Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Before we dive into today's conversation, I want to take a moment to thank this episode's sponsor, Audible. You know how much I love a good story. I write them, I read them, and sometimes when I can't sit down long enough to open a book, I listen to them. Lately, I've been listening to Audible while I walk, travel, or even sometimes while cooking dinner. There's something about hearing a story perform that makes it come alive in a different way.
I just finished. Okay, Julie Chan Is Dead by Lian Zhang, an Alice Feeney book, Blue Beautiful, Ugly, and the latest Linley book by Elizabeth George. So I'm gonna be honest.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: This is how I do it.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: I get a book both on Kindle and on Audible and I go back and forth listening to both. So when I'm driving in the car or, or with my son at some activity, I will listen to audiobooks. And then when I'm home, I read them on Kindle. And Audible makes it easy to switch back and forth in the app.
Honestly, I do it every time. I just, I want to keep the book going while I'm driving. And so I just switch to the audiobook and then when I get home, I switch back to the Kindle because honestly, I can read faster than I can listen.
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[00:01:46] Speaker B: Hi and welcome to the Politics of Justice. It's me, your host, Amy Austin. It is time to get to Caged.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: So
[00:01:59] Speaker B: let me say this. I've had the teen revelation that I've shared in a different video that I have a lot of thoughts about the thriller genre just being centered around the violence of men.
But all that said, let's, let's get, let's get on to Caged. I've been really looking forward to talking to this, talking about this book because, well, for a number of reasons. Let me say this, this book has what I consider one of the two best first chapters I've ever written.
And second note is actually this book is the. And maybe the first chapter plus some other part. I don't remember how much I had to send was the writing that won me the 2025 mystery writers of America Barbara Neely Scholarship so not only don't I think it's a great first chapter, other committee of people thought it was a great first chapter.
And it, it's I think this, by the time I wrote this book, this may have been like the fifth or sixth book I've written. I'd actually have to look at the order. It's like book.
It is probably book five, six or seven. I can't speak on that but it is the first time I think I really hit my writing stride and I was able to like summon, I guess, I don't know, amuse to tell what to me was a very compelling story.
So with all that, oh, also this book.
So for the notes for judged and ransomed the if you're on Goodreads or have a Kindle, you can see the notes and highlights in the book. This one haven't uploaded yet because I haven't finished it honestly. But by the time this series, this particular book ends in the Politics of Justice series, there will be the notes and highlights will be up on Goodreads. So and I'll figure out how to explain. I'll leave a note as to how to do that because they're in my book and I know when you upload them to Goodreads, readers can see them. I just don't remember how because I have been delinquent and haven't done it in such a long time to be fair.
Moving on. So this book starts with an epigraph which reading it now, I have thoughts. But at the time I wrote this book, in 2000, whatever, this is where I was thought wise. It says genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights. It's Hegel, the philosopher. George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, to be precise.
And let me say this, I think the theme of this book is that two things can be right, but the wrong is not fixed.
Okay, so this is the chapter one that won the award. I don't think I should read the whole thing because it's long, although I do find it quite compelling personally. But what I'll do is I'll include a link in the show notes so you can actually listen to the first chapter in audio because somebody else read it.
Dan McGowan actually read it and he'd probably do a better job than I can. But then you could read listen to that and then we'll come to a conclusion. But I will read the first couple of lines. It's chapter one. Stephanie Wells It's January 13, 1999.
And it says, this was going to be the day I told my mama the truth. I'd waited until she stopped wailing. I waited until the cemetery people threw dirt on that motherfucker. I waited until limo we had no money for slipped and slid through the snowstorm to that man's house on East 88th Street. I waited till the fake ass church waters left. I waited until our ancient next door neighbor finished grabbing all the leftovers and plastic taking to her house we couldn't fit in our refrigerator.
So I think, okay, I'm gonna be honest, like I the biggest influence at the time, not the time I wrote this. It's hard to know. I'd have to think about like the sort of monoculture of America before we split it off into like 50 billion cable streaming channels and YouTube and TikTok and whatever.
But at the time I wrote this, Oprah Winfrey had a very compelling narrative about child abuse.
And I don't. This is way after she probably had a disclosure. But there subsequent shows she spent a lot of time talking about people disclosing child sexual abuse.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: And
[00:07:19] Speaker B: I think that was partial inspiration for this chapter because after what, after this guy dies, I don't remember how he died, but it's her stepfather or a living guy. This is when Stephanie Wells discloses to her mother that he had abused her.
And her mother does all the things that you're not supposed to do as a parent.
But it's a thing that I've heard of from unfortunately other people I know who've gone through this abuse their mother. 99% of the time they tell, they disclose. Their mother goes through like a cycle of blame and denial upon the disclosure. And it's like blame denial, blame denial, blame denial. And the child is really trying hard to tell the truth. And like all the, like, after school specials and everything is like, tell the truth, disclose, disclose. But what I guess they don't address is that disclosure is like not like 99.9% of the time. Well, maybe, I don't know. Let me not say this because I, this is not an experience. The disclosure is often not met with some, like, outpouring of apology and love. It's met with this blame and this, this, this sort of blame issue.
And that's, that's, that's where we are the chapter. And it's only at the end of the chapter when Stephanie discloses how he talked to her, that she said, she said, my mom, she, she said, be sad. But like, if I'm not gonna get banned and canceled from every video service. I can't repeat these things. Which is deeply ironic on many, many levels.
So she says what he said. And she said my mama flew across the room like a scared pigeon in the park. Her hands hit my face like sharply beating birds wings. And I raised my own to protect myself. Don't you say that again. Ever. She screamed and cried. Suddenly she wasn't hitting me anymore. I dared to lift my lids. Fear and truth and dread filled my mother's eyes. She closed them and ran up to one bathroom we'd all shared. The slamming door rattled the entire house. He said those same words to her. I knew then that she believed me.
It's not great. So the other difference about this book is that usually in all the Cayce books I have alternating point of view chapters. So it's somebody, somebody, Casey or Casey, somebody somebody or. But they alternate the protagonist of the book in order to move the story forward.
And in this book is also the first time that the first six or seven chapters are just Stephanie Wells in 1999. And I just wanted to lay down this foundation of who she was before I got into the. The, you know, the. Not the crime because I did a lot of crimes what before I got into the sort of crime and punishment, law and order part of the book.
So chapter two is Stephanie Wells and 1789 and things at home have not gotten crate.
It starts with I needed to go for a walk now that Clark was gone. Sydney was back with her kids. If I didn't stay late after school or find something to do with myself, I ended up watching her rugrats while she went out and had fun. My sister still treated me like I was one of her kids. But I wasn't a little girl anymore. Clark had said he'd made me a woman.
So her sister, I think. I think I should know this better was a teen mom. And for reasons I don't quite remember, the new man in Stephanie's mom's life didn't want them there and. But when he died, she moved back in with the two kids that she had and I assume there's no father around.
I think Stephanie and her mom have sort of come to a sort of detente as it were, where her mom doesn't bother her but also doesn't talk about it. And so Stephanie's left with this sort of burden of having disclosed this horrible thing that happened to her in her own house. A mother who's not off to blame denial train but is in the I Don't call it denial train. Just we're going to ignore it and pretend it didn't happen.
State of mind.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: And
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Stephanie's, I don't know, coping the best way she can.
So in this case, she's just out of the house.
So she, like, she's her alter. Her coping mechanisms are right now leaving the house or just disappearing.
So before
[00:12:32] Speaker A: she,
[00:12:35] Speaker B: she was gonna leave the house, but in the alternative, she decides to, like, watch a movie.
A movie called Jurassic park, which I.
It was. It was really interesting. I. I don't watch movies as much as I used to, but Jurassic park at the time was quite a compelling movie because it's a compelling premise. You know, like, if dinosaurs come to life. I mean, come on, Jeff Goldblum.
But she's so.
Just to set the scene, she's like, okay, she's gonna, like, finally relax. She's back from school. She's gonna watch this movie. She's put her.
Her extra butter. Orville Redenbacher. I hadn't thought about that name in a long time.
In the microwave. It's a fan of microwave popcorn. If it still exists, I actually have no idea.
And she's like, she's gonna get some popcorn. She's like, the movie's coming on. And she said, I love the star. The movie had a little black girl for a kid, and no one ever questioned it. She said, maybe some rich man, rich white man would adopt me, build me an amusement park, save me.
This is a persistent theme in actually many books, not only my own. There's like, people are in. In the mire and the muck, and they're looking for some outside savior.
And, well, as an adult, I discovered there is no outside savior and you have to save yourself. But it's definitely still looking for the outside savior.
So she's ready to, like, get on the couch with her, like, microwave popcorn and watch a movie.
So she said, I. I wrenched open the microwave, snatched out the popcorn, not caring that it burned my thumb. I'd learned to take pain.
So her sister is trying to convince her to go to the basement to watch a movie so that her and her kids can do whatever. I don't know what they're gonna do in the living room.
And not only that, but she's trying to convince Stephanie to move to the basement so that she can have all the upper bedrooms. So my best guess is that the. The. I think in my room, remember, it's like a three bed, one bath. So a lot of the older homes in Cleveland on the east side, we don't know about the west side of. Because I haven't been in many of them or like older eastern or maybe midwestern American homes where they had like three small bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, and a single bathroom. I lived in one of these myself and.
But when I was younger, like in, when I was younger, there was a whole era of like the finished basement where you could turn that into like another room.
And I knew a number of teenagers when they were, when they were separating from their parents.
They, there were some, like, often a teenager, usually a boy would move to like finished or partially finished basement so they could have like a lot of autonomy and a bigger space.
And some of them had like a single toilet or sinks and whatever.
The bathroom situation was dicey.
So.
So her sister's like, you should move down to the basement. She was like, I have two kids. She was like, then one of them can have their own room.
And Stephanie's like, no. And then her sister, who, completely blind, is like, no, hear me out. We can fix stuff nice. There's already a blow up bed down there.
Now what I know, and I think if you learned from chapter one, is that that's where she was assaulted on this blow up bed down in the basement. So the idea of moving down there is not one that's appealing. And I believe her sister doesn't know or didn't remember, didn't hear, forgot, she wasn't in the room at the time of the disclosure. And I don't remember what her sister knew.
So her sister's like, hear me out, we can fix it up. And Stephanie's like, I said no. And she said, I must have screamed because it got real quiet. Even the kids stopped making all kinds of noise.
And she's. Her sister's like, well, what's wrong with you lately? You've been off, you've been off since Clark died, coming and going as you please.
And Stephanie says, I'm glad Clark is dead.
So her sister, who's really quite self involved, is like, you're not even playing with your niece and nephew like you used to.
And Stephanie just ignores her. She gets a cat, she gets a bowl from the cabinet, she puts on, gets her popcorn, she puts on seasoned salt and garlic powder, squeezes the extra butter packet.
And she said, I don't have nothing to say except it's time for my movie. She said, I tossed the toys off the leather couch and I got comfortable and I got lost in a world where fake dinosaurs are the worst thing could ever Happen to a teenage girl.
This is funny, right? When that fat guy from Seinfeld was about to be eaten, the screen froze. She said, I didn't look too far to see my sister standing in the tv, remote in hand, remote in one hand, hip in the other.
And her sister's, like, pushing the.
I don't have a sibling. Because, like, at those that might not have survived her own childhood, but she's doing the thing that I imagine that something which is like, I want something. You're not listening. I'm gonna stop what you're doing so that you can listen to what I want.
And so Stephanie still, like, there's no way in hell I'm sleeping down there.
Her sister says, why? So that why needs to get mama to give her things. Probably worked on her daddy and them Higgins folk, but my last name was Wells, and I wasn't fallen for it.
And she's like. Because I said no. And so they go into this whole, like.
Like, sibling fight about, turn the TV back on. Turn it off, turn it on. Like throwing popcorn. Why aren't you, like, willing to move to the basement?
And this is pretty awful.
So the neighbor behind them apparently has, like, pit bulls or rottweilers, I don't know.
And she said, if you don't stop messing with me, she's going to toss your kids in the backyard behind the house, and they can be dinner for the of pit bulls. And those sisters are rottweilers. She is either way.
So Stephanie, at this point, is just done. She picks up the little boy.
She said, I picked up little Dan from the foreign. Sort of towed him out the back door. I was halfway across the backyard when Sid ran out and rescued her little pup. She says, what in the hell is wrong with you? I leave here for a couple of years and you turn into a serial killer?
And then I guess as close as they were, Mama didn't tell her. I wanted to punch her and cry at the same time. My relaxation was ruined. I needed to get the hell out of the house. Was smothering me.
So she can't be herself at home and comfortable.
And maybe that's ruined forever. Maybe it's ruined forever, but there's nowhere else to go. So she goes down to the park and she meets a guy who she thinks is not that much older than her.
And he sits down on the swings and starts, like, swinging next to her.
And the thing about him, and this is, like, probably explained later in the book a little bit, is that he doesn't do the thing that men and boys usually do. If you're a girl alone in a park and let me tell you from my personal experiences, they will come to you, say something extremely sexually inappropriate that's I guess a come up.
And then you're left uncomfortable and not able to say, stay in the space with you where you are for your own safety.
So this guy named Dion gets on the swing and like starts swinging next to her. And like eventually they have like a little swinging contest and I don't know who wins, but she hops off the swing and he's wearing like a polo shirt with a collar like regular pants, probably khakis.
And seems, because he doesn't make an early sexual innuendo, seems safe. And it's hard to say that because that bar is in hell. But if like this is teenage girl, being a woman's better because I have a getaway car now, although it doesn't always get away.
But being a girl, like I remember like going to parks, I did build the swings, but going to parks and just like out walking in the world, subjected to so many men being extremely inappropriate and predatory.
And I would repeat what they said. But then again video would be struck again, another deep irony.
So it would. So he, for those reasons he seems safe because he introduces himself, he's like, oh, my name is Dion. He's dressed not like a thug.
And she says, steffi. And he says he's really like, hey, how are you doing? And not hey, can we whatever. So he's like, oh, where do you live? And you know, he says, are you hungry?
And she actually is because she didn't actually get to eat the extra butter popcorn.
So he's, she's like, she's like, she knows if she goes home the kids will have eaten the popcorn and probably enjoyed her movie.
So this is where he gets her. Because she's hungry and he's, she says, kinda, but there's not much to eat around here. And he says he got a car. And she said, a car? Nobody had a car who wasn't slinging, which is like selling drugs. I learned that term. I was practicing law actually. But deanne didn't have the shifty eyed look or baggy pants of a drug dealer.
And he says, how you got a car? And he said I was 16.
As if that were enough explanation. Like everyone in the hood got a car when they turned the right age.
And so she says, your parents buy it for you. He says, you could say that he blinked slow. He says, I did my chores and they Got me the car as promised. Then her stomach growled out loud, which is like, you know, what are you gonna. How you hide your hunger when your stomach's growling?
And she's, like, embarrassed. And she's like, my sister and I got into a fight. She's like, stop finishing my popcorn.
And he said, let's go. But he's so casual.
Okay, let me just say this. Nothing bad's gonna happen in this chapter.
Like, prevent you. Unlike chapter one of Ask for Andrea, a book I'm reading now, when a woman gets into a car.
So she's like, you know, in her mind, she knows that getting into a car is not a good idea.
You know, don't talk to strangers is, like, one of the first lessons that we all learn.
And if, like, we all know, don't get into the car, don't go to the second location, we'll still ask you. You want to get in the car and go to a second location. You're like, are we the only ones getting the lesson?
So he says he could sense her hesitation. And he hold out his hand, says, dion Fortune. He recited. He recites his address and phone number, which gives her a sense of safety. And he says, not a stranger anymore.
So he starts walking, and she's like, okay. In her mind, I'm sure she's thinking, okay, I'm not going to necessarily get in the car. But I'm curious because this is like. This is a boy who has a car.
So she, like. She's like.
And who doesn't like a ride? Like, I remember, like, being younger. I didn't get a. I didn't have a car until I was 18, maybe 17.
Okay, now this sounds crazy. 17 or 18, not 100% sure. I don't quite remember that part. I'm at a little school, but before the interim between, like, being old enough to have a car and actually having a car is this gap where, especially if you're not in, like, a city, you feel.
You're like, just you're on foot or using public transportation, and a car seems like the ultimate freedom.
And so she's thinking sort of about that. She's like, I like driving through town. She's like, beat walking or taking the bus. She's like, I liked watching the brick and wood building speed by. The pattern of tree branches sweeping over the car made me feel like there's going to be something good at the end of the ride.
Well, actually, that's just kind of stumped, but whatever. So she said it felt like when Sydney's father, Sydney's. Her sister was with us. He like, travel over higher, get some buckeye candy to see his family, to see the countryside. I don't remember what buckeye candy is. Don't ask me.
But.
So she gets him. So he gets up to his car. He's got a green car.
She looked at it. She was like, she slept into the passenger seat. Still in her mind, not necessarily going to go anywhere. And she's like, leather. She's like, it was real nice. She's like, I've been in a ride this nice once when somebody had a Cadillac in town.
So he got in the start the car. And then she's like, she's in.
They're like, we drove past Mickey D's and Burger King. And then she's like, where are we going? She says, I couldn't figure why I wasn't afraid. Something about him put me at ease. If Clark had been driving, I'd have opened the door and jumped out at 40 miles per hour.
So he says, relax, they're going someplace good.
And so they're driving east. And so to explain it, like in the neighborhood she's living, like around East 88th was, well, fairly rough. I probably like very inner city.
To me, Cleveland looks so much Cleveland, like the Midwest doesn't look like the inner city of like New York City, which looked and felt more dangerous in my imagination.
But for people who grew up here, they consider it like inner city dangerous. So it's just a lot of wood frame, older wood frame houses. The upkeep. Upkeep of which is uneven.
And when you drive east, you get through the. You start with like the inner wing suburbs. So it goes from like smaller wood frame houses to like larger brick houses and like bigger lawns. And everything looks like better in the way that it does when you drive from like poorer areas to areas where there's more wealth.
And as you drive further east, the lawns get bigger, the houses get bigger. The wealth is much more clearly on display.
So I just want you to know that she's driving east and that's what's happening.
And it. She said, you know, I pressed the button and my window eased down without a sound. I didn't have long flyaway hair by no stretch of the imagination, but I pretend I was a California girl. It's a warm breeze blew through my scalp and he's looking at the train. So you know, they're in Shaker, the tram, streetcar, whatever they call it, the Green Line.
And she was like, she's looking at the brick houses. And she's like, I wonder what it was like in there. Warring fire meals without yelling, no pretend daddy. It's wanting you to do nasty things.
So in addition, and this is obviously like a misunderstanding of wealth on her part, but in her imagination, the more money you had, the worst bad, the fewer bad things that happen inside your house. Which is unfortunately very much not true.
But she doesn't know that yet. I don't know if she'll ever know that.
So she said, oprah would have frowned on this. There would have been a hug. No hug or getting for getting into a car with a man, only a stiffly wagging finger.
But Dion's humming along to Wild Wild west by Drew Hill Cook Modi song.
Anyway, so they. I'm sorry, I sometimes have to look up things. I don't really listen to music.
So they are bopping along and he pulls into Red lobster, which in 1999, I mean, red Lobster, if it still exists, had a very sharp downturn related to a whole bunch of other factors. But in that era of like, suburban, early suburban chain restaurants, it was, I don't know, middle to high end, I would say high end. It was a chain that sold seafood where seafood wasn't a popular thing across the country. But Red Lobster is one of those chains that really helped popularize that.
And she said that this particular one was old, didn't look nothing like the commercial on tv, but had Cleveland written on over it run down on the outside. The city needed to make them were bad. This is actually true.
I don't know what it looks like now, but she had been to Red Lobster once to celebrate something.
And so she has this great memory of, like, whatever that would be for her.
So they're in there and he says, order what you want, but what he also orders her is a frozen God, really. Daiquiris and margaritas. I haven't been to Red Lobster a thousand years. I've maybe been there four or five times in my whole life. But I do remember they had.
It's probably daiquiri, like a strawberry daiquiri with, like, whipped cream on the top, which, in retrospect, was a lot of sugar and very little rubber, like, a lot of sugar. I think it's just basically like a frozen sugary drink with whipped cream on the top, which, you know, I have a lot of thoughts about now. They say it out loud. So he orders her this probably daiquiri, and it's the first time that I think she's had a drink.
And in this Sort of, like, way of being able to, like, have this all you can eat, like, seafood buffet or whatever.
She is feeling, like, transported to a different life because what she wanted was someone to save her. And what Dionne Fortune has done has come in and from the looks of it, has saved her. So she got the drink when she's not 21, and she realizes that's kind of sketchy, but she doesn't. If she didn't find the drink, it was like she drank the whole thing.
Um, then she gets these, like. Oh, I forget what they have some kind of cheese biscuit. Actually, I've never had it. I think it must have come out after the last time I was there. So she has, like, the. Whatever the cheese biscuit thing is at Red Lobster.
She has the food or whatever. So then he's asking her, like, how old she is and where she goes to school.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: And
[00:31:01] Speaker B: she asks him. He's graduated, and she realizes that he may be older than she thought and she may be in trouble.
She says, maybe he was like, Doogie Hauser or something and graduated early.
This makes me laugh. And he says, 18. That much older than you? And she says, I'm 15.
In her head, she's like, almost. But I didn't want him to think I was no kid. Being a freshman in high school was bad enough. So at this point in the book, I think she's probably 14, which is way too young. We getting into a car with some guy, going to Bread lobster and having a drink. But here we are, right? Here we are.
So he's, like, eating. She's eating. She's having, I think, lobster, shrimp, whatever. And she's having, like, a grand old time.
And at this point, she's too open, in my estimation. She's starting to tell, like, her life story. Like, her mama's boyfriend died. Her sister moved back in with her kids.
You know, they want how she had this argument with her sister about moving around and down in the basement, and then she loses her appetite.
And he sort of changed. He changes tacts, and he's like, you know, of course they shouldn't ask him to move down there. You know, he makes a joke, a derogatory joke about her sister and really sort of sides with her in this, like, theoretical family dispute.
So he, like, realizes she's not eating. Like, he gets a food box, but then offers her dessert.
And after the talk about how he, like, sort of sided with her and saw her point of view, her appetite was back. So he orders something called a chocolate chip lava Cookie. Oh, my God, we're Americans. Is doomed.
Those are four words that probably should not be in the same sentence. Probably has, like, a mouth. Okay, we're not going to get into what's wrong with the food. So she eats this, and, you know, he. He takes her and her leftovers and he starts to. After the. Like, he pays the bill and drive back. And she thinks, I survived this. He's an okay guy.
He takes her to her house.
She. She told him where she lives. He said he found my address, even though there wasn't anything to mark it. I guess the numbers aren't on the door or on the. On the house.
And he says, I really like spending time with you, Stephanie. What's your last name? And she says, wells.
And she says, what about you? And he says, fortune. And she's like, I thought you were kidding back there. And she says, maybe my name helped me get money from the universe. I'd like to see you again.
So Even though she's 14 and he's ostensibly 18, he's engaging in, like, the early sort of courtship maneuvers that she maybe has gone for and is completely within normal boundaries and makes him seem like a very safe person.
So she gives him her phone number, and then she, like, hops out of the car, you know, realizing that she needs to. She needs to get out of the car.
Because even though he seems safe and all this seems. Well, there's just something probably in the pit of her.
Well, we love you, Gavin de Becker. That makes the whole thing seem a little precarious, but she said she opened the door and was going to push it wide when a hand landed on my wrist. Here we go, man. Can't buy you nothing without expecting something. I turned around, ready to spit that out of him when he handed me my doggy back. Don't forget your food.
She pauses then and says, thanks, because she's deeply ashamed that she had assumed that he was going to act the way that most men have acted toward her her entire life.
And he says, good night, Stephanie Wells. So glad I took a detour through the park today.
And she's. This is the last line. I slammed the door. Slammed his door across the street toward home. Maybe all men weren't like Clark or the guys trying to get me into their cars. Maybe I shouldn't have judged the male half of the race so badly.
So this has gone longer than I thought, and I plan it to move faster through this book. But this is the end of chapter two, and I think I just wanted to provide like some background on how Stephanie gets from here to where she's going to be in a few chapters. But you can tell from the title it's probably not great. Not great.
But she's gone from this low of not trusting men at all to ending on a high of thinking maybe they're not all bad.
And unfortunately for Stephanie in her life, they're all going to be bad. So be wrong.
