We Were Never Here(65)



Dear Ms. Schmidt,

Thank you for your inquiry. To answer your questions, Westmoor does not accept insurance and therefore serves a very selective community. We work closely with the Wisconsin court system to identify minors who would benefit from our inpatient services; families cannot check a patient in without a referral. Westmoor’s mission of providing a safe, supportive environment for children with severe behavioral issues is unique in the state, although we see similar models in other regions.



    “Severe behavioral issues”—so it was true. Young Kristen was diagnosed with this as a child. But surely she didn’t spend weeks or months in an institute?

But then my eyes widened:

In regards to Dr. Brightside’s history, she has seen patients at Westmoor exclusively since the center opened in 1995. She is not in private practice, and full-time resident patients at Westmoor are her only clients (in addition to group therapy with parents, siblings, etc.). I’ve attached a PDF of our brochure. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.



And there was my answer.

A handful of years before she befriended me outside an econ class, Kristen—Kristen who felled Sebastian with a lamp and then calmly hatched a plan to sink his body, Kristen who swung a bottle of wine so hard it reshaped Paolo’s skull—had been locked up in a center for emotionally disturbed youths.

Shit.





CHAPTER 27


    LOS ANGELES FAMILY OFFERS $1 MILLION REWARD IN HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION

The family of Paolo García, a 24-year-old backpacker whose remains were found in a remote Chilean village, is now offering a $1 million payout to anyone with information that leads to an arrest.

While holding a framed picture of her son, Fernanda García pleaded for justice for him. Fernanda says on April 25, she received a phone call informing her that the body of her son, Paolo, had been discovered by local police in the Elqui Valley, a mountainous region in northern Chile. That call would shatter her life.

“It breaks my heart that he was taken away from us,” Fernanda said.

Fernanda and her husband, Rodrigo García, CEO of the Los Angeles real estate development firm Castillo Development, expressed hope that a $1 million payout would incentivize witnesses to come forward. García was last spotted at a crowded restaurant in Puerto Natales, a port town in southern Chile, on the night of March 30.

“Someone must have seen something,” Rodrigo said. “The money won’t bring him back, but he deserves justice.”

     Almost four weeks passed between when Paolo was last seen and when his body was found on April 25 in a shallow grave about 25 meters from the road in Arroyito, a sparsely populated agricultural town in northern Chile, according to reports. Police confirmed that an autopsy had been performed, but no additional information on the cause or time of death has been released.

Paolo was described as a fun-loving and gregarious young man who was finally fulfilling a dream of traveling the world. Born in California, Paolo grew up in Barcelona, Spain, where he enjoyed playing tennis and cooking for friends and family. At the age of 16, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and his parents say that beating the disease left him determined to travel and engage with people all over the world.

If you have information that could help detectives, call Los Angeles Police or text the tip to 637274.



I was at work, digging into my sad salad and scanning the news almost on autopilot, when I saw the headline. My stomach roiled, threatening to expel the limp greens I’d already swallowed. Shit. This was bad; this was very, very bad. My heart beat faster and faster as I read, badum badum badum, until it seemed to be convulsing like a person in the final throes of suffocation.

Nothing like a million dollars to jog people’s memories. God, there were so many potential witnesses whose paths had braided with ours, a big tangled knot: The cars we passed on our predawn drive home to the hotel. The waiter at the patio bar, our fellow patrons, the bartender who watched me freak out and blubber and screech, in English, that my wallet had been stolen. Christ, we were nothing if not memorable. Oh, plus—whoever had turned a light on as we clanked the shovels and flashlights back into the shed. The whistling custodian who took a photo of us in our bathing suits—had he noticed we’d moved his tools? Had the hotel’s housekeeper wondered why the shower curtain was hung up differently? Way to keep a low profile, morons.

    And, Jesus. Tennis player, amateur chef, freaking cancer survivor? This made Paolo real; this made what we’d done, even in the name of self-defense and -preservation, more odious. Until now, I could see Paolo as subhuman—Sebastian too—and lock them in a mental jail cell: BAD MEN. Not: bad men with hobbies and loved ones and pasts. Nausea bolted up through me.

“You signed up for yoga, right?” The Slack message from Priya felt like an intrusion, far too mundane for the emergency on hand.

I was about to bow out, but hesitated. Normalcy—I had to maintain it, had to go through the motions lest anyone think anything was wrong. I had a schedule to keep; Aaron and I were grabbing dinner after my class. And anyway, Drishti Yoga had served as my temple after Cambodia, the key to calming me down—better to vinyasa than to sit at home, reading the article over and over. I closed the browser window. “I’ll be there.”

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