American Monsters

by Sezin Koehler

  It was them. They came back to kill Audrey and me. If we hadn’t hidden right at the moment we did, they would have seen us cross the street, they would have found us and gunned us down.

  My sense of relief was bitter. Wendy’s body was in her car, slumped over.

  I knew we needed to call someone. But who? I couldn’t remember. And Wendy was the only one with a cell phone. I knew I had to keep it together, and going back to the car was not an option. What was I supposed to do?

  I don’t know! I don’t know!

  A woman was walking down the street on our side. “Please help us,” I screamed, “My friend’s been shot!” Not a woman exactly, a transvestite, and a hooker. “I heard that shot. Oh Honey, you need to call 911.”

  911! That’s who I was supposed to call! I’d forgotten.

  “But I don’t have a phone!”

  She put her arm around me. “There’s one around the corner.”

  “I’m scared. What if they’re waiting?!”

  “I’ll wait with you.” Not a man, a woman or a prostitute. An Angel.

  Somehow Audrey got to the phone before I did, and called 911. The Angel waited with me. Another man walked up, concerned, asked what happened. I told him. He said he heard the shot, too. A car pulled up around the corner, silver, driven by an Asian couple. The Man glowered, “Is that them?!?” He rushed over, as if to pull the driver out of the car. “No!” I screamed. “They were Hispanic, and the car was brown!” The Man calmed again. I could hear Audrey on 911, she wasn't making any sense. She was telling them where we were, not where we are, but it was all messed up. Gelrose and Mower, instead of Melrose and Gower. But we were actually on Sunset and Tamarind. I wrested the phone from her hands, and told the nice lady.

  As I was speaking, I could see police cars, sirens blaring, approaching fast. The Angel put her arm around me. “Good luck, honey.” She sashayed away down the street.

  One cop car stopped by Audrey and me. I told them Wendy was around the corner. Two cops got out. One took Audrey, the other took me. I was clearly the lucid one. They brought me back to the car. The ambulance was there. Now that help had arrived, I collapsed. I showed the cop, a woman, my bloody hand. I asked her if Wendy would be okay. She didn't lie to me. “She was shot point blank in the head. It doesn’t look good.” I already knew Wendy was dead. I just didn’t want to know.

  Wendy’s brilliant light of a life was over. My stint in Hell was just beginning.

  The Aftermath Part 1

  The police brought Audrey and I to the West Hollywood Police Station, with strict instructions that we were not to talk about what happened. Audrey kept saying to the cops, “Please find Wendy! Wendy’s lost! She’s lost on the streets! You have to find her.” Every time she said it I would weep.

  When we arrived at the station, we had a short wait in the lobby while two party kids, a.k.a. ravers, were talking with the desk Sergeant. Audrey and I were both crying as we sat there. The party boys turned and looked at us. Smirked. I could read their eyes. They thought we’d been caught for drunk driving and we were crying to get out of it. Such a feeling of rage came over me. I wanted to scream at them, “FUCK YOU, BITCHES. OUR FRIEND WAS JUST FUCKING MURDERED! HOW DARE YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT! JUDGE ME! THINK YOU FUCKING KNOW!”

  Instead, I went to the bathroom. I washed the blood from my hands. The last time I would touch Wendy.

  Audrey and I were separated. She was under the influence, they could tell. She admitted it to them. They kept her in an interrogation room. Me, I sat at a cop’s desk. They kept asking me if I wanted anything. Chocolate? Coke? I told them I was allergic to sugar, but they brought the stuff anyway. A young deputy sat with me. Big, tall, blonde, all-American cop, handsome, just my type. I babbled about Twin Peaks and my Hallowe’en costume. He was also a fan of the show. I was drinking my coffee black like Agent Cooper. Nothing felt real.

  The Boyfriend showed up. The cops let me go outside and smoke a cigarette under the condition that I didn’t talk about what happened. I take everything seriously, so I didn’t. The Boyfriend was smirking at me the same way those party boys had. I knew he thought we’d been drunk driving and been caught. Oh how I hated him!

  I finished my cigarette. They let him wait with me in the interrogation room. He still had that smirk. I was shaking, a human vibrator. You got what was coming to you, I could hear him thinking. Finally, with all the rage I could muster I whispered, “Wendy. Is. Dead.” He looked like he’d been slapped in the face.

  We sat for hours in that room. Audrey and I arrived at the station at 3:30am. The head detective didn’t interview me until 8am. I gave my statement. He confirmed what I already knew, that Wendy was dead. He also confirmed that they had caught the people. Showed me pictures of the car. I ID’ed The Girl from a photo line-up.

  10am October 28, 2000, and I finally left the station. It would be days before I could sleep.

  The Funeral

  Wendy’s funeral took place in Dallas, Texas, her hometown. My mother flew in from Geneva and met us there. My mom, The Boyfriend and I stayed at Wendy’s parents’ home. Audrey stayed elsewhere, having become the scapegoat for their pain, since she was the one who called Wendy that night, and she was the one who was so messed up on drugs she would be useless to the trial.

  A few of us refused to wear black to the funeral. Wendy would have wanted that. I wore a dress she loved — she called it my Boogie Nights dress, a beautiful 70s vintage halter dress that could have easily come straight out of the film — and a blue velvet coat. Wendy had a matching red one. We bought them together on Melrose.

  I sat with Wendy’s sister’s best friends at the funeral, not the people I knew from school. They disgusted me.

  Just ten days before her death, Wendy had a party at her house. I was one of the last people to leave. Wendy and I were hanging out in her bedroom smoking cigarettes. She confessed to me how hurt she was by all her girlfriends, and how without fail they would always go after the boys she liked — or loved, as the case may be. She told me how these friends made her feel fat, ugly and inadequate. She cried when she asked me, “Why do they keep doing this to me?” I told her it’s because they were selfish bitches who didn’t deserve her in their lives and she should get rid of them. She told me, “Sezin, you’re the only friend I’ve ever had who never did this to me. Thank you.”

  This conversation resounded in my head every time I saw one of those so-called friends at the funeral. I couldn’t stand to look at them, I wanted to give them a piece of my mind, but I knew that would make Wendy sad. I bit my tongue. I was glad that my place was with Wendy’s family and their friends, not with those assholes who had betrayed Wendy over and over again.

  I don’t remember much about the service. Just that Wendy’s sister’s friend Ronette held my hand in hers. We clung to each other. We smoked cigarettes together before and after. She smoked cloves. I remember that the closing song was supposed to be REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”, but they fucked up and played “Everybody Hurts” instead. I can’t hear that song, even today, eleven years later, without crying.

  One of Wendy’s “friends” from our uni was also someone who grew up in Dallas, and she had a party at her house that night. The disgust I felt for those “friends” grew and grew as I watched people hooking up, laughing and partying as if this was just another night, not the night that our Wendy was put into the ground. There was so much anger in me.

  Wendy’s ex-boyfriend had a guitar, and he started playing the Indigo Girls’s version of Romeo & Juliet. I wanted to sing, but I could only cry. We passed around a bottle of Jim Beam, Wendy’s favorite. If we talked, I don’t remember what it was about. When people got naked and went skinny-dipping, something Wendy would have approved of 110%, we stole their clothes and hid them — again, Wendy-approved 110%.

  We wanted to capture something of her spirit, some of us wanted to honor that. Most of them just wanted to get drunk and forget.

  Betwee
n The Here and Then

  The months after Wendy’s murder were as unimaginable as the event itself. Every night I would dream of The Girl. She wore a red hoodie and she would pull a gun on me, shoot me in the face. Every night I would die. Over and over. In the throes of post-traumatic stress disorder, I was terrified to go out at night. Loud noises made me scream. If someone pulled a gun in a film or TV show, I would put my head in my lap (“GET YOUR HEAD DOWN, BITCH, DON’T LOOK AT ME!) and have a panic attack. Panic attacks became my world. If someone mentioned the word “dead” I’d be in the throes of a flashback, shaking, weeping.

  The language of death and guns permeates American vocabulary. “I’ll give it a shot.” “I’d rather die than...” “Shoot me now.” My emotions were a tightrope. I teetered on balance, falling often. I needed so much support, so much care. Thoughts of leaving The Boyfriend I no longer loved were moot. I needed help. I needed to be monitored.

  I started hurting myself. I would rub my face raw with a towel, my cheeks looking like I had been dragged along concrete. In my frustration and pain I would rake my nails across my face, my body, manifesting my grief in ways that I could treat and people could see.

  Audrey remembered nothing of the night. It was left to me to testify against the murderer and her accomplice, The Driver. It was my senior year of university. I was also trying to graduate. Somehow, in my haze of grief and PTSD I managed to write the first draft of the book that is now American Monsters. I barely remember doing that.

  All I thought about was death. I wished I had died. I wanted Wendy back. I didn’t feel I deserved to be alive. Apparently this is called survivor’s guilt, but it didn’t change the reality of it. I’d always felt different from my peers. Now I really felt a gulf growing, a sense of alienation from the act of life itself. At the same time, I wanted to make Wendy proud. Wendy loved life with a gusto I’d rarely seen in anyone else. I wanted to live in her honor. But it was hard. I hated life. The pain, the suffering I was going through. I missed my friend. I missed the life that was before.

  I wanted to die. But I couldn’t.

  The Aftermath Part 2

  Unlike in the movies, murder trials take a very long time. In May 2001, seven months after Wendy’s death, I testified at the preliminary hearing during which a judge would determine if there was enough evidence to bring the case in front of a jury. Instead of coming for my university graduation, my mom flew to LA from Geneva and spent a few weeks with me before and during the hearing.

  Terrified as I was of seeing The Girl again, I knew I had to testify for Wendy. I had to help bring justice. There really wasn’t any choice about it, especially since Audrey had admitted being on drugs and also had amnesia of that night.

  At the LA courthouse, my mom and select friends and I would sneak into the stairwell to smoke cigarettes. I couldn’t stop shaking. I wrote “XENA” across my belly to give me strength. This made everyone laugh, which I suppose we all needed as well. I was a warrioress in my own way. Wendy’s family were so grateful to me. They thanked me for testifying. Those thanks made me feel guilty in a way I am still unable to articulate.

  I got through it. We all got through it. Unlike the jury trial, there was no cross-examination. If the judge had a question, she asked me directly. It was sort of a breeze. Nothing like what the actual murder trials would be like.

  Seeing The Girl again was awful. She wore bright orange prison jumpsuit, her hair was down and looked different than when I saw her that night. The police said they found wigs and disguises in their car so it’s no wonder. She kept her head down, she didn’t look at me.

  The judge ruled there was sufficient evidence for a trial. The date for the first jury trial featuring The Girl up for murder in the first degree was set for about a year later.

  In the meantime, my PTSD continued, although I was seeing a number of therapists in order to deal with the trauma. I was not speaking to Audrey. In fact, I stopped speaking to most of Wendy’s friends, all those girls she had cried on my shoulder about. I stayed in touch with Wendy’s sister and her friends though, many of whom are still huge parts in my life. I think of them as sisters.

  My best friend, Shelly, lived just up the street from me, and right next door was a houseful of awesome people who became my support system and my outlet for the months school was still in session. My neighbors would hear me crying through my window, and they’d phone me to come over, or yell at my window to come and have a Smirnoff Ice and listen to music. They became my protectors, and my safety net, they put up with my understandable strangeness and held me when I cried. They got me out of my head and my memories, they helped me smile, they got me drunk, they danced my pain away. Had it not been for them, my mother, and the support of my professors, I surely would have succumbed to the darkness that called me every night. That part of me which wanted nothing but the release of death.

  Wendy saved my life when she screamed at me, “HIDE HIDE HIDE!” These friends saved my life every day from October 28, 2000 and onwards.

  With the help from my friends and my professors, in spite of everything, I still managed to graduate as planned on May 20, 2001. It was a small miracle. In honor of Wendy, I refused to wear a cap and gown and instead wore a white vintage dress and angel wings. I was worried they wouldn’t let me walk, but they didn’t stop me. Wendy’s parents came for the ceremony and smiled when they saw me. “It’s a lovely tribute that Wendy would have appreciated.”

  After graduation things started to get ugly again. Many of my friends and members of my support system moved away from LA. I felt pressure to remain in California because I knew the state wouldn’t pay for me to come back and testify, but I didn’t want to stay in Los Angeles anymore. My relationship was getting more and more strained, especially once I was forced to move in with him after graduation. I was in love with someone else, but couldn’t admit it. I kept throwing my back out, and generally felt not in control of my own life, and unable to figure out the next step.

  The first year I met Wendy, she, Audrey, another friend and I went on a spur-of-the-moment Wendy-style road trip for a long weekend in San Francisco. It was an amazing trip, my first ever road trip, and we had such a blast. I decided I wanted to go back to San Fran, and that I would stay with a friend, James. He was actually the man I had been in love with for years, and was also the person who first introduced Wendy and me. My old college neighbor was from Oakland, and so I could see her and we’d drive back to LA together. After a wonderful two weeks in San Francisco, and coming to the realization that I really and truly no longer loved my boyfriend, and James finally admitting that he loved me too, my future plans started to solidify.

  I would move to Berkeley — my friend’s dad rented a room out — I would find a job, and be with the man I had secretly loved all these years.

  Back in LA, my now ex-boyfriend showed his true and violent colors. The break-up couldn’t possibly have been nastier. A couple weeks later, James and a friend drove down from San Francisco, knights in a shining U-Haul truck, and helped me pack up my things. Goodbye and good riddance to Los Angeles.

  Moving to Berkeley helped my trauma subside for a little while, but once I got settled it was back in full force. Plus I couldn’t find a job. Money was tight. But I was in love, and in my lucid moments I was so grateful for that, and I knew Wendy would have been thrilled that after all those years James and I finally had our time together.

  But I wasn’t well. I still had nightmares almost every night. I tried a number of holistic therapies, which helped, but not all the way.

  When the time came around for the jury trials, my American life started to come apart at the seams.

  Witness For the Prosecution

  The jury trial was a far cry from the preliminary hearing. I did not have the entourage of support anymore, and this time when I sat in that witness box I would be faced with twelve individuals staring at me and deciding whether I was telling the truth or not.

  The Assistant District Atto
rney was prosecuting the case, and though we had gone over what I could expect, he opened with an extreme curveball: “Who was Wendy Soltero?” I started to talk of my love for her, our friendship, broke down crying like I had promised I would NOT do, and anyway the question and my response were stricken from the record. The ADA had set the tone, though.

  I was on the stand for almost two hours, the majority of that time spent being cross-examined by The Girl’s — Araceli Pena — defense attorney, a state-provided hag with frizzy hair and a cruel mouth. She tore apart everything I said. She asked why we were out so late and if Wendy made a habit of driving around at 3am. As if Wendy was responsible for her death! I proceeded to have multiple panic attacks on the stand, but nothing stopped her. I could hear jury members weeping along with me, but I never looked at them. I was barely holding it together.

  The defense lawyer tried to get me to re-take the stand the next day, but the judge overruled her, saying that my statement was clear and there was no need for a recall.

  By the time I was released my shirt and suit jacket were soaked through with sweat, and I shook for hours. The Solteros thanked me over and over again for testifying. I didn’t know what to say.

  The verdict came back: the jury found Araceli Pena guilty of Murder in the First Degree. She received life in prison, because of California’s then-moratorium on the death penalty.

  A few months later, I was back in LA testifying against the accomplice. A much quicker affair since I never saw him, only his car. He too was convicted of murder in the first and given a life sentence.

  This is when I found out that on the night they killed Wendy, the police suspected they had killed another man, but they couldn’t prove it. The police never found the gun that killed Wendy, but the two killers on their crime spree had a number of guns in the car I identified.