And When I Die, page 38
Ava flinched, her knowledge of the role her daughter played in helping to eject Jordan from school pinching her like a rubber band.
And that was just the stuff she knew about.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Well, I will tell you, Jay and I are not going to stand for it. No, we’re just going to get through the rest of the school year, then we have the whole summer to get that woman out of there. I’ve always thought she was a terrible principal anyway. Then, Jordan will go back, she’ll get back on pom … everything will go back to the way it was.”
Ava’s mouth went dry at Erica’s glee over crushing Principal Bain in her palm. And even now, she remained obsessed with Jordan ruling East Lake Forest.
Would she come for Carly next?
She couldn’t stand it. She had to get away from this woman.
“Well, Erica—”
Erica’s phone trilled from her purse and she held up her index finger to indicate Ava should give her a minute. She frowned at the caller ID.
“This is strange.”
“Who is it?” Ava asked.
“The police department. What on Earth could they want?”
She answered the phone and Ava searched her face, her own heart pounding with hope.
Dear God, let this be the day.
“Are you sure this can’t wait? I’m at the grocery store.” Erica rolled her eyes in Ava’s direction and shook her head. “All right fine, I’ll finish up here and head over,” Erica said as she ended the call and threw her phone in her purse. “Well, that certainly is odd.”
Ava bit her bottom lip so hard, she was afraid she’d draw blood. “Did they say what they wanted?”
“All she said was they had some new information and they’re re-interviewing everyone. I’m sure you’ll be getting a call soon. Carly, too, since she was friendly with Whitney.”
“Yes, probably,” Ava murmured, barely able to hear herself over the pounding of her heart.
“Well, let me finish up here so I can get this over with,” Erica said. “I’ll text you next week about that drink.”
“Okay,” she said feebly, as she watched Erica float down the aisle. She wasn’t sure how long she stood in front of all those boxes of sparkling water, her breath ragged, her heart thrashing against her chest like a thunderstorm, before she abandoned her half-full cart and collapsed in her car.
92
ERICA
“Thanks for coming in, Mrs. Mitchell.”
“Of course. You said you were re-interviewing everyone. Is there a new lead?”
“We’re just following up on a few things. Shouldn’t take long.”
Erica flipped her hair over her shoulder. “All right.”
“How long have you lived in Lake Forest, Mrs. Mitchell?”
“About eighteen years. We moved here before our daughter, Jordan, was born.”
“Where were you before that?”
“In the city. Ravenswood. Well, I lived in Ravenswood. Jay lived downtown.”
“And you worked for an advertising agency, is that right?”
“I did, yes—I’m—I’m sorry, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Oh, we’re just building profiles on everyone Whitney was in contact with. Routine stuff.”
“Well, I wasn’t really in contact with Whitney, but go on.”
“So, you did graphic design at this ad agency, right?”
“Yes.”
“You go to school for that?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you go? For school, I mean.”
“It was an art academy.”
“Mrs. Mitchell, what’s your maiden name?”
“Dane.”
“Erica Dane.” She seemed to mull this over. “That’s a very pretty name. Very glamourous.”
“Thank you.”
“So, Mrs. Mitchell, where are you from originally? Your hometown?”
“Bay Village. It’s a small little town outside of Cleveland.”
“You know that’s funny, because I thought I detected a little bit of a southern accent.”
“I don’t know why that would be.”
“Huh. And how old were you when you moved to Chicago?”
“Twenty-three.” Erica crossed her legs. “Again, detective, I really don’t understand—”
“Mrs. Mitchell, I want to show you something.” She flicked open the bulging manila folder and extracted a piece of paper. She placed it on the table and pushed it over to her. “Do you know who that is?”
Erica glanced at it, her heart plunging like a roller coaster.
Instead, she shook her head. “Should I?”
“Her name is Ruth Ann Stowers. Some people call her Ruthie.”
“Okay…?”
“I want to read you something,” Diehl said, thumbing through the stack of papers inside the manila envelope, extracting a yellowing sheaf of pages.
Even from a distance, she recognized those typewritten pages, the official FBI seal affixed to the top. Erica blinked, hoping the tears wavering behind her eyes didn’t come spilling out. She swallowed.
“Detective—”
“It’s fascinating reading, Mrs. Mitchell. Really. I was up all night. Couldn’t put it down.” She flipped through the pages and cleared her throat. “Ah, okay, here it is. Here’s the part I was looking for.”
Erica stared straight ahead, her lips pressed into a hard, thin line, bracing for the words she’d worked a lifetime to bury, but would never forget.
93
RUTHIE
The summer of 1986 was an unremarkable one for Ruthie.
Her neighbor across the street, Mrs. Falk, hired Ruthie to babysit her eight-year-old daughter three afternoons a week while she did volunteer work for the Junior League and on the occasional Saturday night when she and Mr. Falk went to dinner or a party. It was an easy gig, as the girl was a bookworm who spent all her time curled up on the hot pink beanbag in her room, her nose barely peeking over the pages of Judy Blume, Roald Dahl, or Beverly Cleary, even while Ruthie fixed her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and cut up carrot sticks for lunch every day. She kept her head bent over her book at the kitchen table as she shoveled the food into her mouth, expertly navigating her way back to her room when she was finished without even so much as a glance up. It was the same thing when Ruthie took her to the library. The little girl would beeline for the kids’ section, her arms instantly bulging with the maximum stack of books her library card allowed. Or when they went to the community pool, her charge huddled up on a deck chair, a floppy hat obscuring her face, book glued to her hand while the other kids played Marco Polo or cannonballed into the clear, blue, overly-chlorinated water.
Mostly, Ruthie reclined on the beautiful white leather sofa in Mrs. Falk’s plush living room and gorged on All My Children and General Hospital while indulging in ice-cold cans of Coke, Jiffy Pop popcorn, one of Mrs. Falk’s Lean Cuisines, and Little Debbie Snack Cakes, the kind of food her mother would never buy. The lemony floral scent of Mrs. Falk’s house smelled almost as nice as Shannon’s. Almost. During One Life to Live, Ruthie cleaned the kitchen and vacuumed and dusted the living room, finishing just as the insistent sirens of General Hospital’s theme song roared across the screen, going home shortly after Mrs. Falk fluttered through the front door at three-thirty.
Her off days were mostly spent hanging around her house, which she typically had to herself, as both her sisters had jobs at the mall and boyfriends to keep them busy, while her brother and his buddy built a thriving landscaping and maintenance business that took them all over town from sunup to sundown. She’d wake up early, lingering in bed until she heard everyone leave, then take a quick shower before eating two bowls of Frosted Mini-Wheats while she watched reruns of Dallas followed by Sale of the Century. At eleven-thirty, she’d walk four blocks to the Whataburger or Del Taco for a to-go order so she could be home in time for her soaps, which stretched into afternoon court shows and sitcom reruns until peace was shattered by the one-by-one returns of the Stowers family by early evening. Shannon’s mother had come back to do the news two months after the Shannon died. The few times Ruthie had watched her, before it had become too painful, too shameful, she marveled at how cool and calm Mrs. Kendall was while she reported the day’s news.
You’d never know.
Sometimes, Ruthie and her friend, Dawn, went to the movies. They saw Top Gun (she preferred Iceman to Maverick), Back to School, American Anthem, One Crazy Summer, and even snuck into Ruthless People one busy Friday night. On occasion, she and Dawn hung out at the community pool or took the bus to Memorial City Mall, trying on clothes at Foley’s, splitting oversized sugar cookies smeared with thick, hot pink frosting, and reading magazines at the Walgreens.
Sometimes, Dawn’s mom loaned her the car and they ventured out to the much nicer Town & Country Mall, wandering around Nieman Marcus, afraid to even brush up against the racks bulging with expensive clothes. She invited Dawn to the small family dinner they had at home for Ruthie’s seventeenth birthday that June. Every few weeks, Ruthie slept over at Dawn’s house. The girls would slather their faces with ninety-nine-cent mud masks from Eckerd’s and paint their toenails in garish reds, purples, or pinks, then giggle hysterically as they took the quizzes in Cosmopolitan and Seventeen (‘Are You Easily Manipulated?’ ‘How Tactful Are You?’ ‘What’s Your Lovemaking IQ?’). They filled out multiple Columbia House Music Club cards, quickly losing track of the names they made up in pursuit of those twelve tapes for a penny (as the tapes kept coming, they ultimately realized they’d filled out no less than six separate cards each).
Occasionally, they talked about Shannon. Ruthie never squirmed outwardly. At least she didn’t think she did. She would merely agree that it was sad and scary all at once and share tidbits from their brief time in drama club or from her one and only visit to Shannon’s house. She took some of her babysitting money and bought Madonna’s new album, True Blue, which she’d dedicated to her husband. Ruthie listened to the title track over and over, wondering sometimes if Shannon would have called Power 104 to dedicate it to Mikey Gold.
It was a quiet, sluggish summer.
Until the last Wednesday in August, right before the start of her senior year, when the kitchen phone rang right as the delicate swell of All My Children’s theme song rolled across her TV screen. It was the police sergeant she’d talked to twice before, calling to ask if she would come down to the station because he had some more questions for her.
Her heart had plummeted, all the moisture in her mouth evaporating like water into a dry sponge. It had been months since that night with Shannon, months since the police had questioned her, months since the story had even been in the news.
Why were they calling her now?
She’d agreed, hoping they couldn’t hear the quiver in her voice, that she’d sounded nonchalant and carefree about the whole thing, happy to provide any additional information she could.
Ruthie didn’t tell her parents the police wanted to talk to her again. And she was too scared to ask any of her friends or anyone from the drama club if they’d also gotten a call.
Instead, Ruthie told herself that it would all be okay.
They arranged for her to come in two days later, a day when she didn’t have to babysit for Mrs. Falk. She didn’t want to ask her mother to borrow the car, not wanting to raise suspicion, so instead, she took the bus to the police station, her bowels knotting and unknotting themselves the whole time. Her footsteps seemed to thud against the concrete sidewalk as she struggled to open the heavy glass door and timidly walked up to the officer at the front desk, telling her that she had an appointment with Sergeant Murphy. She knew her hand was limp and sweaty inside his strong, dry one when he came out to collect her and usher her into an interrogation room. She tried not to be intimidated by his barrel chest or towering height, the military-grade blond buzzcut, or the gleaming black gun holstered on his hip. The quarter-sized grease stain on his tie, bouncing against the dome of his stomach, made him a little less intimidating, but not much. She tried not to glance at the manila folder he tossed onto the battered green-gray table, afraid she’d see her name on it.
There were pleasantries at first—an offered paper cone of water, which she declined, banal commentaries about humid Houston summers, an anecdote about his daughter’s swimming league, queries about how she was spending her days. All while that manila folder sat carelessly on the table in front of him, silent, yet damning somehow. Ruthie answered him carefully, cautiously, reminding herself to speak above a whisper, to smile. To not be nervous.
Finally, Sergeant Murphy’s smile receded into a deeply etched frown as he pulled that manila folder even closer to him.
“So, Ruthie, I called you to come down today because we’ve got some new information about the case with Shannon that I wanted to share with you.”
She didn’t trust herself to speak in the moment. She knew she needed to, but couldn’t make herself squeak out anything but a faint, “Okay.”
He flipped open the folder and looked down at the stapled sheets of paper inside. “In trying to figure out what happened to Shannon, we talked to a lot of people who knew her—friends, classmates—we talked to you twice.”
“I know.”
“And we just couldn’t come up with anyone who would want to hurt Shannon.”
“Everyone loved Shannon.”
He smiled. “We heard that over and over. Everyone we talked to all said how wonderful she was. That she was a beautiful girl. Sweet. Talented. A real star.” Sergeant Murphy sighed, his face slumping back into a disturbed frown. “The other problem we had was, it just didn’t seem like a random attack by a stranger, either.”
Ruthie gulped, wishing she’d taken the water. “Okay.”
“Tell you the truth, we were kind of at our wits end about what to do, about how we could solve this case.”
“Okay.”
“And sometimes, when that happens, we call for outside help, you know, other law enforcement agencies and officers and agents who have different types of expertise, access to different types of tools than we have here.”
Ruthie licked her lips, afraid to breathe, afraid to speak. She took a few shallow breaths through her nose and nodded again. “Okay.” Why did she keep saying that?
Sergeant Murphy cleared his throat and Ruthie jumped. She shifted in her chair in a lame attempt to cover, hoping he hadn’t noticed, though she knew he had.
“Like I said,” he continued, as though she hadn’t made a move, “we were having a real tough time trying to figure out what happened to Shannon, so we reached out to the FBI and they came up with something for us.”
Ruthie could barely hear him over the blood pounding in her ears. Something about the FBI.
“Okay,” she said. Again.
“What they did is, they came up with a psychological profile of Shannon’s killer. And what they do with that is, they look at the crime scene and examine similar crimes and figure out things like personality traits, family background, stuff that will tell us who the killer is.” He cocked his head. “Would you like to hear what they came up with?”
She screwed each nail of her finger into her palm, those pinches of pain being the only thing she could feel aside from the gallop of her heart, the thrum of blood thrashing around in the canals of her ears. The insides of her mouth gooey and dry all at once.
“Okay,” Ruthie said quietly. Damn it.
He cleared his throat again and picked up that stapled sheaf of papers with one hand, his eyes scanning that front page until he licked his thumb and forefinger before catching the bottom corner of the top page between the pads and flipping it over, the rustle of the pages screeching against Ruthie’s ears. He nodded and whispered to himself, as though he’d found what he was looking for.
Sergeant Murphy cleared his throat. “The perpetrator is likely known to the victim,” he read, tapping the sides of the pages with his index finger. “Perpetrator and victim are likely peers, members of the same class at school. While the victim is popular and outgoing, the perpetrator has few friends and is shy and introverted, considered quiet and agreeable by their peers. The perpetrator envies the victim’s social status, accomplishments, and natural talents. The perpetrator is likely the youngest member of a large family and often feels inconsequential, inferior, and inadequate. Perpetrator sometimes vacillates between feelings of wanting everyone to notice and like them and a desire to fade into the background where no one will see them. The perpetrator is a female between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. Perpetrator is impulsive, prone to unprovoked outbursts, yet typically displays an outwardly calm manner that is in keeping with their pacifist nature. In fact, perpetrator likely harbors dissociative tendencies, able to easily compartmentalize or disconnect from events around them, particularly the more chaotic those events are. They will distance themselves emotionally from the act of violence to the point of believing they did not commit the crime, and may even display genuine surprise when confronted with the facts of their involvement. Perpetrator’s attack on the victim was unplanned, messy, and impulsive, a burst of rage. Therefore, no staging of the crime scene and/or body was present.”
Sergeant Murphy put the pages down on the table and looked up at Ruthie. “What do you think?”
Ruthie swallowed over the hard lumps in her chest, afraid, so afraid to open her mouth, to say a word.
“It could be a lot of girls.” She finally said as she looked down at her lap. “Like half the junior class.”
“You’re absolutely right, Ruthie. It could be a lot of girls.”
“Who do you think it is?” she whispered, her gaze still locked downward.
“Ruthie … I don’t think. I know. It’s you.”
94
