January 27, 1999
Dear Mom,
I went to the precinct today. I didn't tell Dad, just found Detective Raglan's number on the fridge and called him, but not before tearing it down. It doesn't belong there, next to the grocery list and pictures of family. Those things are everyday, and this is not. It never will be "just part of daily life." I refuse to let it become normal to not have you around. I put it on the cork board instead, with all the other numbers. Now it's in between our grouchy old neighbor and the cockroach exterminator. I think it fits there.
Anyways, Detective Raglan said I should come down to the precinct around five o'clock, so I did. I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked in, never having been in a police station before, but it was surprisingly tranquil. It wasn't like there were criminals in handcuffs everywhere or anything, just a lot of people sitting at desks doing paperwork.
He didn't spot me at first, but I recognized him immediately. As the harbinger of terrible news, I am certain I will never be able to erase his face from my memory. He took me down the hallway and into some sort of lounge and told me to take a seat. He explained that they had found your body in Washington Heights with a stab wound in your abdomen. Their medical examiner had declared it cause of death. No one had seen or heard anything, and even Dad didn't know what you were doing up there. Then he said that they had shelved your case. At first I thought he meant they had found your killer, but he gently told me that it had been random gang violence.
Random gang violence. Random. That's what this all comes down to? As I was writing these letters, I was waiting for the one where I could tell you they had caught the guy, the one where I could assure he was rotting in jail for twenty years to life for his crime. Preferably life.
I told him he couldn't shelve it, and that he hadn't even looked at the court files Dad offered to give him in case it was related, and that even if it had to do with a gang he still hadn't arrested anyone, but he just looked at me with steely eyes and said it was probably best if I go now.
How can they do that, Mom? How can they just file away a case like that under gang violence with no evidence to back it up? Some people have said the criminal justice system is unfair or dysfunctional, but I never believed that could be true because good people like you worked in it. Now...I don't even know anymore. But I promise, I'll never stop looking, asking questions, trying to find answers. It's the least you deserve.
You deserved to live, Mom. You deserved to live. And I refuse to give up on finding the person that took that away from you. From us.
Love,
Kate