Mystery: Sideswiped

The parking lot looks different.

Everything that I remember from that night seems a little off — the proximity where she died, the spot where I had come out of the restaurant — but I guess it’s pretty common for your brain to scramble traumatic incidents. Watching a woman die in a parking lot seems to fit into that category. But here I am again, standing in the lot at La Stalla restaurant in Newtown, next to a memorial for 34-year-old Heather Demou. It’s been almost two months since she died, but the memorial is still here, wilting flower-stands proclaiming “Mom” and “Sister,” burned-out candles, a waterlogged Bible.

Mike Butler, Heather’s brother, stands next to me. He has a hangdog look about him, one he’s carried since his older sister died. We examine the dashed-off outline of her body; it’s a little faded, but still there. It isn’t the typical chalk body outline you see in the movies. It’s more of a crude hexagonal coffin. Mike stares at it.

“Now, where were you again?” he asks.

I kneel down, try to remember.

Earlier that day, I’d testified in front of a state grand jury as a witness in the inquest into what happened to Heather Demou, whom I watched bleed to death in this parking lot. The facts remain hazy. As of August, no charges had been filed, and the cause of her death, at least publicly, was still in question. What had been reported was that she was accidentally struck in La Stalla’s parking lot by a car driven by her boyfriend, 51-year-old attorney Richard Patton, after they argued outside the restaurant a little after 10:30 that evening. I had come to La Stalla to pick up my girlfriend Kathleen, who was with some mutual friends from our alma mater, Council Rock High School in Newtown. I was in the restaurant for about 20 minutes, to say hello and take Kathleen home. I walked out to grab my cigarettes and take some leftovers — Kathleen hadn’t finished her chicken parm — to the car. That’s when I came upon Heather Demou, dying on the asphalt. Ever since, I’ve been obsessed with trying to find the answer to one question.

Why?


I ASSUMED SHE’D FALLEN OFF the curb. Maybe she was drunk — these things happen — and my halfhearted intention was to do the courteous thing, make sure she was okay. I walked over, placed the container of chicken parm down on the ground. A man was now kneeling next to her, a stocky guy, with suspenders, neatly dressed, looked to be in his 40s. The woman appeared to be awake, but groggy. Her eyes had a strange film over them. Her hands began to reach toward something.

“Don’t you leave me!” the guy barked.

This was no fall from the curb. A girl kneeling across from me was yelling “Somebody call 911! Does anybody know CPR?” I knelt down and took off my coat; I wanted to put it under the woman’s head. Then I looked at her more closely. Blood seemed to be coming out of the left side of her head. I remembered something about not moving people when they were on the ground. So I held her hand. I looked around, waiting for someone to come and fix this. I knew I couldn’t.

“Come on, Heather!” the man was now yelling. “Don’t do this to me!”

He was trying to keep her awake, but she was drifting. She moved her head to the left and then spat up blood. An odd red trickle ran down from the front of her left eye, like she’d just been sprayed with a water pistol. Her head appeared to be open on the left side, its contents now spilling onto the parking lot. People began to gather around. I just knelt there, watching her die.

“What happened?” I managed to mumble to the guy, watching his shirt become mottled with sweat and red blotches as the seconds ticked, as he wiped the blood from her head.

He was manic, panicked, yet his voice was toneless, dead: “She jumped. … ”

Word had spread, as such word does; people were now hurrying out of the restaurant. I felt their eyes on me, felt they were waiting for me to do something. And here I was, doing nothing, with a crowd watching me do nothing. I let go of her hand, got up, skulked away, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. I let myself believe I wasn’t there. I went back to the front porch of the restaurant, got lost in the gawkers.

I watched the rest of it from there. Even from a distance, you could see how much blood there was — buckets, it seemed — and it was still oozing out of her. The EMTs arrived, too late. They lifted her, and I could see how badly her head was destroyed. Another girl, standing by the stretcher, turned and, horrified, silently mouthed to the crowd: “There’s her brain. …”

And there was my coat, and my leftovers, sitting there stupidly, about to get kicked away by the scrambling EMTs. I hurried down to get my coat out of the way, overwhelmed by a sense of foolishness. How dumbstruck had I acted as this woman slowly died in front of all these people? Should I grab the chicken parm?

As I drove home, my mind replayed the gruesome scene — her cloudy blue eyes, her crooked hand, all that blood — and I got lost. When I finally got home, I sat in front of the computer, tried to distract myself. But the heel of my hand had a red smudge mark. It looks like somebody kissed my hand, I thought. I looked at my clothes for more evidence, homing in on the shirt, the lines, the stitch pattern, the arc of the buttons. There it was: a red droplet, like a small paint splatter. Yes, this actually happened.

Kathleen was in another room, talking to a friend, finding out more of what had happened. This friend, who’d left the restaurant shortly before us, told Kathleen it “looked like she was tumbling out of the car, and it looked like she was pushed.” Later, Kathleen asked me, “Do you think he had something to do with it?”

“Yeah,” I said without hesitation, a little startled by the revelation. “I don’t know why, but I just do.”

---