Under the Bridge (38 page)

J
OSEPHINE,
almost sixteen, sat in the room of the police station, curious, suspicious, intrigued. She was dressed in a gray sweatshirt and gray sweatpants, and she bore the resigned and malcontent attitude of one who'd been confined for many months. Why did the cops want to talk to her now? Six more months of jail time faced her. What could they want with her?

The cop who arrested her sat across the table from her in their private meeting room. “We went up there to talk to Josephine because the Crown asked us to. They were hoping she'd be a little more forthcoming. We suspected that there was more involved in the planning of the murder by Kelly. We weren't sure where her loyalties were.”

This meeting would be an attempt to shatter Josephine's loyalty.

To Josephine (“She still had a lot of attitude, but she seemed more resigned. She was looking a little more mousy”), Sergeant Ross Poulton said: “Now, I understand that Kelly's your best friend. She's been a good friend for a long time.”

“Since I was eleven.”

The cop pointed at a tape deck. “Well, we wanted you to have a chance to hear this tape.”

“Fine, go ahead,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Play it.”

He pressed Play. Kelly said:

“Josephine's got some psycho problems. She says weird, demented things all the time.”

“Oh, really, that's nice,” Josephine said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“She says weird and demented things, all the time, all the time. She said, 'I want to kick the living crap out of Reena, that stupid bitch!' She's always saying stuff about burying people.”

Sergeant Poulton stopped the tape, and looked to see how Josephine reacted to the words of her former best friend.

“She was scared,” Josephine said rapidly. “She just said those things because she was scared. I can hear that was scared. Was she crying?”

“Nope, I was right there. She was talking to me. There were no tears.”

“None?”

“None at all.”

“Well, she
was
scared. I could tell.”

“She was scared of getting caught for something she knew she'd done, and she was trying to load it on to you!”

“Well, it's a pathetic lie, if you ask me. I have alibis. The chick at Seven Oaks signed me and Dusty in at 11:03, so I'm really not too worried about what Kelly has to say.”

Josephine was silent for several moments, and then, as if forsaken, she inquired of her captor: “When did she give that statement?”

“The night she was arrested.”

“Are you serious?!”

“Absolutely.”

“The night she was arrested? Are you sure you're serious?”

“Of course, I am. Listen, that statement is going to cause some problems for you. The problem you have right now is Kelly's trying to say the responsibility for the murder lies with you.” Hearing this, Josephine gasped aloud.

“How can she possibly do that?”

“Well, she can say that she did it because you persuaded or coerced her.”

“Kelly has her own opinions.”

“Well, why don't you tell us about the discussion between you and Kelly with regard to killing Reena. We know about that phone call, Josephine,” Poulton said, alluding to the sworn statement in which Elaine Bell had detailed the chilling phone call she'd overheard.

“I don't remember any conversation about killing Reena. I had a lot of telephone conversations with Kelly, but I don't sit there and tell her who should die.”

“Do you recall ever saying that Reena should be buried alive?”

“No, I
never
said that she should be buried alive.”

“Well, you know what happened the day after the murder.”

Josephine sighed and looked at her bare and boring nails. The restrictions
on cosmetics sickened her immensely. How was makeup hurting anyone? She yawned, perhaps enjoying the position of power she was clever enough to realize she now occupied.

“The morning after?” She smiled sweetly at Sergeant Poulton. “I probably did my makeup in the morning. I probably had a cigarette. I usually have a coffee.” She squinted her eyes, looked to the ceiling, gazed at the cop through her dark eyelashes, and smiled once more. “What else did I do? I probably went downtown.”

“Well, Dusty says you found Reena's shoes and threw them in a garbage can.”

“I don't remember that. Maybe Dusty has a better memory than I do.”

“Personally, I find it unfortunate that you'd want to cover for people.”

“Who says I'm covering for anybody? I saw Kelly that Saturday. We talked about parties. We talked about cigarettes. We had stupid conversations. She said, ‘You should smoke Players. Du Mauriers are gross.' See, we don't talk about murders and stuff. We just talk about cigarettes and makeup. We don't talk about violence.”

She smiled once more, rubbed a finger over her dry lips.

“When did you find Reena's shoes?”

“Can you charge me if I tell you?”

“No, I can promise you that.”

“Can you charge me with accessory to murder?”

“No. You haven't had any charters or warnings or any lawyers. Nothing you tell us is going to incriminate you.”

“That's good.”

Then suddenly she stopped toying with the cop. “Reena's shoes were black. We saw them at the schoolhouse. Somebody said, ‘Get rid of them.' I put them in my Guess bag. I think Kelly's mom paged her, and she's like, Oh, I've got to get home for dinner.' So me and Dusty took the shoes and ditched them downtown.” She rolled her eyes, as if to say,
What is the big deal?
Of the cop, she inquired: “How is any of this useful?”

“Well, we don't want anyone to point fingers at you.”

“I don't care, though. You guys could give me a hundred years, and I'd tell you to go to hell. See, jail's done me a lot of good, huh? Look at the positive outlook I have on life now. Every single day, every time something pisses me off, or I get locked down, or I get yelled at, I just go,
‘Fuck. I hate the fucking cops. I hate the judge. I hate everybody who put me here. Everybody.' Because I know that I don't really deserve to be here. I'm not downplaying my role. I know what I did was wrong, okay? I know that I shouldn't have done it and I'm not going to do anything like that ever again. I didn't even like violence. I've never been a violent person. Never. I've seen too much of violence. Normally, I wouldn't have touched her because that's not my style. But I was just like, ‘Hey. I have to do something because people are going to be talking about me and saying I didn't do anything about Reena fucking with me.' It wasn't peer pressure. I chose to do it. It was my fault, but I had to.”

“You're not here because you hit Reena. You're here because they murdered her.”

•   •   •

Again, Sergeant Poulton pressed Play

Kelly: “Josephine is so demented. She worships Satan….”

Hearing this, Josephine laughed, and then, tilting her little chin upward, she laughed in a rather dismissive way. “I'm not a big Satan worshipper, so I don't know what she's talking about there.”

“No pentagrams tattooed on you anywhere?”

“No, I do have a tattoo, but it's nothing to do with Satan. It's a flower, okay, a fucking flower!”

“We don't think you're as callous as the impression you give sometimes, Josephine. Even your mom said you sounded so tough and callous when she talked to you on the phone about Reena. But we don't believe that's the case.”

“I acted a little,” Josephine conceded.

“Exactly. It's a tough situation. You're under a lot of stress, and it was clear to us you were probably surprised and upset.”

“You guys all wanted to see me cry so I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't let you see that. And I don't consider myself part of the murder. I don't.”

“We don't consider you part of it either,” Sergeant Poulton reassured her.

“Sometimes it feels like everybody does,” she said, softening.

Observing the shift in her demeanor, Poulton seized the opportunity, and encouraged the girl to reflect upon her own morality. “How do you feel about what happened?” he asked her, compassionately.

“I think I was a fucking moron, and yeah, I feel bad. I thought she'd just go home and have a black eye, and I thought I would apologize to her if she was in the hospital and maybe I'd bring her flowers. I probably wouldn't have gone that far, but you know, I didn't think she was hurt that bad because I saw her get up and walk away.”

“So you must have been absolutely freaked out when you found out she was dead.”

“You think? I kind of lost it.”

“What did Kelly tell you?”

Josephine shook her head, realizing she'd fallen into a trap. She paused, but then returned to her denial. “I don't know.”

“You
do
know. You just don't want to tell us.”

“Even though Kelly fucked me around, I just don't want to fuck her around.”

“Even though the reason you're doing a year is because of Kelly's stupidity?”

“Maybe it's meant to be that I'm supposed to be in jail right now.”

“A noble thought, but it's all Kelly. It's not karma.”

“I guess so.”

“Doesn't it bother you that she's implicating you?”

Josephine was silent for a while. She reflected and considered, and her thoughts turned back to Kelly's moment of betrayal. “Can I ask you a question?” she asked Sergeant Poulton. He nodded. A certain camaraderie had developed between the two. She was no longer toying with him, no longer trying to appear invincible. She looked, for a moment, very sad.

She asked, “Did Kelly have to be interviewed by you, or did she choose to be interviewed?”

“At no time did she have to be interviewed. We told her that. At any time she could have stopped talking, but you know, she seemed to want to tell us that you're the one who's somehow responsible.” He mimicked Kelly's insistent, girlish, bratty voice: “Oh, it's not me. It's Josephine.

“That's something else to hear that,” Josephine admitted, and once again, she seemed to change and become more reflective, more open to conversation, even confession.

“It's funny because she never blamed it on me when we were together after we got arrested. I saw her before we went to jail, and she was just
like, 'Are you in as much trouble as I am?' I told her I wasn't in half as much trouble as she was. I told her they'd dropped the murder charge on me and everybody but her and Warren. And she just said, ‘Oh.' That was all she said to me! And then, the last thing she said to me, before we left the cop station, was, ‘Don't write any statements on me. I won't write statements on you.' She told me she didn't even bring my name up in her statements.”

“No kidding,” Sergeant Poulton said, whistling.

“She told me she would never write a statement against me. I'm her best friend.”

“Oh, she's such a loyal friend.”

“Yeah, and I wasn't even worried about her writing a statement. I didn't think there was anything bad she could say about me.”

“Except that you set the whole thing up. That it was all your fault.”

“When you're in that much shit, you really look out for number one, huh?” Josephine mused, sardonically.

“But
you
don't. You take responsibility for what you've done. That's actually pretty noble. Kelly's a piece of work. And I feel sorry for Warren. She's sucked him in big time.”

“Yeah, I guess so. She really is a good person, although …”

“You're obviously pretty disappointed.”

“Yeah, I am. She's like my sister.”

“That's too bad.”

“Yeah, it is too bad, but I can find more friends. I have lots of friends.”

“Did she ever say she was sorry about what happened when you were at the Gorge the next day after the fight? Did she ever seem sorry?”

“She seemed like she was on top of the fucking world. It seemed like she was having a great day.”

“That little bitch,” Poulton said, shaking his head, scornfully.

“Yeah, it didn't seem to bother her at all. When I was in jail, I felt bad and I apologized to Reena a billion times in my head. There's nothing I can do to make it okay. I'll just have to live with it, I guess.”

“Kelly's mistake.”

“It's hard for me not to like her, though. It's hard for me not to care about her. I remember when we were in jail, she's like: ‘I'll never write a statement against you. I'd never do anything to hurt you.'”

“Other than try to pin it all on you.”

Josephine laughed. The two might have been friends now, discussing a ridiculous co-worker. “I know,” she said, shaking her head. “She's like, ‘I won't do anything to hurt you.' Oh, I'll try and put you in jail for twenty-five years, but that's all.”

“Did you say that you'd do anything for her?”

“I said that to her
lots
of times. I said I'd always be there for her. I told her she was my best friend and I'd do anything for her, and you know what? I would have if she'd never given that statement.”

Knowing now was his moment, Sergeant Poulton leaned toward the young girl with an expression of great fascination: “When did she first actually tell you that she'd killed Reena?”

“She just kind of implied it.”

“How so?”

“She just said stuff like, ‘Maybe something will be floating down the stream pretty soon.' She just joked around about it: ‘She's floating around somewhere.'”

Josephine looked at her nails but kept on with her surprising revelations. “Part of me just thought, ‘This can't be happening.' Maybe Reena's just in the hospital. Maybe she hit her head and got amnesia. Maybe she's in New York. I looked at every explanation I possibly could. Me and Laila thought maybe she was ashamed because she got beat up. That would definitely do something to my ego. So maybe she ran away. Maybe she met some guy at the hospital. There were a million explanations but none of them really fit. They were all kind of long shots.”