all." I nod. "I just want to speak to you about anything that you want to speak about. I know that Steven believes that she ran away, but that email came yesterday."
"Yes. Steven thinks that she left on her own because that's what he wants to think and that's what I'm going to let him think,” Michael says, looking down at his knuckles; he makes a fist and then looks up at me glaring. "You don't think that at all?"
"What do you know?"
He doesn't respond.
I ask him again, "What is it that you're trying to tell me?"
"Nothing."
"Michael, if you know anything, you have to tell me. Any little bit of information, you never know where it's going to lead. You never know what kind of things it will uncover. Natalie was very private. She wouldn't want anything out and we're going to maintain whatever you unveil in secret, but the authorities have to know. I have to know in order to help you find your sister, do you understand?"
He shifts his weight from one side to another, still hesitating.
He doesn't trust me. I don't blame him. I'm not officially on the case and my sister is missing as well.
I lean a little bit closer and open my mouth to say something else, but I can feel his body shutting down.
The next words out of my mouth need to be significant, otherwise I might lose him forever.
"I promise you that I'm going to keep everything you tell me at utmost secrecy. I will only reveal it to the police if I feel like it's relevant.”
I have no right to say any of this. This is against protocol. I have no idea whether or not anything's relevant until you put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
I need him to tell me what he’s keeping secret.
He hesitates again.
Finally, he says, "I found a video. It's a secret YouTube video. She made it private. Then it required a password to open, but she only uses like two or three passwords total. So, I saw it on her account.”
"What kind of video?" I ask.
"Just videos of her talking about her life, saying how much she wants to cut off her hair and color it purple."
"Oh, okay. That's not unusual, right? That doesn't seem outrageous?" I say.
"It is according to my mother, our mother. She's not exactly the most understanding person. She was obsessed with Natalie being perfect. When her hair started to turn darker like ours, she insisted that she color it and go get highlights. She makes her go every six weeks, even though Natalie couldn't care less. For a while, she wouldn't let her wear makeup. Then she relented and insisted that she only wear the most perfect kind. She wanted her to get her face contoured."
"Contoured?" I ask.
"I don't know, like you spray on foundation and powder in a particular way. I think it gives you higher cheekbones and a smaller nose. I don't know; there's all this stuff on YouTube about it."
"Natalie didn't want that?"
"No. She wanted to shave the back of her head. She wanted to color her hair purple. She wanted to paint her nails black. She just wanted to be different. She didn't want to be Mom approved."
"So, is that what she talked about in these videos?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Would you mind giving me access to them?"
"Sure."
"Does your brother know about them?"
"Yes, he does. We knew everything that she was going through. Mom wanted her to be the most popular girl at school because that's what she missed out on when she was a kid. Now Natalie didn't want anything to do with that. She didn't want to be a cheerleader. She didn't want everyone to know who she was. She was just very good at playing that role."
He pulls up the videos and shows them to me after putting in the password.
"Can you send them to me?" I ask. "I need to be able to watch all of them more than once."
"Yeah, that's fine," he says. "Please don't tell our mom, our dad, or anyone that you don't really have to."
He hands me the phone and I start looking through the videos. He hesitates a little bit.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"Nothing. I'm just waiting for you to find that."
"Find what?" I realize that it's going to be very difficult for me to watch these videos while he's here.
"Click on the fourth video and go to the timestamp five minutes twenty-five seconds."
I do as he says and that's when I see it.
My mouth drops open.
12
I lean over Michael's shoulder to get a good look of his screen. He holds the phone slightly toward him away from me, almost as if he wants to both share what's on it and to shield me from what I'm about to see.
When he fast forwards to the right spot, I see Natalie sitting across from Violet.
In Violet's room the camera is set up so that it's at eye level. They're sitting on the floor with the pink bedspread behind them as a backdrop.
Natalie laughs.
The sound of her laughter reverberates around the walls, wood paneled and then painted over in a matte, but white, and covered up with cut-outs from magazines.
There is a vision board hanging somewhere in the distance between them. Pristine white beaches with tall palm trees swaying in the wind with a laptop with YouTube on the front.
I'm assuming that one of her goals is to start a YouTube channel, something she has talked about for a long time.
Out in the corner are tall pines and a lake, a familiar view of Big Bear.
Underneath, the word ‘home’ hangs in the air, written in a farmhouse style.
Violet looks small in comparison to Natalie, meek. Her hair isn't as shiny or lustrous, but rather flat.
It looks like it hasn't been brushed or washed for a day or two. Natalie looks, well, beautiful, but elusive. Her hair is that elusive ash blonde, cool and flattering. Her skin is sun-kissed and just a little bit golden brown.
These two girls look like they would have nothing in common and not spend any time with each other at school, yet watching them silently gaze into each other's eyes and talk about nothing in particular, I can tell that they have feelings for one another.
"I think I'm going to love you forever," Violet says.
The sentence comes out of nowhere, but it doesn't seem to take Natalie by surprise.
Instead, she just reaches over and kisses her. It's a small peck, delicate.
The kind that tells you that this isn't the first time they have touched one another. Then Natalie reaches over and tucks a hair behind Violet's ear. Violet leans over to kiss her again.
I realize that this video may only be made for private viewing, but I continue watching because I have to know what happens. Maybe there is a clue to their disappearance.
They start to laugh again. Natalie points to her nails and Violet gets out a sparkly pink nail polish that Natalie shakes her head at.
"No, absolutely not.” She laughs, reaching over and grabbing the black one. "This one."
"So, what did you want to show me exactly?" I ask Michael. "The kiss?"
He looks at me dumbfounded and explains, "Of course!"
"Of course, what?" I ask.
"Of course the kiss. I mean, they're like together."
It suddenly occurs to me that he knows nothing about those other videos with Neil, the ones that Violet had on her computer.
"So, do you think that Violet and Natalie were together, romantically?”
“I always thought that Neil was her boyfriend. They dated on and off, but then I found these videos and now I have no idea. I didn't even know that she and Violet were friends."
I nod.
"I know that you're from LA and probably seeing two girls kissing is not a big deal to you and I'm very aware of the fact that it's probably not a big deal in general, but in our family things are different. There are certain expectations."
"Tell me about them,” I say.
"My parents, they're just really tough on her. They expect her to be this perfect daughter and she's not really like that. She doesn't like to dress up in pretty dresses. She doesn't like to have her hair that color, but Mom is insistent. Mom wants her to be the teenager that she never got to be."
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"Well, Mom got pregnant senior year. She wasn't ever really that popular and she just wants to relive everything through us. She wants us to do high school right."
"You're not even in high school," I say.
"I know, but she's getting us ready for that. She's preparing us for all of these things that are going to happen, all of these ways that we have to act that I'm not really sure what Natalie will be able to."
I want to ask him why he gets so mad at Steven for basically telling me the exact same thing earlier, but we're interrupted by the sound of footsteps somewhere on the other side of the wall.
"I just wanted to show you this so that you'd know. I don't know if it has anything to do with anything, but please don't share this with my parents unless absolutely necessary."
"I promise that I won't."
"This would just break their hearts and I don't want them to stop looking for Natalie. I don't want them to reject her or think that whatever happened to her, she deserves it."
"They would do that?" I ask.
"They're very firm about their beliefs."
I hear another clickety-clack of footsteps getting closer to us. I quickly ask him for the login information and if he can send me the videos to my Dropbox.
I can see him hesitating, but he agrees.
"You really have to be careful with this," he says. "I can tell that you don't think it's a big deal, but it is. My parents are very traditional and religious to like the ninth degree. They wouldn't even let Natalie cut her hair short. So, you can imagine what they would say if they saw her kissing a girl."
I nod and promise to keep this safe and exclusively on a need-to-know basis.
Later that afternoon, Luke and his team bring Neil and his father in for questioning. This has been the interview that they have been preparing for.
"Given the fact that Neil's father is a prosecutor and knows the complete ins and out of the system, it's important to treat him with a delicate touch," Luke says while we grab some coffee at the vending machine. I had offered to run out and get some at a real coffee shop, but he declined.
"I'm used to drinking this cold, crappy brew." Then he kind of puts me at ease. "If you know what I mean?"
I nod. I know exactly what he means.
I have discovered that there is certain things that I always do in repetition in order to prepare for an interrogation. It's not so much for superstitious purposes, it's more to put me at ease in asking uncomfortable questions.
The thing about being an interviewer is that it's not as simple as appearing to be good cop and bad cop. That's part of it, but there are so many shades of blue in between.
Different suspects require different approaches. Some do better when you're approachable and relatable and polite. Others do better with direct pressure and a good dose of fear mongering.
Neil is a difficult case.
Not only is he a child, which means that he needs to have his parent present, but his father is a district attorney.
That means that he knows exactly what kind of questions and answers would put his son in danger.
I'm not saying that he would cover up a murder, but parents do a lot of stuff for their children and stopping an interrogation would be the least of that.
13
Since I'm not officially on the case, I sit with Captain Talarico and a few other deputies in another room watching everything that's happening on video.
There are a few camera angles set up, one that focuses on Luke and others that are focused on Neil and his father. Mr. Goss is a tall, confident man with broad shoulders and an incredulous smirk on his face that's perfect for Court TV.
His son looks terrified. He sits deep into his chair hanging his head when Luke fumbles with his folders of paperwork, probably on purpose to appear a little bit disorganized and to give them a false sense of security.
Mr. Goss nudges Neil in the ribs to get him to sit up straight and not look so guilty.
"Tell me about your relationship with Natalie," Luke begins.
Neil goes over pretty much the same thing that he has told me and probably all the other investigators on the case.
Luke carefully goes from one quest
ion to the next. The interview proceeds slowly, but deliberately.
He goes through all of the questions that he showed me and then some trying to get definitive answers on videotape for the future. There are a few that Mr. Goss opposes to and Neil does not answer.
The majority of them are centered on Neil coming to me in private and telling me that he was out with Violet before, after she got dropped off.
It's clear to me why Mr. Goss doesn't want to talk about this or have any of this on tape. He suspects that his son may be somehow involved.
I'm not saying that he's responsible for her death. I'm not saying that I think that Neil is responsible for Violet's disappearance.
However, the last thing that his father, the prosecutor, wants to do is place him as the last person to officially see Violet.
Luke doesn't let up.
He points out the fact that we found Violet and then later Natalie's clothing in a plastic bag at the exact location where Neil said that he was with Violet the night of her disappearance. Again, his father refuses to let him answer.
"You realize that it was your statement to one of my colleagues about being with Violet at the observatory that led to us finding her clothes?"
"You will not answer that question, Neil," his father barks and then glares at Luke.
"Why is that? You know more than you're saying?" Luke finally presses. He has been dancing around this question for a while, but since the answer is a no, why not press harder?
"I'm going to cut this interview short, Agent Gavinson, if you don't stop accusing my son of having something to do with his friend's disappearance. We're all very sorry about what happened to her, but it's not his fault. You know that. I know that."
"No, I don't know that," Luke says, sitting back in his chair. "All I know is that Violet Carr is missing and your son was the last person to see her alive."
"Please, come on, don't be so dramatic," Mr. Goss pipes in. "I'm not confirming anything that Neil said and I'm not allowing for you to ask him anymore questions. I was here out of courtesy, but that courtesy is now being revoked. I can see that our efforts in helping you with this case are going unappreciated."
