Never Tell

Chapter Thirty-Seven

It was Thursday—three full days since Julia Whitmire’s body had been found, nearly two since they’d arrested Casey Heinz—and Ellie was the last to arrive at the conference room of the district attorney’s office.

“You see the cover story on this week’s New York?” She tossed her copy of the magazine, fresh from the newsstand, onto the faux veneer of the table for Rogan and Max to see.

“Prep School’s Deadly Pressures?” was the cover story, complete with side-by-side headshots of Julia Whitmire and a boy named Jason Moffit, smiles beaming, full of life.

Max flipped to the article. “Says here the NYPD continues to investigate Whitmire’s death but that inside sources say it’s almost surely a suicide.”

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I don’t leak to the press. There was no shortage of people at the callout who were thinking the same thing, though. The article’s not really about Julia, even. They’re using her death plus this other student’s heroin overdose to shine a light on the pressures those Casden kids are under. That headmistress is probably tearing up the pages into little pieces as we speak.”

Donovan looked at his watch. “Folger sent me an e-mail saying he was running a few minutes late. Traffic on the FDR.”

They were waiting for Casey Heinz’s defense attorney, Chad Folger. A sit-down between the investigating detectives and the defense attorney wasn’t typical, but from the start nothing about this case had been normal. The initial label of suicide. The involvement of a hired investigative firm. The reward money.

“Folger’s a heavy hitter,” Rogan said. “How’d a kid from a homeless shelter swing his retainer?”

“He didn’t. Folger’s doing it pro bono. The lady at the shelter—”

“Chung Mei Ri,” Ellie offered.

Rogan pointed at her. “Rainman, right here.”

“Ms. Ri called one of the big, national LGBT advocacy groups. Folger’s on their list—a gay brother or something. Now Folger says he has important information and wanted a meet as early as possible. This case is such a quick-moving target that I insisted you two participate.”

They heard a rap on the door before it opened. A well-suited man in his early forties walked in. Ellie recognized him most recently from daily trial coverage of one of the country’s biggest corporate fraud prosecutions. The defense had won.

“Hey, sorry for the wait. You must be Ellie Hatcher and J. J. Rogan. Casey told me you guys have been pretty decent to him, under the circumstances.”

Rogan raised a skeptical brow. “Can’t say we’re used to defendants calling us the good guys.”

Chad Folger smiled broadly. “Maybe ‘good guys’ is pushing it a little. But decent. He definitely said you were decent. High praise, though, compared to what I usually hear.” He offered a quick handshake to Max. “Donovan.”

Once they were seated at the table, Folger immediately leapt to his feet again, taking over the small room with his pacing. “So, let me start by thanking you for hearing me out today. I want to make clear at the outset that Casey isn’t raising any allegations of wrongdoing or abuse against you guys, or anyone at the NYPD for that matter.”

“Because we’re decent,” Rogan said with a smirk.

“Precisely. But Earl Gundley’s another matter. And the Neanderthals he hires as quote-unquote security associates are even worse.” He reached into his briefcase, pulled out a Redweld folder bulging at the seams, and dropped it to the table. It landed with a loud thud. “Those are complaints filed against Gundley when he was still with the department.”

“We were told he was never disciplined,” Max said.

“True, the complaints were eventually dismissed, but I think we all know that smoke sometimes means fire.”

“Only sometimes,” Max emphasized.

“And that is why I also have three file boxes in my office, each filled with civil complaints against Gundley’s security company. Excessive force. Breaking and entering. One lady whose husband hired Gundley to document her infidelity alleged that these guys snuck into her bathroom to photograph her and the personal trainer going at it in the shower. They call themselves security, but they’re glorified thugs.”

Ellie could only imagine what a lawyer with Folger’s talents would do with the fact that someone had threatened Adrienne Langston—a continuation of activity that began with Julia—yesterday morning while his client was in custody.

“With all due respect, Mr. Folger, I was unhappy about Gundley’s involvement, too,” Ellie said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that Casey had a key to Julia Whitmire’s house and a pair of her panties.”

“She gave him the key two months ago, just in case he ever needed a place to stay in an emergency. It was an act of kindness on her part, but not one he intended to take her up on. He honestly forgot he had it.”

“Big thing to forget,” Max said.

“It’s not like you guys asked if he had a key. You asked how many times he’d been alone with her, and he told you the truth. As it turns out, during the last of those times, they were intimate together. She tucked the panties in his jacket pocket as a little surprise for later or something.”

Ellie couldn’t recall a defense attorney ever confirming such an incriminating fact.

Apparently neither had Max. “Chad, you sure you’re not working for us on this one?”

“I spent six hours with this kid yesterday, and I think I get it now. He is seriously in love with one of Julia’s friends.”

“Ramona Langston,” Ellie offered.

“Exactly. Even the way the kid says her name, you think his eyes are going to roll out of his head. But not every girl’s ginning up to date someone in Casey’s . . . situation. And then here’s this adventurous, beautiful girl, Julia, laying it on pretty heavy. It happened one time, and that was it. Casey didn’t want Ramona ever to find out.”

“Not even when his arrest was at stake?” Ellie said. “He didn’t say a word when he realized what we’d discovered.”

“The kid was absolutely terrified. Gundley’s guys were completely out of control. They yanked Casey off the street. They threatened him. They hurt him. And that was only the beginning. What they did to him amounted to psychological torture.”

“Oh, come on,” Ellie said. “Torture?”

“I don’t use that word lightly, Detective. These men should have been the ones placed under arrest. Initially, they grabbed at Casey’s chest from the outside of his shirt. When they realized he had flattened his breasts with an Ace bandage, two of them reached beneath his shirt and pulled the bandage down. Then they moved on to placing their hands against his crotch, mocking him for the obvious absence of male genitalia. One of them even said, and I quote, ‘You’re obviously confused, sweetie. You just need me to straighten you out.’ Casey would have confessed if they’d told him to, but they probably knew anything he said would’ve been completely inconsistent with the crime scene. So instead they coerced his consent to search his room at the shelter.”

Ellie thought about the grass stains on Casey’s pants. They could have come simply from the attempt to get hold of him at the park. Or they could’ve been from exactly the conduct Folger described.

Max tapped his knuckles against the conference table. “Anything else?”

“I know that lobbying for a client preindictment is old hat, but not from me. I’m telling you: Casey did not kill Julia Whitmire. In your gut, do you really believe you would have hooked him up if he had explained to you about the key and the underwear at the shelter Tuesday night? I’ll also have psychiatric experts testify that Casey is particularly susceptible to coercion. The trauma he has suffered in the past as a result of being female-to-male makes him especially fearful of the type of abuse that these men were threatening. He is also under psychiatric treatment for bipolar disorder, which can reduce a person’s ability to resist pressure.”

“Casey was doing handstands in the park a couple of days ago,” Max noted. “And these detectives talked to him at length. He didn’t seem either depressed or manic.”

“Manic-depressives aren’t constantly at one pole or another. Many can maintain periods of a normal mood for large segments of time. They can also suffer from mixed states in which signs of mania and depression occur simultaneously. You’ll see on the jail intake form that my client was carrying two powerful antipsychotic drugs prescribed to him by a Dr. David Bolt.”

As Ellie jotted down the name in her notebook, she realized it looked familiar. When she’d watched the online video of that debate at NYU, Bolt had been the expert defending the use of psychotropic medications in children.

“My understanding is that it’s an experimental use of the drugs. Ironically, it was your star witness, Brandon Sykes, who told Casey about the clinical trial. I’m still gathering information about Casey’s diagnosis, but I’m confident it might also help you understand why Casey seemed so resigned when he was arrested. As for Brandon Sykes and Vonda Smith, I’m just beginning to scratch the surface with those two, but I can already tell you, Max, you don’t want them in front of a jury. Vonda’s an addict who routinely flirts with old men and then steals their wallets once grandpa takes her home.”

Ellie shot Max a concerned look. The lawyer’s characterization was consistent with what they’d learned from Chung Ri.

“And that drug trial Brandon got Casey into? Turns out Brandon faked his diagnosis. Think about that: he’s taking an experimental antipsychotic for a mental condition he doesn’t even have, all for the hundred bucks a week being paid by the researchers. You don’t think he’d lie about Casey with a hundred grand on the line?”

Folger finally took a seat and placed both palms firmly on the table. “Look, I’d usually just wait for trial, but I really think if you take a close look, you’ll see that dismissing this mess before it goes any further is the right thing to do. Otherwise, I will advise Casey to exercise his right to testify in front of the grand jury. You might think you can control what happens in a grand jury room, but I guarantee you that someone on that panel will want to hear the full story. The grand jurors can then call their own witnesses. They will ask Gundley the hard questions, whether you want them to or not. They’ll want to meet Vonda and Sykes. They’ll want to know more about Julia, which means hauling in her parents and those zombies from Casden. We’ve got a New York magazine article saying it was suicide. And even if the grand jury indicts, we still have trial. Right now, neither the DA’s office nor the NYPD is implicated in what has happened to my client. But if you side with Gundley’s team on this, I won’t have a choice. You will become responsible by association.”

She could see why clients paid a pretty penny for this guy’s services. It didn’t always come down to skills in the courtroom. Folger had read the politics of the situation perfectly. He knew that the Whitmires and Casden were already pulling the district attorney’s office in two different directions. Now there was the prospect of front-page stories pitting the city’s wealthy and powerful against an abused homeless kid.

If Max was feeling the pressure, he didn’t show it. “I need some time to look at this.”

“Let me know what you decide. You’ve got until Monday to go to the grand jury before Casey gets sprung.”