“Thank God they didn’t keep you overnight.”
“They have nothing on me other than motive. And apparently lots of people had a motive. Tyler included.” I rubbed my temples. “She was his student, Angie,” I said, shaking my head. “And his lover.”
“What?” Angie stared at me, her eyes blazing with the streaked glow of streetlights.
“I’m still in shock.”
She pressed her hand against my arm. “I’m so sorry, hon. I guess her posts online were no joke.”
“Yeah, but a crush . . . a crush sounds so innocent now. Quaint even,” I said, anger clutching at my throat. If he had to be the cliché professor sleeping with a student, why did he have to do it with our donor of all people? I turned to Angie. “Katya told an Ombuds officer that when she’d tried to break it off, he’d lost it. He’d started pressuring her, stalking her even.” I sucked in my lips. This was way too big for me to begin to comprehend. “I just don’t see Tyler forcing anyone to . . .” I let the sentence hang, the thought too upsetting to complete.
Angie’s eyes had gone big. “Could he have done something to her?”
“God, no!” I shouted. “He couldn’t hurt a mouse,” I added, lowering my voice.
“You didn’t think he knew Katya, let alone that he was sleeping with her, and yet . . .” Angie shuddered. “Eww, just the thought of it.”
“He told me the name of the other woman was Elaine,” I said, and pulled out my phone. “And that she was one of his TAs. Let’s see if we can find her.”
I ignored a slew of frantic texts from Caitlin. There was nothing I could do now. The event was already over. Luckily, it was the middle of the night in Paris. I wouldn’t have to deal with Alistair’s wrath until tomorrow. I texted Caitlin back, Please let me know how it went, before switching to the Safari app. I went to the Columbia Philosophy Department page and clicked on the Graduate Students tab. I should have done it back then, but the news of Katya’s body floating in the river had pushed it out of my head. Angie and I huddled together in the back of the taxi, staring at the screen, as I scrolled down the list. Out of seventy-five MA and PhD candidates, only fifteen were women. None of them was named Elaine. There wasn’t an Elena or an Ellen or even an Emma.
I put the phone away and looked out the window. The rain was coming down hard, the taxi’s windshield wipers swinging back and forth fast and with urgency. Like a ticking bomb.
“It makes no sense,” I said, turning back to Angie. “If Katya were Tyler’s mistress, wouldn’t she have known I was his partner? Okay, maybe I’m not the only Lana in town, but how many of us also have a Bulgarian mother? You’d have to be a moron not to put two and two together and realize I was Tyler’s partner.”
“You’re assuming he told her anything about you. For all we know, Katya thought he was single. No band on his ring finger, nothing to suggest that the cute professor she was hooking up with was coupled.”
I sat up and stared at her.
“But then,” Angie went on, “she found out he was in a serious relationship and told him to go to hell.”
I shook my head. “She wrote in her post that she had a crush on the guy who was going to be the father of the baby. She’d known who Tyler was and that he had a partner.”
“But she could have been writing about someone else, as we thought at first.”
“That seemed plausible back when the thought of Katya and Tyler was inconceivable. With all that we know now, it would be too much of a coincidence,” I said as the taxi pulled in front of the building. I looked at Angie. “You wanna come up?”
“You can’t possibly think I’ll leave you alone tonight,” she said.
I paid and followed Angie out of the car. She ran up the three steps to the building’s entrance, holding her purse over her head. I let the rain wet my hair, drip down my face and shoulders, as I slowly climbed the stairs. I unlocked the door and as we walked in, I looked up at the security camera in the entry hall. The footage from the night Katya went missing would confirm that I hadn’t left my apartment until the next morning when I’d gone to the clinic.
In the elevator, Angie said: “Okay, so then she must have known Tyler had a partner but didn’t know anything about her.”
I nodded. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
We ordered Chinese takeout and ate dinner in silence. I didn’t have much appetite but forced myself to finish my kung pao chicken. My baby needed the calories. Afterward, we made chamomile tea and moved to the living room with our cups. I dimmed the lights and lit a couple of candles in an attempt—however futile—at unwinding. We sat on either end of the couch, Angie with her legs folded underneath her while I stretched mine out on the coffee table. Plato jumped on the pillow between us, sprawled on his belly, his front right leg sticking out straight, and started purring. This could have been a blissful moment: two friends who’d met in an infertility support group, both finally pregnant, relaxing together on a quiet rainy evening.
“So here is what we know,” I said, and picked up a pen and a pad from the coffee table to jot down a list. “The agency sent us Katya’s profile in early January and we booked her right away. Two weeks later, when the semester started, Tyler must have discovered that our donor-to-be was in his class. He didn’t tell me about it, probably because he knew I’d freak out. But he must have told her who he was . . .” I paused. “Before or after they’d started sleeping together.”
“But he never mentioned your name,” Angie said. “Or that your mother was Bulgarian.”
“Right.”
“Then, he decided he wanted to be with her, panicked that once you got pregnant he’d be stuck and decided to bail while he could. He left you for her but—surprise—Katya wasn’t looking for a relationship and told him to go to hell.” I nodded and Angie went on. “He got upset. Of course he did. ‘I left my partner for you, bitch.’” She imitated his voice.
I felt the blood drain from my face. “Oh, my God,” I said, and stood up.
“What?”
“Could he be the possessive boyfriend Katya was talking about? Who’d seemed pretty chill at first? Sure, because he was living with me. Tyler isn’t a Tom Cruise look-alike but he has blue eyes and brown hair. Who knows what Katya saw? And he is in his late thirties.”
Angie opened her mouth, then closed it. “Oh, my God,” she finally said. “So he pressured her to move in with him after graduation. She got worried and went to the Ombuds office.” Angie looked at me. “Didn’t you urge her to talk to someone about it?”
“I did.” I got off the couch and went to the window. The wind outside had picked up and rain pelted the glass. I pushed my forehead against it and stood like that, looking at the drops running down the panel like giant tears.
“Then, at the Ombuds office,” Angie continued behind me, “Katya inquired how to file a complaint against him.”
I turned. “But she never did.”
“He stopped her,” Angie said, and covered her mouth with her hands.
The night sky lit up with bolts of lightning. I stood at the window, my legs weak, my breathing fast, waiting for the thunder, as if that could bring some relief and make things right again.
36.
TYLER
NOW
The interrogation room was small. Brightly lit with a fluorescent tube on the ceiling that made a low buzzing sound. You could smell the fear of those who’d been here before you, sweating on that same folding chair. Made of metal, with a rigid back, it was not designed for comfort. A loud crack of thunder sounded outside and the window shuddered. A car alarm began wailing. I nearly laughed at how appropriate it all seemed. Detectives John Robertson and Alicia Sanchez sat across the table from me. He looked the part—barrel chest, thick neck. She was harder to pin. Could have been a teacher or an office manager—hard face, dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She seeme
d bored, staring somewhere to the left of me while Robertson asked the questions.
“Why don’t you tell us about your relationship with Katya Dimitrova?” he said. We’d already covered what I did at the university, how long I’d worked there, and if I got along with my students.
“Katya’s one of my undergraduates,” I said. “Was. She was in my intro class this past semester.” I paused. Looked down, unsure how much I should tell them. I’d seen Robertson walk Lana out earlier, while I was going over my contact information with a uniformed officer in the main room. I was furious they’d dragged her into this. Clearly, it was a setup. They’d meant for me to see her. She’d looked crushed, shell-shocked. I was glad she hadn’t seen me. I couldn’t imagine what I would have said to her.
I looked back at the detectives across the table. “Katya was also our egg donor,” I said. “My partner and I . . . We’re currently apart but we were planning on doing a fertility treatment using a donor egg.”
Sanchez got up and started pacing the room, seemingly uninterested. Robertson stared at me like an asshole. I couldn’t stand guys like him, pumping iron all day and acting like they were hot shit. “That’s it?” he asked, eyebrows up.
“That’s it.”
Sanchez stood in front of me and, leaning down, her face right in mine, said, “Was Katya perhaps the reason for your separation, Professor Jones?”
I pulled back. “What do you mean by that?”
“Maybe your partner found out about your relationship with Katya,” Robertson said.
Sanchez straightened up. “I wouldn’t have liked that if I were—”
“I had no relationship with Katya,” I said, interrupting her. They were really starting to piss me off.
“C’mon, man.” Robertson laughed. “Don’t tell me that a stunning girl like Katya comes into your life and you don’t take advantage of it. It’s not like you were married or anything.”
“I said, I didn’t have—”
“Interesting,” Sanchez said, and walked toward the mirror window as if talking to those behind it. She took her time before she turned back, leaned against the wall, and crossed her arms over her chest. “Because Katya told an Ombuds officer that she’d been having an affair with you.”
I felt the blood rushing to my face. My hands clamped into fists. “That’s a lie. She made it up.”
Sanchez arranged her lips in an exaggerated smile. “And why would she do that?”
“How am I supposed to know? Because she’s crazy?”
“Of course.” Sanchez laughed as she came back to the table. She pressed her palms on top and leaned forward again, her face stony. “You didn’t mind her being crazy when you had sex with her, did you?”
“I never touched her. Ever. I haven’t so much as shaken her hand, for fuck’s sake.” I slammed my fist on the table. My ears and neck were burning. I clenched my jaw and tried to calm my breathing. The siren of a fire truck sounded outside, the Klaxon noise growing louder and more piercing as it neared, then receding until it was gone.
“Hm.” Robertson took his jacket off and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Why don’t you tell us when you last saw her?”
“Saturday night, two weeks ago.”
“The night she went missing?” Sanchez asked. Her smug attitude was grating at me. I would take Robertson’s bullying over her insolence anytime.
“The night she went missing,” I repeated, trying to keep my voice down.
“And what time was that?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Around four a.m.”
The two of them exchanged looks. She raised a mocking eyebrow. “I don’t remember there being classes on Saturdays at four in the morning.” That venom in her voice again. “You mind telling us where exactly that meeting took place?”
I sighed, shifted on my seat. The silence was thick and sticky. The buzzing of the fluorescent light seemed to have grown louder.
“My apartment,” I finally said.
37.
LANA
NOW
I woke up to a voice mail from Alistair but couldn’t bring myself to listen to it. I didn’t even bother looking at my e-mails. I knew what I’d find. At least Caitlin had texted last night that it had gone well. Everyone seemed excited, she’d written. Whatever had happened or was to happen, I would deal with it when I made it to the office, I thought, and got out of bed.
It was barely seven a.m. but Angie was already up, sitting on the couch with her MacBook Pro on her lap and Plato at her feet. I’d left her there last night, curled up on the narrow cushions like a child.
“I just can’t believe it,” I said in lieu of good morning. “Tyler was the possessive guy Katya was telling me about?”
Angie closed her laptop. “Maybe not. Sounds like she’d been making the rounds: Tyler, the bartender, Jacuzzi Guy. Who knows how many more there were.”
I pulled Plato into my arms and joined her on the couch.
“She told the Ombuds officer about Tyler, though,” I said, running my hand through Plato’s fur with too much force. He squirmed, clearly unhappy, and I let him down. “But there is no way he did something to her. He might be a cheater but he certainly isn’t a killer. He couldn’t be.”
I looked at Angie for reassurance but she only shrugged, then patted my arm. “Did you get enough sleep?”
I shook my head. “I can’t imagine you got much, either, on the couch,” I said, then added, pointing to her laptop: “Are you on a deadline?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get it done.”
Angie was her own boss and had the flexibility of working whenever she wanted. Often, she worked all night, then slept during the day.
“You were right,” Angie added with a head tilt to the framed photographs on the piano. “Katya does look a bit like your mother.” She walked over to take a closer look at my mother’s portrait.
“You’re starting to show,” I said, staring at her baby bump.
She smiled. “I know.” Now that she’d passed the dreaded first three months and the NT scan, she was careful not to talk about her pregnancy around me. “Oh, you have some new ones,” she said, and picked up a photo of my mother in a handstand, her legs spread nearly 180. “Did she ever teach you how to do that?”
“She tried, believe me,” I said, and joined Angie at the piano. “Gymnastics, ballet, dance—I was hopeless. Hence, the piano.” I took the frame from her and studied my mother’s strong, taut little body.
“Holy cow, when did you run a marathon?” Angie asked, pointing to a photo of me wrapped in a silver emergency blanket and looking rather haggard. Tyler had snapped it without warning, and my eyes were trained on something to the left of the camera. I wasn’t even holding my medal to show it off. But my smile said it all. I’d done it.
“Ah, the good old days,” I said, which in our world meant pre-infertility. I’d put up a bunch of new photos to replace the shots I’d had with Tyler. It hadn’t occurred to me that they all dated to the good old days.
“Where is that?” Angie gestured to a photo of me crouched on a rooftop, wielding a hammer. My friend Jen was next to me, nail puller in hand, both of us laughing.
“I haven’t told you about New Orleans?”
Angie shook her head.
“After Katrina. A friend and I went down with Habitat for Humanity.”
“And this?” Angie asked about another “working” photo of me, this time holding a hoe over my head.
“Kenya, just before Tyler and I met.”
“Dear God, woman!” Angie shrieked. “What else have you been hiding in your closet?”
“It’s not what it looks like,” I said, feeling self-conscious about the photos. “I just needed a boost. You know. To remind myself that I’m—”
“Superwoman?”
“I was going for strong . . . A
h, forget it.” I waved my hand.
Angie gave me a long look, a slow smile.
The crunching sound of Plato chewing pellets of dry food came from the kitchen. I looked at my watch. “I have to be in the office in an hour,” I said. “Come, let’s have some breakfast.” I didn’t bother explaining about the missed presentation last night. I couldn’t even think about it. If I did, I’d have to face the fact that my career at the Met was most likely over.
Plato barely glanced at us as he continued eating. He wasn’t particularly skittish and Angie wasn’t a stranger in the house.
“I’ve only got milk, cereal, and some berries,” I warned her, surveying the empty shelves in the fridge.
Angie laughed. “It’s more than I have.”
I washed some strawberries and blueberries to add to our flakes and set the kettle on for tea. “Let’s see if there’s anything new,” I said, and turned on the TV in the living room. I couldn’t see it from the kitchen but I often had it on in the morning, listening to the news, as I got ready for work. Tyler used to tease me that I would be better off listening to the radio.
I flipped to NY1, which repeated the local news every ten to fifteen minutes. A commercial about a constipation drug came on and I muted the volume.
“Wait,” Angie said. “We might need that.”
I shot her a look over my shoulder. “I was hoping that once I stop the progesterone at twelve weeks . . .”
“Keep dreaming,” she said, standing at the doorway, watching the TV. “I’m fifteen weeks with no relief in sight.”
“I hit eight yesterday,” I said, setting out the bowls with our breakfast on the table. “All that drama with Tyler and Katya . . . it’s almost taking my mind off the—”
“Speaking of . . .” Angie said, and grabbed the remote from the table and increased the volume. I joined her in the living room just as Tyler’s photo filled the top left corner of the screen. The anchor, a pretty woman in a pink dress, was speaking in a fake concerned voice: “Columbia professor Tyler Jones has been detained for questioning by NYPD investigators in connection with the case of missing Columbia University senior Katya Dimitrova, whose body was recovered in the Hudson River last Friday.”
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