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CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_fd7eca20-77a2-52da-be9b-6768b161605b)
Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor
“3:14 IN THE MORNING”
It has been twenty years, but at three-fourteen this morning I screamed in my sleep. I probably would not have known I had screamed were it not for the nudge from my husband—my patient, sleep-starved husband, who suspects but can never really know the reasons for his wife’s night terrors, because his wife has never truly explained them.
I could see the uncertainty coloring his face this morning as he sipped his coffee, already going cold, while I poured a fresh cup for myself at the counter, carrying the carafe to the breakfast table to top off his cup. Not uncertainty about my reasons for screaming—that was ever-present—but uncertainty about whether even to raise the subject. Should I ask her? Are some subjects better left in the subconscious?
I loved him so much in that moment—for loving me enough to care, for caring enough about me to let the unspoken remain so. And so, even though I would have preferred we peruse the newspaper together, sharing headlines with each other before he had to dash to work, I told him.
I screamed at three-fourteen in my sleep this morning because twenty years ago—more than half my lifetime ago—a man walked into my bedroom and changed my childhood forever. I did not hear him open the door but somehow I knew he was there. Maybe it was the sliver of light that penetrated the room from the hallway along with his footsteps. Or maybe it was simply because I had known for months that this moment—at some point, on some night—would eventually come to pass. When I opened my eyes, he was there, closing the door behind him. Unwelcome, but not unanticipated.
I remember expecting him to say something, to offer some flimsy excuse for entering my room, or maybe even to try floating some corny, flirtatious line, pretending like we were some kind of illicit couple. But he didn’t say anything. He took the four steps from the door to the foot of my bed in silence. I apparently wasn’t worth the expenditure of words.
I remember wanting to scream. Wanting to beat the shit out of him until he was dead. But it was as if some other part of my brain had already made the decision for me—no, at the time, it felt more like the decision had been made for us: the me in that room and the real me watching from afar. Neither of us would be screaming. We would not be defending ourselves. We would simply watch the bedside clock and wait for this night to be over.
I remember looking at the readout of the display, thinking about the squareness of those red numbers, how each digit could be formed by illuminating various combinations of seven straight lines forming two stacked squares. And the numbers on the readout at that one moment read 3:14—three-fourteen in the morning.
I saw those same numbers taunting me from my nightstand last night after my husband nudged me in our bed. They made me wish he had left me to scream in my sleep, unaware that my body and thoughts still, to some degree, belong to that man, and to that night, all these years later.
It has been twenty years since I stared at that old clock. Ten years since I married a man who was willing to look past my occasional tendency to burst out in tears during lovemaking. Seven months since I believed I was recovered enough to start this blog. One hundred and forty-three posts about my experiences as a survivor. Seventy-two thousand, eight hundred, and ninety words, not that I’m counting.
And with one scream at three-fourteen this morning, I felt once again like a victim.
But to my dear, sweet husband who was finishing his coffee before work, all I could say was, “I had a bad dream, babe. I think it was about those things that happened when I was young.”
And then after I kiss him goodbye and watch him make his way down the steps of our townhouse, briefcase in hand, I walk upstairs to sit at this desk and write down the truth that I still cannot speak aloud to the people who love me, even twenty years later.
Just like the woman said, it had been seven months since she’d first started the blog. “Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor.” Even the title reeked of self-indulgence.
It wasn’t surprising that she’d gone to the trouble of counting the individual posts and even the number of words. She was exactly that type. She was that prideful. High and mighty.
The blog had started out as an anonymous project, but this particular reader knew precisely who had authored the past seven months and, apparently, 72,890 words of this self-involved, self-help-through-writing garbage. The reader scrolled down to the comments section at the bottom of the screen, bypassing the predictable remarks from the undoubtedly overweight, housebound trolls who followed this woman’s crap: “Hang in there, girl.” “One day at a time.” “Thank you for your honesty.”
Those were the comments that were most disgusting—the posts that thanked this woman for deluding herself into thinking she had any kind of insight into her current existence and for enticing even more pitiful souls to read and admire her.
The reader contemplated the blank text box on the computer screen, then began typing:
“If you thought that night twenty years ago was bad, wait until you see what I have planned. You won’t remember a single time on the clock. Maybe a day on the calendar if you’re lucky. Maybe a week. Or maybe I’ll keep you busy for a month. One thing I know for certain: You will not live to write about it.”
The tapping sounds against the keyboard were so quick and intense that the typist did not hear the approaching footsteps until a second face appeared, reflected in the laptop screen.
It was too late.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_c37d6cdc-9e77-59f0-9518-df32526361d2)
Ellie Hatcher had arrived in New York City with certain expectations. Influenced by iconic images of Times Square, the Plaza Hotel, and the Empire State Building, she anticipated bright lights, rows of towering skyscrapers, wide sidewalks filled to capacity with suit-clad businessmen and their briefcases, and a perpetual soundtrack of car horns, sirens, and construction equipment.
But now that she’d lived here for more than a decade, Ellie knew that those iconic images painted a tourist’s picture of New York City. Outside the movie version of this city, most New Yorkers lived quiet lives on peaceful streets, venturing into the madness only as necessary.
This morning found her on Barrow Street, among the narrow, tree-lined diagonals that formed the West Village. Nestled between Washington Square Park and the Hudson River, this was Ellie’s dream neighborhood, removed from the commercial worlds of the Financial District and midtown, protected from the fumes and sounds of frustrated commuters lined up at the bridges and tunnels.
But today a different kind of chaos had found its way into that charming neighborhood. It was a form of chaos to which Ellie had also become accustomed over the years: marked cars, fleet cars, uniforms barking into shoulder-mounted radios, plainclothes and techs gathering physical evidence, even a fire truck and an ambulance. It was the chaos and energy of a crime scene, complete with the yellow tape that separated the normal from the aberrant.
She overheard the murmurs among curious pedestrians as she and her partner, J. J. Rogan, made their way toward the taped perimeter.
“What’s going on? They’re filming?”
“Law and Order, I think. Not the regular one. That got canceled. But SVU still films here. Or maybe it’s that new show—that one with the blonde in the hat. Or was that one canceled too?”
Another bystander noticed them flash their badges to cross the perimeter. “You see that? It’s for real.”
“I thought that was Gwyneth Paltrow’s house.”
“No, she was on Fourth Street. And she sold it a few years ago.”
Ellie could understand the source of the real estate gossip once she had a chance to take in the townhouse to which they’d been summoned. Four floors that she could count above ground, plus what looked like a basement. Twice as wide as the other single-family houses on the block.
Through the etched glass of the front door, she was struck by the spaciousness of the entryway. Larger than her entire living room, the area was empty but for a round table topped with a vase of what appeared to be five dozen fresh tulips and, in the back corner, a sculpture that looked like it belonged in the Metropolitan Museum. A fireplace and Prius-sized chandelier completed the look.
“Damn,” Rogan said.
In short, the place was nice enough to earn a “damn” out of Rogan, who wasn’t as easily impressed as his partner.
The woman who made her way down the curved staircase seemed born and bred to live in this kind of home. Black slacks and an asymmetric tan jacket, for a look that was simultaneously casual and sophisticated. Salt-and-pepper bob, fresh from a salon blow-dry. But when she opened the door, the redness of her eyes reminded Ellie that they weren’t here to admire her lifestyle.
The woman’s gaze seemed to fix on their clothing. “Who are you?”
“Detectives from NYPD, ma’am. Ellie Hatcher.” She offered her hand, but the woman surprised Ellie by grabbing her forearm.
“Thank God.” Ellie assumed she was being pulled to the staircase, but the woman guided them instead into an elevator. It was decorated with photographs of defining moments of New York City from the seventies and eighties. A bar owner writing on a storefront sign during the blackout of 1977: No Lights, No Food, but Plenty of Booze. The Ramones playing at CBGB. Transients lined up outside the Bowery Mission. John Lennon in a crowd in Central Park. The final Simon and Garfunkel concert. Forty-second Street back when it was fleabag hotels and porno theaters. A graffiti-covered 6 subway train. It was a New York Ellie had never known.
The woman pushed the button for the fourth floor and the elevator began to creak its way up.
“You have to do something. It’s my daughter. I found her. In the bathtub. The blood. The water was so red. Her face was—so white.”
“I’m very sorry, ma’am, but why are you still here?” Ellie realized her response sounded cold. “I mean, we usually separate the family from this kind of chaos.”
“They’re up there already, but they’re not doing anything. I heard what they said. They didn’t think I could hear them talking, but I’m not deaf. They don’t believe me. They’re saying she did this. To herself.”
When the elevator doors opened, two uniformed officers were waiting—one short and fat, the other tall and lanky, very Laurel and Hardy. They looked alarmed, and then resigned, when they spotted the badges clipped to the waistbands of the latest arrivals in the hallway.
“Crap.” The skinny one spoke first, trying to explain their presence upstairs while a civilian roamed freely through a crime scene. “We were heading down. Waiting for the elevator. Guess she beat us to it.”
Rogan clicked his tongue as the two officers stepped onto the elevator. Ellie could tell he wanted to clunk their heads together. “Get the hell outside and help protect your scene,” he said. “Hatcher and Rogan. Arrived at eleven-twenty-seven. Write it down.” He jabbed his index finger against the fat cop’s breast pocket for emphasis.
The elevator began its creaky descent. “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” their hostess said. “They’re not taking this seriously. Please listen to me. My daughter did not kill herself.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ec43f112-296f-5867-889f-1b2817e7a72b)
The top floor of the townhouse served as a separate residence, complete with its own dining room, living room, kitchen, and long hallway leading to the back of the building. The decor was white-on-white-on-white. Gleaming white high-gloss floors. White sheepskin rugs. White Lucite furniture. White throw pillows on the white furniture. Swank digs for servants’ quarters.
“Julia’s room is back here.”
From the rear of the apartment, Ellie heard footsteps. Voices. The clicks and squawks of radios.
“And you are?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Detectives. My name is Katherine Whitmire. Julia’s mother.”
“And no one has told you that you can’t be here?”
“This is my home, Detective. My daughter. I said I wouldn’t leave until homicide detectives arrived. I heard what they were saying about Julia, but I’m telling you: My daughter was murdered.”
The callout had come to them as a suspected suicide. When they had pressed for an explanation as to why the case required two homicide detectives, none was forthcoming. Ellie had a feeling she was looking at the numero-uno reason.
“We’re here now, Mrs. Whitmire. And I know you’re hurting. But you can’t be in this house right now, especially if you’re right about someone doing harm to your daughter.” Ellie caught sight of a uniformed officer on the spiral staircase and waved him up. “This gentleman’s going to take you outside. You can wait in one of the cars if you’d like, or he can take you to the precinct if you’d be more comfortable there. We just need to take a quick look around, and then we’ll need to talk with you in more detail.”
She could tell the woman wanted to argue but then seemed to think better of it and nodded. “I’ll let you go back and see for yourselves. I can’t look at her again. I can’t. I just—can’t.” She led the way down the stairs, the uniform following her awkwardly.
The noises Ellie had heard were coming from behind a closed door at the end of the hallway. She opened it.
“Why is this door closed with a civilian running around the crime scene?”
“Because it’s not a crime scene, and that crazy bitch slammed the door before she ordered us not to touch her daughter’s body.”
The two Emergency Medical Technicians were young, one with a crew cut, the other with too much gel worked through his spiked hair. They stood passively by the bedroom windows, placing themselves as far as possible from the white marble floor of the en suite interior bathroom they both eyed unconsciously. It was the spiky-haired one who was doing the talking. From his colleague’s shrug, Ellie could tell that he was also the one who’d gotten into some kind of confrontation with Katherine Whitmire.
“So some rich lady in a designer jacket gets a little irate about her daughter being dead, and the two of you decide to just stand in here, scratching each other’s balls? What the fuck is going on here?”
“You got the same callout we got. Sixteen-year-old girl, slit wrists in the bathtub. We came up. Probably only beat your two guys by a minute or so. And it was obvious what we were looking at.” He lowered his voice. “It’s a clear suicide, all right? The blade’s in the tub on the right side of her body. A couple hesitation marks on the left wrist, then a clean cut through the radial artery. The girl even left a note, right there on the bed.”
Ellie saw a lined sheet of yellow notepaper propped neatly against the throw pillows on the low platform bed.
“So tell me again why you’re calling this girl’s grieving mother a crazy bitch?”
“Because I guess she heard us talking and wigged out on us. I was about to go downstairs for the gurney. We were all in the bathroom, making that initial assessment, you know—the hesitation cuts, the clear slice, the note—and the next thing I know, she’s screaming at me to take my hands off her daughter’s body. Yelling at us not to touch anything at all if we weren’t going to investigate what happened. You’ve seen this place. These people obviously have some grease. So, yeah, we decided to stand in here and—what’d you say? scratch our balls?—until someone higher on the pay grade showed up. When we heard that doorbell, your guys went running out to cover their asses, but here we are, still scratching. I’ll stand here and scratch all day until the ME makes the call. I’m not taking on some rich, crazy bitch. How about you, Andy? You need any help over there, or are you all squared away?”
Another shrug from the quiet one.
Rogan was already making his way to the bathroom. It was spacious enough for the two of them, plus the two Emergency Medical Technicians and a few linebackers, but she was the only one who followed. She heard Spike call out behind her. “If you need me to explain how I know the girl’s bulimic, let me know. We aren’t as magically astute as you cops, but eating disorders go with depression. Suicide notes go with suicides. There’s nothing for us to do here.”
She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “Go save lives, guys. We’ll wait for the ME.”
Rogan looked back at her from the bathroom, hands on hips. “Real sensitive for a guy who spends his days helping people.”
“Some people would say that about you, Rogan.”
“You didn’t want to take him up on that bulimia thing? To me, she looks as skinny as every other white girl these days.”
When people imagine a woman soaking in a tub, they picture those cheesy commercials with a bath full of frothy bubbles, the woman’s hair tucked into a loose bun as she runs a loofah across her pampered skin, pausing to take a sip of wine in the candlelight.
There was nothing pampered about Julia Whitmire’s death scene. There was wine, but it was an empty bottle toppled on the floor next to the toilet. She was nude, but there were no bubbles or loofahs or candles. Just clear pink water, a few smears of dark red on the edge of the white ceramic tub, blood that had streamed from her left wrist. The straight razor had fallen into the tub on the right side of her body.
Ellie leaned forward and saw two superficial lacerations next to the source of the leaking blood. Slitting a wrist takes fortitude. Some people try for years before they can bring themselves to go through with it. This girl only took two practice strokes.
Rogan was seeing the same scene, drawing the same conclusions. “Looks like she held the razor in her right hand and pulled her left wrist across it. Right arm falls into the water with the razor. Left arm doesn’t quite make it back to the side.” Julia’s left hand was draped across her pubic area, as if trying to protect her privacy in death.
Ellie didn’t need an Emergency Medical Technician to explain the signs of this girl’s eating disorder. “Her skin’s loose. That’s one of the things the Emergency Medical Technician was probably seeing.”
“She’s dead. Skin gets loose.”
She peered between the girl’s parted lips. “No, it’s more than that. See how her face is bloated even though she’s gaunt around the eyes? And her teeth are gray. This girl was definitely making herself sick.” She walked out of the bathroom and over to the bed, bending down to read the hand-scrawled note, filled with scratch marks and second attempts, propped against the pillows.
She took in every scribbled word, but a few lines summed it up.
I know I should love my life, but sometimes I hate it … I’m constantly being told how lucky I am, but the truth is, my so-called privileged life hurts … It hurts to believe that I can never amount to the person I’m supposed to be. It hurts to feel so alone every second of the day, even when I’m surrounded by other people.
Poor little rich girl.
The final sentence said it all:
And that is why I have decided to kill myself.
She left Rogan to read on his own as she did a quick walk-through of the upper-floor residence. Medicine cabinet filled with high-end hair and skin supplies, but no prescription drugs other than a birth-control packet made out to Julia Whitmire. Hairclips and magazines in the nightstand. Top dresser drawer filled with expensive La Perla lingerie, more suitable for a soft-core porn shoot than a high school girl’s bedroom. No food in the refrigerator except two bags of baby carrots and a bottle of nonfat ranch dressing. Cabinets filled with liquor. Wine rack stocked with bottles.
Rogan trailed into the kitchen behind her. “So what do you think?” he asked.
“Looks like making herself throw up wasn’t quite enough self-inflicted damage for her anymore.”
“What were you saying about sensitivity?”
“Hate to say those tools were on to something, but this looks pretty clear-cut to me.”
“The note even had tearstains on it,” he said.
“And yet I noticed you didn’t touch the letter. Neither did I.”
“Don’t need to. Got that LASIK shit. These eyes shine like diamonds and focus like laser beams.”
She rolled her own, un-LASIKed, eyes. “You know what I’m getting at. Those idiots had a point about people who’ve got—what did he call it—grease? I don’t know who that woman outside is, but she’s clearly rich enough to have a setup like this, and she’s apparently powerful enough to set her own terms about where she’ll stand and what type of detective will be sent to her home.”
They were interrupted by a towering bald man in medical scrubs. Rogan squinted at Ellie, a sign that he recognized the new arrival’s cue ball but had forgotten his name.
“Ginger,” she called out with a smile. Cue ball had called her “Blondie” during a tense moment when they’d first met. Instead of making an obvious bald comment in response, she’d called him Ginger. Since then, he always returned her calls in record time.
“It’s Blondie and her stoic partner.”
