Gone by Morning

by Michele Weinstat Miller

  “Rusty, what’s wrong?” she asked.

  Rusty whined and let out a short bark in the direction of the man’s fishing pole. The fisherman looked over, raising an eyebrow but not saying anything.

  “Rusty, sit,” Emily commanded, troubled by his break in training. Rusty sat but still seemed anxious, his hackles up. She smiled sheepishly at the man. “I think he’s afraid of the fishing pole.”

  The man amiably waved his hand good-bye and walked ahead, the light green now. Emily gave the fisherman a head start before walking.

  She approached her building, the sun dipping behind the trees of Inwood Hill Park at the end of the block. The birds had begun singing. She always loved how there were so many birds roosting in the trees of her block, particularly at twilight. It wasn’t something you thought about when you apartment-hunted. You looked at the commute, good elementary schools, and whether there was evidence of mice or roaches in the apartments. A bird-filled block was something wonderful she’d had no thought of making happen in her life.

  Frankly, she marveled at having found her apartment at all. It had fallen into her lap. Last year, Emily had posted that she was looking to move from her studio apartment to a larger place better suited for her and Skye. Her Facebook friend Sophie had heard about an affordable two-bedroom apartment from a friend of hers who was finishing up graduate school at Columbia. Emily had jumped at it.

  A man and a woman approached her from the entrance to her building. The man asked, “Emily Silverman?”

  Emily felt Rusty standing at attention, his fur against the side of her bare leg below the hem of her sundress. “Yes?”

  They flashed badges. “NYPD. Homicide.”

  Emily automatically glanced down at Skye, who was still sleeping. “Homicide?”

  “I’m Detective Banks.” The cop signaled toward his partner. “This is Detective Luna. We’re investigating the death of Sharon Williams. We understand you saw her a few nights ago.”

  “Sharon … Kathleen’s friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my god.”

  Detective Luna repeated, “We understand you saw her earlier this week?”

  Emily felt disoriented. Déjà vu. It was the feeling of life suddenly upended. The way it had been when she was sixteen. Emily had been looking out the schoolroom window one morning, daydreaming. Orange leaves floated down from the trees outside her classroom.

  The teacher leaned over her desk, startling her. “Emily, you can finish the work sheet later. They want you in the office.”

  By nightfall, Emily was on a flight to Miami. There had been a hotel fire during her father’s business trip. Emily traveled with her mother and stepmother, Jessica, to the hospital. But Emily’s father, Brian, died that night, without them getting to see him. If Emily had learned anything from that experience, it was that nobody gave you a two-minute warning when your life was about to change completely.

  Emily refocused on Detective Luna, reminding herself that whatever was going on now wasn’t like that. At least not for her. But Kathleen would be devastated. “Yes. My neighbor, Kathleen, showed me her photo, and the woman I saw looked like her.” Emily told the detectives what she’d seen that night.

  “Can you describe the man she left with?” Detective Luna asked.

  “I didn’t see much of his face, but he had short dark hair. He was thick … not fat, maybe muscular, but it was hard to tell under his clothes. He had on a polo shirt. Maybe khakis. He was dressed … I wanna say”—she thought aloud—“corporate casual, as if he was maybe going out to dinner or he was working.” She took in the plainclothes cops. “The way you two are dressed, pretty much.”

  Detective Luna cracked a wry smile, as if acknowledging that their “plain clothes” weren’t a good disguise.

  “What happened to her?” Emily asked.

  Detective Banks spoke. “We’re still waiting for the medical examiner’s report, but the body was found in marshland near Jamaica Bay. It’s a location where we’ve found numerous murder victims. Mostly prostitutes.”

  Emily tried to grasp what he was saying as if she were grabbing a wet branch in rapids. “She was a prostitute?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought she was a model.”

  “No. Is that what you were told?”

  CHAPTER

  14

  BACK HOME, EMILY put Skye in her crib, removed her shorts, and left her sleeping in a T-shirt and Pull-Ups in the warm apartment. Emily lay in bed, replaying in her mind what she’d seen, ruminating about whether there’d been any sign of a problem that could have led her to do something to stop Sharon from getting into the car. Or that might have made her call the police. She gave up on sleep and ended up sitting cross-legged in bed for hours with her laptop, reading articles the intern, Thea, had sent her about violence against prostitutes. Then she did her own search about the North Beach killings and browsed through online bulletin boards, where amateurs traded clues, trying to solve crimes. The material wasn’t exactly conducive to sleep.

  When she finally slept, she dreamt of being attacked by a husky man in a polo shirt. She was running away from him on a beach. He was gaining on her. Then he was in her apartment. Where’s Skye? Skye!

  Emily must have groaned or thrashed. The next thing she knew, Rusty had pulled her blanket off her, startling her with the cool air of the room. The dog ran to the light switch and pushed it on with his nose, flooding the bedroom with light.

  “Good doggy,” she said, bleary-eyed but glad he’d woken her up from her dream.

  * * *

  When Emily woke again, it was just after dawn and Skye was raring to go. Skye ate her breakfast of fruit, scrambled eggs, and toast in their small kitchen, a space that allowed just enough room for a table for two. Emily put her laptop on the table and wrote in the online Puppies-in-Prison journal about Rusty’s success at waking her up, which was exactly what he was supposed to do for veterans with night terrors. She was happy to have something excellent to say beyond the problem with the fisherman. She texted Kathleen to ask if she could come by for coffee.

  Kathleen arrived ten minutes later. She bent down to pet Rusty as Skye peered at her from the doorway between the living room and kitchen.

  “Good morning, Skye,” the older woman said.

  “Say good-morning to Kathleen, Skye,” Emily said.

  “Good morning, Kat-leen.”

  Kathleen put out her hands. “Can I get a hug?”

  Skye came to her and allowed the hug.

  Emily picked up the TV remote. “Skye, come watch Dinostory.” She turned to Kathleen as the little girl ran to sit cross-legged in front of the TV. “I don’t usually let her watch TV this early, but I wanted to talk to you.”

  Emily led Kathleen to the kitchen. “The police were here,” she said, and held up a pot of coffee. “Do you want any? It’s jet fuel, but good.”

  “Sure, thanks.” Kathleen sat. “I gave them your name. I’m sorry to involve you.”

  “That was totally fine. What else could you do?” Emily poured coffee into a mug. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  But when Emily sat, she noticed that Kathleen’s eyes were puffy.

  “Sharon was a prostitute?”

  Kathleen looked at Emily, surprise flickering across her face at the mention. “Yes.”

  Emily placed a milk carton and sugar bowl on the table. “I was a little blindsided.”

  “Is her being a sex worker an issue? She’s dead.”

  Emily was startled by Kathleen’s tone. Emily had never seen any hint of anger in Kathleen. And besides, Emily was the one who should be pissed.

  “Well, considering that sex work probably led to Sharon getting killed, I guess it was a problem,” she said. “And honestly, I thought she was a model.”

  “Why did you think Sharon was a model?” Kathleen asked.

  Emily’s face heated with embarrassment. “You didn’t say she was a model?”

  “We
ll, no, Emily,” Kathleen said. “Full disclosure, I do recall you mentioning my ‘model friends’ on occasion. I didn’t correct you because it’s not my habit to ‘out’ people. I can see from your reaction that it was wise of me not to overdisclose. It usually is.”

  “I just really don’t understand it. All of your friends are call girls?”

  “The oldest and most dangerous profession. Why are you so offended, Emily?”

  “Look, things haven’t always been easy for me. My father died in a hotel fire when I was a teenager. If that shock hadn’t been bad enough, he left a mess for my mother and stepmother, who was pregnant at the time. There were problems with money. There were other women. It was a rough time for my family, and hard for me to face that my father hadn’t been the dad I thought he was. So, long story short, I don’t like being pulled into things without knowing what I’m getting into. I didn’t have a choice when I was a kid, but I do now.”

  “I’m sorry about your father. But you understand that all your assumptions were your assumptions,” Kathleen said in a kind but maybe condescending manner.

  Emily couldn’t decide if she should be annoyed by it. She was mostly embarrassed. She had made assumptions about Kathleen’s friends. It had been a rookie mistake. As a former reporter, she deserved Kathleen’s condescension.

  Kathleen continued, “And, besides anything else, if I thought it was dangerous to be around me, I would have stayed away from you.” She looked down, as if that statement were heavy with emotion she didn’t want Emily to read. It was a little weird. Hard to say what was going on with Kathleen, but she seemed sincere.

  Emily asked, “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “Me? No, I don’t think so. Definitely no trouble with the police.” Kathleen chuckled. “The statute of limitations has long run out on anything I ever did. I’m even an AARP member.”

  Emily couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Are you saying without really saying that you were a hooker before, so I can assume it, and you can tell me later that I jumped to conclusions? Jeez, I’m glad I’m not interviewing you.”

  Kathleen smiled wryly. “No, I wasn’t a hooker. I was a madam.”

  “Oh.” Emily processed it. That made sense.

  “Sharon is dead,” Kathleen said somberly, changing the subject. “I knew her for a very long time. I feel as if I failed her. I tell myself she was an adult and made her own choice to do sex work. But maybe if she’d never met me, the Life wouldn’t have been so easy, maybe it wouldn’t have been so respectable and safe. It’s difficult to get out of the profession once you’re in it, even when things stop being so easy. It’s hard for the women to avoid the shame that’s laid on them. Self-hatred can weigh them down, get them stuck. Of course, for others, it’s all about the money, more than they could imagine making in nine-to-five jobs. I thought that was Sharon’s story.

  “For me, I was becoming too old for the risk of running the operation. Women with my kind of business were going to jail. Kristin Davis, Governor Spitzer’s madam. The woman from Westchester they called the ‘Soccer Mom Madam.’ Society takes deep vengeance against women who’ve been successful outside its laws. Maybe especially when they profit off what might be looked at as male weakness. When I left the business and bought this building, some of my employees didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have a part in getting Sharon into the game, and I hope I prevented her from falling into a pimp’s trap, but I also made the Life easy for her. Maybe that helped her get deeper into it, stay in it. The sadness of Sharon’s life and death, and what it says about me, my life, and my rationalizations about it, is damn near overwhelming.”

  “I’m sorry for the judgment. This whole thing has taken me by surprise.”

  “I understand.”

  “Did you say you own this building?”

  “It allows for a moderate profit. The tenants don’t know anything about my past, so please don’t repeat what I’ve told you. I just want a quiet life and to be a good neighbor.”

  * * *

  Emily took a peek into the living room to check on Skye, who hadn’t budged from her spot in front of the TV. She returned to the table. “I guess what’s freaking me out is that I was probably the last person to see Sharon alive. And I may be the only one who saw the killer.”

  “That concerns me too.”

  “The good thing is that the killer, if he was the killer, has no way of knowing I saw him.”

  “What did the police say?”

  “Nothing, really. They said they may have me come in to look at photos. I was surprised they didn’t want me to look at pictures right away or do a composite drawing. Last night, after they left, I searched for stories on the web about Sharon’s murder. There was nothing.”

  “Hooker lives don’t matter,” Kathleen said. “Men can hook up with a thousand women, but it doesn’t devalue their lives. Sex workers are like irregulars on a discount rack. The media doesn’t care, the public doesn’t care, and to cops, hookers are criminals, so the cops don’t care. It isn’t only serial killers who dehumanize them.”

  “I was reading last night,” Emily said, “when a murdered sex worker disappears, more times than not, nobody calls in a missing-person report. And if there’s a warrant because the woman didn’t show up at court after an arrest, the police categorize her as a fugitive, not a missing person, even if somebody reports her missing. It gives serial killers a head start, because the police don’t investigate it as a possible crime the way they would if any other woman went missing.”

  “You’re right,” Kathleen said. “And when they find a body, since there’s no missing-person report to match the body against, it’s hard to retrace the victim’s steps to investigate. The body can go unidentified for years, if not forever, which makes it that much harder to catch the killer.”

  “So there is one thing that’s bothering me about that,” Emily said. “Sharon was beautiful and really put together. I thought she was a model. A serial killer wouldn’t think she’d disappear without someone missing her. Why would he pick her? And Sharon knew the guy in the maroon car, or he said something that made her comfortable going with him. It didn’t seem to be a long enough conversation for a business negotiation.”

  “It wasn’t a random pickup by someone stalking the ‘ho stroll,’ which surely isn’t this neighborhood, in any event,” Kathleen said. “Sharon didn’t work the street, and I’m sure she hadn’t arranged a date with him. She was coming to my house. She would have called if she’d changed her plans.”

  Emily rolled her questions around in her mind, a thought jelling. “Victims of the North Beach Killer advertised on Craigslist, and the police believe they met the killer while working. But Sharon wasn’t working. So, what if her murder had nothing to do with her profession? What if the killer left Sharon’s body at North Beach just so the police would assume the North Beach Killer did it, to steer the cops in the wrong direction? That would mean he carefully researched and planned the killing and cover-up ahead of time.”

  Kathleen leaned forward. “If you’re right, the cops are looking for the wrong killer with a completely irrelevant profile.”

  “If they continue down that path”—Emily looked Kathleen in the eyes—“we’ll never know what happened to Sharon, a lunatic psychopath will stay out on the street, and he’ll probably kill again.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  SIX DAYS AFTER the subway attack, Kathleen busied herself wiping down the television screen, which was tuned to CNN once again. She wiped at the morning anchor, who was reporting on the recovery of the injured still in the hospital. The subway attack stories had taken a back seat to floods, the first hurricane of the season forming in the Gulf of Mexico, and political scandal. But there were still intermittent updates.

  Kathleen had given the cops the security video of Sharon and had called the detectives earlier today to get an update, but they hadn’t returned her calls. By now, the cops had checked Kathleen’s own criminal record. Con
victed felons were right up there with prostitutes in the lives-that-do-not-matter category, even decades after their last run-in with the law. She didn’t expect a call back.

  Still, she owed Sharon, and she wouldn’t abandon her with no one caring why she had died or what happened to her remains. If nothing else, she needed to claim Sharon’s body and arrange for a funeral, although she had no idea whom to invite from Sharon’s recent life. She would just cremate Sharon and spread the ashes on her own, if necessary. She wished she had some way to find the possible girlfriend, Angel or Angela, before making decisions. More importantly, Angel might have information about who would want to kill Sharon. Kathleen refused to sit back and let the police sweep Sharon’s death under the carpet as if it didn’t matter.

  Thinking about how alone Sharon had been, Kathleen felt a pang of her own deepest loneliness and the decades-old pain and guilt over the loss of her daughter: Lauren. The guilt always flowed in once the loss-spigot opened. Kathleen had left Lauren alone at an age when no one should be.

  Kathleen concentrated on swiping the television screen with her rag, feeling soothed by the cleaning. It took the edge off emotions that had haunted her for over thirty years. Keeping a clean home was the one good habit she’d acquired in prison. Before that, the apartment she’d shared with her husband and daughter on the Lower East Side had been a chronic mess. Boxes, black garbage bags, and old skates and clothes Lauren had outgrown gathered in high piles lining the hallway. Unlike the treasures of a hoarder, the items weren’t saved because she and Michael were attached to them. The problem was that neither Kathleen nor her husband had the energy to do any sort of physical labor, no matter how minor. Plus, toward the end of her drug use, Kathleen had become too afraid to dump the trash in the basement. She’d thought people were waiting for her there. And Lauren had been trapped in the mess of her parents’ addiction, chaos far worse than the physical trash.