by Jason Starr
Katie cried a lot, too, during that period, but most of the time she was just numb. Now, in bed, Katie shuddered as she let the horrible memories back in. She pictured her sister with an insane, wide-eyed expression, leaping off the roof of the dorm and splattering on the concrete. One thing Katie never understood at the time, and which still baffled her, was what the hell had happened to make Heather want to do that to herself? Yeah, she’d suffered from depression during her freshman year and hadn’t been taking her Prozac, but lots of people in the world were depressed and most of them didn’t jump off buildings. When Heather was living at home, she’d suffered from typical teenage angst, had a period of anorexia, rebelled during her senior year of high school, and started cutting and hanging out with the druggie crowd. But she never had any major problems, or at least didn’t seem to have any. Then when she started at UMass, everything seemed normal. She didn’t have any serious adjustment issues; why would she have? The UMass campus at Amherst was only about an hour’s drive from Lenox, and she frequently came home on weekends. She seemed to have a lot of friends and was doing well in her classes. She’d never been the straight-A type, but she was getting mostly B’s and wasn’t failing any classes. But somehow, despite all this, she hated herself so much that she decided to end her life.
There had been no doubt that she’d jumped and wasn’t pushed. The police did a full investigation, and a witness—a maintenance worker—had seen her go up to the roof alone, and a few students who were up there sunbathing had seen her jump. Her friends had claimed that she’d been very agitated during the week before the suicide and the police speculated that academic pressure might’ve caused her to jump. But this had never made much sense to Katie. It had been finals week, and every student on campus, especially freshmen who were taking year-end exams for the first time, had been under pressure. Heather had never been the type to freak out about academics. She was laid-back, a vegetarian, listened to the Grateful Dead. She might’ve been nervous about her exams, but Katie was positive that something like that alone wouldn’t make her kill herself.
Katie remembered the police and school counselors suggesting other possible causes for Heather’s distress, including that some crisis they weren’t aware of had led to a psychotic breakdown. For years, Katie had wondered what that crisis could have been. Heather hadn’t been getting along with a roommate, but that didn’t seem like a big enough deal. A guy she knew had died, and she’d been upset about it, but that didn’t mean…
Katie sat up in bed, afraid she would hyperventilate if she sat still; then she rushed into the living room and started pacing. She had to relax, get a grip.
A guy she knew had died and she’d been upset about it.
This had never seemed significant to Katie before, maybe because she was fourteen when Heather had died, and the idea of “a guy she knew” dying being enough to cause a suicide didn’t really add up. But “a guy she knew” was only how her parents had described the relationship to her. What if it had actually been more serious than that? If she’d been so upset about some guy dying, it figured that the guy probably wasn’t a casual friend. Parents were so lost about those sorts of things. The guy had probably been someone she’d hooked up with, or even had fallen in love with. Girls in college don’t exactly report home to their parents every time they start having sex with a guy—God knows Katie never had.
If the guy who’d died had been a boyfriend of Heather’s, that changed things dramatically. Maybe Heather’s death had been indisputably a suicide, but what about the guy’s? Katie remembered the cause of the guy’s death—he’d fallen off the roof of his frat house while drinking during a frat party. The police at the time had even pointed out that Heather may have decided to jump to mimic the way the guy had died, and Katie vaguely remembered the cops stating some psychological mumbo jumbo about how suicide victims often choose their cause of death by mimicking another recent dramatic death, maybe because they’re striving for the same type of attention. As a fourteen-year-old, Katie had questioned that logic, but now it seemed to hold more weight. Maybe Heather really loved this guy and wanted to die the way he’d died.
But, the catch was, what if the guy hadn’t fallen? What if someone had pushed him? Someone like Peter Wells.
Katie continued pacing frantically, wondering, What if Peter couldn’t get over Heather when she went away to college? Maybe he started stalking her on campus. If he did, it figured Heather wouldn’t want to worry her parents by telling them about it. She might’ve feared that they’d get overprotective of their freshman daughter and make a big deal about it. She also might’ve figured that Peter was harmless and that she could handle the situation herself. But this had turned out to be a huge mistake. Peter continued stalking her and then he saw her, hooking up with this other guy. He got insanely jealous and killed him, pushing him off the roof at that frat party. It all seemed to fit. Maybe this was what Peter did—he got obsessed with girls and killed their boyfriends, just like he’d killed Andy.
Katie was going to call 911 again, but stopped herself. She felt out of control, a little crazed. In the state she was in, who would believe her? Those detectives hadn’t exactly taken her seriously about Peter being involved in Andy’s murder, so why would they care when she told them her new theory about how Peter had killed Heather’s boyfriend?
A few minutes went by and Katie was glad she hadn’t made the call. Now that she had a little distance, she realized how far-fetched the whole thing would have sounded. She had some imagination, all right, the way she could always imagine worst-case scenarios so vividly.
She got back into bed. After a while, she managed to fall asleep, but then a noise jolted her awake. She didn’t know what time it was, but there was some light outside, coming through her window, and the rain had stopped. She heard the noise again, someone jiggling the front door. Thinking, It has to be Peter, she locked herself in the bedroom, and then heard the front door opening.
“Who’s there?” she shouted.
No answer. Just footsteps, coming closer.
“I said who the fuck’s there?”
“Katie?”
Shit, it was Susan.
Katie opened the door and said angrily, “What the hell’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you answer me when I said who’s there?”
“I did. What’s wrong with you? Why’re you yelling at me?”
“You didn’t answer. You just barged in here, scaring the shit out of me.”
“I just walked into my own apartment. Why’re you acting this way?”
“I thought you were Peter.”
“Who?”
Katie was still delirious, confused, her heart beating madly.
“Peter Wells, that guy I grew up with in Massachusetts.”
“Why would you think I’m him?”
“This is getting out of control. I have to tell the police. I can at least tell them, right? Let them decide what to do, right?”
“You sure you don’t want to get back to sleep?”
Katie went to her room, found the business card Detective Barasco had given her, and got his voice mail. Not surprising, considering it was, what—she looked at her clock—seven thirty in the morning?
She started leaving a message, “Hi, this is Katie Port—” and then hung up, figuring it was stupid to call when there was no way they’d take her seriously. But she needed to tell someone, someone who’d at least listen to her.
She had Detective Himoto’s number programmed into her cell. She scrolled to the number and clicked send.
“John Himoto.”
She was surprised he’d picked up, especially at this time of day.
“This is Katie Porter.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“Look, I remembered something else about this guy Peter Wells. Well, I didn’t remember something, but it’s something I think you guys should know—”
“Did those detectives get in touch with you?”
“Yeah, I met with th
em yesterday—”
“Then you should really be in touch with them now. Did you tell them what you told me the other night?”
“Yeah, but—”
“And?”
“They said they’d look into it, but I don’t think they took me seriously.”
“Trust me, they took you seriously. If there was anything about that guy…Peter?”
“Yeah.”
“If there was anything there, they’d take care of it; trust me on that. Did they say they were gonna talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s taken care of.”
“But I think he might’ve killed my sister’s boyfriend, too.”
Himoto didn’t answer right away—Katie heard static. Then he said, “What makes you think that?”
“Because my sister committed suicide in college and Peter was stalking her, too, only I didn’t know he was stalking her until the other day when my mother told me he was. Then I got to thinking, last night when I couldn’t sleep, about when Heather, that’s my sister, killed herself and I remembered that a friend of hers had been killed, he fell off a roof, and she was extremely upset about it. It hit me that the guy wasn’t just a friend, he was a boyfriend, and Peter might’ve killed him, like he killed Andy. I mean, if he killed Andy. Does this make sense? D’you understand what I’m saying?”
Katie was aware of how she’d been talking a mile a minute, probably sounding like a nut.
“Yes, I understand what you’re saying, but you shouldn’t be telling me about this. You should be telling this to Detective Barasco.”
“But he doesn’t listen to me. You listen to me. Can’t you do something? Just check him out? Do some investigating or something?”
“Miss Porter, this is not my case anymore. I can’t be any clearer about that.”
“I understand that but—”
“Look, I’m driving into the city now. I can’t have this conversation.”
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you? You think I’m just making up stories?”
“I don’t think that at all,” Himoto said. “It sounds like this is something you should definitely run by Detective Barasco. Why don’t you throw him another call?”
Katie felt defeated, helpless.
“I did. I got his voice mail.”
“Leave him a message, he’ll get back to you.”
“But—”
“Look, I really have to go now. Relax. Everything’s going to be okay. This is the NYPD, the greatest police force in the world. You don’t have to worry so much, okay?”
Starting to cry, Katie managed, “Okay.”
She ended the call, took a while to get hold of herself. Then she left a message for Barasco. She had no idea what she was supposed to do next. Just sit and wait for him to get around to calling her back? She didn’t feel like going in to work today and she didn’t see why she had to. Other people in the office called in sick when they had hangovers and PMS. Meanwhile, a guy she’d been dating had been killed and another guy she dated had been stalking her and her sister and might have killed their boyfriends and, oh yeah, set his house on fire and killed his parents. If this didn’t entitle her to one goddamn mental health day, what did?
Susan was in the shower. Katie went into the kitchen and made coffee—out of habit, not because she needed the caffeine. She was plenty edgy and wide awake without it.
Katie was on the couch, sipping a cup of Folgers Vanilla, when Susan came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.
“You sure everything’s okay?” Susan asked.
“Yeah, fine,” Katie lied. “Sorry I freaked like that before.”
“I was worried about you.”
“You going in to work today?”
Katie was hoping she wasn’t.
“Yeah, I just didn’t have a change of clothes at Tom’s so I wanted to come back home to shower. Why? You’re not going?”
“No, I just need a day to unwind, you know?”
“Yeah, you should really do that. Go get a mani-pedi, go shopping. That’ll make you feel a lot better.”
Katie liked Susan, she was a good person, but her advice in a crisis situation was worthless. Did she really think that getting her toenails polished would solve anything?
But Katie still felt a lot more comfortable with Susan around. When Susan left for work, Katie started to become paranoid again. It wasn’t as bad as last night, but she kept checking the locks, imagining every noise she heard was Peter breaking in.
And what was taking Barasco so long? Why couldn’t he at least have the decency to get back to her?
At ten o’clock, Katie called him again and got his voice mail. Pissed off, she didn’t bother leaving a message. This was ridiculous. She felt like she had important information and no one from the police was even paying attention to her.
She heard drilling downstairs; the maintenance people were probably doing work in that vacant apartment on the second floor. That made Katie feel a little safer, for now anyway. Then she had an idea.
She dressed quickly, putting on some sweats, and then went to the front door. She heard the drilling, as well as some chatter from the workers, and figured they’d hear her if she screamed. Might as well get it over with, she decided, and opened the door quickly and went out into the hallway. She seriously expected Peter to be there, to grab her and try to force her into the apartment, but he wasn’t. She fumbled with the key, then locked the door and raced downstairs as if the building were on fire.
On Ninety-second Street, in broad daylight, she figured she was safe. He wasn’t just going to jump out and kill her anyway. Still, she jogged to the corner, not feeling truly safe until she reached very busy Second Avenue. She was able to hail a cab quickly and told the driver to take her to Sixty-seventh Street, between Third and Lex, the address of the Nineteenth Precinct on the business card Detective Himoto had given her.
When she arrived, she told the woman at reception that she needed to speak to Detective Himoto right away.
“Does he know what this is about?” the woman asked.
“Just tell him Katie Porter’s here.”
“Have a seat please,” the woman said, but Katie couldn’t sit. She started pacing.
After several minutes Himoto came out to the waiting area and Katie rushed over to meet him.
“I’m sorry I came here,” Katie said, “but I feel like that other guy, Detective Barasco’s totally blowing me off and—”
“There’s been a new development,” Himoto said.
“What development?”
“Come with me.”
Katie followed Himoto through the precinct. His expression had been poker-faced, hard to read, but she hoped that “a new development” meant good news. Maybe they had arrested Peter, or there had been some other break. Maybe that woman from the bar had been arrested.
They went into his office and he told her to sit down.
She sat, then said, “So what’s the development? Did you arrest somebody?”
“I’m afraid not,” Himoto said, sitting in his chair on the opposite side of the desk from her. “I’m afraid there’s been another murder.”
Katie was confused. Another murder? Someone else had been killed, so they weren’t even looking for Andy’s killer anymore?
“I don’t get it,” she said. “How is another murder a development? What does that have to do with Andy?”
“We think it’s related to Andy’s murder. Actually, we’re positive it is.”
Still not getting it, Katie said, “I really just need to sit down with somebody, somebody who’ll listen to me and let me tell him what’s going on. Because that Barasco guy won’t even return my calls. Can I just tell you about Peter Wells?”
“I’m trying to explain to you, Katie,” Himoto said, talking slowly, in a scolding principal-like way. “Detective Barasco is extremely busy this morning, though I’m sure he’ll be in touch with you as soon as possible. This other victim…he was one of And
rew Barnett’s roommates.”
It was starting to hit Katie now. It was hard to get the words out, but she managed, “W-w-wha…what…what do you mean?”
“It happened last night, on Ninety-seventh Street. He was on his way home from work at Mount Sinai Hospital when he was attacked.”
This isn’t happening, Katie thought.
“Who w-w-was it?” Katie asked. “W-w-what was his name?”
“William Bahner,” Himoto said.
Katie lost it. Himoto tried to console her, but for a while, maybe five or ten minutes, she was a total mess. Gradually, she was able to calm down. Well, calm down enough to get out, “It was him. It had to’ve been him.”
“I take it you knew William Bahner very well,” Himoto said.
“He saw us. He must’ve seen us, right? It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Katie wasn’t really talking to Himoto. She was talking to no one, thinking out loud.
“Who saw you?”
“But he wasn’t there. That woman was there. Maybe the woman did it. Maybe it had nothing to do with him.”
“When was the last time you saw William Bahner?”
Now Katie looked at Himoto, as if she’d forgotten he was in the room. “I told you, I was with him the other night, the night that woman saw us at the bar.”
“I was unaware you were with William Bahner that night.”
“She saw us. The woman saw us, don’t you get it? It was her, or maybe she was working with Peter Wells. Maybe she’s, like, a friend of his or something.”
“Why would he have a friend follow you?”
“Because he’s obsessed with me! He was obsessed with my sister, too, and I think he might’ve killed her boyfriend. I’ve been trying to tell you guys this, but you won’t fucking listen to me.”
“I’m listening now, okay? So calm down, okay? You have to try to calm down. Getting hysterical right now won’t accomplish anything. Can you calm down? You think you can do that for me?”