The Last Kid Left

by Rosecrans Baldwin

  The next day, an op-ed columnist in The Wall Street Journal ridicules DROP’s “new spin” on time-honored journalism and attacks Justin Johnson’s lilac prose, then travels further, into full-out denunciation, regarding the article’s inclusion of barely blurred photographs of a nude minor. Arguing that this is not only ethically gross, but only by a hairsbreadth not criminal, not the distribution of child pornography. Which leads to the columnist’s appearance that evening on an MSNBC segment, sitting opposite DROP’s death-faced legal counsel, while a sex-crimes expert argues that the minor in question likely has a strong case for a lucrative defamation suit.

  By midnight, day two, half a dozen media people are on the ground in New Hampshire. And why not? It’s August, the president is on vacation, the news is arid and self-obsessed, there’s breathing room for scandal. The group includes a Fox News TV crew of two and an NPR team of one. An editor at Vanity Fair who’s taking a couple days away from book-leave at the MacDowell Colony, plus a stringer out of Boston for The New York Times’ New England desk. As well as the scooped-to-hell reporter from The Boston Globe, all blue-balled up, who wrote the first story, the original dispatch on Nick Toussaint Jr.—one of the deviant “Claymore Kids” in question, as Justin Johnson so branded them.

  But despite the competition for news, when the journalists run into each other they greet each other collegially, with solidarity and all the constructedness of the first day of fall semester, as if they haven’t seen each other since before summer break.

  Then, day three. Seventy-two hours after the DROP story, the same day that the school board issues its warning, it’s not the New Hampshire Union Leader but the Los Angeles Times, of all venues, that breaks news. Because the paper so happens to have a reporter on the ground, an old hand who’d been on vacation with her family in Maine, who’d been quickly rerouted to Claymore and mightily eager to do a kick-ass job, working from an electrifying sense of dread fed by rumors of more Tribune Company layoffs. As a result, the California newspaper publishes the article that provides scripture for most reporting to come—trumping even the DROP piece on the way to becoming a playbook to rehash, for the simple fact that it’s well reported. Interviews. Researched backgrounds. Curt inventories of facts. Summaries of court records. Multiple verified names named with verified attributed quotes. All told, eight townspeople in and around Claymore offer their opinions about the case and its allegations, their measured thoughts about the crimes and the alleged killer’s sixteen-year-old girlfriend, and what her racy photos say about their town, their region, their country as of now.

  And so the article is shared. Discussed ravenously by Claymore parents, grandparents, and teenagers. Dissected at Denny’s and The Fredericks Family Creamery and the local bars, to a point that it turns citizens subliminally feral, chomping to know what happens next. People take sides, people argue, bystanders intervene. People are surprised by how their neighbors react. At this stage they’re not quite turned on so much as spotlit, like actors, even if they’re not personally mentioned in the stories, as of yet.

  And the eight quoted in the LA Times piece become marked persons, thought of differently, reconsidered in the footlights of something akin to Greek tragedy, to the point that those people, who were formerly neighbors and friends, are now a privileged sect, “the Quoted.” And some of the Quoted will take back their comments in public forums, they read speeches off their phones. Some go apeshit online and call out Conspiracy and Injustice, call out by name any sticklers who judge them, who stalk the web with their moral measuring sticks.

  Eventually all of the Quoted will regret allowing their names to be used, if only because they had no idea that the story would become the top result for many years should anyone search for them online.

  But as all of that occurs, at the same time as the LA Times story’s publication, another story appears—quietly at first, then much louder, by virtue of up-voting in the right internet spaces that can make a story surge. The piece emerges only after a young editor, three weeks new to a job at StankTuna, a gossip website, chooses to publish, for a hundred dollars, an article that she receives by blind submission. It’s forwarded from a grad-school friend who’s an intern at Politico, who notes in their Gchat, “This is probably more up your guys’ alley than ours.” In the article, the author says he resides in Claymore and knows the Claymore Kids sufficiently—which isn’t without merit, especially where clickbait’s concerned; and clickbait’s always concerned at StankTuna. So the website runs the story to beat its rivals, in which the author, for the first time publicly, names the girl from the photos, and tells stories about her family, about an old rivalry that exists between her family and the boy’s, a conflict dating back to the nineteenth century, and then relates stories about the girl and her rivals, a record of nasty behavior and cyberexhibitionism, with a gross-out anecdote involving a winter jacket. A girl for whom disgrace does not count.

  At which point, shit gets real.

  And despite the website’s retraction the following morning, its aggressive mea culpa, contritely expressed new commitment to fact-checking, and a pledge to fire the young editor responsible, Emily Portis becomes news.

  No longer a girl called Girl, but a name.

  And so the Claymore Board of Selectmen summons an emergency session for the following day, day four. When, in an otherwise slow but still competitive August news cycle, a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story plus ye olde Yankee township, plus double homicide, plus porno selfies, plus accusations of pedophilia, equals so much lurid delirium.

  * * *

  But before any of that happens, ten days preceding, ten days before the DROP story kicks off the madness, the first thing Leela remembers about Justin Johnson is that much is extroverted. Chunky glasses. Rubbery nose. A gently frayed, preppy look, with an obesity that seems artisanal, plus an oversensitive, defensive manner that’s always vaulting him into the prow of conversations, putting himself out in front of the herd, even when the herd is a group of friendly colleagues. Also midforties, recovering Catholic, biracial, originally from Connecticut, now a Prospect Heights mortgage owner married to a social worker named Tamlyn whom he met in grad school—a social worker who resembles Amber Rose—with a pair of twin toddlers certifiably so adorable, Leela envied them when she saw a picture for the first time.

  All of this she’d learned two years earlier, on the day she became Justin’s research assistant at BuzzFeed, and he’d given her a two-minute life story while waiting in line for coffee. Favorite movie: Hav Plenty. Favorite band: the Buzzcocks. Favorite song: All of Drake, on repeat, forever.

  He lowers himself into the booth, bulkier than she remembers. Her former mentor who is now, evidently, her competition.

  “It’s great to see you,” Justin says, chewing gum. He strains over the booth to half hug. “Admittedly under some pretty weird circumstances.”

  “It’s unbelievable that you’re here.”

  “So I’ve got something coming out.” He exhales loudly. “Day after tomorrow.”

  She laughs. She wants to barf.

  “That’s amazing.”

  “I haven’t filed yet. I’ve got an interview in the morning, then I’ll wrap it up on the plane. To be honest, it came together really fast.”

  “How long have you been in town?”

  “Almost a week?”

  She’s angry and jealous and also mad at herself. But can’t let it show.

  “You know this is my hometown,” she says.

  “I think you said you were from up here?” He looks around for a waiter. “So you’re up here visiting your folks?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I can’t believe it.” The “it” could be a hundred different things. “My parents actually took me to this restaurant for my graduation dinner. From high school. How crazy is that?”

  “Really crazy,” he says, deadpan.

  She knits her hands together beneath the table. They’re in the Angry Goat, a Claymore institution. In high school it w
as the “fancy” restaurant, where kids ate before prom.

  Justin looks at her questioningly.

  “Leela, be honest. Did you notice I’m fatter?”

  “No.”

  “We can talk about it. Tamlyn says I’m fat. Like, really fat.”

  “I think you look good.”

  Justin smiles. He always was self-conscious about his looks. The waiter arrives. They order.

  “You do yoga?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “You’re Indian, you live in New York, you’re in your twenties. It’s ninety-five percent likely that you do yoga.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  She lets the New York comment slide.

  “So,” she says. “How are your daughters?”

  Justin frowns and smiles at the same time.

  “How about we just talk about why we’re here.”

  “Of course,” she says. “Please.”

  “The most obvious thing is that nobody has anything. Except for that Globe piece, which they let die. You saw that?”

  “But why does DROP even care?”

  He shrugs. “My boss thought we should dig around. She saw the Globe story, she needs stuff. Who knows? It’s summer, nothing’s happening. I do have a salary to legitimize.” He snaps his gum. “I’ll tell you what, her instincts were on the money. Quote-unquote.”

  Justin proceeds to recite facts, which Leela mostly knows already. That a kid from Claymore, Nick Toussaint Jr., had shown up drunk in New Jersey several weeks earlier, with two dead bodies in the back of his car. Since then, he’d confessed to murder, saying that, back in Claymore, he’d killed a local doctor and his wife, the Ashburns, during a home invasion gone wrong. Grisly stuff. Consequently, due to the murders occurring in New Hampshire, not New Jersey, he’d been whisked back to the White Mountains, shoveled into custody while trial awaits, and as of yet there was no bail on offer, so in custody he sat.

  “Did you know him from around town?” Justin asks. “The Toussaint kid? Or the Ashburns?”

  “I don’t,” she says. Which is true. Though there are certain things she needs to keep secret, she reminds herself. When her natural instinct is to share what she knows.

  “Anyway, so now we’re talking a couple more months before anything really gets going. Maybe the fall. Wheels of justice turn slow, and so on. But that’s under normal circumstances. Which, as of recently, are no longer normal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Justin pulls out his gum and sticks it to his napkin. “The kid started singing a different story. As of a week ago. That he didn’t do it. Which isn’t public yet, FYI.”

  “Wait a second.” She’s confused. “How do you know that?”

  “Part of the job. Figure out which nipples to twist.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’ve got a leak in the defender’s office. One of the support assistants likes bourbon. Sidebar, do you know anyone around here I could buy some weed from?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “No yoga, no weed. What good are you?”

  Their sandwiches arrive.

  “The good thing is,” says Justin, “everyone’s still talking. I’ve got a follow-up scheduled tomorrow with the kid’s girlfriend. She’s involved up to the neck. I talked with her this afternoon. Check it out, sixteen years old. Not an idiot. Sort of Tomboy of the North.”

  “Back up a second,” she says. “If the boy didn’t do it, who did?”

  “You remember that bumper sticker, KILL YOUR TELEVISION? I saw one today.”

  “Justin.”

  He laughs, scratches his face. Crumbs dot his tie. “I had to caution the girl. I was like, I’m recording this, you know that, right? Leela, you’re not going to believe all the shit I’ve got.”

  “At least try me,” she says. “I’m so lost.”

  “The kid says the sheriff did it. Killed the doctor and his wife.”

  “The sheriff? Why?”

  “Exactly.”

  “No, why would the sheriff do it?”

  “It turns out, the guy was molesting his daughter for years.”

  “Are you joking? Wait, who?” She feels instantly colder, and much more confused. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Wait until you read my story. Here’s what’s up: our kid, this guy Nick, the one nabbed in Jersey, before any of that shit happened, he was dating this girl. Who’s younger than him by some significant years. But they’re in love, they’ve got big plans, mostly focused on the need to get the hell out of town. Anyway, through her, Nick finds out about this past abuse, on the sheriff’s part. And it drives him mad.”

  “Because his girlfriend is the sheriff’s daughter.”

  “Nails it! I always said you were smart.”

  “Thank you,” she says formally, but it’s from deep inside, a cover-up.

  Justin doesn’t notice. “So now our boy’s one true love turns out to have been sexually molested all this time by Daddy. Nick flips out. Because she still lives at home. Evidently the abuse stopped at some point, a couple years ago, but still. Nick loves her, he’ll do anything. Also, her mom’s a basket case, in a mental asylum somewhere, and for what it’s worth the boy’s dad is also out of the picture, bad blood, plus his mom’s a drunk. Families suck. Anyway, the point is that now Nick’s feeling like The Man, but in a bad way. He has to do something. He needs to protect her, he needs advice. So what he does is telephone his doctor, right? Guy turns out to be a friend of the family, trusted adult or whatever, because the kid had a leg injury a while back and the doctor took care of him. Anyhow, so Nick goes over to the doctor’s house. And the doctor hears the story.”

  “I’m so lost.”

  “There’s more.”

  “Is this your story?”

  “So the doctor is now informed. He’s on the verge of figuring out what to do next, while the kid’s still there, then ding-dong, guess who arrives at the doorstep.”

  “The sheriff? But how?”

  “He’d been tailing the two of them for months, so says the girl.”

  “The girl, Emily,” she says. “Who’s the sheriff’s daughter.”

  “Yeah. Hey, how’d you know her name?”

  Oh shit.

  “The girl? You said it.”

  “I did?”

  “But I don’t understand,” she says quickly, “the girl told you all this, about her dad? The girl who was raped told you this?”

  Justin looks at her oddly. “Is it ‘raped’? ‘Raped’ sounds wrong.”

  “It sounds like rape to me.”

  “She told me, yeah. Totally stone-faced, ice-cold. She’s in love with her boyfriend, she doesn’t give a shit otherwise. Screw Daddy, basically.”

  “The father. The rapist cop.”

  “Sheriff rapist, right. In any case, who’d blame her? So, they’re at the doctor’s house, late at night, the doctor and Nick, when the sheriff shows up. There’s a few words back and forth, again this is according to the boy’s eyewitness, then the sheriff stabs the doctor in the gut.”

  “Oh god.”

  “And dude bleeds out. In his own foyer.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “It gets worse. Next he runs upstairs and kills the wife.”

  “The sheriff does?”

  “Guess why. Not that we have a body camera for this.”

  “Because the wife might know the secret, too.”

  He gives her a silent round of applause.

  “But it’s unbelievable,” Leela says. “I mean, this is my hometown.”

  “At which point,” Justin continues, “our boy and the sheriff load the bodies into the kid’s car, while the sheriff hands out instructions. First, ditch the bodies, get rid of them, though making sure any ‘identifying characteristics’ are gone. Meaning, smash their faces in with a shovel.”

  “No shit.”

  “Second, no one can find out. So the sheriff will hang back and clean up the
mess, because he’s an expert at such, being a cop, while the kid buries the bodies elsewhere. Again, this is according to the kid’s revised testimony. And the sheriff’s final instruction, the kid says, is that if the truth should in some way emerge about this shit, somehow blow back on him, he’ll murder the kid’s mom.”

  Leela is silent, trying to take it in, the enormous awfulness of it all.

  Justin finishes his sandwich.

  He adds, chuckling, “And that’s just the start.”

  “Are you kidding?” She laughs nervously. “What else can there be?”

  He wipes his mouth.

  “Justin, come on.”

  “Read the piece, then we’ll talk.”

  During their time working together, there’d been a moment when she almost walked out. A slow Friday, midafternoon. She’d stopped by his desk to ask, offhand, for career tips. She’d seen someone list something similar online. Like, what had he done to get where he was, that she could do for herself? “So you want the shortcut to my career?” he said. “Basically,” she said, laughing. “Just tell me what mistakes you made, so I don’t make them.” She thought it was a reasonable question. But his face got all stony. “I get it,” he said. “Because you shouldn’t have to put up with crap. You feel like you should get fast-tracked to the top.” She was about to protest, but she heard his temper rising, so she said nothing. Wrong decision. Justin abruptly stood up on his chair. “Can I have people’s attention?” he announced to the entire newsroom, two dozen people. “All interns, anybody born between let’s say 1982 and 2003, will you please remove your earbuds for a second?” Already Leela was cringing. Ready to jump out the window and hang glide away. “Allow me to reintroduce something, to any people of similar age to Leela here. You do not have the right to vampire-suck your elders. We get it, you want it all, you deserve it because you’re specialer. That’s all great. Except please wake up to the truth that every previous generation had the grace to suck up: that having a quote-unquote successful career means doing crap for a while. A lot of it. At an entry-level job, entry-level pay, while working below other people. For which you will get zero credit, and deserve none. So just deal, okay?” Justin sat down again. A few senior people laughed awkwardly. Mostly everyone stared around the room, wondering what had just happened, then turned back to their computers. “That might’ve been too much,” he said to her quietly a second later, cooling down. She’d laughed, when really she wanted to die. She waited five minutes, checking her phone, then went to the bathroom, where no one could see her, to hold her head with two hands to keep it from splitting apart. The following Monday, Justin apologized right away. He said he felt terrible, he shouldn’t have singled her out. Which wasn’t mea culpa, exactly, but after lunch he brought her a Thin Mint Frappuccino just the way she liked it, extra chocolate, no whip. She hadn’t known he’d noticed.