Chapter 24
I am taken with the house as soon as we walk up.
It’s a quaint cottage with ivy crawling up the side.
For a second, I am transported to an English countryside, like in the quintessential Christmas movie The Holiday, starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet.
All we need is a handsome Jude Law character who shows his kind and caring side by being an excellent single father to two adorable little rascals.
We disembarked from the ferry, and though I’m not completely familiar with the area, I figured that we were walking distance from the home.
To New Yorkers, walking distance could be anything from five hundred feet to a few miles, as I found out when I moved here.
This commitment to walking long distances and passing them off as reasonable is only beaten in Sri Lanka, where cars are so expensive that walking ten miles isn’t out of the ordinary.
Luckily for me, the distance to the cottage was on the shorter side.
We both walked in silence, the conversation of the ferry ride lingering in the air like a secret finally come to surface.
Amaya faces the door, addressing it with three assertive knocks.
Looking at her, I notice a vulnerability I haven’t seen before.
I’m not sure if it is because the DNA evidence seems to unequivocally confirm my guilt, or that in revealing this is her first murder case she is showing a side of herself that she hoped would remain hidden.
In rooms full of white male attorneys and judges, she is forced to present herself with a certain confidence just to be taken seriously.
Revealing her lack of expertise is certainly a chink in what is supposed to be impenetrable armor.
“Hello?” A thirtysomething woman wearing a tie-dyed shirt and paint-flecked shorts answers the door. The woman’s outward appearance doesn’t seem to match the house. She seems like somebody’s kooky aunt who went to Woodstock and had a great time.
“My name is Amaya. I’m a lawyer. I am hoping to ask you a little bit about your brother.” I notice she doesn’t say whom she represents.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” I add, while Amaya shoots me a dirty look. Stay silent, her face seems to scream at me.
“Thanks for saying that, it’s been hard.”
I give her a weak smile. I wish I could properly convey to her how sorry I am for her loss.
“Come in,” the woman says. I’m always a little surprised at the comfort some people feel with strangers in their own home.
Did she not want to see at least some sort of identification?
Won’t she even ask us to take off our shoes?
There are almost three burglaries every minute in the United States and countless numbers of rugs that have fallen victim to dirty shoes.
I look at who I assume is Darla as she leads us into the house. The red-rimmed, puffy eyes, the streaks of mascara below them, and the exhaustion. She looks pale and gaunt. I know how she feels all too well.
As soon as I walk into the house, I smell a sharp herbal scent, one I first smelled on Alex in high school.
I look at Amaya, and she at me, both of us registering it.
Weed. The woman leads us into the kitchen, where I’m certain the smell will dissipate, but it doesn’t.
For a second, I worry I’ll get a secondhand high somehow, like the time that Alex smoked a joint in his parents’ car with the windows rolled up.
The one time I smoked, I just coughed until I had to excuse myself.
Plus, I still live with my parents, and sneaking in weed as an adult is just as hard as it was when I was a teenager, and even more pathetic.
“You’re here about my brother?” She looks like she’s holding back tears. The woman hasn’t introduced herself. By confirming her relationship to James, I know she must be Darla, the woman listed on the background report as his sister.
“Yes, we’re sorry to bother you. I’m the attorney for the person charged with the crime, and this is our investigator,” Amaya says, vaguely pointing toward me.
So far, I haven’t provided any assistance that Google Maps couldn’t.
Though, technically, I am serving as an investigator of sorts.
The fact that I’m also the defendant is just omitted, not a direct lie.
“Oh. So you’re trying to help the cabdriver?” Darla says as she lights a blunt. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” Before either of us can respond, she lights up and continues. “Maybe the cabbie didn’t do it, ya know?”
I raise my eyebrows in surprise.
“What makes you say that?” Amaya asks, exchanging a furtive glance with me.
“I mean, why would a random cabdriver kill him? She didn’t try to take anything off my brother. I mean, I have his wallet here. The police finally returned it to me.” She waves the wallet in the air and sets it down on the kitchen table by her side.
“Do you mind if we look at it?” Amaya asks, already reaching for it.
“I don’t see why not, just don’t take anything,” Darla says, eyeing us cautiously for the first time since allowing us into her home. She puffs out a neat circle of smoke, and I have to restrain myself from acknowledging this skill.
Amaya carefully handles the small, worn, brown wallet, taking out the credit and identification cards one by one.
After seeing the New Frontier offices and Brett Ryan and his fancy clothing and Rolex watch, I expect an expensive designer wallet, but when the tag inside reads “Kohl’s” I immediately feel a sense of camaraderie with James.
Something tells me he was a frequent flier at the clearance section of the Gap Factory outlet like me.
Inside the wallet, I see he was only one punch card stamp away from a free coffee.
“Also, I realize this is odd, but I have James’s snake. I was investigating, and they gave it to me at the animal hospital and wouldn’t let me give him back. No other contact information was provided. I got some mice to feed it.” I notice Amaya gag slightly.
“Oh, bless you. Yes, I’ll take Frankie back. Thank you for taking care of him. I wasn’t sure where my brother had dropped him off. I thought he was dead.”
She pauses, and then she does the very thing I try so hard not to do in front of others. She cries, just a little. I hand her a tissue from the floral-covered tissue box, and she takes it. “Sorry about that. I just wasn’t expecting to have a living connection to him, even if I fucking hate snakes.”
Both Amaya and I laugh. If Darla had any suspicion or animosity toward us, it’s dissipating. Amaya’s care of Frankie has paid off.
Amaya continues to sort through the wallet, and I look attentively over her shoulder.
Everything looks fairly normal and explainable.
Old receipts, which don’t seem to be of value.
Credit cards. Business cards. A Werther’s, my favorite, which Alex says is an old person’s candy.
As Amaya continues, we notice a crumpled piece of paper with a number on it: NYCRC #1045. 14-90-18.
I meet Amaya’s eyes, and she covertly takes a photo of it when Darla isn’t looking.
“Do you happen to know what this is?” Amaya says, waving the little bit of paper at Darla.
“Oh, I don’t know. Lottery numbers?” Darla answers as she continues to puff on her blunt, already looking a bit dazed.
“Do you know if your brother had any enemies?” Amaya asks.
The question has always struck me. Who hated someone enough to kill them or have them killed?
According to three of the true crime podcasts I have listened to, apparently plenty of people.
Ninety percent of people are murdered by someone they know.
I mean, my aunties and uncles annoy the hell outta me with questions about why I’m unmarried or so dark skinned, two things looked down upon in Sri Lankan culture.
I briefly held fantastical thoughts of slapping them, but murder was a step too far even for the auntie who pinched one of my fat rolls.
People surrounding victims do have the motive, opportunity, and means. Murder, it seems, is personal.
“Well, my brother was a polarizing person. He cared deeply about the environment. He and I were the same way. We probably pushed ourselves further into the environmental movement than most. Some may have called us radical. We chained ourselves to trees a couple times to protest climate change. We protested often. Even Frankie was a rescue from a rainforest we failed to stop from burning down. We would camp a lot. We took two years off of college and tried to stop fracking in Ohio, attempted to curtail big-game hunting in South Africa, and did a random foray to save an endangered species of snail in Indonesia. People were killing them to make facial products. God, I miss him so much.” Darla sniffles, and my hand hovers over the tissue box again, but this time she doesn’t cry.
Darla’s face is animated, but her voice is still low and slow, as if the weed has blunted the strongest of her emotions.
She and her brother lived an incredible life, and I can’t help being jealous of their passionate dedication to their causes.
Dealing with screaming passengers and getting stuck in gridlock isn’t my life’s passion.
Maybe only a few people are lucky enough to do what they love.
“This seems to contrast with the corporate life James led,” I say.
I don’t dare look at Amaya but can instinctively feel her eyes burrowing into the back of my head.
It’s the same look Ammi gives Thathi when he attempts to shovel rice and curry down with his hands at a restaurant.
Eating with your hands as your utensils is traditional among Sri Lankans, despite it being seen as bad behavior most anywhere else.
“You’re right. It’s probably why so many of the old crew, the Green World guys, were so pissed at him.”
“Green World?” I ask. It’s the same organization that Brett Ryan had mentioned.