"My mom's right there."
Greiner looked over her shoulder at a woman in blue jeans and a bulky sweatshirt, her curly hair in disarray, like she'd jumped out of bed and dressed in a hurry.
"Are we done?" Serene asked.
"For now. I'm going to have you wait right here."
Serene tightened her crossed arms. She looked at someone, a girl with dark waist-length hair, wearing an oversized t-shirt, shorts and flip flops. The girl mouthed something to Serene, and then Serene seemed to deflate, posture sagging as her eyes filled with tears. With her defenses down, what stood out to Greiner was how different she looked from the aloof and distant person she'd just been interviewing. It was almost like looking into the face of a different kid altogether.
24
Barbara - February 2020
It wasn't hard to research the story. Barbara wondered why she had never thought to look before––really dig, like she was doing now. She had found several old magazine articles online featuring the story, and a true crime book called American Murder: The Taylor Davis Story, written by a journalist named Kay Lawrence. Barbara inhaled the articles and checked the book out from the library, reading it in a single evening. Her mind reeled from the fact that Taylor's murder was never completely solved.
Each of the kids at Enzo's that night had had a possible motive for hurting Taylor, including Barbara's own parents. The hard punch to Taylor's right temple had killed her between five and twenty minutes after receiving the blow, forensics surmised. Barbara's father was left-handed, and so was Ramani. The implication made Barbara feel sick. Then there was the discrepancy in time when Barbara's mom left Enzo's house to get some air. She'd said it was five minutes, but Bets had told police she was gone at least ten minutes, maybe even fifteen. Taylor's mom Abby seemed to believe that Serene had it in for her daughter, that she’d been conniving to take her boyfriend Steve when they were dating. At least that was what Taylor had complained about to Abby on multiple occasions. Even Enzo, Bets and Kanani's story of staying in the house to clean up after Taylor, Serene and Steve left had broken down. Kanani had gone to the bathroom for a long time. Enzo had gone to his backyard to have a cigarette and Bets had been left alone in the kitchen. Enough time had lapsed for any one of them to have had a few minutes of confrontation with Taylor.
A third of the book was backstory of Taylor's character. Her beauty. Her arrogance. Her charm and sexual precociousness, and the sting of cruelty several girls had suffered knowing Taylor. Some kids had referred to her as a slut. Somehow the journalist had wrangled a confession from Abby that Taylor's father had molested her. It made Barbara's face burn to read the incestuous abuse Taylor had been subjected to.
There were pictures of all of them, looking so young in a time that seemed impossibly far away and not.
In the end, Darpan paid for the crime. Semen was found in Taylor. There was no bruising of the tissue, which would have suggested rape and, initially, the semenal fluid was thought to be Enzo's, but turned out to be Darpan's. Then there was Serene's confession that she'd seen Darpan kissing Taylor and that Taylor had pushed him away. Unbelievably, Ramani had backed Darpan, securing him legal representation and leaving Serene to grapple on her own with a public defender.
But it was Carrie's statement to the police that prompted Barbara to sit bolt upright in bed, clutching the tattered paperback from the library. Aunt Carrie had had a rough few years as a teen, drinking, partying. A stint of heroin. Her goth phase, wearing all black. Sulky, angry-looking eyes, too much black eyeliner, dyed black hair and pinched white features. Grandma Maggie and Grandpa Ron sent her to rehab twice. Carrie's life didn't turn around until she graduated and left Culver City, moving to New York. Her statement was definitely incriminating. Grandpa Ron tried to get it thrown out, but it was too late, and Ramani said later that she felt vindicated. That was before the legal winds turned against her and Darpan.
The jury unanimously found Darpan guilty of Taylor's murder. Serene's witness of Darpan's shared intimate moment with Taylor and his semen found in her body was a major deciding factor in the conclusion.
It was conceivable that Taylor pushing him away during their kiss had angered him into attacking her, the prosecutor had argued. And just because the intercourse Darpan had with Taylor didn't show signs of physical rape, didn't mean it wasn't rape. Darpan had once been a part of the dangerous cult, Shangri-La, the cult collapsing after some of its members committed suicide. He'd been a child at the time. Still, his mother's abandonment of him in lieu of cult doctrine, found to be dangerous and psychopathic, had a sociopathic effect on his development and many of the youth coming out of Shangri-La. The crimes later committed by said youth were numerous and of a serious nature. His mother had escaped with him prior to the suicides, however she'd been unfit to finish raising him. Darpan spent a summer with his grandparents, who described him as odd and lacking in common morality. He often stole, lied and lived in a strange fantasy world. After that summer, he was put into foster care. The polyfidelitous relationship between Darpan and Ramani and Aarav, who were also once Shangri-La community members, and the age difference between Ramani and Darpan, painted a disturbed and eccentric image of Darpan.
"I don't condone the fact that Darpan was having sex with Taylor, understand, but he didn't murder that girl. It wasn't Darpan's nature to be violent. He's now rotting in prison for a murder he didn't commit. A waste of a life." Ramani was quoted as saying.
When Barbara went to sleep, the events from the past plagued
