by Zara Lisbon
“You’re letting me take the blame for something you did,” I said, trying but failing to keep the tremor out of my voice, “and it’s … it’s not right.”
What was I thinking? That she’d confess to me right there in the bathroom?
“Something I did?” She gawked. “You must be joking.”
“I know Rob’s doorman said you were there that night, but you ran away. You left town. With Rob. Why would you do that if you didn’t have something to hide? It wouldn’t be the first time a doorman lied for some cash.”
“We didn’t leave because we had anything to hide, Justine, we left because our lives here were unmanageable. Do you think we can go anywhere in this city without being swarmed? Everywhere Rob goes becomes a circus, and after Eva-Kate died, they started swarming me too. That’s no way to live, especially when you’re grieving.”
“You weren’t grieving; you hated her. She took the life that should have been yours and you wanted her dead for it.”
“What are you talking about? I told you, I didn’t hate her. She hated me.”
“You told me they offered you the Jennie role and you turned it down so she could have it. But I don’t think that’s what happened. I think you wanted it more than anything but they gave it to her. I think you finally got her back when you stole her boyfriend but that still didn’t quite feel like enough. Because they chose her, she became a celebrity, she got rich, and what about you? You’re just a waitress. You’re invisible and it’s her fault. So you finally made her pay.”
“You sound insane,” she said. “And you don’t have any proof to back up this little theory.”
“Your fingerprints were on the athame,” I said. “It could have been you just as much as it could have been me. And whoever hated who, we know your relationship with Eva-Kate was strained. It’s all in my mom’s notes, and those are being entered into evidence as we speak. She’s going to testify to all of it.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient?” said Liza.
“Isn’t what convenient?”
“That it’s all in your mom’s notes. How supposedly unhealthy our relationship was. It’s just very convenient that all of it was documented, don’t you think?”
“What are you saying?”
“What I’m saying is that I wouldn’t be surprised if the two of you were in it together. She knew she could cover it up by writing these notes that very conveniently draw attention away from herself. Be careful of finger pointers, Justine. It’s almost always the finger pointers.”
She left me standing alone staring at my own reflection, the bathroom mirror soap-splattered and scratched.
CHAPTER 18
JUSTINE CHILDS PLAYS CAREFREE IN THE RAIN
It rained that night. Dense, heavy sheets of rain plunging, tumbling down my windows. I watched, mesmerized. I love rain. Have I already told you about my love of rain? It makes me feel more at home than home itself. It sounds like a language I knew before birth. It howls renewal and whispers nostalgia. It almost never rains in Los Angeles, but when it does I am guaranteed precious memories.
In fourth grade, for just half the year, I went to the all-girls school Riley was enrolled in. The school was expensive and came with all kinds of perks, my two favorites of which were 1. an environment free of the boys I’d known in public school (absolute terrors), and 2. an adorable uniform composed of a white blouse, red plaid skirt, red cardigan, topped off with a red beret like the maraschino cherry on a sundae. I lived in that outfit. That’s what it was to me, not so much a uniform as a second skin that felt so right and so good. Sometimes I even slept in it.
Anyway, one day—a Wednesday, I think—was a day like this, where the rain spills suddenly from the sky, unapologetic and unplanned for. My mom was supposed to pick us up after school, Riley and me. But it was three fifteen and she wasn’t there. Then it was four fifteen. Then it was five fifteen and the teachers were all starting to go home and the courtyard lamps were starting to turn off. It was December and so the sun was setting and it was getting dark and the rain was falling harder and harder. Soon the entire campus was empty. After-school care was up and running in the gym, but we weren’t enrolled in that, so we huddled underneath one of the classroom awnings, watching rain gush relentlessly from the waterspouts.
At first I panicked. I worried my mom had died in a car crash, skidding across the freeway in the torrential downpour. I worried we’d be kidnapped and then die in a car crash ourselves as the kidnapper attempted to make a quick getaway. I worried we’d drown. I worried we’d survive but have to spend the night sleeping in an abandoned school. I worried we’d have to live there forever, that the storm would wipe out all of civilization and from then on it would just be Riley and me fending for ourselves, feral and rabid, as Saint Catherine of Siena School for Girls crumbled around us. But then Riley dared me to go stand in the rain.
“No way,” I said, shuddering in the cold. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m not crazy,” she said. “Are you scared? Are you still a crybaby scaredy-cat?”
“No,” I pouted. “I’m not.”
I stood there for a minute, feeling my lips turning blue. Then I had the overwhelming need to prove her wrong. To show her I was someone different than who she thought I was. I wanted her to see what I was capable of.
“Fine,” I huffed, stomping into the rain. “Are you happy now?”
Water cascaded down my face, rolling off my nose and lips in plump drops.
“Oh my God,” she squealed, jumping up and down, “I didn’t think you’d do it!”
I could hardly hear her, the rain was so loud in my ears, crashing all around me. To my surprise, I took to it like dried-out soil. My skin drank it up. With each drop I felt more and more alive, more brave, more free. I tilted my face to the sky and let it wash me. I held my arms out and twirled around like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, feeling like myself, feeling truly Justine for the first time. And, if I really think about it, for the last time. Until the day I met Eva-Kate.
Riley ran out to meet me and we splashed around in the rising puddles, water soaking through our black Velcro Mary Janes, soaking through our tights. We chased each other, giggling, then laughing hysterically, tripping and falling and getting back up to do it all over again until we were wet from head to toe. A mural of Peter Rabbit looked down over us, and I didn’t care anymore if anybody ever came for us. In fact, I prayed they wouldn’t.
But they did, of course. My mom showed up at five thirty, so apologetic she didn’t notice we were drenched. It was Rachel Ames, of course. Again. She’d had several nervous breakdowns since Benji Laramore had left her, and my mother was by her side for every one of them. Riley and I huddled together for warmth in the back seat of the Land Rover, and after we dropped Riley off, my mom helped me out of my uniform and into my favorite pajamas, then wrapped me in a blanket and stroked my hair as I fell asleep to Mary-Kate and Ashley’s Winning London.
It was one of the many rainy memories I cherished.
That night, after the first day of my trial, I was sure if I could get outside to stand in the rain I could feel okay again, even if just for a moment. But my mom was camped out in an Eames shell chair outside my room, making sure I wouldn’t go anywhere. She wasn’t wrong to do so. “A Carefree Justine Childs Plays in the Rain After Day in Court” was not a headline that would work in my favor.
My mom took away my Xanax and my alcohol and I had nothing to dull my nerves. I chewed on the inside of my bottom lip until the skin felt like how baked pizza dough feels if you pull the cheese off, tender and blistered. I knocked my hands against the corners of my desk until they bruised and swelled. Pressing on the bruises took my mind off it all. I rubbed my eyes until they stung. I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep.
I got on Twitter and tried to numb out. Tried to think of something other than myself. People on Twitter were praying for Notre Dame Cathedral as it burned, laughing—baffled and bemused—at the first ever photograp
h of a black hole, celebrating Taylor Swift as the video for her latest single, “ME!”—an all fun and games pastel homage to imagination—hit twenty-four-million views in less that twelve hours. Last but not least, the people of Twitter were, it seemed, more or less convinced of my guilt. I was a top four trend.
I smiled. It didn’t matter what they were saying about me; this was so fucking cool. I should have left it at that, feeling good for a second. I shouldn’t have clicked on the #JustineChilds hashtag, but I had to see.
@TabbyPantano: Justine Childs is sooooooo guilty. She looks legit terrified, cuz she knows what she did.
@AmandaKnoxTruther: She did it! Duh! She was a crazy fan who got unhinged. End of story. Wake up, people.
@SteevieKay: I know she’s a killer, but do any other gay boys out there have a taboo crush on Justine Childs?
@CarrieMorseCode: If you think Justine Childs is innocent you are beyond saving.
@MonicaHarmonica: I believe Justine killed Eva-Kate, but I think she is too tiny to have done it alone. I think there were #multiplekillers.
@JayJayVanderoth: Justine is out there playing the victim. Let’s not forget the real victim, EVA-KATE KELLY. Justine doesn’t seem so sweet after you realize she stabbed that poor girl in cold blood.
“Okay, okay, okay,” I said out loud to no one, slamming the computer shut and tossing it out of the way. “I get the picture.”
I rolled onto my back and dug my left canine deep into my lip. By that point, the pain didn’t even make me flinch. My thoughts kept coming back to Liza and our standoff in the courthouse bathroom.
What I’m saying is that I wouldn’t be surprised if the two of you were in it together, she’d said. She knew she could cover it up by writing these notes that very conveniently draw attention away from herself. Be careful of finger pointers, Justine. It’s almost always the finger pointers.
She was wrong, of course. My mom couldn’t have been covering anything up for me, because I didn’t do anything, and because I found those notes before Eva-Kate was dead. And, of course, because my mom wasn’t even in town yet. Or was she? I didn’t want to think about it, but something about Liza’s accusation had stuck with me. Was there a way, I had to wonder, that somehow my mom was involved in Eva-Kate’s death?
CHAPTER 19
NANCY CHILDS TESTIFIES
The next day in court I was in a painful, sleep-deprived daze. I struggled to keep my eyes open, but my nerves jittered with an ongoing adrenaline spill. I’d let my mom dress me, so I wore a black dress with white pinstripes and my hair clipped to the side with a girlish pink-satin barrette. I had been too weak to put on any makeup, so she hustled concealer and nude lipstick onto me as I slumped against the passenger seat window. It’s not that I didn’t care anymore; I did. I just didn’t have the wherewithal to do anything about it.
A forensics expert, Michael Ferguson, testified for the prosecution that my fingerprints were found on the athame, as well as on multiple glasses in Eva-Kate’s bedroom and kitchen. We looked at black-and-white renderings up on a light projector, my fingerprints and the ones found at the crime scene placed side by side, an identical series of looping, swirling ridges, Under the Wave off Kanagawa outlined over and over and over. Jack cross-examined and got him to admit that, while my fingerprints were no doubt all over the athame, so were many other people’s. Those people included Liza and Debbie McKelvoy. At this, Melinda Warren looked momentarily downcast. Jack turned to give me a wink.
Then the ball was in Jack’s court. He called Richie Holmes, the Ace Hotel desk clerk, who testified that I checked in at exactly 5:09 in the morning. Jack reminded the courtroom that it was entirely possible that Eva-Kate had died while I was on my way to the hotel, or even once I had already checked in. From the witness stand, behind horn-rimmed glasses, Richie kept looking over at me. Even when Jack refocused him, his gaze would be back on me in no time. I wondered if it was a compulsive kind of thing. I wondered if he had a crush. He had dark features, brown hair styled back off his forehead, and an elegantly angular nose. I tried to imagine him naked, a pathetic attempt to keep myself from bursting into tears at any second. It didn’t work; in the place of a naked body all I saw was amorphous, staticky gray.
Melinda didn’t cross-examine, but brought in Douglas Mathis, the Uber driver who took me to the Ace. His records showed that he picked me up at 4:40. Melinda reminded us all that according to the coroner’s report, Eva-Kate most likely died between midnight and four in the morning.
“Forget the time Justine checked into the Ace Hotel,” she said. “What matters is that she got into Mr. Mathis’s car at four forty. Until that point, her whereabouts are unaccounted for. She has no alibi whatsoever for the window of time in which Eva-Kate died. That part of this case is undisputable.”
The room was silent then. I was sure everyone could hear my heart flailing, thumping itself against my chest like a bat in a birdcage.
“We’re gonna prove her wrong, don’t worry.” Jack patted my hand. “Just sit tight.”
* * *
When it was Detective Sato’s turn to testify, he climbed up onto the stand with unnerving zest, like this was the moment he’d been waiting for, like this was his moment.
“Good afternoon,” Melinda said amiably.
“Good afternoon,” he replied. His cheeks were slightly sunburned, two red blotches that moved up and down as he spoke.
“Can you please state and spell your name for the court?”
“Detective Trevor Sato. That’s Trevor T-R-E-V-O-R Sato S-A-T-O.”
“Thank you, Detective. Are you employed currently?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you employed?”
“The Los Angeles Police Department. Homicide division.”
“What is it that you do in the homicide division?”
“Investigate and aim to solve murders.”
“How long have you been a police officer?”
“A little over ten years.”
“And how long have you been in your current assignment with the homicide division?”
“Three years.”
“Thank you, Detective. Now, I’d like to draw your attention to the afternoon of July seventeenth.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is this the afternoon you found the body of Eva-Kate Kelly?”
“Yes.”
“At what time did you locate the body?”
“1:46 P.M.”
“How was it that you came upon the body?”
“We received an anonymous tip. The captain sent Detective John Rayner and myself to investigate the scene at Eighteen Carroll Canal.”
“Is it relatively normal to receive an anonymous tip?”
“No, generally not.”
“Why would somebody want to report a crime anonymously?”
“Most likely because said person was somehow involved in the crime—or other illegal activity—and is feeling guilty, doesn’t want to get caught.”
“I see. And what did you discover upon arriving at the scene?”
“A body floating facedown. Half in the water, half washed up onto the shore.”
“And this was the body of Eva-Kate Kelly?”
“Yes.”
“And were you able to determine cause of death?”
“It was clear that she had been stabbed to death.”
“How was that clear?”
“There was a knife sticking out of her. Below her left ribs.”
“I see. And what was your role in the investigation of Eva-Kate’s death?”
“My role, basically, was to work along with Detective Rayner to determine what happened to Miss Kelly and identify the person responsible.”
“To identify who murdered her?”
“Objection. Leading the witness.”
“Sustained.”
“Allow me to rephrase. During the course of that investigation, did you come to believe that Eva-Kate Kelly was, in fact, murdered?”
&n
bsp; “Yes.”
“Did you develop a suspect?”
“Yes.”
“And who was that suspect?”
“Justine Childs.”
“Is that a person you recognize in the courtroom today?”
“Yes.”
“Can you please describe where she’s seated and what she’s wearing?”
“She’s sitting in front of me, slightly to my left. She’s wearing a dark blue skirt and blazer.”
“Thank you. And how did it come to be that Justine was a person of interest?”
“We had an eyewitness inform us that they saw Miss Childs at the scene of the crime holding the murder weapon.”
“Was that witness Josie Bishop?”
“Yes.”
“Was Miss Bishop’s testimony the sole reason you suspected Justine Childs?”
“No. When we tested the knife for fingerprints, it was determined that Justine’s were present.”
“So, then, it can be concluded that Justine did in fact hold the knife?”
“Objection, your honor.” Jack stood. “Argumentative!”
“Sustained.”
“Aside from the eyewitness and the fingerprints you found, was there another reason that you came to suspect Miss Childs?”
“The surveillance footage we obtained from Miss Kelly’s residence showed Miss Childs following Miss Kelly outside, which corroborated Miss Bishop’s testimony.”
“Your honor, I’d like to enter into evidence the surveillance tapes from the Kelly residence as Exhibit B. Can we dim the lights?”
The lights dimmed and Melinda guided our attention to the screen. She used her remote to click PLAY. My mom always said so many of her actress patients couldn’t stand watching themselves on-screen. She said oftentimes they wouldn’t even watch the movies they were in, or, if they did, they’d look away during their scenes. Some, though, would force themselves to watch, knowing it would strengthen their craft if they could study themselves and learn from their mistakes. This was just like that, I told myself. This was just an uncomfortable performance I had to force myself to sit through in order to become stronger.