Written Off

by E. J. Copperman

  The “list” is the New York Times Best Sellers list, and my chances of making it are roughly equivalent to my being declared queen of the Netherlands. But Adam, a good agent, likes to think that my star is constantly on the rise and that the next step in my career is a trip to the list. I let him think it.

  I also let him continue to talk; it wouldn’t take long for me to get to the “wash it down with milk” step in the process, which my mother taught me when I was three.

  “Anyway, I think it’s an amazingly good sign that Hugh is asking for the book, Rachel. I can’t guarantee he’ll go for it—he’s not always open to anything but graphic novels—but him asking for it without being solicited can’t be seen as anything but encouraging.”

  Finally! I got a sip of milk in, cleared my mouth (realizing that all the stress on getting to swallow had pretty much destroyed my enjoyment of the snack), and considered. “How do you think he found out about it if Sheila York” (whoever she was) “didn’t give it to him?” I asked.

  “Well, he had a story, but you have to take it with a grain of salt,” Adam said. “No. A whole shaker of salt.”

  Okay, it worked: I was intrigued. “What does that mean?”

  “Keep in mind that he doesn’t consider mystery most of the time,” my agent told me in a tone that indicated I shouldn’t be insulted. “So he’s probably never heard your name before and certainly doesn’t know anything specific about what you’ve written.”

  “So obviously he’s going to jump right on an unknown book in the middle of a series from an author he’s never heard of before,” I said. “How the hell does that work?”

  “I told you all that because you need to understand that he has no point of reference,” Adam explained. “So he didn’t know that what he told me about Little Boy Lost was crazy.”

  Crazy was a word that had popped into my mind far too often for the past couple of days, and I didn’t like what it was doing to my stomach. Although that could have been the effect of eating crumb cake too quickly. “What did he tell you?” I asked.

  “He said he’d gotten a call about an author whose name was unknown to him. That he’d asked around his office and found out that there was a manuscript in house by that author. That’s you, you know.”

  “No kidding. Who was calling about me?”

  And somehow I knew the answer before Adam had the opportunity to say it. I can’t say it made my stomach feel any better.

  “He said he’d gotten the call from someone in a county prosecutor’s office and the guy’s name was Duffy Madison.”

  Chapter 6

  After spending twenty minutes (unsuccessfully) trying to convince my agent that I was, in fact, not paying some guy to pretend to be a law enforcement official and call publishers on my behalf (why would a producer read a book because a county investigator told him to?), I forgot about my revisions, got into my car, and drove, with the help of my very reliable GPS device, to the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.

  Hackensack, New Jersey, is not all it’s cracked up to be. On the other hand, when you start out with a name like “Hackensack,” you’re not exactly shooting for the stars to begin with. It’s the seat of a county that includes some of the richest real estate in the country within its borders, and yet the city itself is a little tired, a little rundown, and frankly, mostly forgotten by Bergen County’s wealthier residents except when they have to find a way to get out of jury duty.

  My purpose was considerably less hypocritical (I thought). I asked very nicely for Chief Investigator William Petrosky’s office and was told I couldn’t see him.

  That was something of a problem. You’d think that a woman of my accomplishments (which were up to about five now) would have thought to call ahead, but I’m more of a take-the-bull-by-the-horns kind of girl, and besides, it had never occurred to me that Petrosky wouldn’t drop everything on his to-do list just to converse with a woman from a county he didn’t represent and of whom he had almost certainly never heard.

  But I decided to persevere. “It’ll only take a minute of his time,” I said. “I promise. Did I mention I’m a mystery author doing research?”

  “He doesn’t have any time today.” The receptionist, whose expression indicated she had expected to marry out of her job by now, wasn’t exactly looking at me. She was glaring into an iPhone, which was situated in such a way that I couldn’t tell exactly which Candy Crush game was giving her trouble. “You want to make an appointment for next month?”

  “I’m afraid it can’t wait.”

  “Sorry. There’s nothing I can do.” She slammed the phone down on her desk. “Dammit!”

  “I appreciate your frustration,” I told her. “Couldn’t you just ask him?”

  The woman looked up, apparently startled that I was still there. “I told you, he’s booked.”

  Defeated, I started for the office door. Then completely on an impulse, I turned back and blurted out, “Duffy Madison.”

  She looked dumbfounded. “What did you say?”

  “I want to talk to him about Duffy Madison.” I had no idea what this conversation was about, but it was working.

  “Hang on,” she said, and walked to the door six feet to my left. If I’d had any indication that was where Petrosky was located, I’d probably have tried to barge in, but the door wasn’t marked with anything but the numeral 4. The receptionist knocked, walked in, and shut the door behind her. I waited perhaps ten seconds before she walked back out, smoothed her hair (which did not need smoothing), and said, “He says to go right in.”

  Petrosky turned out to be a man of about fifty, was an inch or two shorter than me, and wore a white shirt and navy-blue tie. The jacket from his navy-blue suit hung over the back of his chair, which was behind his desk.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t get your name.” He reached out to take my hand in a businesslike manner. I gave it to him, but just for a loan. I was going to need it again later.

  “I’m Rachel Goldman,” I said, mostly because I am. I could have added that I write a series of novels about a guy who claimed to be working for him, but I wanted to gauge Petrosky’s sudden interest. It was clear Duffy’s name had gotten me in. Maybe not talking was a better way to find out something about what was going on.

  “You’re the woman Duffy’s been talking about,” Petrosky said, sitting back down and gesturing for me to sit on a county-issued chair in front of his county-issued desk. Okay, that indicated that there in fact was a Duffy Madison, or at least someone using that name, and that Petrosky had heard of him—and me. This keeping quiet thing was working out, so I did it some more.

  Sure enough, more information came my way. “Duffy says you write novels and that you use his name for a character you write,” Petrosky went on. “How did you find out about Duffy?”

  Clearly, I couldn’t stay silent after that, since I’d probably set a personal best just in those twenty seconds. “Wait,” I said, “this guy really is Duffy Madison? And he says I stole his name from him?”

  Petrosky smiled in an avuncular manner and spread his hands in a gesture of calm and reconciliation. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “Nobody’s going to sue you.”

  Sue me? For using my imagination and creating a fictional character? What world was this? Still, I had to maintain my composure. I was talking to a man who came to work in a navy-blue suit. Some sense of professionalism was called for, clearly.

  I couldn’t get my jaw to open the whole way, so through the tiny space my teeth would allow, I said, “Well, I’d hardly think I was going to get sued, but I don’t understand.” The jaw loosened up a little. Soon Petrosky would be able to recognize vowel sounds I made. I barreled on through before he could ask me for the name of my translator. “You see, I created Duffy Madison, my character, from scratch four years ago. I had no idea there was someone going around using that name. I made him a consultant with the Morris County prosecutor. I took two whole days to settle on the name Duffy Mad
ison after using baby name books, death registries, and a random search of the Morristown phone book.”

  Petrosky’s smile had dimmed, and he leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his desk. “So you’re saying that you’d never heard of Duffy Madison before you wrote his name down?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. How long have you known your Duffy Madison?” I asked.

  “Just over four years,” the chief investigator said, staring at a point about two feet above my head.

  “And how did you meet him?”

  Petrosky didn’t focus so much as he simply answered the question from memory. “We were working a missing person case in Lodi,” he said. “Woman left her bed in the middle of the night and vanished. We had no trail at all. This guy walks up to one of my investigators at the woman’s home while it was still a crime scene, says he specializes in this stuff. We looked at him hard as the possible kidnapper, but nothing pointed to him ever having met her before.”

  “And that was the guy who calls himself Duffy Madison,” I said.

  Suddenly, Petrosky’s face was completely attentive and focused directly on me. “Look, lady, we didn’t just take him in off the street and ask him to start looking into crimes. I checked into his background personally. Saw his ID—Social Security number, Selective Service registration, driver’s license. Had him fingerprinted, no matches. We took samples of his DNA to use when we thought he might be a suspect. Nothing. He’s clean as a whistle.”

  “How is that possible?” I asked. “The guy’s claiming to be a fictional character.”

  “And you’re claiming you’d never heard of him when you started writing your books,” the chief investigator snapped back.

  That got me—he was looking at me like I was a suspect in . . . something. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

  “It’s supposed to mean, who should I trust—a guy who’s helped us solve eight missing persons cases or a woman who makes stuff up for a living?” Petrosky waved a hand to dismiss that. “No. I’m not saying I think you’re lying. I’m saying that what you’re telling me doesn’t add up.”

  “Imagine how I feel.”

  He caught my eye a moment and studied my gaze. “Yeah. I’ll bet. Look. I know Duffy. I’ve worked with him. He’s never told me anything that was the least bit questionable. Tell me what he said to you.”

  I could have; maybe I should have. But something in the back of my mind was insisting that I refrain from outing “Duffy Madison” as a raving lunatic, and I didn’t know why. I simply couldn’t tell Petrosky that he’d said I had created him from whole cloth and that the grown man in his thirties who came to my book signing had claimed he hadn’t existed before I’d started writing a character with his name.

  “Besides his name? He said that he worked with you on missing persons cases. He said that he had a case he thought I would be able to help with and that it was a matter of life and death.”

  Petrosky, as good investigators will, had been watching my face as I spoke. He’d been paying excellent attention. “There’s something you’re not saying,” he suggested. “What did he tell you that you don’t want to say?” Far too excellent attention.

  I looked away as if I were embarrassed. “He said he’d never read any of my books,” I said. Then I sniffed a little, not as if I were stifling tears, but as if I were terribly offended and wished the subject to go away.

  Petrosky smiled. “Well, I’ll tell you what. After this conversation, I’m going to make a point of going to a bookstore on my way home and buying copies of all your books. I want to see if your Duffy bears any resemblance to mine.”

  Good; he’d bought the act. “Yeah, I’d kind of like to find that out myself. I’m even more confused now than I was when I got here. That’s not what I was hoping would happen,” I said. I stood to leave.

  Petrosky held up a hand like he was directing traffic and wanted me to clear the crosswalk for an old lady. “Maybe you can get your chance,” he said.

  “To do what?” I didn’t know what he was getting at, but the odds were that I wouldn’t like it.

  “To find out if our two Duffys match and to get less confused,” he answered. “I’d really appreciate it if you would talk to Duffy about the case he’s working.”

  I knew I wouldn’t like it. “Why?” I asked.

  “Two reasons: First, because I don’t understand what’s going on with him and your books. I need to know if one of my best consultants is a nut job.”

  “And second?”

  “Second, because what Duffy told you is true. The case he’s working really is a matter of life and death.”

  Chapter 7

  “Her name is Julia,” said the man who called himself Duffy Madison. “Julia Bledsoe. She is forty-seven years old, divorced, no children. She lives in Upper Saddle River, and her sister called three days ago saying she was concerned because she couldn’t contact Julia. Her phone was going directly to voice mail, and the box was full. Her house was locked; the sister has no key. When police arrived to check out the scene, there was no sign of Ms. Bledsoe.”

  We were sitting in a conference room that Petrosky called “Duffy’s office.” It was bare except for the standard oblong table in the center of the room. No windows. A plain, light-brown textured wallpaper. Refreshingly, incandescent rather than fluorescent light. Duffy (I’ll just call him that in an effort to simplify matters) sat in the center of the table on the right side.

  I was opposite him on the left.

  Petrosky had insisted that I meet with the imposter, simply because the case of Julia Bledsoe was still active and the police felt time was short to bring it to a favorable conclusion. I had agreed because I am easily bullied and, to be honest, because I was intrigued by this strange creature on the other side of the table.

  Duffy Madison was not exactly how I’d always pictured him; I don’t think of my characters in specific physical terms because I prefer to let the reader decide what they look like. This is especially enjoyable when readers insist they know a character is blond, or tall, or has green eyes. It’s a real ego boost to know they can picture my people so vividly.

  In this case, though, the man was in front of me and clearly visible. He was tall without being imposing and a little thin for his height with unruly brown hair that had some wave to it but couldn’t be classified as curly. He had brown eyes that were large and seemed to be able to bore into a person (me, for example). He was the kind of man who, although he was not doing so at the moment, looked like he should be wearing tweed.

  “She lives by herself and now she’s not answering her phone,” I summed up. “That’s a matter of life and death?”

  “It’s the pattern that’s the problem,” Duffy answered. “This is something I’ve seen happen to three other women in the Northeast in the past two years.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “How did the other three women get found?” I asked.

  Duffy looked away. “They were not found alive,” he said quietly.

  In the books, Duffy would be driven by guilt. “Were they your cases?”

  “No. None of them was in New Jersey. But they are all dead.”

  It took a moment to sink in. I felt something like a trap close around me; now I had to be committed to do whatever this weirdo wanted me to do because there really was a life at stake. “I’m guessing they didn’t all die of natural causes by coincidence,” I said.

  “Sadly, no.”

  “So there’s a serial killer targeting upscale divorced women in the Northeast?” I asked.

  “No,” Duffy said. He stood, looking restless, like he really wanted to leap out of the window, if there had been a window, and go rescue Lois Lane. Instead, he was stuck in this room explaining the details of an odd missing person case to a mystery novelist. That didn’t make any sense, and I started to raise an objection, but he went on. “That’s not the pattern. One of the other three women was married, another was single, not long out
of high school, and without much of an income. The third was divorced, it’s true, but she did not have the same economic advantage as Julia Bledsoe.”

  I write dialogue for a lot of characters—more so for Duffy Madison than others. I know his speech patterns because I have made them up; they are not even second nature to me; they’re first-and-a-half nature. I don’t have to conjure up Duffy’s conversation when I need it. I know exactly how he talks; that’s the easiest part of writing the character.

  So the way he was talking now was especially worrisome, because I could tell there was a gap in it, but I didn’t know where. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” I said to him, and he avoided eye contact, so I knew I was right. “You’re either withholding something that’s confidential about the case, or you’re trying to lead me into an area of conversation I don’t want to bring up. Which is it?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “I’m simply telling you the facts of the case so you can help me find Julia Bledsoe.”

  “No, that’s not it.” I stood, too. I write best when I glue my butt to the chair and force myself (writers spend years, sometimes decades, trying to become full-time authors, and once they do, they’ll do anything to avoid writing), but I think best on my feet, pacing. “There are questions I should be asking, and I haven’t stumbled onto them yet. You just want to tell me in your own way, and I’m not giving you the opportunity.”

  He stared at me.

  I ignored that; there was no way I was going to be the crazy person in this conversation, and I had to remember that. Duffy hadn’t anticipated my ability to think his thoughts—he was a talented imposter, but I was the character’s creator—and he could probably feel the tables turning on him.

  “Let’s break this down,” I said, talking mostly to myself and pacing back and forth on my side of the table. It was a decent-sized room, so there was plenty of pacing space. “Three women have been murdered in the past two years. There’s a pattern to the victims, you said so yourself, but it’s not marital or economic status. And the wild card is that for some reason you think I can help you find the latest woman to disappear, this Julia Bledsoe, even though I’ve never actually heard of her before. So given that I have no knowledge of the victim but you’re intent on talking to me, there has to be some common ground. How am I doing so far?”