“Tell me about Decklin. Did he ever date or try to date Catherine or Lara?”
“No,” Helen answered for Avina. “He’s just around. His parents are super loaded, like, unreal rich. They have a huge ranch up here but they live in Indianapolis or Minneapolis, or whichever. But he’s nowhere near Catherine’s league. He’s a goofball. He would never be around Catherine.”
“He comes from San Francisco,” Avina said.
“He would he never be around Catherine, because you’d make sure of that, wouldn’t you Helen?” Sheriff Hargrove said.
Helen stared the sheriff in the eye and didn’t waiver.
“Why is he not in Catherine’s league?” Brouwer asked.
“As though it’s at all possible he could be on her level? Decklin would have no chance with Catherine and he’s not Lara’s type. Lara was into badasses. She worked in a biker bar for crying-out-loud. Decklin Siboda is a bigger bitch than I am.”
“We didn’t ask if Catherine liked him. We asked if he liked Catherine,” Brouwer said.
“Oh,” said Helen. “Well then, yeah he would have liked Catherine. I mean he’s a straight dude right? You know what I mean, hey Sheriff?”
Brouwer cut in before the sheriff could answer. His cheeks flushed.
“Was it Decklin Siboda that gave you magic mushrooms?” Brouwer looked at Avina, who lowered her eyes.
“Yes,” Avina Zadeh said. Helen began to watch her companion.
“Did he give you other drugs?”
“Yes.”
“Like what did he sell you?”
“He never sold us anything, he gave us stuff.” As Avina Zadeh spoke, Helen watched her closely, as though she could control the smaller girl’s mind. Avina kept her eyes down in response, and focused on a secret point in the gray table.
“Look at us,” Helen said. “Do you think we have to buy drugs? Dudes give us drugs so that we’ll hang out with them.”
“Where did you take drugs Avina?” the sheriff asked.
“We used them to go to clubbing in L.A, and um, we attended Art Week in Miami Beach last year and we went to different get-togethers, and bonfires at the beach.” Avina Zadeh spoke slowly, enunciating.
“What drugs exactly?”
“Nothing serious: Molly, zoomers, blow.”
“Did he ever give you a synthetic drug called Jet Stream?” Brouwer asked.
“Yes,” Avina said.
Two summers ago, at a rock festival in northern California, local police picked up Decklin Siboda with a new rave drug. He was never charged.
“Was he with you on the mountain that night, on the night Catherine was taken?”
“No,” Avina said. “He was with his parents at their ranch. The party was really just our tents in the higher meadow.”
Sheriff Hargrove leaned back in his chair. They knew this to be true. The boy’s alibi was solid.
“Has he acted weird at all lately?” the sheriff asked.
“You mean like, as weird as you?” Helen said.
The Sheriff broke off. “Helen, can you explain why you were sending menacing texts to Catherine leading up to her death?”
Brouwer flashed her eyes at the sheriff. She thought she’d convinced him of her plan, she had pleaded with him not to pressure these women, but to simply talk to them and build a relationship, to build rapport, so the girls would express themselves openly. The women had serious resources, if they felt threatened, they would lawyer up and any talk with investigators would be dead in its tracks. She felt she could gain their trust and let them incriminate themselves, if he allowed her to get close to them, but Sheriff Hargrove ignored her and plowed ahead.
“You were a vicious bully to Catherine Kinderdine,” he said.
“Excuse me?” Helen held eye contact with the sheriff.
“You called her hateful names leading up to her death. You were last with her when she died. Catherine never took hallucinogens. No mushrooms in her stomach, just granola and yogurt. You’re not adding up.”
“You’re after me because I teased my friend?”
“On more than a few occasions you refer to her as ‘cunt,’ and in an incident in January, you say she is a total cunt. Friends like these hey?”
“Is that what has you hot and bothered? I used anti-female epithets toward her because it’s ironic to call her that. The intention is not to insult her per se, just the opposite. The ironic use of the term emphasizes its opposite meaning. I called her a cunt because she was sweet. It’s an inside joke, like reclaiming something awful and making it your own. Like how a black person calls another black person the N word, to show affection. You have black people on TV in Wyoming right?”
Sheriff Hargrove pressed forward. “Bullying feels genuine to its victim, even if it’s only a game to the perpetrator. You were demeaning her.”
“They are texts. It’s presumptuous to take a text seriously, a buffoon does that.”
“It matters what you say Helen,” he said.
“Actually, no, it doesn’t. What you think doesn’t matter, and what you say doesn’t matter. It’s what you’ve done that matters,” Helen said.
The sheriff paused, and then said, “You called her those things, but she never responded and never used that type of language with you.”
“Catherine didn’t speak like that but I do. I know what you’re trying to do, to spin this onto me. I can see what you think. You’re see through, and what I see, I don’t like.”
Zadeh smiled with surprise but quickly sobered.
Sheriff Hargrove pressed his angle, talking over Brouwer when she started to change tack. “We received a tip to the hotline that implicates you Helen,” he said.
“Is that right?” Helen raised her chin toward him.
The smaller Zadeh pulled her forearms up into the small muscle shirt and raised her bare knees in front of her. She was hugging herself. She watched Helen take the questions.
“You bullied other girls and not just Catherine Kinderdine. You didn’t think Lara Mazer was good enough to be in your group. Lara was poor, she comes from nothing, and you couldn’t allow her getting close to Catherine.”
Helen pounded her open palms onto the steel table. “How dare you suggest I was elitist toward Lara? I’m conscious of my privilege; I went to performing arts school with scholarship students. I have friends from diverse backgrounds. Only authoritarian boors divide people by class. We loved Lara for who she was. I never gave a fuck that she was poor. Lara was beautiful. Don’t ever say that I didn’t love Lara Mazer. Never say that again.” Helen was incensed, she was pointing at the sheriff’s face, breathing deeply.
It was Helen’s first display of emotion and Brouwer felt its rawness. Her power comes from integrity. She’s telling the truth, Brouwer thought.
“You are violent to girls that cross you. You bullied a girl into suicide.”
“Wait, what?”
“A girl from California cut herself with a kitchen knife and her parents hold you responsible.”
“A girl from California, is that what you call her? I know what that means. It means you don’t know who she is. The tip was anonymous. You have no way of verifying its truthfulness. Some chick from out West hates me, what else is new? She told you some bullshit story to get me hanged out here in the sticks. You have no clue about these chicks.” Helen forced a laugh, waiving a hand in front of her face.
“According to our tip line more than one girl is afraid of you.”
“I don’t have a fan club out here, whatever. If I see a basic bitch I have to announce it.”
“You think anti-social behavior is a lifestyle? But to the law, it’s a track record,” Sheriff Hargrove said.
“Some amateur chicks don’t like me. What else is new?”
“It’s much more than that Helen. We have information that you are dangerous. Women called the tip line warning us about you, asking us to look into you, the waitress at the bar Lara worked at, the Nite Ride, says you took Lara out there
to die. Penny Kinderdine, Catherine’s mother, not a woman to disregard exactly, puts this on you. All of these women put these deaths on your head and more are coming forward. Guess what they’re saying, Helen? That you secretly hated Catherine, she was everything you could never be. You attacked her.”
Helen yawned and rubbed her forearms. “Why is it so cold in here? Do people really confess to shit so you’ll give them a sweater or what?”
Brouwer tried to steer it back to Catherine’s last night, to the campsite, but a still silence stood in the room. The sheriff chose not to go on. He was finally realizing what Brouwer had warned him of, that once endangered; Helen would get legal counsel and leave for Seattle.
Helen waited, staring at the wall beside her. She faced the sheriff and said,
“Keep up your Texas cowboy shtick Sheriff, and my Dad will send a team of lawyers that’ll make you wish you never heard of Jackson Hole. You’ll wish you never laid eyes on me. You’ll wish you were still in Iraq. You’ll feel like your horse has been riding you.”
15.
Brouwer split the women into separate rooms.
With Lara Mazer’s mother up from Idaho to retrieve Lara’s remains, Brouwer suggested the sheriff meet with Mrs. Mazer and to join in the interviews later if need be. He readily agreed. Avina Zadeh was left to sit on her own in the cold room with her thoughts while Brouwer spoke to Helen Hearne alone.
Helen sat with her back to the wall and her bare legs outstretched with her flip-flops on a chair seat. She was content with herself, secure. Catherine was a beautiful woman, truly beautiful, Helen said. She receded behind the light blue of her eyes into thought. She repeated with conviction that Catherine was truly beautiful. She was authentic, as though the major problem for the world was that it allowed for so many fake women. As a person, Catherine was so high quality, she said.
Brouwer handed Helen Hearne a single sheet of printed out text messages taken from Catherine Kinderdine’s smartphone. Someone was coming to meet Catherine the night of her murder, someone texted her from a number not matched to a mobile account holder. The texts pinged a cellular tower near the Town of Jackson. I am Coming to Find You, it read.
“If Catherine was safe when she left your camp site, then this person may be the last to see her alive. The person says they are coming to find her. Who would say that to her?”
“I don’t know who said that to her, but it’s a stalker.”
Helen’s eyes were unblinking, large and blue. She seemed impervious to the coldness of the small room or the gaze of the detective. The thinness of her hair at the hairline, backed away from her forehead and temples, added to the boldness and drive of her face. Her full lips opened slightly as she took quick, almost imperceptible glances at Brouwer’s eyes and then body. Studying the photos and text messages laid before her for some moments, her eyes would then come back to Brouwer’s again. Rising from her casual pose to sit square, with her shoulders righted and her back straight, she held her chin forward and slightly up. Faint strands of her white hair floated in the breeze of the air conditioner fan. The text messages were ominous or enigmatic, or both. She said, “He’s telling her that he’s coming for her but she’s not responding to him. She’s not telling him to come for her. He’s unwanted.”
Brouwer let silences stand, to see if Hearne would speak to fill the quiet. She never did.
“Were you really as close to Catherine as you say you were?” Brouwer asked.
“We were best friends. This has been the best two years of my life with her, vacationing here. I’m actually not big on the whole mountains thing. We have mountains at home. I think my dad wanted to be a cowboy when he was little or something. It’s maybe why he got us a place here. I don’t even like skiing. I mean, I don’t hate it. It was all about being with her, with Cat. That’s why I came here. It was like a light shown through her, a lucent purity. Anything was possible around her,” Hearne stopped short.
“In all your time with her you never had an argument? Never had a falling out, say, over a guy?”
Helen smiled at the corners of her mouth. “There are no guys here, not for us.”
“But you partied here, and you made friends.”
“Sure, there are hot cowboys here, and there are hot snow boarders, but they aren’t keepers. We didn’t date here. Catherine rarely, if ever, had men around her. She didn’t take validation from male attention and she didn’t seek it. Of course, it came to her but she never sought it out. Catherine had no desire to be understood.”
Brouwer nodded, writing notes on a yellow pad, and said, “Was Catherine exclusively heterosexual?”
“In terms of gender identity, she identified as traditionally feminine, attracted to the masculine. She was hyper-feminine I would say. She never had any female partners. I’m not convinced she’d a male sexual partner yet either.”
“She didn’t share that information with you?” Brouwer asked. “Whether or not she was a virgin?”
“I don’t ask about sex because I hate when people lie. Catherine was cautious and timid sexually, with men and women. Not me though, I slut it up enough for all of us.”
Brouwer shook her head. “Being a smart ass isn’t helping you Helen. The sheriff is right about that. Sarcasm will not help Catherine. Every second matters in this. If I don’t get her killer into custody, he could leave the state, at any moment. Don’t waste my time.”
“I’m not being ironic right now. I don’t think you really listen to me. I wouldn’t waste your time.”
“I’m listening Helen. But you’re not saying anything.”
“You think you and I are different, don’t you? But we’re the same. You have something very good going on surprisingly. The vintage Americana look really works for you. Wind swept on horseback, like a Ralph Lauren campaign in the eighties, very rugged western throwback, all denim and worn cotton. You don’t care about looking good, and that makes you beautiful.”
Helen assessed Brouwer. She drew in close across the table with her hands out and Brouwer took the younger woman’s hands in hers. Strength coiled in them, her fingers were long, they could grip and extend around a slight neck forcefully, but were undamaged, and her smooth nails were immaculate. Catherine was petite and Helen was strong both physically and mentally, but not so much to overpower Catherine utterly without struggle. Brouwer examined Helen’s hands and released them.
Helen continued her assessment of Brouwer’s appearance.
“You definitely have something special. Pale eyes in that sun kissed face. Your look is not for sale, because it’s just so . . . real. The cowboys out here must take one look at you and lose their fucking minds.”
“That’s very flattering Helen, but right now you are a person of interest in two homicides. You need to be helping yourself out.”
Helen was lost in contemplation. “Can I tell you something detective? I think you are someone I can really identify with. If I knew who sent that message to Cat I would tell you. I truly would.”
#
Helen Hearne had modelled for the art of Aoi Aoki and the clothing designs of Catherine Kinderdine. Perfectly still, like a soapstone statue, while Catherine pinned patterns in place around her body. Catherine, cross-legged on her bed, an artist’s pad on the duvet, would draw sketch after sketch of her. Helen, chin up and one bare leg forward, held the pose without wavering. Reworking the cloth on Helen’s body, over and over again, Catherine worked through the night. Her lips held pins and her eyes held a vision of the nature goddess reborn.
“I need to sit down,” Helen said. “You know what the patterns look like on me.”
But Catherine only smiled from her large bed, and re-drew designs in her sketchbook.
“But you tell people you’re a model.”
“I'm sorry,” Helen said. “I’m really tired.”
Catherine lay back on the bed and drew forms on her artists’ sketchpad while Helen stood still before her.
“I am going to create a line o
f clothing that puts women back in nature where they belong; invoking the natural order. Not just trees and changing seasons, I mean a call, a cry to the wild woman that is available to every woman if we help her access it. A call back to the goddess and to the cycle of life, the rhythms of women’s bodies, the rhythm and cycle of the earth goddess, the benevolent and merciless goddess. Nothing can stop me. Nothing is going to get in my way.”
“I’m sorry Cat,” Helen repeated. “I’m just so tired.”
“Models have to stand and walk. It’s the two basic things you have to know.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.”
“Nothing is going to stop me,” Catherine repeated. “Nothing, no one, is getting in my way. And anyone who isn’t helping me is in my way.”
Helen stood for her throughout the night. Catherine was obsessive about her vision, about building a line of clothes. New York City, Milan, the whole deal. She was ambitious, an overachiever, and a ruthless visionary. Helen lived in awe of her.
16.
The final member of the clique was in art school in Philadelphia. From a young age, Aoi Aoki was precocious with a brush and by her early twenties had a significant body of painting to call her own. Images of naked women in hyper-realistic detail subtly distorted to look real and unreal at once. The bodies made false, warped. Helen modeled often for her but her preference was painting nude portraits of Catherine.
Other women bewitched Aoki yet she had no friends. She was odd. Curled onto her dorm room bed at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, she talked about the Jackson women breathlessly. On a cruelly boring and lonely vacation with her parents to the Rockies, she met these women. It struck her dumb that they liked her, especially someone as mainstream, as right, as Catherine Kinderdine. She now had girlfriends who understood her, encouraged her art, and inspired her to take risks. She began begging her parents to come back to see the Jackson Hole group.
She readily sent her portfolio of Jackson paintings to Brouwer as a portable file. The massive file contained painting after painting of Catherine, a few of Helen and none of Avina. The images perfected the women to an extreme—they appeared plastic, as parodies of beauty. Taken too far, too exact in chasing some ideal, the women became warped and fantastic, dreadful fabrications, like lifelike sex dolls. An image of the women back-to-back, naked, Helen’s eyes were full of hate, Catherine in profile, was a figurine.
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