Her Last Breath

by Hilary Davidson

  “Why was she touching her head?”

  “Dizziness from her heart, probably.”

  “Did she have a head wound?”

  “I told you she got a concussion,” he said. “You saw her fall. She hit those steps hard.”

  He had an answer for everything, but we were drawing different conclusions from the video. I was absolutely certain about one thing: there was a reason Caro had run a mile south to the United Nations area that morning, and no one had bothered to find out why.

  “There’s more to this story,” I said. “Why did she even go into that park?”

  “Being completely honest, I think she was meeting someone there,” Villaverde said.

  I gulped for air. “Why?”

  “Here’s the list of what she had on her when she died.” He pulled out a folder. My eyes felt bleary, but I could make out a list: Watch (Cartier). Diamond wedding band. Diamond stud earrings. Memory card.

  “Memory card?” I said. “She was out jogging. She wasn’t carrying anything.”

  “There was a little zipped pocket in the waistband of her leggings,” he said. “You could fit a house key there, maybe a credit card. But all your sister had was this little memory card.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “With her husband,” he said. “Theo Thraxton took possession of everything.”

  CHAPTER 13

  DEIRDRE

  It was stupid to walk from the police station to the spot where my sister had collapsed. I knew that. Caro had died over a week ago. What could I possibly find? But I had to see it for myself.

  The iconic United Nations building with the international flags flying in front was a little to the north. The UN headquarters was directly across, a mirrored-glass skyscraper that looked like a lonely domino on the empty landscape by the East River. Caro had dropped in front of Ralph Bunche Park, a tiny green oasis named for the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The curving Isaiah Wall was on my right, brushing against a spiral staircase that led one story up. There was a Bible verse on it:

  They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

  I appreciated the antiwar sentiment, but I was ready to pick up a sword for my sister. The cops weren’t going to listen to me. Bring him to justice, no matter what you have to do, my sister had written about her husband. But I couldn’t see a way to do that. It wasn’t even clear if Theo had been involved in her death. What had made my sister write that panicked message in the early-dawn hours the day she died?

  I wanted to head home and study the memory card she’d given me. There had to be something important on it I’d missed. But my phone buzzed at nine a.m. sharp, reminding me I had to work. I’d taken an unpaid day off when Caro died, then another for the funeral, and I couldn’t afford to lose more money. I worked for a company called Snapp, an app that allowed New Yorkers who couldn’t make time to buy toilet paper outsource their shopping and domestic chores. Plenty of other services did that, too, but Snapp’s edge was in giving clients a warm body to organize all the stuff they bought. That was where I came in. In Snapp parlance, I was a curator. It was an exalted title for someone who spent her days opening toothpaste and soapboxes, cleaning the contents, and then arranging them in Olympic-sized bathrooms scented with candles that cost more than what I spent on food in a week. To most of the clients, I was like a friendly ghost. They never met me, and that was by design. The app’s tagline was Snapp and it’s done. Normally, I communicated with clients by text or email. Some of them never got in touch at all.

  The text was from my boss, an angry Gen Xer whose hair was always greasy and who had weirdly short arms, which had led to the predictable nickname T-Rex. He hated everyone he managed on Snapp’s payroll, and the feeling was mutual. This was his message to me: WTF, D? What are you doing at Tudor City?

  I gritted my teeth. One of the worst things about Snapp was that bosses liked to spy on my location. Had to talk to the police about my sister, I texted back.

  T-Rex’s reply popped up ten seconds later. You took yesterday off for your sister’s funeral.

  I could feel my face flush.

  The police are investigating her death, I texted back. This is serious. And I’m on my way to work anyway.

  I was hurrying north as I typed. I was a little over half a mile from the Sutton Place apartment where I needed to be.

  Irresponsibility has consequences, T-Rex typed back.

  His veiled threat made me ball my fists. He was a creep who knew how to push my buttons.

  I’d started at Snapp as a marathoner—that was the person who ferried heavy bags between shops and apartments—but I’d been promoted during the pandemic, because clients only allowed workers with proven antibodies to enter their homes. I’d gotten sick early on, and my monthly tests had made people think I was a safe bet, so clients paid a premium for my work. Of course, Snapp didn’t lower those rates after most people had gotten vaccinated. It was a weird fit, because I was a minimalist who disliked extra stuff, and I was organizing kitchens for people who kept a dozen types of salt on hand.

  My first client of the day was an older lady I liked, even though I’d never laid eyes on her. She always tipped well, and more of her purchases were for her three schnauzers than for herself, which seemed weirdly sweet. I worked at her place for two hours, walked six blocks to the next one, which was a little more chaotic—that home had three kids, who were way more destructive than dogs. The doorman had the bags the marathoner had dropped off. Afterward I ate a protein bar and checked my email. There was nothing from the mysterious X, and I emailed the address again. There was a sweet message from Jude. Just wanted to check in, she’d written. How are you doing? Sending hugs.

  I flinched slightly. I wasn’t good with hugs, even virtual ones.

  I kept moving, because I was on the clock and there were no breaks.

  Things went well until the middle of the afternoon. My work had a kind of mindless drone quality to it that I hated, but it also left me alone with my thoughts. I didn’t have much contact with humans, which was fine with me. But when I saw the address on my next client—Beekman Street, barely three blocks downtown off City Hall Park, I texted T-Rex.

  I was direct: I’m not going there.

  As was he: You are. Consider it penance.

  Not happening. Last time ASB tried to rub up against me.

  There was a tiny pause in our exchange.

  I thought you were able to take care of yourself, T-Rex shot back.

  It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

  ASB was Aubrey Sutton-Braithwaite, widely considered by Snapp employees as the world’s worst human. He was twenty-nine years old and had never worked a day in his life, thanks to his hedge-fund-manager father. But that didn’t mean Aubrey didn’t have his own colorful career. He’d been a suspect in a series of arsons in the Hamptons. He’d been arrested for DUIs on multiple occasions. At least two women had restraining orders against him. Of course he’d never spent a day in jail. Aubrey was like a free-floating cancer cell, wreaking havoc wherever he landed, but suffering no ill consequences himself. He was always home when I went to his apartment. That day was no exception.

  “Deirdre.” He looked me over from head to toe when he answered the door. Aubrey’s eyes were small and close-set, which made him appear shifty. Whenever the reboot of America’s Most Wanted launched, there’d be an episode devoted entirely to his exploits. “Nice boots. You come here from your dominatrix job?”

  “Fuck off, Aubrey.” Snapp had already cycled through a dozen female curators who’d quit instead of setting foot in Aubrey’s lair again. The world’s worst human wouldn’t allow Snapp to send him a male curator, and the company pretended it wasn’t enabling sexual harassment. It was all about the customer’s happiness, after all. Instead of responsibly cutting all ties with Aubrey, my boss sent me when he cou
ld. I tolerated it because I made triple my usual pay, plus I knew I could kick Aubrey’s ass if I had to. Just don’t turn your back on him was T-Rex’s advice, as if I were dealing with a wild animal.

  I stormed into the apartment, dumping the four bags the marathoner had dropped off on the Italian marble floor of the kitchen. Aubrey’s place was a cautionary tale. You could take a gorgeous apartment with towering ceilings, fluted columns, and crown moldings, and slap up some very pricey artwork—a Rothko hung in the living room, giving the city view serious competition for eyeballs—but all it took was the stale smell of sweat, week-old pizza, and pot to give it that overpowering eau de frat house. It didn’t help that dirty towels, old gym clothes, and sporting gear sprouted like toadstools from every flat surface.

  “Your cleaning lady quit again?” I asked.

  He grunted in response. That was as good as our exchanges ever got. As much as I wanted to run out of there, I had to work. Aubrey stood four feet away from me, arms crossed, trying to make his stringy biceps pop. He was lean and lanky, with the kind of body you might get from being a mildly ambitious gym rat who sampled illegal performance enhancers.

  “You got the condoms?” he asked.

  “If you ordered them, they’re here.”

  “You better not have brought the regular ones. I need the extralarge magnums. Bet you’d love to see why.”

  “You just lost that bet.”

  “My girlfriends say I’m amazing.”

  “I didn’t know inflatable dolls could talk.”

  “Bitch,” he muttered.

  I slid the fancy gold box of condoms across the countertop. “One box of balloon animals, coming up.”

  “Take them out of the box and organize them on my night table.”

  “I’m not your condom curator.”

  “You’re supposed to do whatever I say.” Aubrey pouted.

  “Not even close. I’m here because your mommy and daddy know they screwed up raising you.” I carefully lined up kombucha bottles in his Meneghini fridge. Until I’d started this job, I didn’t know there were refrigerators that cost as much as an average American made in a year. “They know you’re a useless baby.”

  “Ha ha. Your parents screwed you up, Deirdre, for you to keep working in a dead-end job like this.”

  “Yeah, it’s my fault for failing to be born rich,” I shot back. “Go back to playing Call of Duty or whatever it is you do all day.” I piled a couple of fancy cheeses in the fridge. I swear, this creep ordered random things to keep me captive longer. I was probably his only human contact of the week.

  “You’re in a shitty mood today,” he observed. “Who died?”

  I put down a six-pack of Sapporo’s Space Barley and stared at him. There was no way Aubrey knew about my sister. He didn’t even know my last name. It would be wrong to lash out at him. He’s just a loser living on an allowance from his father, I reminded myself. He’s nothing.

  “Oh, that’s right,” he added. “Your sister died. I read all about it.”

  “You can read?” I said, but I felt chilled to the bone. Clients were supposed to be given curators’ first names only. But I should’ve known that rules were just for drones like me.

  I tried to work more quickly.

  “Are you sad about it?” Aubrey asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  “I wouldn’t be sad if my sister died,” he went on. “She’s a bitch. Was your sister a bitch like you?”

  Tuning him out was the only option. In my haste, I dropped a bottle of tequila on the tile floor. I stared at the flood of dark-red liquid and glass shards in despair. That was Clase Azul Extra Anejo, worth more than I made in two weeks, tips included.

  “Shit!” shouted an excited Aubrey, zooming in closer. “You’re in trouble now.”

  I was stuck in place, mentally calculating what I would have to do to make up the cash. It was impossible. There was no way to do it.

  “You better hope I don’t tell your boss.”

  I glanced up. Aubrey’s beady convict eyes were open as wide as I’d ever seen them, and their usual flat, dead aspect had been replaced with something shadier. Without meaning to, I’d misplaced the hard shell I wore like armor. Aubrey had been waiting for this moment. While my brain was processing those facts, he pounced, shoving me back against the stainless-steel fridge, grabbing my breast, and shoving his thick, sour tongue into my mouth.

  In a split second, I shifted from anguish to rage. Revolted as I was, there was something akin to joy in the knowledge I had a legit target for my fury. First, I jabbed my fist into his Adam’s apple. When he flinched back, I swung my arm around, striking him in the face with my elbow. He yowled and hunched over in pain, turning away from me. I kicked the back of his kneecap, and he fell onto the fancy tile floor with the soft squish a bag of wet dirt would make.

  “I know you tried to pull some creepy shit on the other girls who came here,” I told him. “You’re not going to do that to me.”

  I kicked him in the stomach for good measure. He retched like he was about to cough up a hairball and curled into a fetal position.

  “Noooo,” he whimpered. His eyes were squeezed shut, but his face was wet with a gross combination of tears and snot that I didn’t look too closely at.

  “I’ll let myself out now,” I said. “Word of advice: next time you feel like grabbing a girl, remind yourself she feels like killing you.”

  I started out of the kitchen, and thought better of it. I went back to kick Aubrey in the kidneys. Then I left without a backward glance.

  CHAPTER 14

  DEIRDRE

  Leaving Aubrey’s apartment, I felt nothing but shame. No one had ever deserved an ass kicking like that guy, and the look of surprise on his face when he realized he wasn’t going to overpower me was intoxicating. But underneath was a bitter awareness that if I’d been on top of my game, it never would’ve come to that.

  I hurried along Beekman Street, unsure where to go next. There was no way I could call T-Rex and tell him what happened. Even in a best-case scenario, with him agreeing that I’d never have to go back to Aubrey’s apartment, I’d be on the hook for a two-thousand-dollar bottle of tequila.

  When I saw City Hall Park, I felt a moment of relief. Jude’s office was steps away. It was just after five; there was no doubt she’d still be at her desk. I messaged her and got a response immediately. She was waiting for me at the security post in front of city hall.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered to me after my bag was x-rayed and I was waved through.

  “A creep just pounced on me.”

  “Someone you know?”

  “Yeah. A Snapp client.”

  “Did he rip your shirt?”

  I glanced down. I was wearing a black shirt over a black tank top, and I hadn’t even noticed it lost a few buttons when Aubrey grabbed me. It didn’t look indecent, but Jude knew me well enough to realize it wasn’t a style choice. “Yeah, he did.”

  “We can talk to the police here,” Jude said. “I’ll have an officer come to my office.”

  “No, thanks. I already talked to the cops this morning. That’s enough for one day.”

  “What happened this morning?”

  We were at Jude’s cubbyhole of an office. She ushered me in and closed the door behind me. On the wall behind her was a framed degree from Georgetown University with Judeline Esther Lazare in black calligraphic script. There were a few photographs of Jude with boldface names in politics and entertainment. I spotted a framed coat of arms—the Haitian palmiste, with a lone palm tree and spears and cannons and anchors—and a lone hibiscus plant on her desk with a single flower in bloom. Everywhere, there were books.

  “I went to the cops because . . . sorry, I should’ve told you this before.” My mouth was dry. It was hard to get the words out.

  “Told me what?”

  “I got a message from Caro when I was at her funeral yesterday.”

  Jude’s expression was sheer astonishme
nt. “How is that even possible?”

  “It was an email she set up in advance.” The cop, Villaverde, had kept the printout I’d given him, so I found the message on my phone. Jude stared at it for a long time, frowning deeply. “I can forward it to you,” I offered.

  “I’d say yes, but even my private emails can be subpoenaed.” She handed my phone back. “I can’t believe it. Why wouldn’t Caroline tell me she was in danger?”

  “She didn’t say anything to me either.”

  “It’s my own fault,” Jude said, wiping her eyes.

  “How could it be?”

  “I wouldn’t listen to her.” Jude grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. “She told me things—things she swore me to secrecy about—but I . . .” Her voice trailed off as I stared into space. “I didn’t understand how bad it was.”

  “What did Caro say?”

  “Months ago, we had lunch, and she told me she wanted a divorce from Theo,” Jude said. “I asked why, and she wouldn’t give me a direct answer. Of course, they were apart for much of the pandemic—you remember, right?”

  “Sure, Theo stayed in Europe for months.”

  “Right, but those were unusual circumstances. I asked Caroline, ‘Is he a good father to Teddy?’ She said he was. I asked if Theo ever hit her . . .” Her eyes teared up again, and she grabbed another tissue.

  “What did she say?” I leaned forward. This was important.

  “She said no, but that wasn’t the point. Then she asked what would I do if I found out someone I loved had committed a terrible crime?”

  “What crime?”

  “I don’t know. I told her my faith would guide me, that if a person truly had remorse, that if they had truly changed, I would forgive.”

  “You’re a better person than I am, Jude. I’m an eye for an eye.”

  “Violence begets more violence,” she said. “But if a person has no remorse . . .” She swallowed hard. “Caroline told me Theo had been lying to her as long as she’d known him.”

  “About what?”

  “I can’t say what. It would embarrass her.” Jude rubbed her temples. “It wasn’t a crime, though. She never told me what that was supposed to be.”