by Kit Frick
Please keep listening. I’m Martina Green, and I’ll be back next week with more Missing Zoe.
[CODA TO MISSING ZOE INSTRUMENTAL THEME]
29 THEN
August
Herron Mills, NY
WHEN I WAKE UP, it’s dark. A full moon glows outside the window. I’m not sure how long I’ve been sleeping. On the nightstand are two cold pieces of toast and a glass of orange juice. It looks like I drank half of it, but I don’t remember that. I don’t remember Emilia coming to check on me either, but she must have. Next to the plate is a note:
Sleep as long as you need to. Please call if you need anything. —Emilia.
I force myself to sit up and take a couple wooden bites of toast. I feel hungry, but my stomach clenches, and I push the plate aside, afraid I won’t be able to keep it down. I search my pockets for my phone, then my bag. My legs feel like rubber bands; my mouth tastes like chalk. Finally I find it plugged into the charger in the pool house kitchen. Emilia must have done that too.
I lean heavily against the counter and navigate to the news, dreading what I know I’ll find, but needing to see it anyway.
George Spanos of Herron Mills, NY, was seen entering the town morgue at 3:47 p.m. on Monday. Local officials confirm he was called in to identify the body of a young woman found in Parrish Lake. Earlier this morning, Parks Director Paula Aimes alerted police to the presence of a small motorboat submerged toward the center of the lake, which was discovered by her staff during algae cleanup efforts. When it was raised to the surface, a young woman’s body was found in the bed of the motorboat, enclosed beneath a tarp.
While officials have not yet confirmed the identity of the body, the disappearance of nineteen-year-old Zoe Spanos from Herron Mills last December 31 is at the forefront of local residents’ minds. A small motorboat belonging to Catherine Hunt, also of Herron Mills, was reported missing that same night, and police have long suspected the two events may be connected. …
I stumble into the bathroom and lose my two bites of toast into the toilet bowl.
When I crawl back into bed, I’m afraid to close my eyes. The bees are back, swirling around the inside of my skull until all I can hear is a dull, ringing wail. Three days after she messaged me, Zoe disappeared. And now, a boat. A body.
In my mind, I’m on the balcony at Windermere again. It’s winter; fat flakes swirl all around, and on the railing a white ribbon of snow is starting to gather. The night is cold and crisp; the house lights are out, but up above, a round moon glows through the treetops, and the sky is dotted with stars. Zoe’s there, in a gold dress with a billowy taffeta skirt. Her hair is twisted up in a high knot; she looks like a ballerina.
Kaylee’s there too, huddled into her puffy winter coat and clutching a highball glass. She raises her glass toward me in a toast, and it sparkles golden in the moonlight. Then she drains it in one gulp before slipping through the door, into Windermere.
I look down at myself. I’m wearing my ugly brown winter boots and the navy peacoat I’ve had since tenth grade. Beneath my coat is a party dress.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask Zoe. Kaylee and I are all bundled up, but she’s only wearing a summery dress. Zoe laughs, the sound a shower of stardust in the night.
“Dance with me, Anna.” She twirls once, twice, her slippers making delicate circles in the snow. Then she reaches out, and I take her hands in mine, one arm crossed over the other in a long X. She’s laughing, and then I’m laughing, and we’re both twirling, ballerinas in the crisp winter night. We spin and spin, and then I feel my feet slipping on the snow.
“Anna!” she screams, and her hands slip out of mine, two birds bursting into flight. And then Zoe, too, is flying, the backs of her knees glancing off the balcony rail, her gold dress soaring into the moonlit night, and I’m falling back, back, onto the balcony, my back striking the ground, then my head, and everything fading into blackness.
I squeeze my eyes shut, press my fists into the lids until I see stars. It would be so easy to dismiss everything I just saw as the work of my overactive imagination.
But I can’t.
* * *
The sun is streaming bright and hot through the pool house windows. It’s late. My phone is buzzing on the kitchen counter, a text message reminder. Something tells me it’s been buzzing for a while. I drag myself out of bed and into the bathroom, where I stick my head under the faucet and gulp mouthfuls of cold water. I can’t get enough. I drink and drink until my stomach hurts. My phone buzzes again, drawing me into the kitchen. The texts are from Caden.
You probably know already, Zoe’s dad identified her body.
I’m leaving the police station now.
This text is a courtesy, Anna. The police are going to be coming to Clovelly Cottage this afternoon.
I don’t understand it, but I know you know something. You need to talk to the police.
I close out of the texts and look at the time. 1:20 p.m. I’ve been sleeping for over twenty-four hours. I can’t believe Emilia let me sleep so long. My chest tightens with a fresh rush of guilt.
In the bedroom, I grab my sketchbook and watercolor pencils from the table. Then I flip through to a clean page and begin to draw, letting my memory guide me.
My hand flies across the paper in confident, bold strokes. It’s a sketch of the famous Waterhouse painting of the Lady of Shalott, a painting I’ve copied dozens of times before. I don’t even need to look at the original; I can copy it from memory. But instead of Waterhouse’s red-haired lady, the woman in the boat is Zoe. My watercolors capture her raven hair, olive skin, the boat her watery grave.
I breathe.
For the first time in days, everything is perfectly, brilliantly clear. I’ve been moving through a dense gray fog, and suddenly the sun is out. I understand it now—what my brain’s been trying to tell me.
Caden’s already notified the police. No sense in waiting for them to come here, to the Bellamys’ front door. I still feel nauseous and a little unsteady, but the bees are gone. I set my pencil down and tuck the sketchbook away. With a grim, fixed determination, I turn on the shower and pull a red tank top and a clean pair of cutoffs out of my drawer. I’m going to get ready. And then I’m going down to the station myself.
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF MISSING ZOE EPISODE EIGHT: THROUGH A TELESCOPE LENS
[ELECTRONIC BACKGROUND MUSIC]
YOUNG MALE VOICE: … a couple days after Christmas, she starts texting me. Wants to know if I want to hang out over break. … Then sometime midafternoon on New Year’s, she asks if I want to come out to Herron Mills for a party at this guy Jacob Trainer’s house.
[END BACKGROUND MUSIC]
MARTINA GREEN: Thanks for tuning in to the eighth episode of Missing Zoe. Today is Tuesday, October sixth, and it’s been two months and two days since Zoe’s body was found in Parrish Lake. Her death remains unsolved, and we’re still missing Zoe.
[MISSING ZOE INSTRUMENTAL THEME]
MARTINA GREEN: I’m going to cut right to the chase today. As you know if you’ve been following the action in the past week, Max Adler of Montauk, New York, was brought in for questioning in the Zoe Spanos case, identified as a person of interest by the Herron Mills PD, and then released without charge. I caught up with Mr. Adler over the weekend at his family’s home in Montauk, and I’m pleased to bring that interview to you today.
MAX ADLER: There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and I’ve seen a bunch about myself this week. To be perfectly honest, I don’t trust the mainstream media. But people are listening to your podcast, and I want to clear some things up.
MARTINA GREEN: Thanks for agreeing to speak with me, Max. Why don’t you go ahead and tell us what happened with police this past weekend.
MAX ADLER: Right. I got called into the station on Sunday morning. I agreed to go voluntarily; I was never arrested. Detectives Holloway and Massey said they had some questions about the night Zoe Spanos disappeared, following a conversation they’d had with the
kid Anna had been babysitting this summer.
MARTINA GREEN: Did they tell you the content of that conversation?
MAX ADLER: They did. Seems she saw me through her bedroom window on New Year’s Eve; I guess the girl has a telescope in her room. The Bellamys live next door to the Talbots—Caden Talbot is the guy Zoe had been dating, as everyone knows. Apparently fireworks woke the kid up after she’d gone to bed that night. She went to the window to look and saw Zoe and me entering the stable, then me leaving alone.
MARTINA GREEN: And is that true? Were you and Zoe at the Talbot estate on New Year’s Eve?
MAX ADLER: Yeah, we were there for about an hour that night.
MARTINA GREEN: Can you tell us what you told police?
MAX ADLER: Here’s the deal. Zoe and I know—um, knew—each other from bio at Brown. I was two years ahead of her, and I had a girlfriend when she was a first-year. But then last year, I was single, and Zoe and I kept running into each other around the department. I finally convinced her to go out for a coffee with me, and she told me she was having a rough time at home. Stuff with her dad, although she didn’t say what. Things weren’t great with her boyfriend either. He’d been distant since the summer, she thought they were drifting apart.
Naturally I figured she was opening up to me about this for a reason. I thought she was interested. I asked her out a few times, and she kept saying not right now—but it wasn’t a hard no. I didn’t push, but I figured she was waiting to see how things played out with her boyfriend. I respected that. Then after Thanksgiving, she came back to campus and called me, super upset. She asked me to meet her in the library, so I went. Said while she was home over Thanksgiving, she’d found these pictures and emails on Caden’s computer. He was in love with another girl.
MARTINA GREEN: Zoe knew about Tiana Percy?
MAX ADLER: Tiana, right. She was in the news recently, provided Caden’s alibi for New Year’s Eve. Anyway, Zoe came to me about this, right? I figure she wants revenge at the very least, or even better, she’s ready to move on.
MARTINA GREEN: And then what happened?
MAX ADLER: Nothing. She tells me she shouldn’t have said anything, and she has to leave. She barely talks to me again until it’s almost winter break, and then the weekend before break starts, I hear she’s at Yale visiting Caden. So I figure they worked things out, whatever.
MARTINA GREEN: Did you see her again before the semester ended?
MAX ADLER: Just once in the lab. But then, a couple days after Christmas, she starts texting me. Wants to know if I want to hang out over break. I say sure, but she drags her feet on making a plan. Then sometime midafternoon on New Year’s, she asks if I want to come out to Herron Mills for a party at this guy Jacob Trainer’s house. Turns out Jacob and I have a couple friends in common from baseball back in high school, so I say sure, I’ll go. I had plans in Montauk, but I ditch them for her.
MARTINA GREEN: Did Zoe ask you to meet her at the party?
MAX ADLER: No, she wanted to pre-party before we went over. Told me to meet her at Windermere and gave me the address. I thought it was her house; I didn’t know it was Caden’s. She met me at the front gate and took me around back to the stable. The Bellamy girl must have watched us walking inside.
MARTINA GREEN: And when was this?
MAX ADLER: Early. Nine thirty maybe?
MARTINA GREEN: Okay. What happened once you got to the stable?
MAX ADLER: Like I said, Zoe wanted to pre-party before we went out. I’d brought a six-pack, but she had an open bottle of whiskey in the stable, and judging from how she was acting when I got there, she was already a couple shots in when I arrived.
MARTINA GREEN: And how was Zoe acting?
MAX ADLER: She was all over me. Kissing me, running her hands all over my chest. It was cool at first, we made out for a while. I offered her a beer, but she said she was going to stick with whiskey. Judging by how emotional she got, I don’t think she was much of a drinker.
MARTINA GREEN: Do you know how much she drank that night?
MAX ADLER: The bottle was almost empty when I got there. But I don’t know how much she’d already had. I stayed long enough to drink a beer and part of a second before she really started flipping out. She kept running her fingers along her neck. She wasn’t wearing that necklace she always has on—the little gold chain with her initials on it?—and it was like she kept reaching for it, but it wasn’t there. Things got real weird when she started crying and kind of writhing around on the stable floor, moaning about Caden and Tiana. That shit killed the mood real fast.
MARTINA GREEN: Did she say anything specific that you remember?
MAX ADLER: She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense, but she said something about being in Caden’s stable, drinking his whiskey, and then I put two and two together. She had a flash drive in her fist she kept waving around, and eventually she threw it against one of the stall doors. She was a mess.
MARTINA GREEN: And what did you do?
MAX ADLER: I tried to get her to stop crying, said I’d drive her home. But she told me to leave. I didn’t want to leave her like that, but she was screaming “get the hell out” and “leave me alone.” Finally, I just left her there.
MARTINA GREEN: You left Zoe in the stable?
MAX ADLER: I know it sounds like a dick move, but believe me, she wanted me gone. I think she wanted to hook up with someone under Caden’s roof—a kind of “fuck you,” you know? And then she changed her mind. So I left.
MARTINA GREEN: And that’s when you were seen again, from the Bellamys’ house?
MAX ADLER: Must’ve been. It was probably around ten thirty, and yeah, there were fireworks going off nearby and a bunch of people partying on the beach. It was loud, normal stuff for New Year’s. I left the stable and walked around the side of the house, back to the front where I’d left my car. Zoe must’ve walked; there weren’t any other cars parked on the street out front. Then I drove to Trainer’s place. I figured since I’d come all the way out to Herron Mills, I might as well hit up the party. And thank god I did, cause lots of people saw me that night. The police had already looked through a bunch of photos; I was in a few, and I had a bunch of alibi witnesses.
MARTINA GREEN: Did you hear from Zoe at all after you left Windermere?
MAX ADLER: Nope. Honestly, I wasn’t that worried. I just figured she’d walked home and was sleeping it off. It wasn’t until a couple days later that I heard on the news she was missing.
MARTINA GREEN: And why didn’t you go to the police then? You could have helped put a few pieces together months ago.
MAX ADLER: I know, okay? It wasn’t my finest hour. But honestly, I knew her disappearance didn’t have anything to do with me. She was drunk and upset when I left the stable, sure, but she was fine. I was trying to graduate from Brown. I didn’t want to get tangled up in a missing-persons investigation. I don’t know what happened that night any more than anyone else.
MARTINA GREEN: And you didn’t try to get in touch with her at all?
MAX ADLER: Look, I know this doesn’t make me sound great, but no. I didn’t. She was a hot mess; it was kind of a turnoff. Maybe I should have checked in with her, sure, but I didn’t have anything to do with Zoe winding up at the bottom of Parrish Lake. Walking away when a girl tells you to leave her alone isn’t a crime. The police agreed.
MARTINA GREEN: The day after Zoe’s body was found, Caden Talbot told police that he’d discovered an empty bottle of whiskey and two empty beer bottles in the stable on January first. Presumably those belonged to you and Zoe?
MAX ADLER: The whiskey was technically Caden’s, from what Zoe was saying, but yeah, the two beer bottles would have been mine.
MARTINA GREEN: And it was just you and Zoe pre-partying in the stable. Anna Cicconi wasn’t with you?
MAX ADLER: No way. I met Anna for the first time this summer, when she came to the aquarium where I work. She definitely wasn’t drinking with us that night.
MARTI
NA GREEN: And what about Kaylee Harrison?
MAX ADLER: Kaylee …
MARTINA GREEN: Anna’s friend from Brooklyn who she said in her August fifth confession was with her at Windermere the night Zoe disappeared?
MAX ADLER: Oh right, I’ve met Kaylee. Anna brought her to a party over the summer. But no, she wasn’t there that night. I only met Kaylee once, this July. Unless Zoe invited someone else over after I left, it was definitely just Zoe and me drinking in the stable. Those were our bottles Caden found.
MARTINA GREEN: Thanks, Max.
[SOFT ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYS IN THE BACKGROUND]
Okay listeners, it’s go time. Missing Zoe reached eighty thousand of you last episode. That’s huge. That means there are a lot of you tuning in—people who want justice for Zoe, who know that justice doesn’t happen without the whole truth. And now it’s my turn to ask you a favor. If you have any information about the night of December thirty-first or morning of January first that might help police uncover what happened to Zoe Spanos after Max Adler left her alone in the Windermere stable, this is the time to come forward. Even if it’s a detail that seems insignificant.
With the information we know now, the likelihood that Anna Cicconi was even in Herron Mills the night Zoe died is very, very slim. Anna’s pretrial motion to dismiss the charges against her is still pending review by the court. If anyone has information that could help prevent the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of an innocent girl, this is the time to step up. Anna needs you. It’s your responsibility to help. You can reach an anonymous tip line established by the Spanos family at 631-958-2757, or you can contact the Herron Mills PD directly.