Alafair Burke: Never Tell

Another shrug from the quiet one.

Rogan was already making his way to the bathroom. It was spacious enough for the two of them, plus the two EMTs and a few linebackers, but she was the only one who followed. She heard Spike call out behind her. “If you need me to explain how I know the girl’s bulimic, let me know. We aren’t as magically astute as you cops, but eating disorders go with depression. Suicide notes go with suicides. There’s nothing for us to do here.”

She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “Go save lives, guys. We’ll wait for the ME.”

Rogan looked back at her from the bathroom, hands on hips. “Real sensitive for a guy who spends his days helping people.”

“Some people would say that about you, Rogan.”

“You didn’t want to take him up on that bulimia thing? To me, she looks as skinny as every other white girl these days.”

When people imagine a woman soaking in a tub, they picture those cheesy commercials with a bath full of frothy bubbles, the woman’s hair tucked into a loose bun as she runs a loofah across her pampered skin, pausing to take a sip of wine in the candlelight.

There was nothing pampered about Julia Whitmire’s death scene. There was wine, but it was an empty bottle toppled on the floor next to the toilet. She was nude, but there were no bubbles or loofahs or candles. Just clear pink water, a few smears of dark red on the edge of the white ceramic tub, blood that had streamed from her left wrist. The straight razor had fallen into the tub on the right side of her body.

Ellie leaned forward and saw two superficial lacerations next to the source of the leaking blood. Slitting a wrist takes fortitude. Some people try for years before they can bring themselves to go through with it. This girl only took two practice strokes.

Rogan was seeing the same scene, drawing the same conclusions. “Looks like she held the razor in her right hand and pulled her left wrist across it. Right arm falls into the water with the razor. Left arm doesn’t quite make it back to the side.” Julia’s left hand was draped across her pubic area, as if trying to protect her privacy in death.

Ellie didn’t need an EMT to explain the signs of this girl’s eating disorder. “Her skin’s loose. That’s one of the things the EMT was probably seeing.”

“She’s dead. Skin gets loose.”

She peered between the girl’s parted lips. “No, it’s more than that. See how her face is bloated even though she’s gaunt around the eyes? And her teeth are gray. This girl was definitely making herself sick.” She walked out of the bathroom and over to the bed, bending down to read the hand-scrawled note, filled with scratch marks and second attempts, propped against the pillows.

She took in every scribbled word, but a few lines summed it up.

I know I should love my life, but sometimes I hate it… I’m constantly being told how lucky I am, but the truth is, my so-called privileged life hurts… It hurts to believe that I can never amount to the person I’m supposed to be. It hurts to feel so alone every second of the day, even when I’m surrounded by other people.

Poor little rich girl.

The final sentence said it all:

And that is why I have decided to kill myself.

She left Rogan to read on his own as she did a quick walk-through of the upper-floor residence. Medicine cabinet filled with high-end hair and skin supplies, but no prescription drugs other than a birth-control packet made out to Julia Whitmire. Hairclips and magazines in the nightstand. Top dresser drawer filled with expensive La Perla lingerie, more suitable for a soft-core porn shoot than a high school girl’s bedroom. No food in the refrigerator except two bags of baby carrots and a bottle of nonfat ranch dressing. Cabinets filled with liquor. Wine rack stocked with bottles.

Rogan trailed into the kitchen behind her. “So what do you think?” he asked.

“Looks like making herself throw up wasn’t quite enough self-inflicted damage for her anymore.”

“What were you saying about sensitivity?”

“Hate to say those tools were on to something, but this looks pretty clear-cut to me.”

“The note even had tearstains on it,” he said.

“And yet I noticed you didn’t touch the letter. Neither did I.”

“Don’t need to. Got that LASIK shit. These eyes shine like diamonds and focus like laser beams.”

She rolled her own, un-LASIKed, eyes. “You know what I’m getting at. Those idiots had a point about people who’ve got-what did he call it-grease? I don’t know who that woman outside is, but she’s clearly rich enough to have a setup like this, and she’s apparently powerful enough to set her own terms about where she’ll stand and what type of detective will be sent to her home.”

They were interrupted by a towering bald man in medical scrubs. Rogan squinted at Ellie, a sign that he recognized the new arrival’s cue ball but had forgotten his name.

“Ginger,” she called out with a smile. Cue ball had called her “Blondie” during a tense moment when they’d first met. Instead of making an obvious bald comment in response, she’d called him Ginger. Since then, he always returned her calls in record time.

“It’s Blondie and her stoic partner.”

Apparently Rogan wasn’t the only one in the room who struggled with names. “Bob King, you probably remember J. J. Rogan.”

“I’m told there’s a tearstained note,” King said.

“Our guys or the EMTs?” she asked.

“Your guys. Two of them cowering on the front porch like bitch babies. I take it they’re a-scared of the mama grizzly out in the living room. Or the parlor. Whatever you call that big useless room down there.”

So much for telling Katherine Whitmire to wait outside.

“Yeah, there’s a note,” she verified. “Body’s in the tub.”

She noticed that he stooped slightly beneath the doorway as he crossed the bathroom threshold, a habit of the tall, she supposed.

While he was inspecting the body, Ellie rifled through the bright-orange Hermes handbag on the kitchen counter until she found an unlabeled vial of pills. She unscrewed the cap and held an orange-and-white capsule up to the light. “Bingo.”

When King stepped from the bathroom, she threw the capsule in his direction. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Adderall’s prescribed for depression?”

“Nah, more for ADHD-attention deficit hyperactivity disorder-but, yeah, it’s a stimulant. Your extra-special law-enforcing eyes seeing anything that my awesome medical training is missing?”

They shook their heads.

“Haven’t seen slit wrists in a while,” he noted.

Despite the well-worn paradigm, Ellie knew that a cut wrist was a surprisingly ineffective method of death. The vessels in a wrist just aren’t that big. And bodies fight to survive. The vessels usually close before death occurs. That’s why cut wrists are often followed by cut chests or necks. But, in this case, Julia had the bathwater to help keep the blood flowing. The empty bottle of Barolo on the marble floor indicated some alcohol-related assistance as well.

Ginger placed his hands on his hips. “Well, I don’t know about you two, but I get paid the same whether I’m here or back at Twenty-sixth Street. If this were a subsidized studio at the Patterson Projects, I’d be heading back to the office. But for Mama Grizzly out there? I plan on doing everything I’d do if you told me this was fishy. Better the taxpayers’ dollars than my ass.”

“Then it’s unanimous,” Rogan declared. “Let’s do it.”

“Yoo-hoo.” Ellie waved a hand. “Not unanimous yet.”

“What’s the big deal? We’ll get CSU to work the place up. Talk to a few of the girl’s friends. Canvass the neighborhood. Make sure we’re not missing anything.”