“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
