Читать книгу Never Tell - Alafair Burke - Страница 10

Ellie found Katherine Whitmire perched on an upholstered banquette at the bottom of the stairs, a cordless phone to one ear. The officer who was supposed to have accompanied her outside stood by. “I’ve been with her the whole time,” he offered as a consolation.

Ellie was beginning to wish she possessed whatever power this woman seemed to exert over others.

Katherine used her free hand to wipe away smears of black mascara when she noticed Ellie approaching.

“I have to go, Bill,” she said into her phone. “One of the detectives just finished up in the bedroom. She might have some news. But you’re heading back into the city, right? Immediately?” She muttered a soft thank-you before clicking off the line.

“My husband,” she explained. “He’s getting a helicopter back from East Hampton. He was talking about a meeting out there. I think he’s in a bit of shock.”

“It’s not unusual.”

“Right. I guess you’re used to dealing with these sorts of things, aren’t you?”

“You never get used to it. Tell me about your daughter.”

“She would never do something like this to herself.”

Everyone thought they could spot suicidal tendencies. Ellie knew better. Some people advertised their misery with unshowered days spent self-medicated in bed, but just as many kept up appearances as workers, students, neighbors—fathers. It had taken Ellie nearly twenty years, but she’d come to the truth the hard way.

“So tell me about her.”

“I don’t understand, Detective. What is it that you want to know?”

She wanted to know how this woman saw her daughter. Mostly she wanted this woman to feel like she had been given the opportunity to speak before Ellie left her to deal with the long and messy aftermath of a suicide. “I know you overheard a couple of the police officers talking to the Emergency Medical Technicians. Obviously you believe they jumped to the wrong conclusions. So tell me what you want us to know about Julia, so we can have the whole picture.”

Ellie followed the woman to the living room, where she removed a framed photograph from the mantel. “This was two Christmases ago.” Katherine Whitmire had not changed since the family portrait, but her daughter looked much younger with no makeup, plump cheeks, and pink lips struggling to cover her metal braces through a smile.

“Is that your son?” Ellie pointed to the preppy-looking boy seated next to Julia.

“Billy. Bill Jr., yes. He’s a freshman at Colby now. And that’s my husband, Bill. I haven’t called Billy yet. I—I don’t know how to. He doesn’t handle change well. He’s very regimented, very planned—like his father. Not like Julia at all.” She smiled sadly. “Julia’s more like me. Or was. Independent. Free-spirited. Stubborn as all hell, but so tolerant and accepting and loving of every person she ever met. She had the kind of heart that wanted to save us all.”

“Did you need saving?”

Her wistful expression was replaced by an intense stare. “I didn’t mean myself personally, Detective. I meant—you know—society, the world. She wanted to save the world. I warned her. I told her that some people just couldn’t be saved. They might have been decent people under other circumstances, but that kind of poverty, living on the streets—it makes people desperate. It makes them dangerous. That’s what happened here. One of those—animals—killed her. They probably stole a few bucks from her purse. That’s what this is about.”

The words were tumbling out too quickly to follow.

“You sound like you have someone in mind.”

“They’re kids from the street. I found them here with her—maybe two months ago.”

“And who were these kids?” In the world of the Whitmires, kids from public school might be considered bad influences.

“I don’t know if they’re orphans or in foster care, or maybe they’re just homeless. I don’t know their names. There were maybe three of them here—two boys and a girl, I think. Ramona would know. Ramona Langston. She’s Julia’s best friend. I told Julia not to have those people over again, but, God knows, my daughter never did listen to me. Bill said she’d only hold on to them closer if I tried to push them away. What can you do, though? She was all grown up.”

“I was told she was sixteen?”

The woman blinked as if Ellie’s response was a non sequitur.

“So these kids were here two months ago?” Ellie asked. “You didn’t see Julia with them since then?”

“I’ve only been back once since then.”

“I’m sorry. You told us when we arrived that this was your house?”

“It is, but Bill and I only come in about once a month or so. We’ve been going back and forth between here and East Hampton for years, but we’ve tapered off our city presence. When Billy went to college, Julia moved upstairs.”

“And before Billy was at school?”

“Then the two of them would be here. Oh, they were inseparable. I don’t even know how to tell him what’s happened. Julia followed Billy everywhere. She has never liked being alone. That was probably why she befriended such desperate people. You know, I was here more often before Billy went to school. She had me. She had him. Now—”

“So, I’m sorry—Julia was basically living here alone?”

“Most of the time. That’s right. She preferred the city. Her school. Her friends. Everything is here.”

And this woman had called the street kids the orphans.

What else would a good, thorough, concerned detective ask? “Did she have a boyfriend?”

“A boyfriend?” Like the word was foreign.

“A guy in her life?”

“Well, my daughter certainly dated, I’m sure. But no one special I know about.”

“I found birth control pills in your daughter’s medicine cabinet. I thought that might indicate she was seeing someone regularly?”

“Oh, those? She’s been on the pill since she was fourteen. Bill’s idea, actually. Better safe than sorry.”

There was something about Julia’s father’s name that felt familiar to Ellie. Whitmire. Bill Whitmire. She couldn’t quite place it.

“What about other prescriptions? We found Adderall in her purse.”

“Adderall? I’ve never heard of it. I mean, she would get headaches. Maybe—”

“It’s a prescription stimulant used for ADHD.”

Katherine shook her head. “She didn’t have anything like that.”

“Did she see a psychiatrist?”

“No. Lord knows I do, as do a lot of her friends. But Bill thinks therapy and antidepressants and all of that are overused by overindulgent rich people. I suppose to you we might seem to fit that description.”

“Your husband’s name sounds familiar to me. Do you mind if—”

“CBGB.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t tell me you’re so young you don’t know about CBGB?”

Ellie and her brother, Jess, had probably logged a couple thousand hours at the celebrated music venue before it succumbed to escalating rent prices. “Of course I know it.” Then the light clicked. Bill Whitmire was the famed producer behind bands that had played with the Ramones and Blondie.

“It’s a John Varvatos boutique now,” the woman said sadly. “Can you believe that?”

Ellie stayed with the woman in the living room while CSU officers came and went. She heard about the school Christmas play Julia wrote in the fifth grade, where Santa Claus went to a doctor named Cal Q. Later to lose weight so the reindeer could still fly with him in the sleigh. She learned that Julia had been the one to write her older brother’s college admission essays. She found out that Julia had organized the first chapter of Amnesty International at Casden, her Upper East Side prep school. That she loved dogs but was allergic. That she once met Bono through her father and got his autograph—not for herself, but to donate to a charitable auction for an animal shelter.

Ellie interrupted on occasion to voice aloud the questions raging in her head.

Didn’t you notice your daughter had an eating disorder? Why would you ask that? She’s naturally thin. Right, despite that chubby adolescent picture on the mantel.

Did it dawn on you your daughter might have reasons to feel lost? Have you heard anything I’ve been saying to you, Detective? Have you been listening to yourself?

I assume this note is in your daughter’s handwriting? Handwriting can be imitated. You must have learned that on CSI.

And though she pontificated about her daughter and their family for well more than an hour, Katherine Whitmire never once mentioned the fact that her sixteen-year-old bulimic daughter died in her bathtub from a slit wrist, leaving behind a suicide note propped against her overstuffed down pillows.

Sometimes it was easier to deny undeniable facts than to acknowledge a painful truth. Ellie knew that better than anyone.

She took a deep breath of fresh air once they left the townhouse, as if freshly oxygenated blood could wash away her unwanted thoughts, imagining what it had been like to grow up with Bill and Katherine Whitmire for parents.

“Some house, huh?” Rogan had been spared all but a few sentences of the conversation with Katherine and was still looking up with envy at the four-story abode.

“Her dad’s Bill Whitmire. The music producer.” She rattled off a handful of the projects he’d backed.

“You and that loud white-boy music. Give me Prince any day. I wanna be your … lovah!”

“Hurry it up, will you?” She looked at her watch as she continued her march to the car. “I’ve got that hearing scheduled. Told you I’d make it in time, but only if you drop me by the courthouse straight from here.”

“I thought you said when we got the callout your testimony wasn’t that important. You said the DA could get by without you if necessary.”

“Well, I don’t see anything here that counts as necessity. You said yourself no one reported anything out of the ordinary here over the weekend.”

“We’ve still got uniforms canvassing the neighborhood,” Rogan said.

“They haven’t found any witnesses, and they’re not going to.”

“You know what’s going to happen if we blow this off, right?”

“Katherine Whitmire will huff and puff and blow our house down?”

“Seriously, Hatcher, what is up with you? We’ve worked cases before that we knew weren’t going anywhere. We don’t usually walk away.”

He was right, of course. How many hours did they waste a year on gang shootings where there was no such thing as a witness? But those cases were different.

“It’s just pathetic, Rogan. Some people have kids just to satisfy their own fucking egos. That girl was sixteen years old and was expected to be all grown up because her parents were too cool and too impatient to have children in their lives. On the pill for two years already. Obviously bulimic, and her mom doesn’t even notice. Apparently hanging out with street kids just to get some attention from her parents.”

“Shit, you’re confusing me. Now you’re saying we’re missing something?”

“No, Rogan, none of that’s suspicious. It’s totally, completely, one hundred percent predictable, and it all adds up to a reason why she’d kill herself. This girl slit her wrist as a final cry for help, and her mother refuses to see it. You do what you want, but I’m going to the courthouse.”

They’d wait for the medical examiner’s report. An autopsy. Forensic findings. Science. It would all sound more official and indisputable than the experienced instincts of cops and EMTs. But there was no doubt in Ellie’s mind that by the end of the week, Katherine Whitmire would be informed with all finality: her daughter killed herself. Maybe then she’d look in the goddamn mirror and start facing the truth.