Jamie loved to sleep late. He worked at the supermarket from eleven until three o’clock. Marge had his breakfast ready at ten o’clock. When he was finished, she reminded him to go upstairs and brush his teeth. Jamie came back, gave her a wide smile and waited for her to say, “Very nice,” before he bolted out the door to go to “my job,” as he proudly referred to it. It was a twenty-minute walk to Acme. As she watched him head down the block, Marge was aware that something was nagging at the back of her mind.
When she went upstairs to make his bed, she remembered what it was. Jamie was wearing his old scuffed sneakers, not the new ones she had bought for him last week. What on earth made him do that? she asked herself as she began to tidy up his room. And where are the new sneakers?
She walked over to his bathroom. He had showered, and the towels and washcloth were in the hamper just where she had taught him to put them. But there was no sign of the new sneakers or the pants he had worn yesterday.
He wouldn’t throw them away, she told herself, as she went back to Jamie’s room and looked around. It was with both relief and dismay that she picked up his tangled belongings where he had left them on the floor of his closet.
The socks and sneakers were soaking wet. So was the lower half of his pants.
Marge was still holding them when she heard a piercing scream from the backyard. She ran to the window to see Aline leaping into the pool and her parents rushing out from the house.
She watched as Steve Dowling jumped into the pool next to Aline and came up carrying Kerry with Aline steps behind him. Horrified, Marge watched as he laid Kerry down and started pounding on her chest, shouting, “Call an ambulance!” In a matter of minutes, police cars and an ambulance were racing up the driveway.
Then Marge saw a policeman pull Steve away from Kerry as the crew from the ambulance knelt beside her.
Marge turned away from the window when she saw the officer get back on his feet and start shaking his head.
It took a long minute before she realized she was still holding Jamie’s pants, socks and sneakers. She knew without being told how they had gotten wet. Why would he have started to go down the steps to the pool and then come back out? And what are these stains?
She had to throw the pants, socks and sneakers in the washer and dryer immediately.
Marge didn’t know why every bone in her body was screaming at her to do that, but without understanding why, she understood that she was protecting Jamie.
? ? ?
The wail of the police and ambulance sirens had drawn the neighbors out of their homes. The word spread quickly. “Kerry Dowling drowned in her pool.” Many of the neighbors, some with coffee cups in their hands, hurried to the back of Marge’s yard where they could see what was happening.
Marge’s neighbors lived in the bigger houses surrounding her modest home. Thirty years ago she and Jack had bought their small Cape Cod on this curving, heavily treed property. Their neighbors had been like them, hardworking people in similar homes. Over the last twenty years the neighborhood had gone upscale. One by one the neighbors had sold their small homes to developers for double their value. Marge was the only one who had decided to stay. Now she was surrounded by more expensive homes, and the people who lived in them—doctors, lawyers and Wall Street businessmen—were all well-to-do. They were all pleasant to her, but it wasn’t like the old days when she and Jack had been good friends with their neighbors.
Marge joined her neighbors and listened as some said they had heard the music from the party and seen a number of cars parked in the driveway and on the block. But they agreed that the kids who had gone to the party hadn’t been very noisy and were all gone by eleven o’clock.
Marge slipped away back to her house.
I can’t talk to anyone now, she thought. I need time to think, she said to herself. The clunk-clunk sound of Jamie’s sneakers in the washing machine made her even more frantic.
She left the house for the garage, then pushed the button to open the garage door and backed out of her driveway. Careful to avoid making eye contact with any of her neighbors, she pulled away from the crowd of people gathered in her backyard and the increasing number of police who were on the patio and in the yard behind the Dowling home.
5
When Steve pulled Kerry’s body out of the water, he laid her on the ground, frantically tried to resuscitate her and shouted to Aline to dial 911. He continued to try to force Kerry to breathe, stopping only when the first police car arrived and an officer pushed him aside and took over.
Agonizing and praying, Steve, Fran and Aline watched as the police officer knelt over Kerry, continuing to administer CPR.
Less than a minute later an ambulance came screeching up the driveway and paramedics jumped out. Steve, Fran and Aline looked on as one of them knelt over Kerry to take over the CPR. Her lips were closed and her slender arms extended away from her chest. The red cotton sundress was crumpled and soaking wet on her body. They stared down at Kerry unbelieving. Her hair was still dripping down on her shoulders.
“It would be easier for all of you if you went inside,” they were told by one of the police officers. Silently Aline and her parents walked toward the house. They went inside and huddled at the window.
Working swiftly, the paramedics attached leads to Kerry’s chest to transmit her vitals to the local emergency room at Valley Hospital. The attending physician quickly confirmed what everyone at the scene already believed. “Flatlined.”
The medic who had taken over the CPR application noticed a trace amount of blood on Kerry’s neck. Following his suspicion he lifted her head and saw a gaping wound at the base of her skull.
He showed it to the police officer in charge at the scene, who promptly called the Prosecutor’s Office.
6
Homicide detective Michael Wilson, of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, was on call that day. He was settled with the newspapers on a chaise lounge at his condominium complex’s swimming pool in Washington Township. Just starting to doze, he was startled by the ring of his cell phone, but quickly became alert. He listened as he was given his next case. “Teenage girl found dead in swimming pool at 123 Werimus Pines Road in Saddle River. Parents were away when she drowned. Local police report signs of a party at the property. Unexplained head trauma.”
Saddle River borders Washington Township, he thought. I can drive there in ten minutes. He got up and started walking back to his unit, the feeling of chlorine on his skin. The first thing I’ll do is shower. I might be working for the next two hours, twelve hours or twenty-four-plus hours straight.
He grabbed a freshly laundered long-sleeved sports shirt and khakis from his closet, tossed them on the bed and headed to the bathroom. Ten minutes later he was out of the shower, dressed and on his way to Saddle River.
Wilson knew that at the time he was called, the Prosecutor’s Office also would have dispatched a photographer and a medical examiner to the scene. They would arrive shortly after him.
Saddle River, a borough of just over three thousand residents, was one of the very wealthy communities in the United States. Despite being surrounded by densely populated suburbs, a bucolic atmosphere pervaded the town. Its minimum two-acre zoning for homes and easy access to New York City made it a favorite of Wall Street titans and sports celebrities. Former President Richard Nixon owned a home there toward the end of his life.