by Adam Mitzner
Today, however, when I leave my building, I jog to the east. I hadn’t given it any true forethought. It’s almost as if my mind has tricked my body, or perhaps it’s the other way around. Whichever is in charge, I find myself heading to the East River. Returning to the scene of the crime, as it were. Well, not the crime exactly, but the cover-up.
I run from Chelsea through the East Village and then into Alphabet City, that part of Manhattan where the streets are lettered rather than numbered. On nearly every tree I see Charlotte’s smiling face staring back at me from that pink leaflet.
It takes me no more than twenty minutes to bisect Manhattan and arrive at First Avenue. From there I head north, watching the numbered streets tick by—First Street to Second to Third. My destination is Fourteenth, where I’ll enter East River Park, just as I did six days ago.
Only this time, I’m without Charlotte’s dead body in a suitcase.
I haven’t formulated any sort of plan for what I’ll do when I arrive. Nor have I really thought about whether my presence is well advised. For all I know, the cops are staking out the area. But if I see a horde of police, that’ll be helpful information I didn’t have before, and I’ll just turn around and go home.
Nothing looks familiar in the park in daylight. In fact, it’s a joyous place on this Sunday morning, a bustle of activity. Couples hand-in-hand, people walking dogs, the ball fields filled with Little Leaguers, and the playground bursting with the bright colors of the outfits of the children running around. Best of all, no cops.
I walk down the embankment to the East River, stopping at the fence separating the park from the water. I recall how formidable it seemed, but without a suitcase filled with Charlotte’s dead body, it only takes a half jump to scale it. On the other side, the ground is soft and muddy even though it hasn’t rained over the last few days. There’s no evidence of footprints and certainly nothing to indicate wheels or a heavy item being dragged.
I look back into the park. No one has taken any notice of me making my way down to the river. Perhaps this is something people do—try to get close to the water.
The river is calm, barely a ripple on the surface. It’s what lies below that concerns me, of course.
I can feel Charlotte with me. It’s not that I actually see her dead body rise from the river, nor do I feel a ghostly presence. Rather, she has invaded my consciousness somehow.
Although I thought I’d succeeded in intellectualizing away my breaking of the “Thou shalt not kill” commandment, her presence suggests otherwise. Needless to say, she takes the opportunity to make clear that she’s not supportive of my choices.
“You’re not going to get away with it, Christopher,” she says. “You think you’re smarter than anyone, but you’re not. Ella’s twice as smart as you. She’ll figure it out.”
I respond audibly, albeit in a whisper. “She hasn’t so far.”
“She will. And when she does, she’ll make you pay.”
At ten, my phone pings. A text. The only reason I even move to read it is because it’s my burner.
Ella.
If she had let the weekend pass without reaching out, I would have begun second-guessing everything I had thought about her interest. Worse than that, I would have become suspicious that she knew I’d killed her sister. But any thought of that is erased when I read her message.
The words almost completely fill my screen. Full sentences, complete with punctuation. Not the phonetics and emoji-heavy gibberish most women text.
Hey there. Wondering how you’re doing.
I’m good. And you?
I’ve had a crappy day, to tell you the truth.
Sorry. Anything I can do?
I stare at the screen, awaiting her reply. Ten seconds pass. I no longer even see the ellipses that indicate she’s typing her next message.
But then my phone rings.
“Hello?” I say, as if I don’t know it’s Ella calling.
“Hi, Dylan. It’s Ella. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m just not that into texting.”
“Me either.” Of course, that’s a lie. I text all the time, usually preferring it to actual conversation. “I was really hoping that I’d hear from you.”
“I have to be honest,” she says, “I’ve been struggling with the whole can-I-meet-someone-new-while-my-sister-is-missing thing.”
She laughs. A nervous laugh. I try to put her at ease. To let her know there’s nothing wrong with her becoming close to me.
“I totally understand. Timing . . . couldn’t be worse. But I’m a big believer that things happen for a reason . . . at least sometimes. We met, we really clicked, and then this terrible thing happened to your sister. I think . . . I don’t want to get all higher-power on you, because I’m not religious, but I do consider myself spiritual and, well, I think the universe does send us messages. And yes, I know that makes me sound like someone dressed in pajamas giving out daisies at the airport, but I believe it.”
She laughs again. This time it isn’t nervous. It’s the sound of comfort.
A few moments of silence tick by before I finally ask the question again: “Is there anything I can do? To make things easier on you, I mean.”
“In fact, there is,” she says. “Would you mind terribly keeping me company tomorrow night? I’m just going crazy here all alone and I don’t want to do it again another night.”
“It would be my pleasure. Do you have a favorite restaurant?”
“I don’t think I want to be in a restaurant. You know, out in public.”
This is music to my ears. I don’t want to be out with her in public either. Unfortunately, I also don’t want her knowing where I live. I have a lie on the tip of my tongue—I’ve been having some painting done and the smell is awful—when she spares me.
“So, could you come to my place? Seven? Do you remember where I live?”
I do, but I think better of admitting it. “I know it’s close to the Lava Lounge, but I have to confess I don’t remember exactly where.”
She gives me the address. Then she says, “I figured I’ll order in some pizza. Is that okay?”
“Who doesn’t like pizza?”
“Great.”
“Thanks so much for calling, Ella. I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”
“Me too. Bye, Dylan.”
DAY SEVEN
MONDAY
34.
From the moment I wake on Monday, my thoughts are about seeing Ella that evening. I’ll have real time with her, in her apartment, aided by alcohol, hopefully. That should get her to open up to me about the police investigation, her sister’s love life. Who knows what else?
But until then, I have to pass the day at work and not raise anyone’s suspicions that I’m the man at the center of the biggest missing-persons case in New York City history.
“Morning, Beth,” I say to my assistant when I enter the firm. “Keeping safe, I hope.”
“Not funny,” she replies. “I didn’t go out all weekend. I just had friends come over to my place.”
“Don’t worry. You’re safe here with me.”
I go in my office and shut the door. I click on the Excel spreadsheet that lists the potential investors I’m circling for The Pouch. The levels I’m seeing are not good. Amoroso is going to be apoplectic when I tell him that interest is below eight bucks. One of the biggest players in this space, a hedge fund appropriately called Bottom Feeder, told me early on they were willing to invest upward of $40 million, but yesterday reduced their buy to $25 million, and they now refuse to pay more than $7.75 per share.
I call the fund manager, Brian Weinberg. I’m told he can’t come to the phone, and my call is rerouted to Seth Shapiro. Seth’s a decent enough guy, but the fact I can’t get to the head honcho means that things are even worse than I thought.
“Seth, my man. How’s it going?”
“No complaints,” he says. “What can I do you for?”
“Looking at the circles on my spread. I have
you guys at twenty-five mil at seven seventy-five. We had originally talked about forty at eight.”
“That was two weeks ago. Ancient history.”
“But the market is up two, three percent.”
“That’s a tech pop, Christopher.”
I’m not bullshitting him. I really don’t understand why they’re skittish at eight bucks.
“What’s going on, Seth? Really.”
“You want the truth?”
“Hell yeah, I do.”
“Brian went to Bergdorf Goodman’s and bought a pair.”
“What?”
“You heard me. He went to Bergdorf’s and bought a pair of your client’s product. Dropped a hundred fifty bucks. He had them on yesterday.”
“And . . . ?”
Seth laughs. “I take it that you’ve never worn them.”
I could lie, but what’s the point. “I’m a Jockey guy.”
“Well, suffice to say, you’re lucky we’re buying at all.”
“That bad?”
“Brian’s balls itched all day.”
Either the other big players in the market have stronger testicles or haven’t decided to do their own market research, because their circles remained at the eight-buck level. It didn’t much matter, though. They each had favored-nation status, which meant that they got the best price I was willing to offer anyone else—and if Weinberg’s itchy balls meant that Bottom Feeder was only going to pay $7.75, that’s the price everybody else would get too.
Amoroso is going to shit when I tell him that he’s going to be short on the total raise. But that conversation can wait.
Today, I have much bigger fish to fry.
I arrive at Ella’s apartment right on time, wearing what I consider my not-trying-too-hard outfit—jeans and a long-sleeved, collared shirt. On the way to her place, I picked up a bottle of wine, a cheap one, to vary things about myself so as to better pull off my alter ego of Dylan Perry, mild-mannered, altruistic doctor.
Ella’s hair is loose, reminding me of the way she wore it at Lava the night we first met. That’s where the similarities to Cassidy end, however. Tonight, she’s dressed casually—black jeans, loose-fitting white T-shirt—and, as when I saw her at Riverside Park, she’s not wearing any makeup aside from lipstick.
I hand Ella the bottle of wine. “I don’t know much about wine,” I say, trying to sound humble, “but the guy in the store said that this was good.”
“My motto is that every wine goes with Italian food,” she says. “There’s this great little place I always order in from. They have pastas and small pizzas, so I thought maybe we’d have a carbfest and do one of each.”
“I’m in your hands,” I say.
She calls in our order. After hanging up, she reports there’s a backup at the restaurant, so it’s going to take an hour for the food to arrive. Then she sits beside me on the sofa, even though her living room has other seating options. I’m about to inquire about the investigation when she asks me about the one thing I did not want to discuss: myself. Or more accurately, Dylan Perry.
“So, give me the whole Dylan Perry story. From birth to right now.”
I’ve prepared for the question, just in case it came up, going so far as actually writing down my fake biography. I’d also double-checked my data through Google, to confirm she couldn’t disprove any of what I might tell her. At least not without some serious background checking.
In my alternate life, I’m a farm boy—born in Wyoming, because I assume she’s never been there—but the son of intellectuals. Reared in Kansas because that’s where my made-up father taught English at the university. I almost screw up by making an off-the-cuff joke about Manhattan, Kansas, before realizing that I’d told Ella I live in Brooklyn, not Manhattan, but I cover it well enough. I give myself a fancy pedigree—Duke undergrad and Johns Hopkins for medical school—although it’s less impressive than my actual Ivy League education. I’d already told her about Doctors Without Borders when we met at Lava, but now I gild that lily by saying how rewarding my work has been, even amid the horrors I’ve seen.
After reciting my too-good-to-be-true biography, I feign interest in Ella’s life and I hear all about how she chose to go to law school rather than pursue a career in music. This leads to the inevitable question of what she was doing performing at Lava under an alias, at which time she gives me the sad story that Charlotte had mentioned before. How her mother wanted her to pursue her talent in music but, after she died, Ella chose the safer path of law school to please her father. The one part that Ella adds that Charlotte never told me is how Ella’s choices had left her with so much regret.
Dinner finally arrives, during which we finish the bottle of wine. After, Ella suggests we watch a movie. She scrolls through the Netflix selections and asks if some Reese Witherspoon flick is okay. I couldn’t care less what we watch, so I tell her it sounds great.
Once the movie is queued up, she snuggles beside me.
“I don’t want to be a downer, but I still feel a little guilty,” she says. “I’m really enjoying myself with you and my sister is . . .”
This is my opportunity. If I approach it right, I’ll be able to get Ella to open up to me.
“You need to take care of yourself too,” I say. “You know, like what they say before the plane takes off. Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.”
I wait to see whether she’ll go for the bait I’m dangling. She doesn’t at first, and I’m left petting her hair as the credits roll.
Just when I think that this is going to be a waste of my time, she breaks the silence. And when she does, it’s music to my ears.
“Because I used to be a prosecutor, I know the police lieutenant who’s running the case,” she finally says. “His name is Gabriel Velasquez. He keeps me up-to-date. They were initially focused on Charlotte’s boyfriend. Zach’s a real asshole and initially refused to cooperate. But he’s cooperating now and he passed a polygraph. There was another guy that Charlotte was seeing, named Josh. He cooperated from the very start, but his polygraph was what they call ‘inconclusive.’ So I guess the state of play is that Zach’s not a suspect but Josh still is. I’ve told the police that I don’t think Josh did it, though. He just doesn’t seem the type.”
There’s so much in this download, I don’t know where to begin. First, they’ve been polygraphing suspects. Second, McDouche has apparently been cleared, but this other guy Charlotte was screwing—the guy whose name she called out on the night I killed her—flunked the poly. And third, if Ella’s ruling this second guy out, does she believe it’s someone else?
I need to press further. “You say that like you have a suspect in mind,” I say, hoping I’m not being too obvious.
She begins to cry. It’s soft, and she’s trying to hold it back, but I can see that I’ve touched a nerve. It’s good for me, the vulnerability. So I pull her closer to me.
“It’s okay,” I say softly.
“There’s another guy she was seeing,” she says.
This cuts way too close to home. I try to maintain a calm exterior, but inside I’m in a full-fledged panic. I need her to tell me what she knows about this other guy. I’m formulating how to coax the information out of her without making her suspicious, but then she just comes out with it.
“It’s my former college boyfriend. How messed up is that, right? I hadn’t seen him in more than ten years, but we recently reconnected and he told me that he also knew Charlotte. And I think—more than just think, actually—I’m pretty sure that he’s the guy who killed . . . or whatever . . . Charlotte.”
It’s not me. That’s all I hear. She has a prime suspect and he’s not me.
I watch her expression change. Her grief has receded, and she’s taken on a different cast. Angry. Defiant, maybe.
“You know, before this, I never considered myself a vengeful person,” she says. “I mean, I was a prosecutor for a lot of years, but I was never one of the ones who relished the idea that
these guys—and I prosecuted mainly men who were sexual predators—would be on the other end of that equation in prison. I just considered it a tragedy all the way around. But now . . . all I want is for Paul, this guy I once thought I was in love with, to suffer for what he did to Charlotte. Not just to die, but to suffer.”
I swallow hard. I need to make sure that never happens.
35.
Ella’s phone rings a few minutes later. She’d resumed her position cradled under my arm, but when it rings, I can actually feel her clench up beside me. It’s not just that she’s startled, though. I know what she fears on the other end of the line. Truth be told, it’s what I fear too.
“Hello,” she says tentatively.
The way the blood drains from her face confirms that our mutual concern has been realized. Charlotte’s body has been found.
The conversation is short. Less than two minutes. When she puts down the phone, her eyes are unfocused, almost as if she’s been hypnotized.
“Ella, are you okay?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. I ask again.
“Ella, was that about your sister?”
“The police . . . ,” she starts slowly and then stops. After a deep breath, she provides the information I’ve been waiting for. “They found Charlotte. She’s dead.”
Ella falls into my arms. Her face is buried deep into my chest, and I can feel her convulse. As she sobs, I’m reduced to patting her on the back, an effort to provide some comfort for what I’ve taken from her.
After a moment, she pries herself off me. Sitting up but breathing heavily, she looks at me quizzically, like she can’t quite place how she knows me.
“I . . . I need to go to the police station,” she says.
