I Killed Zoe Spanos

by Kit Frick

  I nod eagerly. My heart speeds up, a quick rat-a-tat in my chest. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Someone to tell me that none of this is a coincidence. That I’m here for a reason.

  “It’s such a tragedy,” Emilia says. “She was one of Paisley’s favorite babysitters. I think, truthfully, when she saw how much you looked like Zoe, she was won over immediately. And you’ve been great with her, of course. Tom and I know we made the right choice.”

  She smiles reassuringly, but I’m not sure what I feel. I’m here because of Zoe. Because we look alike, and that strange bit of happenstance struck the fancy of a little kid. All those strange looks, awkward conversations. Not coincidence after all, not really.

  “You might have warned me,” I say, I hope not rudely. I take a big gulp of seltzer through my straw.

  “I’m sorry.” Emilia’s face clouds over. “You’re right, we should have. I didn’t know how to bring it up, honestly. I was afraid you might not take the job.”

  “Do George and Joan—” I start to ask. I want to know if Zoe’s parents know about me. What if I run into them in town? But before I can finish my question, Emilia cuts me off.

  “What about Joan?”

  “Oh, I …” I’m hit with the presumptuousness of my question. Martina’s podcast made me feel for a second like I was on a first-name basis with everyone in the Spanos family, the same way characters on TV start to feel like friends. Emilia looks at me sharply, then her eyes wander to Tom, still in the pool. Mentioning Mrs. Spanos clearly pushed some kind of button, and I forget why I even brought her up. “Nothing, never mind.”

  Emilia’s face relaxes. “We didn’t only hire you because of that, you know. You interviewed well. You were fantastic with Paisley during our trial run at MoMA. Don’t think I let Paisley entirely steer the ship.” She laughs and leans back in the chaise, hair fanning out against the back of the chair.

  “Right, of course not.” But it’s clear now. I got this job because of the missing girl. It doesn’t explain everything I’ve been feeling—the rush of nostalgia at the beach, the odd moment at the ice-cream shop, the wave of vertigo peering up at the balcony at Windermere. But it’s something. A rational explanation for the way in which my fate and Zoe’s have oddly intertwined.

  * * *

  Mary is off tonight, and I’m instructed to help myself to party leftovers in the kitchen if I get hungry later. I feel the opposite of hungry. No, that’s not quite right. I feel hollow and like nothing could ever make me solid again. As soon as the last guests have departed and it seems socially acceptable, I slip into the pool house and latch the door behind me.

  Tearing off my hat and sundress, I turn the hot water all the way up, filling the bathtub. I need a long, long soak. I feel more than just sweaty and hot. I feel violated somehow, and at the same time, like I’m the one who’s done something wrong. I’m an interloper in Herron Mills, in Caden Talbot’s world. Even though I didn’t mean to be. Even though the Bellamys invited me in.

  I slip into the bathtub, gritting my teeth until my skin adjusts to the scalding water. I don’t have bubble bath, so I pour some shower gel beneath the tap until it forms a few lackluster suds. My phone is propped on the edge of the tub. I’ve barely had it for two weeks, and there’s already a scratch on the top left corner of the screen.

  I think about putting on music. I should put on music. But my finger traces the scratch, then navigates to my podcasts. I don’t want to listen anymore. But I need to know. I press play on Episode Three.

  * * *

  Martina Green is struggling. I turn the volume all the way up and sink down in the bath, breathing in the steam. The third episode of Missing Zoe is dedicated to interviews with the people closest to Zoe, but by the last week of February, eight weeks after she vanished, Caden has still declined Martina’s interview requests, and the Spanos family is, understandably, not ready to speak to a teen podcast producer about the very open wound left by the disappearance of their beloved daughter and sister.

  It’s palpable in the interviews that Martina does get—with a teacher from their high school, a couple of friends, and the volunteer coordinator at the animal shelter where Zoe used to walk dogs and clean cages during high school—that with every passing week, the likelihood that Zoe will return alive and unharmed has diminished.

  I do the mental math. It’s June 28. That means it’s been almost eighteen weeks since Martina recorded this episode and twenty-six weeks total since Zoe disappeared. It will be six months on Tuesday. There’s still one episode of Missing Zoe remaining, but I know she hasn’t been found. After Episode Four, Martina’s trail went cold.

  I listen to Zoe’s teacher talk about her academic promise. How she excelled in math and science, how she was a student leader, involved in multiple clubs and activities. How it came as no surprise when Zoe landed the internship in California the summer after her first year at Brown, when those spots were typically reserved for juniors. I listen to her friends talk about her bright and easygoing personality, how she loved animals and baking, how she planned something thoughtful for all her friends’ birthdays, without fail, every single year. She didn’t drink, brought huge pitchers of her own juice blends to parties, which somehow everyone thought was endearing, not dorky. She loved Caden. She loved her family. She had the most volunteer hours in her graduating class.

  It’s a nice character study of Zoe. It’s clear that everyone liked her. All the episode seems to prove is how unlikely it is that Zoe Spanos had any enemies in Herron Mills. Martina ends the episode on a hopeful note that she’ll still get to talk to Caden, to Aster, to George and Joan Spanos. That she’ll uncover information the police discarded or didn’t think was important about the fall leading up to that night, the night itself. But I saw the way Martina looked at Aster on Main Street earlier this week. It was a look of failure. A look I know really well.

  By the end of the episode, the water has turned lukewarm and my fingers have puckered into prunes, but I don’t want to get out. “I’m sorry,” I whisper out loud, although I’m not quite sure why. I’m sorry we look alike? I’m sorry you’re gone, and I’m here, in Herron Mills, where you should be? I’m sorry I stepped unwittingly into your life? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. The urge to apologize is strong, the need clawing at my throat like angry talons. “I’m so sorry, Zoe.”

  I stumble out of the tub and dry myself off. Wrapped in my robe with my hair twisted in a towel on top of my head, I sit in the center of the bed and open Google. I type Zoe Spanos into the search bar and click through the first few results. Most links take me to news articles from January about Zoe’s disappearance, then a few more recent posts with paltry, unsatisfying updates. There are a couple older hits from the Jefferson website and the school paper’s online archive. Most compelling of all, there’s an open-access web forum set up by Zoe’s college friends where people from all facets of her life—Brown, Jefferson, Herron Mills, and beyond—have posted everything from theories to photos to open messages for Zoe.

  I read everything. Then I read through her LinkedIn profile, her intern bio from last summer on the research center’s website, even a long article about Brown’s fund-raising campaign for a new campus lab that quotes Zoe only once, but I somehow read through to the end. By the time my phone warns me it’s reached 15 percent battery life, it’s almost midnight. Eyes stinging and skin crawling with the persistent sensation that there’s something ever so slightly familiar about everything I just found, I reach for my charger, then force myself to turn off the light.

  10 NOW

  September

  Herron Mills, NY

  MARTINA SITS ON the family room couch with Mami, suffering through the commercial break before the eight o’clock news. Pampers. Coleridge Audi. A new drug treatment for fibromyalgia. She wishes her dad were here to cut the tension in the room with his warm smile and quick laugh, but he’s at the shop, closing up for the
night. Martina has two siblings, both brothers, both older, both no longer living at home, so it’s just Martina and Mami tonight. Mami thinks her daughter’s interest in the Zoe Spanos case is unhealthy. Morbid. But even Mami can’t tear her eyes away from the screen tonight because the autopsy report for Zoe is about to be released. All of Herron Mills is watching.

  Martina fidgets with her phone, shoots Aster a quick text.

  You OK?

  It joins the chain of five others Martina has sent her best friend today. They’re all unread. Martina last heard from Aster early this morning; she was in the car with her parents, on their way to meet with someone from the medical examiner’s office. Martina thought she might get the news straight from Aster, but she didn’t come to school today, and she’s been silent since this morning’s text: Autopsy results are in. We have to drive all the way to Hauppauge. I feel sick and Mom literally threw up before we got in the car. IDK if I can handle this.

  Whatever the report said, Zoe is still dead. It’s not a good day.

  Still, Martina curls her hands into fists beneath her thighs, keeps her eyes trained on the screen as the local newscaster, a brightly rouged woman with a frosty blond bob seated behind a desk in the NBC New York newsroom, opens the segment.

  “Breaking news in Suffolk County tonight. Autopsy results were released this morning to George and Joan Spanos, parents of Zoe Spanos, who disappeared on her way to a house party in the Long Island village of Herron Mills last New Year’s Eve. The missing girl’s body was found submerged in a small boat in Parrish Lake last month, just over two miles from her home. Channel Four has the latest.”

  The words NEW INFORMATION flash in silver block letters across the screen as the newscaster introduces a young reporter with a thin smile and wire-rimmed glasses to match standing inside the busy front hall of an administrative building somewhere in Suffolk County. On the couch beside Martina, Mami clasps and unclasps her hands in her lap.

  “Thanks, Cady. What we know right now is that autopsy results were released to the victim’s family earlier today, but they have not yet been made public. We’re expecting a representative from the medical examiner’s office to give a statement shortly.”

  The camera cuts to a wooden podium in a room not quite as packed with reporters as Martina would have hoped. Across the front of the microphone-studded podium hangs a gold and black seal with the figure of an ox surrounded by the words SUFFOLK COUNTY SEAL * NEW YORK * FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE. Above it hangs a cardboard identification card for Daniel Medina, Supervisor, Medical Forensic Investigations.

  The Jenkins women grit their teeth through three local news stories until Daniel Medina is ready to speak. When he comes to the podium, he has a prepared statement in hand. Martina leans toward the screen as he rustles the papers before him. Mami raises one hand to her lips.

  Daniel tells the room that the forensic medical investigators and pathologists could not determine a cause of death due to the advanced state of decomposition in which Zoe’s body was found. Hot bile floods the back of Martina’s throat, and Mami whimpers, clasps her hands in her lap. But what they can confirm is shocking: Zoe Spanos did not have any broken bones when she died. Which means Anna’s story about Zoe falling to her death from the third floor balcony of Windermere?

  Impossible.

  Martina’s pulse begins to race.

  * * *

  Martina fidgets in her desk chair in the back of the chemistry lab, which Miss Fox-Rigg has kindly agreed to let her use for her interview. The interview. She can’t be home for this, can’t risk Mami walking through the door while she’s recording. While she’s supposed to be at an SAT study session she’s currently blowing off. Besides, the lab has the best acoustics. For the next hour, it’s all hers.

  She checks her phone, again. 3:56. In four minutes, she’ll put through the call to Pathways. She wonders how much Anna knows, how much she’s been told. She has to know at least as much as has been made public over the last forty-eight hours. Her lawyers would be keeping her up to speed. In the past day, Anna’s mother has hired two more, a real legal team. It’s been all over the news.

  Martina pulls up Pathways in her contacts and presses the green call button on her phone. Her recording equipment is all set to go. She’s ready.

  “Martina?”

  “Anna, hi.”

  “Before we start, can you do me a favor? They monitor everything we do online here, and there’s an address I need you to look up for me. …” Anna’s voice trails off.

  “Sure,” Martina says. She agrees to look it up before they end the call.

  “I’m going to start recording now, okay?” Martina tries to keep her voice steady, calm. Professional. She digs her nails into her palm.

  “Yeah. Yes.”

  Martina draws in a deep breath. She had so much she’d planned to ask Anna today, but the autopsy news has blown everything out of the water.

  “The answer is, I don’t know,” Anna says before Martina has a chance to speak. Then Anna laughs, a hollow, tinny sound funneled through the miniature speaker on Martina’s phone.

  “What?” Martina is caught off-guard.

  “Sorry, it wasn’t funny. It’s a quote from an old movie. They don’t have anything from this century in this place.” Anna clears her throat. “You were going to ask what really happened that night. Now that the autopsy results have come in. You were going to ask how Zoe died, if she didn’t fall from that balcony.”

  “Right,” Martina says, regaining her composure. “Is there anything you can tell me? Anything you remember?”

  “Honestly, no. I remember being on the balcony. With Zoe. I remember falling. I thought she fell.”

  “And what do you think now, Anna?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I’ve been here a whole month. I’ve had nothing but time to think.” A pause. Then, Anna starts to sing. “ ‘Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future!’ ” In the lilt of Anna’s voice, Martina detects a tinge of something that sounds like hysteria. She clears her throat.

  “I should have it all figured out by now,” she continues, “but it seems like I never knew what I was talking about.”

  Anna’s words are podcast gold. She just admitted to lying to police. Didn’t she? Martina makes an effort to steady her voice, to tamp the giddiness down. “Are you saying you weren’t responsible for Zoe’s death? Or that she didn’t die in the way you told police?”

  There is a long pause, and for a moment, Martina wonders if she’s lost Anna. If she’s still on the other end of the line. When Anna finally speaks, she doesn’t answer Martina’s question.

  “My lawyers say this is good news. They didn’t want me to do this interview, but I don’t really care. I need to know what happened. I really need to know. And I think you’re going to figure it out, Martina. I trust you.”

  Martina steadies her palms against the desk. She’s glad she’s alone, that no one can see the way her eyes flash and shimmer, how she can barely force her feet to stay planted on the floor. She tries another angle.

  “The night you spoke with Detective Holloway and Assistant Detective Massey, August fifth. Were you telling the truth?”

  Anna draws in a deep breath. “I told them what I remembered, and those memories haven’t gone away. But I was under a lot of stress that night. More than I realized. Did you know I was in that interview room for seven hours? Eventually I just wanted the questions to stop. So I told them what I remembered, and my brain filled in the blanks. Or they filled them in for me.”

  “What kind of blanks?”

  “There’s this gap after the Windermere balcony. I don’t remember driving to Parrish Lake, or putting Zoe in that boat. I never remembered any of that. I remember being by the water, though, after. Knowing she was down there, that I could never get her back. I told the police I must have taken her body to the lake because it fit. Because they told me I must have done it. At the time, it seemed like the answer to
a question I’d been chasing all summer.”

  “Why did you confess, Anna?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it. … I remembered feelings, scraps of things. I had all these scraps, and nowhere to fit them. And then, after what Caden said, suddenly they all shifted into place. It was the only story that made sense.”

  “Did you kill Zoe Spanos?”

  For a moment, the sound of Anna’s breathing is the only sign that she’s still there. That she hasn’t hung up like Martina still fears she might.

  “I do not believe I killed Zoe Spanos, or concealed her body.”

  Blood rushes to Martina’s head, and she focuses on her phone’s black screen. “And do you have any idea who did? Anything that could help the investigation move forward?”

  “I think,” Anna says slowly, “it’s time for Caden Talbot to speak to the police.”

  PART II The Stable

  We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us.

  —Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

  11 THEN

  June

  Riverhead & Herron Mills, NY

  PAISLEY WANTS TO do the Penguin Encounter at the Long Island Aquarium, so on Monday morning, Emilia calls to book two tickets for the one-thirty group, then hands over the keys to her car. I’ve driven it a couple times, little errands around Herron Mills, but it’s about forty-five minutes to Riverhead, and the pending drive makes my nerves spike. I’ve had my license for a year now, but I don’t have much highway experience. Plus, this time, I’ll have Paisley with me. I hide my jitters beneath a big smile, reminding myself I learned to drive in Brooklyn. I can handle Long Island.

  The drive is undeniably beautiful. While Paisley entertains herself in the back with Emilia’s iPad, I will the scenery to soothe my nerves as we coast from the South to North Fork: lake shores, vineyards, farmland, and the largest golf course I’ve ever seen. But I can’t relax. My palms are slippery with sweat on the wheel, and every electronic chime from Paisley’s game makes me flinch.