Katie Beers (6 page)

Sidney was dressed in a pin-striped suit, contrasting striped shirt and impossibly patterned tie. From behind his enormous black square-framed glasses, he answered authoritatively, “I can tell you they are free to go; they are suspects like everyone else.

“I think it’s fair to say that until they find the girl, dead or alive, they will never be able to prove our clients did it, John or Sal.”

Andrew, clad in a different variation of pin stripes upon pin stripes added with conviction, “John and Sal both are concerned about the well-being of the child. They both want to see her safely returned.” He nodded his head for emphasis.

Then Sal seemed to speak out of turn. Andrew was too late to reel in his client this time. The words were coming out of Sal’s sweat beaded lips.

“Let me say this again—and let me say this
explicively
. The man, John Esposito, is,” he paused, “I have no problem with him and I don’t think he is capable of doing any horrendous act like this. Yous may want to press him in the papers, but that’s my opinion.”

He couldn’t be stopped.

“Never heard of him doing anything to a twelve-year-old child. Never heard that till yesterday on the news.”

Someone, a reporter this time, changed the subject back to Marilyn.

“The only reason I ever tolerated her is because of my wife. I never really cared for Marilyn—I had her number from years ago and I always told my wife ‘you be careful of that woman because one of these days she’s gonna turn around and back stab ya.’ Howeva yous fellas wanna write it up in the papers fine, I have nothing to hide.”

Sensing his client’s bravado beginning to swirl anew, the senior Siben then announced with a booming voice, “Let’s bring this to a close. Two questions: Do you know where Katie is now?” he asked, playing journalist.

“No I have no idea,” Sal said innocently.

“Did you have anything to do directly or indirectly with her kidnapping?”

“No sir.”

The press, though, wasn’t taking direction.

What do you think happened to her?

“It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery.”

So you think any of this has anything to do with her disappearance— this conflict between you and Ms. Beers?

He stammered, “N..no, it don’t have nothing to do with her disappearance.”

John Esposito’s house on Saxon Avenue was next on the list of venues to shoot for the evening newscast. The house was peculiar as its design was a patchwork of brick, split cedar and partially painted shingles. The apparent work of an indecisive builder, it was a collage of mismatched architectural features such as columns and port windows. The builder’s work was only further muddled by the homeowners who had added in the front yard a small statue of Saint Francis inexplicably paired with a plastic flamingo and stone lions. If they were intended to convey class, they failed miserably.

Is Mr. Esposito here?

Surprisingly, a plainclothes cop at the door spoke without
hesitation, even though he seemed aware the camera was rolling.

“Mr. Esposito is here, but he wishes no contact with the press.”

From the front door, dead ferns were visible on the sills inside the picture windows. Tony and I noticed a brown shingled two-story garage in the back, behind the main house, shot video of it, but didn’t pay it much attention.

Neighbors back at the Inghilleri house, however, were offering a view of the missing girl’s life that was more difficult to ignore. Mike Bergo, a heavyset young man in a Georgetown University sweatshirt, was one of the first to give reporters reason to believe that all was not well in Katie’s world—even before she disappeared.

“Katie’s a great kid, a really good kid. The family though, I do
not
like them,” he said, gesturing to the Inghilleri house.

“Screaming, yelling all hours of the night. It’s like constant; cops are here
all
the time.” Such bluntness is rare on camera. People usually don’t like to offend their neighbors, but rules of civility did not seem to apply in this neighborhood.

What do you think happened to Katie?

“I don’t know—I thought she had run away at first too, but I heard about the phone call so I have doubts. Katie,” he added, gazing directly into the camera lens, “I hope you are alright.”

You think she’d want to run away from this family?

He didn’t hesitate, “
I
would.”

Did Sal abuse her?

“She’s real quiet when we discuss Sal. I just hope they find Katie—I really do.”

The still images of Katie, provided by Linda, defied the picture that was being painted by those who knew her. In the photographs, Katie looked neat, clean, happy. In one, she wore a black dress with a floral patterned collar. The smile looked authentic. Where in the world could this little girl be? I felt it gnawing at me like few stories ever had. Each day that passed without a sign of a missing child was another day closer to an anguished ending I didn’t want to have to write.

Big John came down to my cage regularly to see how I was doing. It seemed like once a day. But without a window, without a clock, without sleep, I just couldn’t keep track of time.

“Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

At these moments, he was the gentleman I had known my whole life. I asked him for another blanket. I was shivering.

“You are going to have to get back up in here,” he said sheepishly, tapping his dirty nails on the coffin-sized box on the wall.

“Pleeezzee Big John,” I begged, “let me stay in here so I can move!” I could just barely sit up in the coffin-box, and I couldn’t stand up without crouching over.

When I was in there earlier, I noticed that there was a chain attached to the wall with a padlock on it. There was also some sort of contraption in the area my head would go. It seemed to me that it might be some sort of soundproofing box with a hole on one side for a neck. It was terrifying. What could that possibly be for?

There were also handcuffs attached to the walls where my hands would lay. When Big John was gone, and I was certain he was gone, I scanned my surroundings for any way out. A television monitor in the corner of the room showed video of the outside of John’s house; it was aimed at the driveway. Some keys sat on the shelf to the right of the monitor. I stood on a milk crate and reached for the key, then climbed up into the coffin-box and hid the key under my pillow. That’s when I heard the drill again. I knew I had seconds to jump down out of the box and appear as if I hadn’t moved. He dropped a blanket along with a change of clothes in the box.

“Ever have sex before?” he blurted out.

I tried to hide my concern about why he wanted to know, but told him a little of what happened with Sal. I had never told him before.

“Oh, so you are experienced!” He seemed excited by the notion.

At first, I didn’t know if I had said the wrong thing, and then, I was sure I had. Big John told me to undress and change into the clothes he
bought for me—a nightgown with boy’s underwear.

“I’ll change later,” I said.

Big John didn’t like that, and he wasn’t about to argue. He grabbed me by the arm and took my clothes off for me and told me he was going to “pleasure” me.

He ordered me to stand up on the milk crate. I don’t know why. Maybe he wanted to elevate me. He pulled down my underwear and I remember feeling pain when his finger nail scraped inside of me. I remember thinking how disgusting he was for then putting his finger in his mouth with a very happy look on his face. After a few minutes of John “pleasuring” me, he announced as if he had suddenly remembered something, to lie still on the floor naked, making it look as if I were dead. He said he would take a picture and leave it for the cops anonymously, and that way they would stop looking for me.

This meant one thing to me: John was trying to kill me.

“No way,” I snapped back.

After this I rarely slept. Adrenaline. I was sure that if I slept, he could come down one time and that one time that I didn’t hear the drill, he would kill me.

Big John backed off. “Okay, Katie, we’ll do it another day.”

He also saved the worst for another day.

I’m not sure which day it was. My sense of time is off. It must have been a few days in. But my sense
is
quite clear that it happened more than once. The memories, though, are together as one.

John would arrive in the chamber with a blank look on his face. His eyes would never meet mine. Nice John was gone and in his place, Sadistic John. That’s when my breathing would begin to quicken and my stomach turn. He made me lay down on the floor in the bigger room. As I stared at the cork-covered ceiling, I think my arms were up, and I thought about how gross it was to be lying on that dirty floor and how I just wanted to get it over with. Get it done. Whatever I needed to get it done quickly, I would do. Fighting, I figured, would only make it take longer. Fighting with him might arouse him more, he might like it better. Maybe if he realized I would just submit, maybe he wouldn’t want to do it anymore.

That made no difference. Big John had come with a purpose and would proceed to use my tiny body until he was finished and drained and
I was covered in his putrid sweat and fluids. He undressed me and laid me on the floor. He got on top of me. He was a super skinny man. I was going from one extreme to another. From Sal, a fat slob to this, skin and bones. It disgusted me. I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes open to be aware of what was happening around me. I focused on the ceiling. I just wanted to know when he was done and I was off the hook.

It seemed to take a long time, and then there was silence. Big John got himself dressed, locked me back in the little box, chaining me around the neck. He tried to use the handcuffs too, but my skinny hands slipped through the cuffs. He left with a few words about how he’d be back soon with more food or anything else I needed.

There were times he would come and rape me and other times he would bring me a toy from his toy closet and food. Now, I would describe it as a split personality. Sometimes he would transform while he was there, in front of me. He would come bring me a toy or juice and then he would rape me.

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe Big John was doing this to me.

In the days that followed, there was no morning debate surrounding my assignment. The child’s disappearance was front page news, a “must cover.” Wednesday, December 30
^th
was a particularly poignant day. Katie would be turning ten years old
, if
she were still alive.

I knocked on the Inghilleris’ wooden front door, again. The Mylar sign was still hanging, as were Christmas lights. An inflatable snow man stood on the front stoop. Yellow ribbons were now tied and strewn haphazardly on the bare branches of trees and shrubs around the front of the house.

Sal was getting out of a beaten up sedan with his aviator glasses dangling from his mouth. Before I could even ask for Linda, he garbled something about her being in the bathroom. I knocked anyway and a young woman with a Russian accent and cigarette smoke billowing out from behind her back opened the door only wide enough to say bluntly, “We don’t want to talk to anyone.” She then shut the door with a creak. I pressed the issue, literally pressing my cheek against the door.

“Well, maybe Linda would want to know what we know—that there are reports of sightings upstate.”

I had no idea if the reports were true, but I had a New York State Police report in my hand indicating that a girl fitting Katie’s description had been seen in the Hyde Park vicinity one hundred miles from the arcade. The girl was seen “in the company of two men.” The door remained closed. I remained determined.

“Linda?” I spoke into the door. I could hear a slide lock engage on the other side.

Undeterred, Tony and I headed to West Islip—where Katie was born and spent most of her life. We videotaped the outside of the house on Higbie Drive and walked across the street to a strip mall. The Q.T. Laundromat advertised free coffee and tea in the window alongside a missing child flyer with Katie’s picture on it. Inside, I found a long row of industrial-sized washers and dryers lining the walls and Trudy, a woman of
a certain age wearing a royal blue sweat suit and an abundance of thick gold chains around her neck. Trudy also had thick black eyeliner and wiry strands of grey peeking out amongst her long auburn hair. She was a colorful sight who gladly answered reporters’ questions. We were not the only crew there and microphones were propped before her weathered but pleasant face.

“She came in here for a number of years and did all the house chores for her family.” Trudy said.

She painted a bleak picture of little Katie’s life. “She would get up early and do the chores for her family, get them breakfast. She didn’t have any time for herself. She was a little girl growing up too soon—didn’t have any friends of her own.”

Trudy had some good grains of information for reporters desperate for details. She didn’t know Katie’s parents well. No, actually she didn’t know them at all. She understood the people who lived opposite them were elderly folks who always wondered why Katie looked so shabby—and so terribly skinny.

“She’d come in with a little handbag with her change. And sit right there. I’d help her with the wash. She’d always have a big load—first for her mother and then her grandmother. I felt sorry for her.

“She used to drink coffee. I’d ask ‘Katie, why aren’t you playing with your friends?’ She would say ‘I don’t have any friends.’ Probably ?cause the house was filthy.”

The strip mall housed an eclectic assortment of Suffolk county essentials: a beauty salon, a delicatessen, a stationery store, pizza parlor, porcelain doll store, a dry cleaner, a florist and a paintball supply store.

I went door-to-door with cameraman in tow. Tony didn’t have an impatient bone in his body. A perfectionist for just the right lighting and camera angle, he was tireless. He and I were young and eager and knew we needed a scoop in the story that was putting our Long Island beat on the national map.