Dear Susie,
Please forgive me. You and I, we’ve always struggled with the crazies upstairs, haven’t we? Remember, that’s what dad used to call it when the depression got to him too? The crazies upstairs, I always liked that.
I take this final plunge because there is no other way. The woman I thought I loved betrayed me. The book that was consuming me now seems destined to bankrupt us, or worse. If I continued, I’d be sued for millions. I’ve been threatened. They threatened to hurt anyone close to me. The thought of anyone harming you for something I pursued is too much to bear.
Sell my house. It was appraised for almost a million. You can live on that for a good long time. I love you, sis.
Good-bye.
Victor
Lea looked up at me when we finished. Her eyes were moist.
“Cass didn’t kill him,” I said. “It was suicide after all.”
“Appears so.”
Lea refolded the letter, placed it back in the envelope, and returned it to Susie’s lap. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she whispered. “Your brother sounds like a good man.”
Susie looked past her to me. “I could have burned it, you know? I could have let your friend rot. She helped kill Victor, even if she didn’t push him.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For showing us, and for reporting it.”
“Miss Wingate,” said the older cop. “As discussed, we’ve made copies of your brother’s note and we may need you for further questioning. You’ve done a good thing, ma’am. You’re helping to free an innocent woman.”
Hearing those words, a fire seemed to light in Susie’s drugged eyes. “That whore’s not innocent,” she said. “Now I want all of you off my property.” When none of us moved, she stood and screamed, “Now! Get the fuck out of here, all of you!”
We did as we were told. The cops waited for us to pull out first, then followed us back down the gravel drive. Lea and I didn’t speak until we reached the town center of Woodstock.
“The bus leaves every hour from here,” she said. “Unless you’d like to stay for a bit?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m going back to the city—to see my partner.”
Author’s Note
The facts behind this work of fiction bear mentioning. This book came about through two preoccupations that were consuming me as I wrote the first draft in 2016. The first was in researching the “birth of doping” for a documentary I worked on called The Last Gold. It told the story, in part, of the East German experiment, when a generation of young women was sacrificed at the altar of sport, forced to dope as part of a political program, officially known as State Plan 14.25. While athletes of both genders were subjected to these “supporting means,” the focus was on young female athletes—whose bodies could be transformed more dramatically with heavy doses of Oral Turinabol and other steroids.
One such athlete deserves special mention. His name is Andreas Krieger, formerly Heidi Krieger, a world champion shot-putter at the 1986 World Championships. In 1997, Krieger underwent gender reassignment surgery and changed his name to Andreas. Krieger is married to a former East German swimmer named Ute Krause, also a victim of forced doping. Unlike the characters they inspired in this book, they are alive and well. All similarities end with the broad strokes of their doping history.
The second preoccupation was witnessing the rise of overt and shameless white supremacy during the 2016 presidential election. This was a year before the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, when that ugly undercurrent appeared to burst into the mainstream. While racism has always been an ignorant and enduring legacy of America, its Original Sin, so to speak, it has never felt quite so unconcealed in my lifetime. As Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter wrote in his October 2017 “Editor’s Letter”: This may sound unkind, but why are supremacists invariably the worst specimens of the race they are claiming to defend?
So, to any neo-Nazis or white supremacists I may have offended with my uncharitable characterizations in this book: good.
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