Daddy's Little Girl

  Rob Westerfield was arrested two days after the funeral and charged with first degree murder. Almost solely from the information I provided them, the police were able to obtain a search warrant of the Westerfield home and Rob’s car. They found the clothes he had worn the night he took her life, and though he had thoroughly bleached them, the police lab was able to identify bloodstains. The tire jack that had been the murder weapon was found in the trunk of his car. He had washed that, too, but a tiny strand of Andrea’s hair still clung to it.

  Rob’s defense was that he had gone to the movies the night Andrea was murdered. The cinema parking lot was full, and he left his car at the service station next door. He said that the pumps were closed, but he found Paulie Stroebel working in the enclosed garage. He said he looked in on Paulie and told him he was leaving the car there and would pick it up after the movies.

  He claimed that while he was watching the movie, Paulie Stroebel must have driven to the hideout in his car, killed Andrea, then left the car back at the service station. Rob said he’d left the car at the station at least half a dozen times to get dents fixed, and that on any of those occasions Paulie could have had an extra key made.

  He tried to explain away the blood on his clothes and in the ridges of his sneakers by claiming that Andrea had begged him to meet her at the hideout. He said that she had been pestering him with phone calls and phoned him at dinnertime the night she died. She told him that she was going to a mixer with Paulie Stroebel and didn’t want him to be mad at her.

  “I didn’t care who she went out with,” Rob explained when he testified at the trial. “She was just a kid in town who had a crush on me. She followed me everywhere. I’d be hanging out in town, and she’d walk by. I’d go bowling, and suddenly she’s playing in the next lane. I caught her and her friends hanging out in my grandmother’s garage, having a cigarette. I wanted to be nice, so I told her it was all right. She was always begging me to take her for a ride in my car. She was always calling me.”

  He had an explanation for why he went to the garage-hideout that night. “I got out of the movie,” he testified, “and started to drive home. Then I got worried about her. Even though I told her that I wasn’t going to meet her, she said she’d wait there for me anyway. I thought I’d better drop by and make sure she went home before her dad got angry. The light in the garage had burned out. I kind of fumbled along and walked around behind the van. That’s where Andrea and her friends used to sit on blankets and smoke cigarettes.

  “I felt the blanket under my foot. I could just about make out that someone was lying there, and I figured Andrea must have been waiting for me and fallen asleep. Then I knelt down, and I could feel the blood on her face. I ran.”

  He was asked why he ran. “Because I was scared somebody might think I did it.”

  “What did you think happened to her?”

  “I didn’t know. I was scared. But when I found out that the tire jack in my trunk had blood on it, I knew it had to be Paulie who killed her.”

  He was very slick, and his testimony was well rehearsed. A good-looking young guy, he made a strong impression. But I was Rob Westerfield’s nemesis. I remember being on the stand and answering the questions the prosecutor asked.

  “Ellie, did Andrea call Rob Westerfield before she went to do homework with Joan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he ever make phone calls to her?”

  “Sometimes he did, but then if Daddy or Mommy answered, he always hung up. He wanted Andrea to call him because he had his own phone in his room.”

  “Was there a special reason Andrea called him the night she died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hear the conversation?”

  “Just a little of it. I went into her room. She was almost crying. She was telling Rob that she couldn’t help it that she was going with Paulie to the mixer, that she had to do it. She didn’t want Paulie to tell Daddy that she sometimes met Rob in the hideout.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “She told Rob she was going to Joan’s to do homework, and he told her to meet him at the hideout.”

  “Did you hear him tell her that?”

  “No, but I heard her say, ‘I’ll try, Rob,’ and when she hung up, she said, ‘Rob wants me to leave Joanie’s early and meet him in the hideout. He’s mad at me. He said I’m not supposed to go out with anyone else.’ ”

  “Andrea told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  And then on the stand I gave away Andrea’s last secret and broke the sacred promise I had made to her—the “cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die” promise that I would never tell anyone about the locket Rob had given her. It was gold and heart-shaped, and had little blue stones. Andrea had shown her that Rob had had their initials engraved on the back. I was crying by then because I missed my sister so much, and it hurt to talk about her. And so, without being asked, I added, “She put on her locket before she left, so I was pretty sure she would meet him.”

  “A locket?”

  “Rob gave her a locket. Andrea wore it under her blouse so no one could see it. But I could feel it when I found her in the garage.”

  I remember sitting on the witness stand. I remember trying not to look at Rob Westerfield. He kept staring at me; I could feel the hatred coming from him.

  And I swear I could read the thoughts of my mother and father who were sitting behind the prosecutor: Ellie, you should have told us; you should have told us.

  My testimony was pounced on by the defense attorneys. They brought out that Andrea often wore a locket that my father had given her, that it was on top of her dresser after her body was found, that I was making up stories or that I was repeating the stories Andrea had made up about Rob.

  “Andrea was wearing the locket when I found her,” I insisted. “I could feel it.” I burst out, “That’s why I know it was Rob Westerfield who was in the hideout when I found Andrea. He came back for the locket.”

  Rob’s attorneys became furious, and that remark was ordered stricken from the record. The judge turned to the jurors and told them not to consider it in any way.

  Did anyone believe what I told them about the locket Rob gave Andrea? I don’t know. The case went to the jury, and they were out for nearly a week. We learned that a few jurors leaned at first toward a manslaughter verdict, but the rest insisted on a murder conviction. They believed that Rob had carried that tire jack into the garage because he intended to kill Andrea.

  I reread the transcript of the trial the first few times Westerfield came up for parole, and I wrote vehement letters protesting his release. But since he has served nearly twenty-two years, I knew that this time the parole may well be granted, and that is why I have come back to Oldham-on-the-Hudson.

  * * *

  I AM THIRTY YEARS OLD, live in Atlanta, and work as an investigative reporter with the Atlanta News. The editor in chief, Pete Lawlor, considers it a personal affront if anyone on the staff takes even a yearly vacation, so I expected him to hit the ceiling when I told him I needed a few days off immediately and might need more later.

  “You getting married?”

  I told him that was the last thing on my mind.

  “Then what’s up?”

  I had not told anyone at the newspaper anything about my personal life, but Pete Lawlor is one of those people who seemed to know everything about everybody. Thirty-one years old, balding, and always fighting to get off those ten extra pounds, he was probably the smartest man I’ve ever met. Six months after I’d started at the News and covered the story of a murdered teenager, he said in an offhand manner, “That must have been a tough one for you to write. I know about your sister.”

  He didn’t expect a response, nor did I give him one, but I felt his empathy. It did help. It had been an emotionally wrenching assignment.

  “Andrea’s killer is coming up for parole. I’m afraid he may get it this time, and I want to see if there’s
anything I can do to stop it.”

  Pete leaned back in his chair. He always wore an open-necked shirt and a sweater. Sometimes I’ve wondered if he even owns a jacket. “How long has he served?”

  “Almost twenty-two years.”

  “How many times has he come up for parole?”

  “Twice.”

  “Any problems while he was in prison?”

  I felt like a schoolgirl being grilled. “None that I know of.”

  “Then he’ll probably get out.”

  “I expect he will.”

  “So why bother?”

  “Because I must.”

  Pete Lawlor doesn’t believe in wasting either time or words. He didn’t ask any more questions. He just nodded. “Okay. When’s the hearing?”

  “The hearing is next week. I get to speak to someone on the staff of the parole board on Monday.”

  He turned back to the paperwork on his desk, effectively dismissing me. “Go ahead,” he said. But, as I turned away, he added, “Ellie, you’re not as tough as you think you are.”

  “Yes, I am.” I didn’t bother to thank him for the time off.

  That was yesterday. The next day, Saturday, I flew from Atlanta to the Westchester County Airport and rented a car.

  I could have stayed at a motel in Ossining, near Sing Sing, the prison where Andrea’s killer has been incarcerated. Instead I drove fifteen miles further to my old hometown, Oldham-on-the-Hudson, and managed to find the quaint Parkinson Inn that I vaguely remembered as a place where we sometimes went for lunch or dinner.

  The Inn was obviously flourishing. On this chilly Saturday afternoon in October, the tables in the dining room were filled with casually dressed people, mostly twosomes and family groups. I felt a moment of acute nostalgia. This is the way I remembered my early life, the four of us having lunch here on Saturday, and then sometimes Dad would drop Andrea and me at the movies. She’d be meeting her friends, but she didn’t mind that I tagged along.

  “Ellie is a good kid, she’s not a snitch,” she’d say. If the movie got out early enough, we’d all rush to the garage-hideout where Andrea and Joan and Margy and Dottie would share a quick cigarette before going home.

  Andrea had an answer ready if Daddy said he smelled smoke on her clothing. “Can’t help it. We had pizza after the movie and a lot of other people were smoking.” Then she’d wink at me.

  The Inn had only eight guest rooms, but one was still available, a spartan space containing a bed with an iron headboard, a two-drawer bureau, a night table, and a chair. It faced east, the direction where the house we lived in was located. The sun that afternoon was uncertain, slipping in and out of clouds, one moment blinding, the next completely concealed.

  I stood at the window, staring out, and it seemed to me I was seven years old again and watching my father holding the music box.

  7

  I REMEMBER THAT afternoon as the defining day of my life. Saint Ignatius of Loyola said, “Give us the child until he is seven years old, and I will show you the man.”

  I assume that he meant the woman as well. I stood there, quiet as a mouse, watching the father I worshiped, sobbing and hugging my dead sister’s picture against his chest, while the fragile sounds from that music box drifted around him.

  I look back and wonder if it ever occurred to me to run to him, throw my arms around him, absorb his grief and let his mingle with mine. But the fact is, even then I understood that his grief was unique and that no matter what I did, I could never really ease his pain.

  Lieutenant Edward Cavanaugh, decorated officer of the New York State Police, hero of a dozen life-threatening situations, had not been able to prevent the murder of his beautiful, headstrong, fifteen-year-old daughter, and his agony could not be shared with a fellow mourner, however close by blood.

  Over the years I came to understand that when grief is not shared, blame is passed around like a hot potato instead, thrust from one to the other, eventually sticking to the hands of the one least able to throw it away.

  In this case, that person was me.

  Detective Longo lost no time following up on my violation of Andrea’s trust. I had given him two leads, two possible suspects: Rob Westerfield, who used his stunning, sultry, rich playboy persona to turn Andrea’s head, and Paul Stroebel, the shy and backward teenager with the crush on the gorgeous band member who had enthusiastically cheered his game-winning performances on the football field.

  Root, root, root for the home team—no one was better at that than Andrea!

  As Andrea’s autopsy results were being studied, and preparations made for her interment in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, next to the paternal grandparents I only dimly remembered, Detective Longo was interrogating both Rob Westerfield and Paul Stroebel. Both protested that they had not seen Andrea on Thursday evening, nor had either made plans to meet her.

  Paul was working in the gas station, and although it closed at seven, he claimed he had stayed longer in the shop to complete some minor repairs on several cars. Rob Westerfield swore that he had gone to the local cinema, and even produced a ticket stub as proof.

  I remember standing at Andrea’s grave, a single long-stemmed rose in my hand, and after the prayers had been offered, being told to place it on Andrea’s casket. I remember, too, that I felt dead inside, as dead and still as Andrea had been when I knelt over her in the hideout.

  I wanted to tell her how sorry I was that I had told her secret about her meetings with Rob, and with equal passion I wanted to tell her that I was sorry I hadn’t told about them the minute we knew she had left Joan’s but not reached home. But of course I said nothing. I dropped the flower, but it slid off the casket, and before I could retrieve it, my grandmother stepped past me to place her flower on the casket and her foot crushed my rose into the muddy earth.

  A moment later we filed out of the cemetery, and in that crowd of solemn faces I caught angry stares directed at me. The Westerfields stayed away, but the Stroebels were there, standing on either side of Paulie, their shoulders touching his. I remember the feeling of blame surrounding me, overwhelming me, choking me. It was a feeling I have never lost.

  I had tried to tell them that when I was kneeling at Andrea’s body, I heard someone breathing, but they were skeptical because I was so hysterical and frightened. My own breathing when I ran from the woods was as labored and rattling as it became during my bouts of croup. But over the years I have been awakened many times by the same nightmare: I am kneeling over Andrea’s body, slipping in her blood and listening to the harsh, animal-like breathing and high-pitched giggle of a predator.

  I know with the instinct of fear that has saved humankind from extinction that Rob Westerfield has a beast lurking inside him, and if he is freed, he will strike again.

  8

  WHEN I FELT tears stinging the back of my eyes, I turned away from the window, reached for my backpack, and tossed it on the bed. I almost smiled as I unpacked, realizing that I had a nerve to even mentally criticize Pete Lawlor’s casual wardrobe. I was wearing jeans and a turtleneck sweater. In the bag, besides a nightshirt and underwear, I was carrying only a long wool skirt and two other sweaters. My favorite shoes are clogs, which is just as well because I’m five feet nine. My hair has kept its sandy shade. I wear it long and either twist it up or clip it at the back of my neck.

  Pretty, feminine Andrea resembled Mother. I have my father’s strong features, which work better on a man than on a woman. No one would ever call me the star on the Christmas tree.

  Tantalizing aromas were drifting up from the dining room, and I realized I was hungry. I’d caught an early flight from Atlanta and, of course, had to be at the airport well ahead of departure time. The food service—excuse me, beverage service—had consisted of a cup of bad coffee.

  It was one-thirty when I went down to the dining room, and the lunch crowd was thinning out. It was easy to get a table, a small booth near the blazing fire. I didn’t realize how chilled I felt until the warmth penetr
ated my hands and feet.

  “May I get you a beverage?” asked the waitress, a smiling gray-haired woman with the name tag “Liz.”

  Why not? I thought, and ordered a glass of red wine.

  When she came back, I told her I’d decided on the onion soup, and she said that it was always a favorite.

  “Have you been here long, Liz?” I asked.

  “Twenty-five years. Hard for me to believe.”

  She might have waited on us years ago. “Still fix peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure. Did you used to have them?”

  “Yes, I did.” I was immediately sorry I’d mentioned it. The last thing in the world I wanted was for old-timers to realize I was the “sister of the girl who was murdered twenty-three years ago.”

  But Liz was obviously used to having passersby mention having dined at the Inn years ago, and without further comment she left the table.

  I sipped the wine and gradually began to remember specific occasions when we’d been here as a family, back when we were a family. Birthdays, usually, and stopping for dinner after we’d gone for drives. The last time we came here, was, I think, during my grandmother’s visit after she’d lived in Florida for nearly a year. I remember that my father picked her up at the airport and met us here. We had a cake for her. The pink lettering on the white frosting read, “Welcome home, Grandma.”

  She began to cry. Happy tears. The last happy tears ever shed in our family. And that thought wrenched me back to the tears shed the day of Andrea’s funeral and the terrible public confrontation between my mother and father.

  9

  AFTER THE FUNERAL, we went back to the house. The women in the neighborhood had put together a spread, and a lot of people were there: our old neighbors from Irvington, my mother’s new friends from our parish, her Wednesday bridge club members, and her fellow volunteers from the hospital. Many of my father’s longtime friends and fellow officers were there as well, some of them in uniform and on duty, able to pause only long enough to offer brotherly solace.