The Empty Bed

by Nina Sadowsky

  All three of the men that Jake was so proud to have left alive in the Star Ferry car park were painfully executed within hours of their “rescue.”

  You don’t want to mess with the grandmas.

  MATCH

  Magali Guzman,

  Hoboken, New Jersey

  The restaurant is a superb choice, an Italian joint specializing in fresh seafood. Carlos is delightful, helping her off with her coat, pulling out her chair, soliciting her choice of still or flat water. He’s dressed up for the occasion too; his button-down shirt strains appealingly against his muscled chest. But he proves he really knows the way to a girl’s heart when he lifts a first glass of wine and announces, “I got a match for you.”

  Maggie can’t believe it. “For real?”

  He slides a folded sheaf of papers from the inside breast pocket of his sport jacket and hands it to her. Maggie scans it eagerly.

  Finally a name for her phantom. Stephanie Regaldo. Arrests for prostitution, drug possession, vagrancy. Regaldo’s most recent mug shot confirms she is indeed the girl in the Elliotts’ security footage. But there’s something different about her too. In the mug shot, her eyes seem vacant, her features riddled with the effects of addiction. In the security footage, she looks healthy, clean, aware, alert, invested.

  Overactive imagination. Maggie chastises herself, realizing she’s been so absorbed in scanning Regaldo’s sheet that she’s not even thanked Carlos. “I owe you,” she says.

  “I hope so,” Carlos flirts. “And don’t worry, not a word to Diego.”

  “You really do know how to make a girl feel special,” Maggie says, smiling at him.

  The rest of the date is perfectly fine as far as dates go. The salad is crisp and fresh, the seafood linguini exquisite, the conversation lively. Maggie confesses she has a rule against dating cops, but coyly reveals she’s heard rules are made to be broken, and is delighted by the grin this elicits from Carlos.

  As much as she genuinely enjoys herself, however, she can’t wait to get home and in front of her computer. She likes Carlos enough to share a molten chocolate cake and a kiss outside her apartment building, but when she finally ducks inside it’s with an audible sigh of relief.

  Once situated, Maggie pores over Stephanie Regaldo’s record a second time. She compares the mug shot to the image she’s printed of the woman’s face from the security footage and lays them side by side. She feels that tingle again. She’s certain something changed for this girl.

  Regaldo’s last arrest was eighteen months ago. Where was she and what was she doing between her last encounter with the law and now? Maggie types “Stephanie Regaldo” into her search engine.

  Maggie’s looking for the near past but her search takes her deeper back. The story is a gruesome and tragic one. Sixteen-year-old Stephanie Regaldo lived with her construction worker father and older brother in New Jersey. Her parents had been divorced for three years. During the first two summers after the split, Stephanie and her brother had traveled together to visit their mother in Hawaii, where she had moved permanently. That summer, Stephanie’s brother wanted to stay in Jersey with his friends as he was off to college in the fall, so Stephanie went to Hawaii alone.

  She returned home to find the bloated, mutilated bodies of her father and brother, victims of brutal stabbings, a suspected home invasion gone terribly wrong, a crime that is still unsolved.

  Following Stephanie’s trail is easy for a while. Headlines after the murders. Then Stephanie moves to live with her mother and graduates high school in Kauai. Shortly after, barely eighteen, she has her first arrest for prostitution in New York City. The pattern that follows is a rotation of arrests and probations, missed court appearances and short-term incarcerations, court-mandated drug treatment and community service, only leading to more arrests. Then Stephanie seems to disappear off the face of the earth. Given the recidivism rates for drug-addicted prostitutes, this in itself is anomalous, but even odder is that there are no public records for her anywhere. If Maggie wasn’t looking at a photo of Regaldo from just a few weeks ago, she would have guessed the girl was dead, and had been for a year and a half.

  Stephanie Regaldo evaporated into thin air. Just like Betsy and Bear Elliott.

  That can’t be a coincidence.

  BAGGAGE

  Catherine,

  London, England

  My heart pounds as I enter the swanky reception area of Holcomb Investments. It’s not meeting my Target that’s making me nervous; I’m certain I can play Peter Lombard’s personal assistant like a Fender bass guitar. No, it’s the thrill of seeing Holly’s name etched in thick gold letters on the doors, the heady proximity to the man himself. A man who may yet betray me, who may already have done so.

  I ask the elegant receptionist for Peter Lombard’s assistant, a woman with the stolid English name of Jane Brown. It turns out the appellation suits her: lank hair, brown eyes, pale eyebrows, thick ankles, no effort.

  “I so hope you can help me,” I launch in as Jane comes toward me with a cautiously polite expression on her face. “I work at the Rimowa branch over on New Bond Street and there’s been a frightful toss up about some luggage that was supposed to be on hold being given to another customer.” I fully embrace the role of oppressed London shopgirl with my tweed skirt and rayon blouse, flat shoes and practical tote, wispy ponytail and harried expression.

  Jane Brown’s face turns uninterested. “I’m sorry,” she says flatly. “I hardly see how I can help.”

  “Didn’t you purchase some luggage for your employer with us recently? Our records show his card was used. Where did you take the luggage after you bought it? Did you hand it over to him here at the office?”

  “I authorized a purchase for him,” Jane explains. “But I never actually saw the luggage, so I’m no help, I’m afraid. Another gentleman here at the firm was intending to go to your shop that day. He offered to sort out the set for me while he was there. But I believe he had it all sent directly to Mr. Lombard’s residence. Don’t your records tell you?”

  “Do you mind if I ask who it was that was so kind as to offer to help you? Don’t often see people helping each other out these days, do you?”

  “What? Well, I did think it a bit odd of Mr. Cotter actually….” A furrow creases between Jane’s almost invisible eyebrows. “Is that all?” she asks, catching herself mid-sentence, smoothing her skirt.

  “What was odd on your end exactly?” I let loose a nervous giggle. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m trying to get a picture of what happened that day. Who might have been sold our missing luggage by mistake? I’m in a heap of trouble. Please help if you can.”

  Jane shifts a glance at the receptionist before leaning in. “I can’t imagine my odd has anything to do with your odd, it’s just that you know how it is in offices. That Mr. Cotter offered to do anything at all for Mr. Lombard. I’ve told Mr. L many times he should watch his back when it comes to that one.”

  Jane shuts down then, suddenly rendered awkward by the instinct she’s overstepped some boundary she never knew was in front of her. “You’re welcome to check directly with Mr. Cotter,” she tells me crisply. “I can let his PA know you’d like to speak with him if you leave me your card.”

  It doesn’t really matter if I speak to Derrick Cotter; in fact, I’d prefer it if I didn’t. I want to stay invisible as I turn the kaleidoscope lens and watch all the colors of the truth swirl into place before my eyes.

  I thank Jane Brown for her time and offer a twenty-five percent discount the next time she comes into the store.

  TROLLING

  Magali Guzman,

  New York City

  Maggie’s been avoiding Diego for days. She continues this policy as she punches REJECT on her cellphone once again. She’d listened to one message her brother had left and that was enough for her to know that she doesn’t wa
nt to listen to any more. At least until he cools down. If he ever cools down.

  But it was worth incurring Diego’s wrath. Instinct sent her searching and after many fruitless hours of trolling unsolved crime chat boards and online survivor support groups, Maggie found the one fluttering handkerchief that Stephanie Regaldo left behind when she fled her old life and became someone new.

  The chat room Stephanie infrequently frequents is composed of the desperate, the crazy, the manipulative, and the compulsively sad. The majority of the visitors to the site, which serves partly as a support group and partly as a tip line, are survivors, the battered, lonely leavings of murdered families. The trolls and predators can’t resist joining in, of course, raising false hopes in some cases, purporting to communicate with the dearly deceased (for a fee) in others.

  Stephanie’s pattern on the site is consistent with her arrest and other public records. She was a much more active visitor up until her last arrest, engaging with other members at least once a month, but she has only posted three times in the last year and a half. Each time it was to offer encouragement or ask a pointed question when a fellow survivor posted a lead about his or her own case.

  Three days ago Maggie dangled a tasty morsel for Stephanie Regaldo. It was a fishing expedition, but Maggie likes to fish. It teaches patience; her dad taught her that.

  She composed a carefully worded DM to Stephanie with just enough specific information about the Regaldo murders to make it sound legit. She made an offer to provide more details in person. She didn’t make her appeal about money; she claimed a guilty conscience, that she’d been with the guy who’d done it back then and wanted to come clean now that she was finally free of him. Maggie carefully hinted at the perpetrator’s abuse without laying it on too thick.

  The insider details she’d been able to provide were thanks to Carlos, who’d done Maggie another favor. That favor is the reason for Diego’s many outraged calls.

  Whoops. Dios mío. Busted. I owe Carlos at least one more zesty session before I cut him loose. Maggie smiles thinking about their last zesty session, but UC school starts in a heartbeat, and she’s leaving everything behind. Her imminent departure left her uncharacteristically unguarded with Carlos, and Maggie’s ruefully grateful the relationship has a clock on it.

  She logs on to the survivor chat site and starts to poke around. When she sees that her message has received a reply, Maggie feels it, that tingle.

  Stephanie Regaldo has taken the bait. Agreed to a meeting.

  Maggie’s first instinct is to call Diego, share her process and her progress, bat around next steps while positing countless what-ifs. She glances at her cold phone and resists the temptation. Diego’s family; he’ll have to forgive her eventually, but until then she’s on her own.

  THE BENEFITS OF INVISIBILITY

  Catherine,

  London, England

  All roads lead to Derrick Cotter, it appears, so I start to make a map. Hacking into his credit card and financial history, I discover Derrick has joint checking and savings accounts with his wife, an educational trust in place for his daughter, an investment portfolio with Holcomb Investments. Nothing staggering there.

  His wife is a cosigner on all of Derrick’s credit cards but one—a limitless Black Card that bills to a postal box. Interesting. Deeper digging turns up a cleverly concealed shell corporation with dubious purpose, its prime asset a nearly empty London bank account with a history of large payments wired to it from a bank in Hong Kong, and with subsequent wire transfers out to two other financial institutions, one in the Cayman Islands and the other in Sierra Leone.

  London. Hong Kong. The Caymans. Sierra Leone. Four corners of a square. Four sides of a picture I can’t yet see. Answers that only lead to more questions.

  London makes sense. Derrick and Holly live here, after all. The Caymans too, as a universally acknowledged safe haven for dirty cash. But why Hong Kong? Why Sierra Leone?

  Social media is the death of privacy and also its perversion, I reflect as I data-mine all of Derrick Cotter’s. Incessant public posting makes it harder to hide or rewrite personal history. Virtual communication also allows for a false life or lives to be lived solely behind the anonymity of a screen. (Sadly for me, it also presents challenges to creating new identities out of nowhere when I need them. It’s why I’m careful to protect and care for the stable I have, stories for another time.)

  On the main, however, I find a lot of benefit to other people living their lives out loud. Today is no exception. Derrick Cotter’s social and family life is well documented, and I’ve pieced together a fairly complete portrait of his existence. Point of pride on Cotter’s feed goes to shots with Holly, of course, with Miranda Holcomb and Cotter’s wife, Louise, often posed adoringly by their husbands’ sides. Another frequent theme features pix of Cotter, Louise, and their young daughter cruising the Thames on a sleek riverboat. There are a significant number of photos of Cotter at various charity events where Holly is being honored. One or two where Cotter himself is the honoree.

  A photo of Holly commands my attention, receiving an award for a significant donation to a charity that rescues endangered pygmy hippos from Sierra Leone. Holly looks good in his exquisitely tailored monkey suit; he always could rock eveningwear.

  While Sierra Leone is apparently the home of pygmy hippopotami and mysterious bank accounts, I know little about the country (when you’re largely self-taught there are bound to be gaps). It strikes me as interesting that Sierra Leone has come up twice all of a sudden. Reticular activation, it’s called, when something hasn’t been on your radar and suddenly it’s everywhere you look. I love that there’s a term for this phenomenon. But also believe it’s a call from the universe to pay attention.

  What else do I know about Sierra Leone besides pygmy hippos? For that matter, why pygmy hippos? It sounds like the kind of bullshit Holly makes fun of wife #4, Miranda, for, although I admit it gives me a pang that he does so with affection in his voice.

  I research. I always do. I learn that Sierra Leone is also a hub for smuggling blood diamonds out of Africa. I break down the sides of the square again and again and only put the story together when I realize it isn’t a square at all. Hong Kong is also a hub, used for washing bloody diamonds clean, shipping them to Mainland China to be cut, relabeled, and sold.

  I track flight records and passenger manifests, bank payments and electronic correspondence. The picture gradually swims into focus.

  The planes Holly dispatched to war zones must have been carrying more than endangered animals and altruism on their way back to England, counting on minimal screening of planes entering the country carrying adorable, defenseless animals rescued from explosive battlefields by daring young pilots. One beautiful thing about diamonds is their easy portability.

  Tracking the money tells me the plot was initially financed out of Hong Kong, which explains a Triad tie. The recent transfers tell me that the operation began slowly and is getting more aggressive; the dates are closer together, the amounts larger.

  With each revelation my heart sinks a little lower. I had blinded myself to Holly’s true nature all along. Most damning is the reported arrest of a young woman last year in Hong Kong for diamond smuggling: caught bringing the gems in, arrested, and sentenced. My research reveals payments to her from Cotter’s shell corporation. Staring at a news photograph of the girl’s wide-eyed and terrified mug shot, I wonder: Was she a complicit part of their scheme or another innocent whose life has been shattered by their gluttonous pursuit of money?

  I reopen the photo of Holly from the pygmy hippo benefit, the one where he looks so sharp in his tuxedo. I almost miss the next piece of the puzzle, and wouldn’t have blamed myself if I had. It’s no more than a look captured between two people, one that could have been explained away as a trick of the light or the camera angle’s misleading distortion. The pair is not even in the foreg
round of the image; Holly has that distinction.

  I push in on first one face and then the other, all the yearning and planning and smug complicity somehow caught in their locked eyes. A cold wave of foreboding washes over me. I have to click the image closed. A terrible secret threatens to erupt from within this frozen moment.

  An easily accomplished siphon of Derrick’s cellphone’s Wi-Fi history reveals a base carelessness about erasing his digital fingerprints, one that allows me to track his routine. That Derrick logged into networks at his own flat, his daughter’s school, and Holcomb Investments was not a surprise. The number of expensive London hotels populating his history was more unexpected.

  Personally, I appreciate a high-end hotel. Growing up poor is partly why; the luxury of crisp sheets and thick, clean towels changed fresh every day is a delicious indulgence. The anonymity a hotel can provide is also attractive; it’s easier to stay off the radar in a place perpetually populated by transients.

  Hotels suit me for a variety of reasons. But why would Derrick Cotter, owner of a perfectly nice flat in Chelsea that he shares with his wife and little girl, and with access to a luxurious office in a tower in the City with every modern convenience, be spending quite so much time in London hotels? What needs are propelling Derrick’s quest for anonymity and spotless linen? Could these neutral locations be where Holly and Derrick met their less “acceptable” business partners?

  Tracking the dates of his room charges against Derrick’s virtual calendar (also linked to his cellphone, honestly, people just make it too damn easy to have their privacy exploited), I am able to put together a pattern. As I dig deeper and the facts reveal themselves, I have to admit I am shocked. The secret that threatened to erupt from within that benefit photograph is confirmed.