12. You Think you’d Never Join a Cult and Then Suddenly You’re in One
YOU THINK YOU’D NEVER JOIN A CULT AND THEN SUDDENLY YOU’RE IN ONE
EMMANUELLE WAS TRUE TO her word—she did have Genesis make me a schedule. Genesis was plainly resentful about this, but as Genesis and I had not gotten along very well up to that point, that didn’t worry me at the time.
“If the police ask you any further questions—” Genesis began.
“I see no evil, I hear no evil, I speak no evil,” I cut in under my breath.
She gave me perhaps her most disapproving look to date, though there was no further argument.
I hardly considered it necessary to be told not to trust the LAPD.
I was equally suspicious of everyone involved.
But I did have a brain, and thus I had some questions.
For example, how did an institution known for sloppy policework and internal corruption find that Instagram post so quickly, within hours of her death?
“Who was the woman?” I dared to ask. “The one who died” is how I negotiated the tone of my question, though “the one who was butchered” did materialize clearly at the front of my mind.
By then she was all over the news and social media, proof that the summer of exsanguination had become dismemberment fall.
I already knew, then, that her name was Valerie Nguyen, she was twenty-eight years old, and she was an immigration lawyer.
I knew she’d graduated from Cal State Long Beach and was engaged, and I knew that at present, her fiancé was the prime suspect.
It’s always the boyfriend, said the comments, each one with hundreds of conspiratorial likes.
Of course, not all the coverage was entirely sympathetic. She was said to have been partying quite a lot in the weeks preceding her death, so. Probably she had asked for this.
“Just the usual trash desperate for fame,” remarked Genesis, with a suggestive glance at me.
“Not me,” I assured her. “I just really love domestic labor, don’t you?”
At which point Genesis predictably walked away.
I am not, as I’ve said, completely stupid, although experts may disagree.
Valerie Nguyen’s connection to the de Witts was thin, but it existed—she’d assisted with some pro bono work as a consultant for Ara on a recent case as part of their efforts to provide advocacy for victims of human trafficking.
The mystery is not why the de Witts were being monitored by the LAPD, or even whether I knew about it. I did.
The articles asking What does movie star William de Witt have to do with the brutal murder of Valerie Nguyen?
disappeared from the news cycle almost immediately, washed away by the influx of more interesting details, coverage of older Santa Ana–related murders, listicle clickbait about Hollywood’s seedy past. Valerie vanished from the feed within a couple of days, probably because her fiancé was arrested soon after and quickly arraigned for his crimes.
It might have remained interesting for longer if not for him—if her death had been left a mystery.
But after a while, the overall tone of the situation was that domestic violence is what it is, and what it always has been.
Later, I asked him directly if he killed her. He had blood on his hands at the time and was scrubbing them off in the sink, staring at the cracks in his nailbeds.
Don’t ask stupid questions, Anya.
Even now, knowing all the answers, I’m not sure it ever mattered, what he said or didn’t say. The problem with this and every story is that people willingly open the door for danger.
People say yes to monsters all the time.