Poisonous: A Novel (5 page)

“I’m on call,” Grace said when the cop walked away, “so if I have to leave, I have to leave.”

“Of course.”

Grace led Max upstairs to a small windowed room. A clean whiteboard covered one wall and a round table could comfortably seat four. She motioned for Max to take a seat. “Coffee? Water?”

“I’m good, thank you,” she said.

Grace walked over to a small minifridge in the corner and pulled out a Diet Coke. She sat across from Max, opened the soda, and sipped.

“I won’t take too much of your time,” Max said. She slid over one of her business cards even though she’d e-mailed Grace all her contact information. “The information you sent me helped tremendously. I have only a few follow-up questions.”

Grace glanced at the card but didn’t pick it up. “I need to make this clear—you may not quote me without written permission from my chief.”

“You made that clear in your e-mail.”

“He wasn’t too keen on granting you any access, or even letting me talk to you, but I can be persuasive.”

“I appreciate that.” Max eyed the detective. “Not all law enforcement officers are so accommodating.” She was hoping to prompt Grace to explain her motives, but she continued as if Max hadn’t spoken.

“The second issue relates to the computer archives for the victim. The county prosecutor didn’t want to grant you access to the information, but as I pointed out, the information we have was all public at one point in time. There are Internet archives that also contain the same information—as you mentioned when we first spoke. Corte Madera is a small community and this case is especially sensitive. Because of our proximity to San Francisco, outsiders think we’re a suburb of the city, but we have a long-standing community. Basically, everyone knows everyone. The victim’s social media profiles were exploited by the local press, which was one reason we asked to pull them down. The information would simply continue to hurt people with no benefit to our investigation. Ivy’s parents cooperated. Another key reason to freeze the information was to prevent potential tampering—most of our leads were generated off information we found on the victim’s cell phone and her public accounts.”

“Yet, you never had a viable suspect.”

“We had multiple suspects,” Grace corrected, “but every one of them had an alibi for time of death. Ivy was killed between ten thirty and two in the morning per forensics, but she used her phone to access social media at one ten, so we’re confident T.O.D. was between then and two. Half of the alibis were claims to be home sleeping. Most of the suspects were teenagers—and sneaking out of the house is certainly not impossible. Still, we couldn’t find proof that any of our key suspects did so.”

“One reporter—Lance Lorenzo—suggested that Ivy committed suicide out of guilt for her complicity in the suicide of another student earlier in the year.”

Grace’s lip twitched just a bit. “Lorenzo took partial information and came up with a theory that I refused to confirm or deny because we were in the middle of an investigation. Probably half the people involved think Ivy killed herself, including her stepfather once we verified Ivy’s ex-boyfriend’s alibi.”

“But not you.”

“I don’t know what happened to Ivy. Whether she was intentionally murdered or not I can’t say. If someone accidentally pushed her off the cliff that individual committed a crime by not reporting the death. And if that was someone we interviewed, that person is guilty of lying to the police and impeding an investigation.”

“An accident.” Max jotted that information down in her notepad.

“I’m not saying that I believe it was an accident; I do not have enough evidence to make that determination. I agreed to provide you information because your reputation tells me you won’t go off half-cocked like Lorenzo. That you’re not going to print or broadcast anything that you cannot verify.”

“That’s correct. I don’t publicly issue a report until I have all the facts. I have never been asked to retract anything I have said or written because it was false. What I’m hearing from you is that while some people think Ivy killed herself and others think her death was an accident, you think she was murdered.”

Grace leaned back, her stubby, unadorned fingers steepled in front of her. “I’ve been a cop for coming up on thirty years. Yes, I believe that Ivy Lake was murdered, but I explored every angle. She showed no signs of contemplating suicide. Her grades didn’t change. Her weight hadn’t changed. She showed no signs of depression, wrote no suicide note, no cutting, no drugs, no drinking. They did a full tox screen and there were no narcotics or alcohol in her system, and no sign that she’d used drugs in the recent past. She didn’t tell anyone she was thinking of killing herself, or use any of the references or catchphrases of someone contemplating suicide on social media.

“The coroner found injuries consistent with being cut prior to falling—or being pushed—into the ravine. There were three distinct cuts on her forearms that were caused by a small, sharp blade, thicker than a scalpel but thinner than a standard switchblade. We tested every knife found in her residence and none matched.”

“That information wasn’t released to the press,” Max said.

“Correct. Because we had so little evidence at the scene, we needed something to hold back, something we could use against a potential suspect. Her cuts were consistent with defensive wounds, but they didn’t kill her. She fell the equivalent of three stories—survivable, perhaps, if she’d rolled down the ravine. But based on where Ivy’s body was found at the base of the cliff, we believe she was either running away from her attacker, or pushed by such a person. She landed on her back on a boulder. Her skull was fractured from the fall. Based on the limited evidence—and from my gut—Ivy
was
attacked.”

Max believed in gut instincts. She often had them herself when she was investigating a case, particularly when she sensed someone was lying. But she never reported her theories as fact based on mere impressions, just like cops couldn’t arrest someone just because their gut said they committed a crime.

She asked, “Was there evidence at the top of the cliff to indicate a struggle?”

“The ground was hard and yielded no usable footprints. It’s an area popular during the day—joggers, bikers—and we collected evidence within a large radius. Nothing was useful, at least at this point. She had no forensic evidence under her fingernails. We considered possible sexual assault, but there were no signs of recent sex, forced or consensual. She’d split with her boyfriend, Travis Whitman, at the end of the school year—a month before the murder—and we looked at him hard. She’d posted some negative comments about him on social media. But it was more than that. It was his attitude and confirmation from his peers that he was angry with Ivy. He was lying to me about something, though I still don’t know what.”

“Would he be at the top of your suspect list?”

“Two people vie for that honor—Travis Whitman, first, because he’s a jerk and a liar and I don’t like him.”

Max smiled. “Honesty. I like that.”

“Just because I don’t like someone doesn’t make them a killer.”

“Except that he lied, but again, that’s your gut.”

“Exactly. And my gut can’t convict anyone. After your call two weeks ago, I made another pass at him. Following up, basically just to annoy him. The night Ivy died he was home alone until eleven fifteen when his parents returned from a night out and found him watching television. They stayed up together until about one in the morning. I spoke with both parents, and they wouldn’t lie to protect their son—I don’t see it, at any rate. They were concerned, helpful, forthcoming. Unlike their son.” She almost smiled. “It was fun shaking him up. Since Ivy’s death fourteen months ago, we’ve had two murders in my jurisdiction. One a domestic violence situation, and one a drug-related homicide. Both I closed. It bothers me that I haven’t closed Ivy Lake’s murder.”

“I will be talking to Travis,” Max said. “Because I’m a reporter sometimes I have success getting people to open up to me. They want to look good on the news or in the paper, so they talk too much. Liars tend to trip themselves up. Who’s your other primary suspect?”

“Justin Brock.”

Max raised her eyebrow. “Heather’s brother?”

According to what Max had read in the local newspaper, Heather Brock’s family had filed a civil case accusing Ivy of using social media to bully and ostracize Heather until she became so depressed she killed herself on New Year’s Eve with alcohol and pills. The family’s civil suit was dropped several months after Ivy’s death.

“Justin is the opposite of Travis. I don’t
want
him to be guilty. His family has been through hell with the suicide of his sister, and then dragged through the mud when they filed the civil suit against Ivy and her parents. When Ivy was killed, it all came up again about Heather’s suicide. Justin certainly had the rage to kill her, and he’s the only one without a solid alibi. He was home from college for the summer and his parents were out of town. He was alone, claimed to be sleeping. He could have been. No one can say, no one saw him after he left a party with his girlfriend at nine that night; his girlfriend said Justin was with her until nearly midnight, when they had an argument and he went home. With no physical evidence and no witnesses and a strong motive, I pressed him hard, but he said he didn’t kill her. He said he didn’t care that she was dead, either. Very blunt, very angry.” She paused. “The day before Ivy’s murder, Justin had confronted her at a street fair downtown. According to witnesses, their meeting was a chance encounter but his verbal assault was witnessed by a dozen people. He has a temper and knocked over a display when he left. He paid triple damages to avoid charges—now he’s in prelaw at Stanford.”

“But you think he’s capable of pushing Ivy off the cliff.”

“I hope he didn’t, because I have empathy with him. Also, I can see him getting verbal with Ivy at the street fair, spontaneous and in the heat of the moment. But luring her up to the cliffs? I don’t see that. He doesn’t have a solid alibi—but we have no physical evidence tying him to the crime.”

“Maybe he followed her there,” said Max. “You don’t know why she was at the preserve in the first place?”

“No. According to her brother, Austin, she left the house just before ten thirty and told him not to tell their parents she’d left, or she’d tell them he did something. I think it was something like going into the city with friends when his mom thought he was at the movies. I’d have to check my notes.”

“Did she tell Austin who she was meeting?”

“She didn’t tell him she was meeting anyone. According to Austin, Ivy was on her phone using Snapchat or some similar program. One that doesn’t archive any of the photos or texts unless you request it. We got a subpoena, but the company doesn’t hold on to the data on their servers. All we could learn was the cell service provider of the individuals she was chatting with, and that she was chatting with three different people.”

“Could you subpoena the records of your suspects?”

“Tried, failed. We didn’t have probable cause, according to the DA. Said we were fishing. Though I suspect if the DA had pushed for the records, the judge would have ruled in our favor.”

“So your two primary suspects have weak alibis, both have motive, but there’s no evidence to tie them to the crime and they didn’t break during interrogation.”

“In a nutshell. The next group of suspects have motive, but the motives are weak. One we dismissed because she was in San Diego—Ivy’s former best friend, Bailey Fairstein. They had a falling-out that spread onto the Internet.” Grace shook her head. “I feel damn lucky my son was out of high school before there was Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all those other apps. Have you read the civil suit filed by the Brocks? Bailey is the girl who gave a deposition that Ivy purposefully posted sexually explicit photos of Heather Brock as retribution for Heather allegedly stealing Bailey’s boyfriend, among other things. Those explicit photos not only showed Heather in bed with her boyfriend, but Ivy allegedly uploaded a sex video on to a porn site. You can’t get those things down. The FBI got involved and sent notices to the sites that Heather Brock was a minor and to remove the content. Some of the more … reputable, for lack of a better word … porn sites removed the video, but it’s still out there.”

Max leaned forward. “If I understand the law on the matter, it would seem to me that Ivy could have been charged with child pornography.”

Grace nodded. “She might have been. But Heather’s parents didn’t know about the video until after her suicide. My office didn’t investigate that matter, it’s federal, but after Ivy’s murder the FBI shared files from their investigation. Frankly, it wasn’t much. Because Ivy was a sixteen-year-old girl who wasn’t producing, selling, or buying pornographic material, prosecuting her wasn’t a priority. The feds spoke with Ivy and her parents.” Grace paused. “I don’t know that there was any real punishment. I heard from one of Ivy’s schoolmates during the murder investigation that Ivy was grounded for a month with no cell phone or computer. I think the lack of serious punishment, followed by Ivy going back to her old habits, led to Justin Brock’s frustration.”

“Who sent Ivy the video in the first place?”

Grace raised an eyebrow, a half smile on her lips. “You caught that, too. It was recorded on Heather’s phone and e-mailed by Heather. Based on what happened in the weeks prior to her suicide, it appears that Heather may have recorded the video, but someone else with access to her phone sent it to Ivy.”

“Anyone at school. Kids keep their phones in their lockers or backpacks.”

“Exactly.”

“Who else did you look at as a possible suspect in Ivy’s murder?”

“Anyone she had posted something negative about. Frankly, there were a lot of them and nothing came of that endeavor. Most of the people involved were in high school or had just graduated. They were Ivy’s peers. It came out during our investigation that many of these kids sent Ivy private information—gossip, photos, video clips—knowing that Ivy would put it all up on the Internet. So while on the one hand, some of these kids had cause to be angry with her, they were also culpable in her online shenanigans. But none of these individuals had the spark. I might have looked harder at Christopher Holbrook … he was the male in the sex video with Heather. He’s now in college—he was a year older than the girls. Fortunately for him, he was also a minor at the time the video was made. But as you know, when these things get out they have more repercussions for girls than boys. Christopher wasn’t in town the weekend of Ivy’s death, either. He and his family were in Europe for five weeks. July third was smack in the middle of that.”