Under the Bridge (23 page)

Warren was “scared shitless.” He'd been the only one sent to the Youth Custody Centre, and on Saturday morning, Bruce Brown came to get him and bring him back to the station for another interrogation, Warren asked if he could call Syreeta. But he was not allowed to call her, and so he called his father in California.

“Dad, I had nothing to do with this.”

“You sure put yourself in a fine fix now.”

“Yeah, I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I guess my family's going to disown me now. Everyone is going to disown me.”

“No, they are not going to disown you.”

“I never hit a woman. I wouldn't do it.”

“I believe you,” his father said. “Let me talk to that Sergeant Brown.”

Sergeant Brown asked Warren's father for the number of Warren's mother.

“She's an alcoholic,” Warren's father said. “I have no idea where she is. If Warren had reason to hit anyone, it would have been his mother. He had no use for her. He just can't stand her. If there's anyone he should have hit, it was her, and he just walked away every time. He put up with her for years and years. He's never had any problems with the law. He's a good kid. He's always gone to school. The only problem he ever had is with his mother, and everybody in the world had trouble with her.”

Warren's father then asked Sergeant Brown a question. “Is Warren being pinpointed for this?”

“No, we've got about eight other individuals in custody. They're going in front of the judge on Monday. We're going to detain them all until we get the proper truth out of them. I'll keep in contact with you and inform you what happens next.”

Warren asked his father, “Can you come here?”

His father thought Warren sounded “very scared.”

“I just got my green card, Warren, and I'm not going to have the proper travel documents for about four months.”

“That's okay,” Warren said. “Don't worry about it. Don't worry about me.”

Warren was unaware of the words John Bond was now reading. Secretaries had been typing and transcribing nonstop, and as he read the girlfriend's interview (“that cute little girl from the fish and chip shop”), John Bond felt confirmed in his belief that Warren so far had been less than forthcoming.

“I know the script now,” he told Bruce Brown. “Let's get him in here.”

•   •   •

Sergeant Poulton drove up the long hill to Seven Oaks and found Josephine at last. She was in the bathroom, drying her hair.

Enthralled by her own reflection, she seemed at first not to notice the man standing there.

“Josephine,” he said. “You're under arrest.”

“What for?” she said, blithely, looking at him through her eyelashes.

“For the murder of Reena Virk.”

She smiled at him and raised the hairdryer back near her clean blonde hair. He watched her, amazed. She turned to him then, and after she lowered the dryer, she bent forward, letting her blonde hair fall. She ran her fingers through her hair and then tossed her head back dramatically.

“Do I look like a murderer?” she said. She gave him a look of careless disdain. “Josephine Bell does not murder.”

“Well, we can talk about it at the station.”

“Who else did the cops pick up?”

“You're under arrest,” Sergeant Poulton said. “We can talk at the station.”

“Fine,” she snapped, and she grabbed her Guess bag, and put into it
her Nivea cream, her bus pass, her cigarettes, her Maybelline Great Lash mascara, and her Polo Sport perfume.

As they left Seven Oaks, she informed Sergeant Poulton of her wish. “Get me John Gotti's lawyer,” she demanded.

“I don't think he's available,” Sergeant Poulton replied.

•   •   •

She cried once more when she was told she could not see Warren.

“I don't think that's going to be possible,” Syreeta was told.

“How long will it be before I can see him?”

“Well,” the officer said, quite taken aback by the request, “we don't know that right know. This is as serious as it gets. This is murder.” He realized his tone was too stern for the girl, who was so young, with her braces and ponytail. Her mother too seemed wholly stunned. “We really do appreciate your cooperation,” he said to Syreeta's mother as he walked Syreeta and her to the door. “We really do know how horrible this is. We have spent these last few days dealing with kids, with teenagers.”

Major Crimes prosecutor Stan Lowe arrived at the Saanich Police Department on Saturday morning. He surveyed the photos of the eight suspects. Warren looked absolutely petrified—his eyes immense, his lips parted as if mouthing a silent apology. Kelly was smirking, the stud still in her nose. Laila's eyebrows were very thin and arched highly above her slightly defiant gaze. (“She's a different cat,” Sergeant Poulton told him. “All these girls talk really fast, but Laila talks so fast that when you finish a conversation with her, you have no idea what she was talking about. She's a kickboxer. She's like the West Side enforcer. If you're gonna fight, she's the one you call. But probably of all of them, she's the least culpable because she tried to stop the fight.”) He saw Mayas photo and recognized her last name. (“I really like Maya,” Poulton said. “She's the only one who told us everything.”) Dusty's nostrils were flared and she looked rather menacing. (“Dusty's the most upset,” Poulton thought. “She's the only one of them who really knew Reena.”) Of all the girls, Josephine appeared the least menacing. She looked like she could be advertising Neutrogena soap; she looked like one of those twirling ballerinas on a jewelry box. Her smile was a bit odd. Who smiles in their mug shot? She was smiling, proudly and mockingly.

“They're quite a group of girls,” Poulton mused. “Definitely tougher
and more worldly than they look. They're all into rap, gangster music. They all want to be Puff Daddy.”

This thought was interrupted by a tap on his shoulder from the chief of police. The members of the Dive Unit had located a pair of underwear and jeans in the waters of the Gorge, not underneath the bridge, but farther away, a few miles out from the old white and historic Craigflower schoolhouse.

Sergeant Krista Hobday confronted Dusty with an adult version of the scene under the bridge.

“You're all under the bridge. You have Laila, Kelly, Maya, Eve, Josephine, Willow, and Warren. Maya has light red hair and really pretty green eyes. Warren has kinky blondish hair that comes out like a clown's on top of his head. Josephine butts a cigarette out on Reena's forehead. You're basically ticked off because Reena's been telling stories.”

Dusty nodded, and tears fell to her closed lips.

“The fight is on. Some people under the bridge do nothing. They stand back. They don't punch her. They don't hit her. They don't help her. But you and the others kick her, punch her, pull her to the ground. Kelly grabs her by the hair, looks her straight in the eye, and punches her in the face, over and over and over again. Reena's nose is bleeding. Her eyes are being swollen shut. At this point, her ribs are probably cracked from the kicks. She is crying: ‘Please stop! Leave me alone! Stop!' Laila finally says, ‘Enough. Leave her alone. She's taken a bad enough beating.' Everybody complies. Everybody leaves. Reena's laying in the muck. Helpless, bleeding, broken,
because she told a story.”

Dusty nodded, and as she opened her lips, her words turned to sobs.

“At any point, did you think to call an ambulance for this girl?” the detective asked. (All the detectives, among themselves, alone, and together, had found this one aspect of the night particularly terrible. “If one of those kids had called 911, we wouldn't be here,” Sergeant John Bond said. “They wouldn't have had to give their name. It wouldn't have even cost them a quarter.”)

“No,” Dusty admitted. “Because I didn't think she was hurt that bad. She was walking. She was fine. I thought she could make it home. I didn't know they were going to follow her. She was walking. She was fine,” Dusty repeated, softly, to herself.

“Dusty, where's Reena?”

“I don't know. I heard someone saw her downtown.”

“Do you think after the shit-kicking Reena took that she would be downtown?”

“I don't know,” Dusty said. “She was walking. She was fine.”

“Do you know of any threats made against Reena?”

Dusty, somewhat startled by the vociferous outrage of the woman before her, finally elaborated:

“Yeah, a long time ago, when we were all in Kiwanis, Josephine said she wanted to beat up Reena. And then, after this happened, I heard that Kelly and Josephine had this all planned out. They had it planned for months.”

“And what was their plan?” Sergeant Hobday asked, aghast that the script was only getting worse.

“To bury her alive.”

•   •   •

Josephine sat in the detective's leather chair, toying with the black phone cord.

She thought she'd let the cop call her mother, and then when the cops weren't looking, she'd hang up and try to call Kelly.

She brushed her hair off her face and dialed her mother's number. Her blue nail polish was chipped.

“Hi, Mom!”

“Hello.”

“I didn't do it!” Josephine said.

“You didn't do
what?”
she asked Josephine.

“We just beat her up.”

“Beat
who
up?”

“But I went home, and I was home by curfew so I wasn't involved in the rest of it.”

“What
rest of it?”

“They dumped her body in the Gorge and she died.”

Elaine, in shock, did not reply.

“I know who did it. I'm not gonna tell. What do you think, I'm stupid? My lawyer says I don't have to say anything, so I'm not going to say anything.” She looked over at the officer and smiled, tauntingly.

“Well, what about remorse?” her mother asked. “What are you feeling?”

Josephine didn't answer.

“Do you understand what this means to the girl's family?” her mother asked her. “Do you understand what this will mean to our family?
Do you understand what's happened?”

But Josephine did not seem to understand. She hung up on her mother and tried to dial Kelly, but she was noticed and the telephone was taken away from her.

“Who else is in here?” she demanded to know. “Where's my lawyer?” She was asked again if she would like to give a statement, and she declined, looking at the police detective with scorn. Did he not know that mobsters never ratted? “Do I look like I have a tail?” she asked him. He did not know of her adherence to a mafioso code of ethics, nor did he know of her fierce loyalty to Kelly, a loyalty that Josephine believed truly was mutual. Kelly, she had always believed, would do
anything
for her.

̺   •   •

“Where's Reena right now?” Sergeant Krista Hobday asked Kelly.

“I don't know.”

“In your heart. Close your eyes and think with your heart. Where do you believe Reena is right now?”

“It's hard to say. There's so much wacko stuff that goes on. She could have been abducted, or raped by an old man or something. She could have been drunk and passed out and hit her head, 'cause she was pretty drunk. Anything could have happened to her. I truly don't know. Now the cops are saying that apparently she got drowned. That was the rumor that was going around. If I didn't do it, then this person who started the rumor obviously did it.”

“And who would that be?”

Kelly sighed, and then without flinching or hesitating, she said, “Josephine.”

“Josephine's supposed to be your best friend. Josephine's doing this to you? She's sewering you?”

“I have no doubt in my mind that it could have been Josephine,” Kelly said, blithely. “She always says sick stuff—just weird, demented stuff. She wanted to
bury
someone. I think it must have been Josephine if she says demented stuff and she had lots of stuff against Reena.”

“Then why isn't everybody saying it was Josephine?”

“People are probably saying it's Josephine.”

“Nobody's saying it's Josephine. How's that for a tidbit?
Absolutely nobody.”

“You don't know how much of a shock this is to me,” Kelly said, seemingly bewildered by her fate.

“Kelly, all I want from you is the truth. Were you fighting under the bridge?”

“Reena pushed Josephine. So I just kind of punched her, I said, ‘Don't touch my friend.' I said: ‘Go home. Don't ever talk to any of my friends like that. We don't want you around here.' She was starting crap with
everybody.
I'm like, ‘Go home.' She started to walk away, and everyone started beating her up. I don't know why, but I think it's 'cause Josephine was going around telling everybody that she wanted Reena to be beaten up.”

“Kelly, your story just doesn't wash.”

“That's 'cause they have a different story. I'm a different person.”

“They all have the same story.”

“What's their story?” Kelly demanded. “I'm curious to know.”

“Their story is the truth.”

“I could tell you their story is a lie if I heard it.”

“I want the truth from you, because I've already got the truth from a number of people.”

“Well, I'm not going to tell you that I did it if I didn't. Why would I do something like that?”

“I don't want to know
why.”

“Why would I put
my life
in jeopardy?”

“How about, ‘Why would I ever hurt somebody like that?'”

“Exactly,” Kelly agreed. “You've got brain problems if you're going to do that. Nobody deserves to die. Nobody.”