“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.”
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,
