Never Tell (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

R
amona was not usually an angry girl. She had been told over the years that she had plenty of reason to be an angry person. The word
bitter
had been used at times, too.

Usually the words came from people who thought their job was to tell Ramona how she should feel.

The first person she recalled telling her she was “allowed to be angry” was a school counselor in the—what?—the third grade? Yes, she was in Mr. Masterson’s class at the time, so it was the third grade. She didn’t get long division, so Dad got her a tutor. And when she still had trouble with long division, despite the private tutor, she saw the school counselor.

Why wasn’t she paying attention in school? Why did she seem so distant? Was she angry about her mother?
You’re allowed to be angry
, she was told. She was barely nine years old. What was there to be angry about?

Sometimes Ramona wondered how much she even remembered about her mother. Her dad was good about keeping photographs of her around, like that one of her and her mom by the bears statue. He also talked to Ramona about her—not so much anymore, but while she was growing up. She knew that memory could play tricks on a person. You could convince yourself from pictures and stories that you remembered a person, when really all you knew were two-dimensional images and rehashed anecdotes.

But Ramona was confident she had at least some true, authentic memories of her mother. Her name was Gabriella. Her girlfriends had called her Gabby, but at home, Ramona’s father always called her Gabriella. She wore this lotion that smelled like ginger and honey. When she was done applying it, she’d run her still-slick hands along Ramona’s forearms and say, “Now you and Mommy smell just the same.” That wasn’t a story Ramona’s father had ever told her, and someone can’t make you remember a fragrance that distinctively. That’s how Ramona was certain she really did remember her mother, Gabriella Langston.

Oddly, though, she could not remember learning she had died. She knew, because she certainly had been told, that her mother died shortly after Ramona’s fifth birthday. She knew because she had been told much later that a car on Egypt Lane had struck her mother during her ritual walk home from the Hamptons Equestrian Stables. She knew that the state police department’s accident-reconstruction experts believed that the car involved was a red Pontiac of some kind. Something about the tire tracks and paint transfer. A hit-and-run, they said. Probably a drunk, though there was no way to know since they never caught the guy. Ramona also knew that her mother’s ashes had been scattered in the ocean at Montauk, because she had loved the taste of the salty wind hitting her face as she stood on the rocky beach’s edge.

And she knew that, not eighteen months after her mother’s ashes had been scattered, her father had married Adrienne. She had been working as a nanny for another family in the building, back when she was still Adrienne Mitchell. The transition from neighbor’s nanny to supportive presence to new wife and stepmother was quick.

Then Ramona was in Mr. Masterson’s third-grade class and couldn’t do long division and got asked a lot of questions about being angry.

Then, in the fifth grade, she started complaining about being tired in the mornings. Her father sent her to her first therapist, who also asked Ramona if she was angry. In fact, she may have been the first to throw in the
bitter
word, not Mr. Masterson. The therapy sessions got down to once a month until a couple of years ago, when her father found pot in her purse. Somehow pot meant she needed to talk to a doctor once a week, like so many of the kids Ramona knew. And somehow all these trained experts seemed to think that Ramona should be angry.

The truth was that Ramona just wasn’t the angry type. She only remembered getting really angry about her mother’s death once. It was the first time Adrienne had tried to discipline her. Ramona must have been eleven. She pierced her ears without permission, and Adrienne had dared to express her disappointment. Ramona screamed at her—“You’re not my mother,
Adrienne
!” emphasizing the use of her first name—then ran to her bedroom. She could hear Adrienne crying in the living room but couldn’t bring herself to apologize.

When her father finally came home from work, she heard their voices in the kitchen. Maybe Adrienne wouldn’t mention the episode to him?

But then her father had come into her room and sat on the foot of her bed. She’d never seen him like that before. He was usually so flat in his affect. He didn’t show emotions. But that night, after putting in thirteen hours at the law firm, he had cried in front of his daughter. He said how much he missed her mother. He talked about the day he first met her, at a jazz concert in the Museum of Modern Art’s sculpture garden.

She would never forget how matter-of-factly he had said that Adrienne was not Gabriella.
Love at my age isn’t the same as meeting someone when you’re in your twenties,
he had said. She hadn’t even questioned it at the time, because children instinctively think of their parents as old. But in retrospect, he was all of forty-six at the time but reminiscing as if his best days were already past. Adrienne wasn’t Gabriella, he had said, but Adrienne was a good person. She was young. She brought a different energy into the house. She was fun. She made him feel happy again. They had been married four years by then, and she was still helping him learn how to be happy without Gabriella. “And,” he said, “she loves you and really wants to be a mother to you.”

But Ramona wasn’t done pouting. “She’s
not
my mother.”

And so her father told her that her mother hadn’t really been her mother either, not according to the DNA. They had tried. They kept a calendar. She took all the expensive drugs that were available. They tried one round of in vitro, but still nothing. Some of their friends resorted to surrogates and egg transplants, but Gabriella cared more about being a mother than about the biology. They called a lawyer. They arranged a private adoption. Gabriella had been the one to choose the name Ramona.

Adrienne wasn’t her mother, but neither was Gabriella.

And so just as the baby version of herself must have come to accept Gabriella as her first mother, she resolved to accept Adrienne as her new one. Now, five years after that episode with the earrings, she didn’t think of her as a stepmother. Or an adoptive mother. Adrienne was her mother. She had never again questioned the truth of that relationship, not only because she’d made a promise to her father, but because Adrienne had earned it.

Ramona returned her gaze to her mother’s computer screen, the browser open to the page that had appeared when she had typed in the password.

The website was called Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor
.
And the page wasn’t the blog as it would appear to any casual reader. No, Ramona was looking at the administrative “dashboard” on a blog-hosting service called Social Circle. This was the place where the author of the blog could draft new posts, delete comments, and modify content.

Ramona was always so proud of the fact that, unlike her friends, she had a “real” relationship with her mother. But here she was—alone in her mother’s study, snooping around on her mother’s computer when she should have been in school, finally discovering why her mother had seemed so secretive lately.

Her mother was a sex abuse survivor. Her mother was the author of this blog.

And now, after all these years of being told that she had every reason to be angry, Ramona Langston was actually angry.

Someone was threatening her mother.

F
ive miles south, at NYPD headquarters, Ellie and Rogan were also reading the “Second Act” blog, paying special attention to the threats that had been posted since Julia’s death.

“Can you tell if Julia accessed the blog anytime after that comment on Saturday night?” Rogan asked. They had evidence suggesting that Julia had been the one to post the first threatening comment on Saturday. Clearly she had not authored the threats written since Monday, but she was still alive on Sunday and may have checked in on the blog then.

“Nope,” Pettinato said, pivoting back and forth on his fitness ball. “Just the one hit the night before she died. But if I’m right and she was the one who posted the comment, she must have known the website well because she navigated through it so quickly. However, I have found no indication that she ever used
this
laptop to visit the website previously.”

They had more questions than answers.

“So how do we find out whose blog this is?” Ellie asked. “And what computer was used to post the more recent threats?”

“The blog was created with a hosting service called Social Circle. They should be able to give you the IP addresses. That stands for—”

“Internet protocol address,” Ellie said. She and Rogan had come up against these Internet situations before, where the bad guys cloaked themselves in anonymity. The IP address was like a computer’s numeric address on the Internet.

“Good luck getting it, though,” Pettinato warned. “Unless you’re working with some corporate behemoth, the dudes who run these webites usually won’t cooperate without a subpoena.”

She and Rogan were familiar with that world as well. Fortunately, she knew an assistant district attorney who liked her.

Her cell phone buzzed at her waist. She didn’t recognize the number.

“Hatcher.”

“Detective Hatcher? This is Ramona Langston. You came to my apartment last night to talk to me about my friend, Julia Whitmire? You gave me your card?”

“Sure, Ramona. What can I do for you?”

“It’s not about Julia. But, um—I’m not sure who I should call. It’s about a website?”

“What website?” Rogan and Pettinato both perked up on hearing her side of the conversation.

“Um, it’s at secondacts-dot-com. I’m pretty sure it’s my mom’s? And, it’s about stuff that happened to her when she was young. But, um, I think—well, someone’s basically threatening to kill her. Can the police find out who it is?”

Chapter
Twenty-Four

T
he city of
New York is home to nearly nine million people. Within it sits the island of
Manhattan, only twenty-three square miles of land, but with nearly two million
residents, the most densely populated area in the United States. Two million
people buzzing around on just twenty-three square miles of land bred a certain
culture: efficiency in moving from point A to point B; no eye contact or small
talk; no connection to the people one passed on the way. And along with that
culture came a distinct feeling of anonymity.

But the sense of anonymity was not the same thing
as actual privacy. Among the hundreds of people a busy Manhattanite buzzed past
on a daily basis was the guy at the deli counter who poured the same large cup
of coffee each morning, two sugars with nonfat milk; the pedicurist who feigned
obliviousness to prolonged cell phone calls while she scraped away dead skin
from her clients’ cracked feet; the clerk at Duane Reade who pretended not to
notice when a husband purchased condoms six hours after his wife picked up her
birth control pills.

The Manhattan economy was propped up by people
whose very jobs depended on feeding the feeling of anonymity, even as they were
entrusted with the most private secrets. And no one knew more about the lives of
the seemingly anonymous than a New York City doorman.

The doorman stationed at the entry of the
Langstons’ Upper East Side apartment building was the epitome of
professionalism, with a neatly pressed navy blazer, perfect posture, and a
prompt greeting. “Good afternoon. How may I help you?”

While she and Rogan displayed their shields, Ellie
squinted at the name embroidered on the doorman’s jacket. “How are you doing
today, Nelson?” The personal touch never hurt. “We’re here to see Mrs. Langston.
We were here last night as well. It’s about a friend of Ramona: Julia
Whitmire?”

If the name meant anything to Nelson, he certainly
wasn’t showing it.

“Of course. Let me call up.” His expression was
blank as he placed the call. “Good afternoon, ma’am. There are two detectives
here to see you. . . . Detectives Hatcher and Rogan. . . .
Yes, they are right here in the lobby now. . . . Very good.” He hung
up the phone and extended a white-gloved hand toward the elevator. “To the
twenty-first floor.”

“They seem like a nice family,” Ellie offered.

“Very,” he said with a nod. He might have meant
exactly what he said. Or he might have meant the Langstons were devil-worshiping
cat torturers. His face revealed nothing.

“Do you remember Ramona’s friend, Julia?”

“We have many visitors in a large building like
this.”

“My understanding is Julia spent a lot of nights
here. I’d think you’d get to know the kids’ friends pretty well.”

“Sometimes, yes. We have very nice families
here.”

“Was Julia Whitmire ‘very nice’? Did she seem to
still be on good terms with Ramona and her parents?”

“She visited regularly, I believe. Please, Mrs.
Langston is expecting you.”

Once they were in the elevator, Rogan gave her an
“atta girl” punch in the arm. “Good job interrogating the domestic help there,
partner.”

Not all doormen were like Nelson. Some of them were
refrigerator-size versions of Joan Rivers, happy to dish endlessly about the
residents. It wasn’t her fault that, compared to those guys, Nelson was Fort
Knox.

A
drienne Langston was standing just beyond the elevator doors when they
opened.

She was dressed in yoga pants and a hoodie from the
Pilates session that had given Ramona a chance to hack into her mother’s
computer. Ramona had chosen to leave the apartment after speaking to Ellie on
the phone, asking Ellie to be the one to tell Adrienne that her daughter had
discovered the blog.

“I’m sorry you came all the way up here,
Detectives. I’m afraid Ramona is still at school. I tried to convince her to
stay home today, but she insisted she wanted to keep her normal routine. She
should be home soon, but if it’s important, you can of course pull her from
class if necessary. She’s at the Casden School.”

“I appreciate that, Mrs. Langston,” Ellie said.
“We’re actually here to speak with you. It’s about a blog.”

No response.

“A blog called ‘Second Acts’? I think the full name
is ‘Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor.’ ”

Ellie considered herself a pretty decent poker
player. She was good enough that, some months, she brought home more money from
Atlantic City than from the NYPD. She did not, however, want to play cards with
Adrienne Langston, who was up there in Nelson the doorman’s league of unreadable
mugs.

“Do you know of a website by that name?” Rogan
nudged.

“What is this relating to, Detectives?”

“It’s just a simple question, Mrs. Langston.” Rogan
had used his sweet voice when they were here the previous night, but now he’d
upped the ante to what Ellie called his military tone.

“And I asked you one in turn.”

Most people shared a natural tendency to acquiesce
to authority. They accompanied police to the station without an official arrest.
They answered questions from detectives despite Miranda warnings advising them
of their right to remain silent. They consented to searches without warrants. In
Ellie’s experience, only two categories of Americans departed from this trend.
The first were the hardcore recidivists who could look a cop in the eye and say,
“Fuck you, bacon. I want my lawyer.” The second were rich people. And while
Adrienne Langston might not be Whitmire wealthy, she was rich enough to think
she was owed an explanation.

“We assure you,” Ellie said, “that our questions
about the blog are related to the death of Julia Whitmire. I think
your
question is intended to protect your
privacy.”

“I value privacy a great deal.” Adrienne was
adjusting the floral arrangement on the foyer’s center table, even though every
last stem was meticulously placed.

“Is that why the blog was supposed to be
anonymous?” Ellie asked.

“It’s sort of a contradiction, isn’t it?” Adrienne
said. “A person claiming to want privacy, while placing every last personal
detail on the Internet for every prying eye to see?”

“My father died under horrible circumstances when I
was little. All my life I wanted the details of his death to remain private. But
two years ago, I found myself in the media spotlight, sharing all of these
stories I never wanted to talk about. I did it to help my mother get access to
my dad’s pension—it’s a long story—but I have to admit that the process of
unloading all of that onto a curious public was strangely healing. If I could
have done it anonymously, as with a blog—well, I can see the appeal of
that.”

Ellie truly did value privacy. She hated every
second of those ridiculous interviews. But, despite what she said to Adrienne,
she did not understand people who blogged, Facebooked, and Tweetered (or
whatever) their every irrelevant moment. She did not enjoy hauling out her own
drama, even for the sake of getting a witness to trust her. Luckily, the
trumped-up common ground did the trick.

Adrienne invited them into the living room,
gesturing toward an oversize floral-print sofa. Ellie felt herself sink into the
plush down cushions.

“I suppose there’s no point in denying the blog is
mine,” Adrienne said, claiming a spot on the rocking chair next to them, then
tucking one foot beneath her. “You are the police, after all. All these years, I
thought I’d put my childhood behind me.”

“So why did you decide to write about this now?”
Ellie asked.

She wrinkled her face in confusion as she
considered the question, obviously not for the first time. “Who really knows why
we do
any
of the things we do. But my best guess? I
look at Ramona. She’s the same age now as I was when I finally told my mother I
was being raped.” She used the word without any hesitation or discomfort. “I
remember, at the time, forcing myself to understand why my mother didn’t want to
believe me when I went to her. She didn’t want to be alone again. My dad left
before I was born. She was poor. She was forty years old but looked sixty. Men
weren’t exactly pounding on her door.”

“But you were her daughter.” Ellie felt strange
talking to this woman about something so personal, when she’d already read the
details on her blog.

“Exactly. And when I was a teenager, I really did
try not to hate her. I made all kinds of excuses. And it wasn’t hard, you know,
because boys were my first consideration, too, at the time. And I wanted to love
my mother. But now?”

“You’re not a teenager anymore,” Rogan said.

“Exactly. When you’re a kid, it’s like you don’t
have enough experience to gauge how wrong your situation is. It’s not until you
grow up that you can truly and honestly evaluate just how
off
something was when you were a child. I knew enough to understand
that my mother’s boyfriend should not have come to me at night the way he did.
But I would have also known it was wrong for him to borrow a CD without my
permission. It was like I somehow convinced myself they were close to the same
level of offense, so I was able to forgive my mother for not reacting more
strongly. And, ultimately, I still forgive her, because I know that in some way,
it was that same man who made her weak. But, wow, I see my Ramona. If any man
ever touched her like that, I’d kill him.”

“And you never spoke to Ramona about the abuse?”
Ellie asked.

Adrienne shook her head quietly. “That part of my
life is over. I write about it as a way to rid myself of those events, but I
don’t want my family to see me as that person. I need it to be separate. Wait,
if this has something to do with Julia—does Ramona know about my writing?”

Ellie broke the news that the woman had started to
piece together on her own. “She found your blog. She saw the threats, too. She
called us because she’s afraid for you.”

“I guess I’ll need to talk to her about it now.
And, of course, George.”

“You never told your husband?” Ellie had met George
Langford and had filed him away mentally as Mister-Stick-Up-His-Ass, but she
still couldn’t imagine marrying someone without telling him something so
important. “Not that it’s my business.”

“You’re right. It’s not your business. What does
any of this have to do with Julia?”

“Would you say that you knew Julia well?” Rogan
asked, still with the military voice.

“Very. She and Ramona were practically joined at
the hip since they were in the fifth grade. Slumber parties. Late-night cookie
baking. They got their ears pierced together, way too early if you ask me, but
that’s another story. Future maids of honor for each other would have been my
guess. Ramona—well, I don’t know what she’s going to do without Julia.”

“And everything was okay between them?” Ellie
asked.

“Two peas in a pod.”

“And what about Julia’s feelings toward you?”

Adrienne was clearly perplexed by the question.
“Me? Oh, I don’t know. I liked Julia. Very much, actually. I felt bad for her.
Her parents—well, you met them. You probably gathered that parenting was not
their top priority. Sometimes I wished she would just stay with us instead of
being downtown in that museum, all by herself. But her feelings about me? I’d
like to think that she liked me. And respected me. And recognized that I cared
about her. But my guess is that, like all children, she just saw me as the woman
who happened to be around Ramona’s house every now and then.” She smiled
sadly.

“When we were talking about your blog, you didn’t
mention that someone had been posting threatening remarks in the comments.”

“Oh, those drive me crazy.” Adrienne waved a hand
as if the remarks were nothing to worry about, but Ellie noticed she was rocking
in her chair more aggressively. “I thought about deleting them, but then I
figured, if some crazy person wants to attack me, I’ll let my readers see it for
what it is. Speaking the ugly truth is a sacrifice. There are people who think
survivors should all shut up and keep it to themselves. And that’s why it’s all
the more important for survivors to have their voices be heard.”

“Don’t you wonder who’s posting the comments?”

“Of course I do. But I’ve read enough in the
newspaper to know I really can’t do anything about it. Words are only words,
right?”

Her impression of the law was accurate. If Adrienne
had called the police about the threats on her blog, her call would have been
transferred to ten different departments until someone finally explained to her
that problems of jurisdiction, anonymity, freedom of speech, and antiquated
penal laws all conspired to leave only one option: suck it up.

It was time to drop the other shoe. “We have
uncovered evidence that Julia Whitmire posted one of those comments.”

Adrienne’s face was initially unchanged, but then
the truth must have registered. She looked like she’d been slapped.

“I don’t understand. How can you know that? Julia’s
dead.”

Ellie gave her the truncated, nontechnical version
of the information they’d pulled from Julia’s laptop. She left out the part
where they wouldn’t be a hundred percent certain until Max subpoenaed the
Internet protocol addresses from the blog’s hosting site. She had called Max
before leaving for the Upper East Side, and he was working on it at that very
minute. But Ellie knew what she knew, even without the records. The timing
revealed by Julia’s Internet history was good enough evidence for now.

“That doesn’t mean Julia wrote it,” Adrienne
protested. “Anyone could have used her laptop.”

“True, the author wasn’t necessarily Julia, but not
just
anyone
would have access to her computer. It
stands to reason that Julia had something to do with that original post, and
someone else has continued making similar threats since she died. Maybe a friend
of hers?”