Under the Bridge

by Rebecca Godfrey

  “Yeah. That’s where these white hairs come from,” Bond said. “Marissa, Tara, Dimitri, you know, everyone’s been spoken to. You may not like doing this, but I’ve got to tell you, we’ve got a dead girl here. I’ve got a lot of explaining to do to everyone in Victoria.”

  “I know.”

  And she told them again about the blood on the pants. The 187 conversation in the bedroom. She told them all this again.

  “I bet it probably made you sick hearing about it,” Bond said. “Did it bother you? I mean, you’ve got to be thinking that something is not quite right here. This isn’t the guy I know.”

  “I didn’t think anything like that because I didn’t think it was true.”

  “So what did he say that you didn’t think was true?”

  “The whole thing. I didn’t believe any of it. I didn’t think he could do it. I didn’t think it could happen.”

  “What exactly did he tell you?”

  She sighed. “He got on his knees and he whispered to me. He asked me if I’d known the girl was missing. I said no. He said something about him and Kelly went back. She’s dead. The Gorge. She’s dead. Kelly. Beat her up. And more. And then. She was thrown. In the Gorge. Or she was dragged.”

  “Well,” Cameron said, “in your earlier statement, you recall exactly what his conversation was in regard to who dragged her into the water.”

  “No, in my earlier statement, I recalled what I pictured in my head when he told me because I was asked what I pictured in my head when he told me.”

  “We’ll just give you a second and you try to remember more details. This is important. We’re not dealing with somebody stealing some celery from a grocery store here. Somebody was killed!”

  “I’m well aware of that,” Syreeta said.

  “This is not a house that’s been broken into. If you think these questions are difficult and uncomfortable, wait until you’re in court, in front of a jury and a judge. It probably won’t be as comfortable as being here in the kitchen with your grandparents.”

  Syreeta looked near tears, and Bond suddenly felt very sorry for her. He softened his tone. “You haven’t done anything wrong here,” he said. “I know you and Warren went out for seven months. I can appreciate that no one wants to be in a position where they have to come to court and testify against their boyfriend. But we have got to get this while it’s fresh in your memory. In a year, when it goes to court, it may not be as fresh. And in court, Warren’s going to try and put it on Kelly. Kelly’s going to say, ‘Hey, it wasn’t me. I’m not an aggressive person.’ And everyone’s going to be looking at you, Syreeta, because you heard it directly from Warren.”

  He drank some of the coffee Syreeta’s grandmother had brought him.

  “Now if I asked you: ‘A month ago, who ordered fish and chips at Brady’s at 6:30 at night?’ you’re not going to remember because it’s not that big of a deal. But when your boyfriend is kneeling down in his bedroom indicating that he’s responsible for a homicide, I would say you’d probably remember pretty closely what he’s saying.”

  She tried then to explain to the older men the way she’d felt but it was seeming to her more futile trying to explain. “It’s not like I was like, ‘Oh tell me.’ I was sitting there, trying to be stubborn, acting like I didn’t care.”

  “Well, what was his emotion like when he was on his knees, telling you this? Was he crying? Was he upset?”

  “He wasn’t proud of it.”

  “Did he look like he had sorrow?”

  “He looked like he regretted it.”

  “You’ve been dating him a long time. You know him better than most people know him. So when he’s on his knees, showing remorse and he seems quite upset, didn’t this lead you to believe he was telling the truth?”

  “I think it was that I didn’t want to believe.” It was funny then because she’d spent so much time trying to understand Warren and what he might have done. Now, for the first time she understood herself, and it was very clear to her finally: I didn’t want to believe.

  “But I think inside you did believe him,” Bond said, gently. “Is that fair of me to say that?”

  “I can’t say for sure.”

  “I think you had two sides to you. One side said, ‘What I’m hearing sounds true.’ But in your heart, you didn’t want to believe what he’s telling you. It’s like hearing something bad about a member of your family. One side of you says, ‘Hey, my brother or sister couldn’t have done this.’ Is that the kind of feeling you had?”

  Syreeta nodded, struck again by Bond’s understanding. He seemed to know her so very well.

  “We investigate lots of these types of crimes,” he said. “It’s hard for the family or the relative when they hear something like this.” He looked at her now. “When he was on his knees, was he praying to God? Was he saying, ‘God, I made a mistake’?”

  “He had his hands on my knees like this,” she said, and she pressed her palms against her grandmother’s knees to demonstrate.

  “What was he whispering? Take your time. Go slow.”

  “He told me that she was dead, and, I think, that she was dragged into the Gorge.”

  “So in your first statement, you remembered more than you do now?”

  “I’ve been trying to forget.”

  “Do you wake up thinking about it at times?”

  She nodded. “I’ve been having nightmares. Every time I close my eyes, I can see Reena’s face. I’ve been scared to turn the light off. I can’t go to sleep without the radio on.”

  “It’s posttraumatic stress,” Bond said. “It usually goes away in a few months, but it’s common when you hear something this terrible. It overwhelms you. One side of you says, ‘He’s my boyfriend. I’ve been going out with him for seven months. He’s a good guy. This isn’t like him.’ And the other side says, ‘Well, the newspaper says it’s true. The police are picking me up. There’s something to it.’ Is that how you feel?”

  “Yes,” she said, and she nodded several times.

  “Did you ever ask him, ‘Why the heck did you do this?’ You must have wanted an explanation.”

  “I think it’s like you said before: I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “You realize that he’s ruined his own life. You haven’t ruined it. Reena didn’t ruin it. He’s ruined it himself.”

  She began to cry then, and under the table, her grandmother squeezed her hand.

  “Did he ever tell you why he screwed up? He was sort of mixed up in his family. Did you guys talk about that?”

  “Well, I know his dad didn’t want him. His dad left him and went to San Diego. I knew then that his dad was just an asshole and his dad didn’t even care about him. And I know his mom’s an alcoholic. He was supposed to go out there for Christmas, but then she started drinking again.”

  “Did he ever discuss what put him over the edge here? Why he did it?”

  “He won’t tell me details. I know he’s had his share of b.s. in his life.”

  She felt guilty suddenly. She shouldn’t be telling these strangers the things Warren had been so ashamed to admit.

  “When I first talked to you,” Constable Cameron said, “I could tell that you were obviously very much in love with Warren. You were quite emotional that day. I don’t think you stopped crying through the whole interview. I could tell that there was still just a little bit more that you wanted to say, but because you loved Warren so much, you didn’t want to say it all. Well, that’s what we’re looking for today. That little bit more that you didn’t tell us before.”

  “Well, my love for him doesn’t have anything to do with it. He murdered someone my own age. That could have easily been me. So I don’t care that I love him. I’m telling you everything I know.”

  Memorial

  THE HIGH SCHOOL GYM, crowded now with a community, grieving. A table, set up like an altar, displayed an assembly of photographs, entitled “Reena’s Life and Her Loving Family.” Photos of: a little girl
, no more than five, with her hair in two ponytails, a bright blue pinafore, smiling, and behind her, the white chrysanthemums in fragrant bloom. This was a Reena most of the audience had never seen. In the past week, Reena, to strangers, was a girl in the newspapers, described in the shorthand of a simple story: “a misfit,” “a chubby girl,” most of all, “a girl who got in with the wrong crowd.” She was even more misunderstood in death, merely a warning sign, a victim, a symptom.

  Below the photographs of a beautiful child, fresh daffodils lay with petals loose and frail, emerging from the stems so long and green.

  Suman wore a thin white veil over her hair, a black jacket; her eyes were very red, and all who observed her would later use words to describe her, words like grace and dignity.

  Through a spokesman at a press conference earlier, she stunned many of the townspeople by offering, publicly, her sympathy to the families of the accused. “The Virks have no feelings of vengeance or animosity toward any of these people, neither the accused or their families.”

  Sitting at the memorial, Amy did not yet know that the diary she had given Reena was both discarded and rescued. She thought now only of the gifts exchanged. The ring Reena had given her “because you’ve helped me so much.” The diary she’d given Reena because “it’s important for you to have a voice in all this.” Now, help and a voice seemed abstract concepts, both futile and given too late, taken away. What mattered now were stories.

  There were so many stories. The stories made her head spin. There were stories in the newspaper of the “awkward misfit.” There were the stories told to detectives of “some Indian chick,” of “Rhea,” of “Trina,” of “Elly McBride.” There were stories in the autopsy report, stories of bruises and footprints on a skull, and a body literally crushed. There were stories in the Bible told now by the Jehovah’s Witness elder. There were stories of an ordinary night turned terrible, soon after the lights in the sky blazed and broke from a falling satellite.

  But the story of the memorial seemed wrong and untrue to Amy, for no one spoke of Reena as she had known her, and she wished she could have stood up there, told the strangers of a young girl who was so young, who didn’t know the ways of the world. Yet she was emerging, as if she no longer wanted to melt into the walls behind her, as if she was ready to be. Amy would have said Reena was determined; she was not awkward or shy, not anymore. True, she didn’t belong anywhere, not really. She didn’t belong in the traditional world of her grandparents or in the modern world of thugs and contrived sexiness. She didn’t belong with the strict and severe JWs, because she was fourteen and wanted birthday parties and rebellion, and she wanted to celebrate. But she was trying to be a girl who would belong somewhere, not yet, but soon.

  Reena told stories in the last year of her life that surely were untrue. Stories of probation officers and pimps, stories of romance with boys named Nick and Jack and Dan, stories of a girl named Josephine who really painted on her eyebrows and was not so pretty with her makeup off. But were these stories, Amy wondered, any different from the stories in the songs all the kids loved? Invented tales of mayhem and lovers, boastful braggings that earned that most elusive quality: something they all called respect.

  There were girls who teased her, girls who stole from her, girls she wanted to be.

  “Why do you lie?” a teacher once asked her.

  “Sometimes I have to lie to get people to like me,” Reena had replied.

  After the memorial Amy thought, There are all these stories now, and there will just be more stories about Reena. The stories at the trial The stories in magazines. The truth in these stories would hopefully surface and shimmer, borne forward like the pieces of glass Reena discovered in the sand.

  More memorials would follow, for Reena was now everyone’s daughter. In the park she had loved as a child, a petition was signed by many who vowed to honor “nonviolence.”

  “Reena’s death is a wake-up call,” said the chairwoman of the Greater Victoria School Board, “a wake-up call that we must listen to in order to honor her memory.”

  Shoreline students presented roses to Reena’s mother. Among these students were Tara and Syreeta. John Bond, in the background, observed the presence of Syreeta, cynically. “Now there’s a person who could have helped us,” he scoffed. Mrs. Virk hugged Syreeta, and thanked her for this gift. But her stoic composure could not be possibly maintained at the private funeral.

  “My baby, my baby, don’t do this to my baby,” she screamed as the coffin moved toward a rather dark place of flames. She tried to throw herself on the coffin, to hold her daughter, but she was pulled back and the casket receded into the place for burning.

  Part Four

  The Trials

  “Which way ran he that kill’d Mercutio? Tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he?”

  —citizen, Romeo and Juliet

  The Color of Right

  FIRST TO APPEAR before their judge were the six girls who had been under the bridge. The media invented the moniker for these girls: “The Shoreline Six.” The name was slightly erroneous, as only three of the girls had attended Shoreline. Yet the name suggested some romantic troupe of rebels, and truth be told, the name was rather catchy.

  If the townspeople were hoping the assault trial would be cathartic and sensational, their hopes were dashed, for the trial was cursory and quick, and the convictions of all six girls seemed from the start a fait accompli.

  Mayland McKimm, Mayas lawyer, was neither surprised nor pleased that the assault trial took place less than three months after the arrests. Neither was he surprised nor pleased that the Crown hired a special prosecutor from Vancouver, a “big gun” lawyer named James Wesley Williams.

  “In this case, society needed an answer immediately, and they needed to put closure on it. There’s a huge social value to that. Everyone knew the odds for any of the girls walking out free were zero. In a case of this magnitude, the state has all the machinery in place. Those girls were hooped. Those girls were doomed. Even before we went to trial, I wanted to say: ‘There is no way you’re walking out of here.’ There was just no way.”

  The Crown had changed the charge from aggravated assault to assault causing bodily harm after reviewing the evidence. This seemed a more appropriate charge for the punches and kicks that had felled Reena Virk. Perhaps because of the lesser charge, perhaps knowing they were doomed, Josephine, Dusty, and Laila all pleaded guilty.

  Maya, Willow, and Eve chose to plead not guilty, and their trial would last for only three days. The girls’ names could not be printed since a law called the Young Offenders Act prevented the identification of any minor under the age of eighteen. The public never got a chance to see the faces of the supposed savages, and though sketch artists attended the trial, the portraits they drew appeared in the newspapers as girls, literally, rendered unrecognizable with blank faces.

  The public never heard their voices, their stories, their explanations.

  Judge Filmer listened to the youth of View Royal during the course of the trial. He heard witnesses speak somewhat reluctantly of seeing their former schoolmates and friends surround Reena Virk “in a semicircle” and pummel and kick and punch the girl until she “was bruised up pretty bad.” Judge Filmer heard as well of the bragging during the week after the night of the Russian satellite, when the girls boasted of “kicking the shit out of some girl.”

  The prosecutor, James Wesley Williams, a former police officer, was a stern, imposing, and convincing teller of the tale. He stripped away all the talk of love and beauty and jealousy, of bitch fights and likes and Omigods and maybe, yeah, whatever, something. Told in his austere manner, the events under the bridge nonetheless made for a dreadful and disturbing narrative. After the teen witnesses spoke—haltingly, reluctantly, with mumbles and slang—he made a forceful and clear summary of his case. “Reena Virk was a young girl who appears to have a certain social awkwardness about her and may not have been enormously well accepted by others. The evidence s
hows that Reena Virk was essentially trapped, with persons surrounding her, and that she was there struck and kicked a number of times. She was not able to extricate herself from that predicament and she was struck a significant number of times and effectively covered herself up and cried out for the others to stop hitting her.”

  Away from the courtroom and out of his black robe, James Wesley Williams was less formal when speaking of the attack. “It was a nasty bit of business. They swarmed her. Can you imagine the insane cruelty? It’s breathtaking.”

  James Wesley Williams often reflected on the difference between those who were violent and those who were not criminal. He himself believed the factor that allowed some to cross the line was, simply, conscience. For conscience allowed you to stop yourself from harming others—it “acts as a brake upon your conduct.”

  During the trial, as he was able to establish, with little theatrics and even less doubt, there had been no brake in action on the night when the Furies released themselves like so many pairs of dark wings beating.

  The day before Valentine’s Day, Judge Filmer returned with his verdict. He found all three accused girls guilty. He spoke less of the beating and more of the aftermath when the girls grabbed Reena’s knapsack and ran with it to the parking lot of the Comfort Inn. This gesture seemed to him to reveal the real reason for the savagery.

  “Why did Laila take Reena’s bag? Was it a theft or a robbery? I do not think so. I think she took it because she had what adults know as a ‘color of right,’ a belief that there was something in the bag that did not belong to Reena Virk and that somehow in this rather bizarre scenario, these young people felt that they had the right to do what they did to get the object that was in Reena’s bag. Her perfume was in that bag and a diary or journal was in that bag. We hear nothing more of the journal, nor do we hear anything more of the pajamas. But we do hear that someone rather casually or cavalierly broke or dropped the bottle of perfume.