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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.
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 (#ulink_46982793-24a6-52d5-b651-b91a416a6a94)
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 Langston’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.
“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.”
