by Zara Lisbon
Justinejustinejustinejustinejustinejustine. I closed my eyes and saw only purple spots, hot and bright. At the top of the steps, Jack Willoughby turned around to face the crowd of reporters and paparazzi, who backed off slightly, holding out their microphones, holding up their cameras. I saw them as ants, scrambling frantically for a coveted bread crumb. I was that crumb.
“I won’t be answering any questions.” He held up his hands, saying don’t come any closer. “But what I can say is that my client is innocent and has been wrongly accused. We’ve been looking forward to our day in court when we can finally prove that once and for all.”
He pulled the courtroom door open and swept me in. When the eruption of questions was finally shut out, along with the lights and their inexhaustible pop-popping, I sighed deeply. I’d been holding my breath the entire way up.
* * *
“All rise.” Judge Victoria Lucas took her place at the podium, and the room rose to welcome her. She had orangey hair clipped beneath her chin in a blunt bob, her skin wrinkled and weathered. There was something so reassuring about her presence. When I was twelve, my wisdom teeth grew in early, deeply impacted and unbearably painful. So they had to operate. I was terrified. I worried I’d go under the anesthesia and never come back. I worried the anesthesia wouldn’t work at all and somehow I wouldn’t be able to communicate that to them, forcing me to endure every moment of agony, blades slicing into my gums, severing roots. But the surgeon said I had nothing to be worried about.
“This is the most basic and routine procedure,” he said. “And all in all it only takes twenty minutes. We’ve actually already done five this morning.” It was only 9:00 A.M. His point was that he’d overseen the extraction of wisdom teeth more times than he could count, that it was so commonplace it almost bored him. That calmed me down enough to let them put me under.
Judge Victoria Lucas didn’t say it out loud, but her face—her deep-set eyes and wrinkled mouth—conveyed a life of experience that told me I was being taken care of.
The room was packed. People overflowed from the benches, some choosing to stand, packed tight against the back wall. The jury were twelve people I didn’t want to look at. I didn’t want to know the faces of the people who were to decide my fate. If it went down badly, I’d spend the rest of my life haunted by them. Aside from my parents, the only familiar faces belonged to Riley and Ruby, and London and Olivia. Riley gave me a pathetic, pitying wave, and Ruby gave two thumbs up and then blew me a kiss, leaving a red imprint on her palm. London and Olivia didn’t acknowledge me at all. Missing were Rob and Liza, Debbie, and Josie. Where’s Josie? I wondered. She wouldn’t miss this. Not on purpose, anyway. But of course, she must have been there. I just couldn’t see her. She was waiting in the wings until it came time for her to testify against me.
“Docket ending 1270, the People versus Justine Childs,” Judge Lucas recited, reading from a piece of paper through gold wire-rimmed glasses. “One count of murder in the second degree.”
“Jack Willoughby for the defendant,” Jack announced. As soon as we’d stepped into the courtroom, his body language changed. It went from tightly wound to loose and relaxed, almost swaggering, as if he’d entered his natural habitat and no longer had a single thing to worry about. The courtroom is where I thrive, he’d told me, you’ll see. And now I was seeing. He wore a slender black silk tie that bisected him in half from his freckled neck down to his unwieldy belt buckle.
“ADA Melinda Warren for the people, your honor,” said Melinda, shoulders pulled back and chin held high. She had an unnerving air of pure, distilled determination about her. The way she stood said I am as permanent and unconquerable as the columns of ancient Greece.
“You may be seated,” Judge Lucas said. My muscles quivered, fatigued, as I tried to sit. “Does the prosecution wish to present an opening statement?”
“Yes, your honor, thank you.” Melinda stood back up. Her legs were Barbie-doll long and sheathed in sheer beige nylon that shimmered in the light as she walked. “The facts of the case are these: In the early morning hours of July seventeenth, 2018, Justine Childs stabbed her friend and neighbor Eva-Kate Kelly with a knife used for practicing witchcraft, then left her to bleed out in the Venice canals. This is a story of passion, of obsession, and of jealousy, the story of a stalker and her victim. This is the story you’ll hear from Detectives Sato and Rayner, and it’s the story you’ll hear from Eva-Kate’s lifelong best friend, Josie Bishop. Now, Mr. Willoughby is going to try to paint Miss Childs as a harmless sweetheart caught up with the wrong crowd. He’s going to tell you stories of past rightdoing and good deeds. He won’t have the supporting evidence, so he will invent reasons why she couldn’t have possibly committed this heinous crime. But make no mistake, she did. The evidence shows that Justine Childs is a stone-cold killer, let’s not forget that.”
“Does the defense wish to make an opening statement?” Judge Lucas peered down over the tops of her half-moon glasses.
“Your honor,” Jack began, using his spindly arms to push himself up from the table, “picture in your mind a young woman. No older than sixteen. She’s a student, a daughter, and a friend. Her days are spent peacefully, uneventfully, taking care of the family dog and taking care of her parents’ home while they’re away on vacation. Until one day she has a new neighbor. Her new neighbor is fun, beautiful, intriguing, and famous. But, more than that, she is kind and welcoming. She invites this young woman into her world and brightens up her humdrum life by ten thousand percent. But, more than that, the two become close friends and confidants. Kindred spirits. Our young woman is finally enjoying life. More than that, she feels truly alive for the first time. Until, one night, an unspeakable tragedy occurs, and all of that is pulled right out from under her. Eva-Kate Kelly is not coming back. She was ripped from this life in a cruel act of violence. And now the prosecution is trying to lock up the last person on Earth who would or could have possibly done this awful deed. And, I might add, this charge was made following an investigation that was cursory at best, looking into a grand total of one suspect. So what Miss Warren has just illustrated for you is not the full story. In fact, what she has just spun for you is a fictional account of what happened that night. She says the evidence shows something that it simply does not. What the prosecution has against my client—namely, one piece of threadbare evidence and one unreliable witness—is circumstantial at best. And what the prosecution lacks—namely motive, hard evidence, and a definitive timeline—is quite significant. It absolutely cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that my client did anything to harm Eva-Kate Kelly, and quite honestly, the true tragedy is that the real killer is still out there. Now, I can’t tell you who that is, because, again, my client was the only person investigated. The irony is that there were many people who wanted to hurt Eva-Kate Kelly, but Justine Childs just wasn’t one of them.”
This isn’t going to work. I felt it moving through my blood and my bones like a fog. This isn’t going to work. If Jack’s defense was that other people wanted to hurt her, wouldn’t the judge need to know who? I studied Judge Lucas’s face for signs of what she thought, but there was nothing there. She gave me nothing. I sweated underneath my borrowed blouse, the silk blend sticking to my skin.
Your honor, I have suspects. I wanted to run up to her podium and tell her everything I knew right then. Your honor, Eva-Kate’s closest friends resented her, she never trusted them and maybe she was right not to. Your honor, her Instagram feed is crawling with death threats. Her plastic surgeon was there the night she died. Hasn’t anybody considered Rob? Your honor, it’s almost always the boyfriend. Your honor, did you know she had a penchant for blackmail? Your honor, please pull at any one of these threads. You can pull at any one and find that it wasn’t me who did this.
“This isn’t going to work,” I whispered to Jack, once he had sat back down next to me. “You have to tell her about Liza. Or Dr. Silver. Or—”
He put a finger to his lips.
“That isn’t how this works,” he said.
My cheeks were hot but the tears that slid down them then were hotter.
“Please,” I said under my breath.
“Mr. Willoughby.” Judge Lucas removed her glasses and dangled them impatiently between two fingers. “Is there a problem?”
“No, your honor,” he told her, then turned to me and squeezed my hand so tightly I heard a knuckle crack. I couldn’t tell if it was his or mine. “Justine,” he insisted, looking me dead in the eye, “you need to get it together. You need to take a breath, and you need to let me do my job.”
For my wisdom teeth, after an hour of convincing I’d finally let the oral surgeon put me under. He had his technician do it, of course. She’d worn a flamingo-pink gown and matching papery gloves that clung to her wrists with elastic.
“Okay now, sweetie,” she said. “I’m gonna have you count down from one hundred, okay?”
Praying for courage, I nodded and started to count. “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety—” The ceiling liquefied and went black. Whether I’d wanted to or not, I’d surrendered.
This, I thought, sitting in the courtroom, this is just like that. You are twelve and you are in the chair and you need to go under now. I’ll see you on the other side.
I felt myself shrink down and slip away like a shadow. Like Peter Pan’s shadow when it escapes from him. If I was going to make it through, I’d have to watch this one from the sidelines.
CHAPTER 15
“WITNESS” SLANDERS JUSTINE CHILDS
Josie sat up on the witness stand wearing an ankle-length green satin dress and black velvet Mary Janes, her highlighted hair freshly cut into a blunt, shoulder-length bob, her dark eye makeup impeccably feline and winged.
She won’t get away with it, I told myself, stroking my own hand beneath the table, feeling the interwoven rise and fall of bone and vein. Somehow the fragility of it was a small comfort.
“Will you please state your name for the court?” the bailiff, a squat man with a Dr. Phil mustache, asked. He waited ceremonially for her reply.
“Josie Bishop,” said Josie softly, playing meek.
“Miss Bishop,” Melinda Warren greeted her with a tight-lipped smile. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Are you in school?”
“Yeah. Well, sort of.”
“Just a yes or no, Miss Bishop.”
“I’m homeschooled. Yes.”
“And what grade were you in this past school year?”
“Um…” She paused for so long I had to look over at the clock. Almost ten seconds passed before she said, “Eleventh grade.”
“During this past July, were you living here in Los Angeles?”
“Yes.”
“What neighborhood did you live in?”
“Venice. The canals.”
“And what was your address?”
“Eighteen Carroll Canal.”
“Who did you live with in July 2018?”
“Eva-Kate Kelly.”
“And what was your relationship to Miss Kelly?”
“Uh … we’d been friends for many years, and I was working as her personal assistant.”
“Did anyone else live with you and Eva-Kate?”
“Yes.”
“And who was that?”
“Justine Childs.”
“How did you first meet Miss Childs?”
“She came to a party at Eva-Kate’s house.”
“What were your impressions of her at that time?”
“She was…” Josie coughed and sat up straighter. “She was shy and sweet enough, but there was something off about her. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but for a while after I just kept thinking something’s not right, something’s not right.”
“Objection,” Jack interjected. “Improper opinion.”
“Overruled,” said Judge Lucas. “I’m allowing it.”
“As time went on, did you come to have a better understanding of why you felt that way about her?”
“Yes. I realized she was obsessed with Eva-Kate.”
A quiet concerto of murmurs drummed through the crowd.
“Can you explain what you mean by ‘obsessed’?”
“Um, yes, sure. She moved into the house and started doing everything Eva-Kate did. She went to all the same parties, she started talking like her and wearing all her clothes. I saw her getting way too close with Eva-Kate’s ex at a Fourth of July party. It was like she wanted to be her. And she was always going into her room late at night, which I thought was kind of creepy and weird. I don’t think she knew I could see her sneaking in, but I could. I was always watching, even when she thought I wasn’t.”
You were always watching me and somehow I’m the obsessive creep? Maybe you’re the one obsessed with Eva-Kate, I thought. Maybe you couldn’t handle that I was the one she invited to sleep in her room.
“And why were you always watching her?”
“Because I didn’t trust her. I didn’t feel safe with her around. I always had this feeling like I needed to watch my back.”
“Now, Miss Bishop, I’d like to direct your attention to the night of July sixteenth. Where were you that night?”
“I was at Eva-Kate’s house.”
“What time did you arrive there?”
“Around eight at night.”
“Where were you coming from?”
“We had been at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Me, Eva-Kate, and Justine. Also Ruby and Zander and Declan.”
“Is that Ruby Jones, Zander Linton, and Declan Fischer?”
“Yes.”
“And did Ruby, Zander, or Declan return back to Eva-Kate’s house after the trip?”
“No.”
“Did Justine?”
“Yes. She was in the car with us.”
“And what happened when you got home?”
“Um … London and Olivia were there. They were upset that we didn’t invite them on the trip.”
“Is that London Miller and Olivia Law?”
“Yes.”
“Why weren’t they invited on the trip?”
“Oh … I have no idea. That wasn’t my call. But by then Eva-Kate and Justine mostly only did things together. Nobody else was invited in those last days.”
“But you were invited?”
“To the Madonna Inn, yes. I’m her…” She paused. “I was her personal assistant. So she took me with her on trips.”
“So then Eva-Kate must have trusted you a great deal. A personal assistant has a lot of responsibilities that you don’t give to just anybody. She really relied on you.”
“Objection.” Jack stood. “Your honor, the prosecutor is testifying.”
“Sustained. Miss Warren?”
“Of course,” Melinda went on without hesitation. “Let’s try that again. Josie, can you describe your relationship with Eva-Kate?”
“Yes. We’d known each other for most of our lives. I trusted her with my life, and I’d like to think she trusted me with hers too.”
“Okay, so, London and Olivia were frustrated that they didn’t get invited. What happened next?”
“Justine went upstairs while Eva-Kate and I stayed downstairs. She asked London and Olivia to leave, because they were being assholes. I mean, sorry! They were, uh … I don’t know, they were being the spoiled brats they always are.”
“Was that the last time you saw Justine that night?”
“No.”
“When was the last time you saw Justine that night?”
“About an hour later.”
“And what was she doing?”
“She was arguing with Eva-Kate outside Eva-Kate’s bedroom. Eva-Kate went outside and Justine followed her.”
We weren’t arguing. We never argued.
“You say they were arguing. Did you happen to hear what they were arguing about?”
“Justine was
angry that Eva-Kate had been keeping a secret from her. Their voices were hushed so I didn’t hear the details. Just that there was a secret and Justine was completely flipped out about it.”
“I see. And then you say she followed Eva-Kate outside?”
“Yes.”
“Did Justine bring anything with her when she went outside?”
“Yes.
“And what was that?”
“The athame.”
“For those who don’t know, can you tell us what an athame is?”
“It’s a dagger used in witchcraft rituals.”
“Could you describe what this particular athame looked like?”
“The handle was painted white with blue cornflowers and had a green bow tied around it. The blade was about five inches long.”
“No further questions, your honor.”
CHAPTER 16
JOSIE BISHOP CROSS-EXAMINED
The self-critic in my mind was on fire and everything I did was wrong. Everything about me was wrong. The way I sat was wrong. First I was too slouched, then I was too poised. I hadn’t dressed up nicely enough, then I had dressed too well. I worried the shade of brown I dyed my hair was too dark—does it make me look devious? Then I worried I hadn’t dyed it dark enough—why do you always have to go around fixing what isn’t broken?
My cuticles throbbed from where I’d picked at them. My cheek stung where a zit was surfacing, unkind and unforgiving. My ankle muscles ached from standing in heels and the blisters on my heels flared raw.
“Miss Bishop.” Jack took Melinda’s place standing before Josie. “You knew Eva-Kate for how long?”
“About ten years.”
“About ten years,” he repeated. “And you’re seventeen now. So, that means you met when you were seven?”
“Wow.” Josie smirked. “That’s some quick math, counselor.”
“Answer the question, Miss Bishop,” Judge Lucas instructed.
“Yes,” she said, uncrossing and recrossing her legs. “We met when we were seven. In school.”
“Then this was before Eva-Kate became a big star?”