by Carrie Smith
He gripped the railing and extended his head forward so that all he saw in his peripheral vision was the gray water below. The current was strong. His eyes locked on little whirlpools until he followed a decomposing tree branch carried by the current. The water would be frigid. The moment he jumped in, it would saturate his parka, shirt, pants, and shoes and awaken all his senses. He would feel more alive in that split second than he had felt at any other time in his life. But in the very next instant, he would probably regret his decision and cry out for help as he struggled against the current and the weight of his water-soaked clothes. Drivers on the West Side Highway would whizz by without any awareness of his emergency. And soon he would understand that his struggle was useless, his decision was irrevocable. And then he would search his memory for one last image to hold onto. And what would that image be? Baiba smiling at him? Judith Greenwald telling him, You’ve done hard work in here. Singing “Cell Block Tango” with Lucy? All of those moments in time were so ethereal—they only existed in his mind—and when he had sunk below the surface of life, they would be gone forever.
Brandon pulled his head up and stepped back from the railing. He didn’t have the courage to take his life that way. He started walking uptown on the bike path that bordered the length of the highway. Cars drove by him in the opposite direction, heading toward Battery Park, and he imagined stepping headlong into traffic. He stared up at the Empire State Building rising above the other Midtown skyscrapers and imagined hurtling himself from the top floor. And then he thought of all the jumpers who leaped to their death in front of an oncoming train. He could go to the Chambers Street Station right now and stand at the end of the platform where the Number 2 emerged from its tunnel. The train would still be moving fast, and if you leapt in front of it right there, the conductor couldn’t possibly see you in time to brake.
He continued to walk. He imagined his fractured body on the rails, people staring down at him from the platform. They wouldn’t really care about him. They would just want to see what a mangled body looked like. And they would carry his image home in their short-term memories, describe him to their friends and family, and quickly forget about him.
He began to cry. He was giving in to self-pity, he knew. Judith would say, You have a choice, Brandon. You always have a choice how you respond to things. He turned onto Pier 46. No one was there, and he screamed at the top of his lungs, “I hate you all! I hate everyone! Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!” His words were swallowed up in the frigid winter wind. But when they were out of him he felt calmer. He didn’t want to disappear from this world or give up his dreams. Yes, they were modest, but they were real. He would become a respiratory therapist and work in a hospital one day. He would intubate people and save their lives. They wouldn’t know him, but they would know what he’d done for them in their moment of need, and he would feel a sense of accomplishment in that. Maybe he would earn enough money to buy a little apartment in Queens or the Bronx—he’d never be able to afford Brooklyn. And if he was very lucky, he might find someone to love—not someone like Baiba, but someone who would love him back.
He left the pier and continued to walk.
CHAPTER 63
Codella had taken no chances this time. She presented a search warrant to Constance Hodges. “I’ve come to examine Ms. Lielkaja’s office. There’s the outside chance I’ll find information in there that will help us with the case.”
Hodges stared at the warrant and nodded. “Shall I take you up?”
“You can, if you prefer,” said Codella, “but it’s not necessary. I remember the Nostalgia code. I’ll just be in her office. I won’t disrupt any activities.”
Hodges remained downstairs, and Codella was relieved not to have her company.
The first thing she noticed when she switched on the light in Lielkaja’s office was the empty Juice Generation cup sitting on the right side of her desk. Codella stared at it for several seconds, remembering the identical cup she and Muñoz had found in Lielkaja’s apartment. Then she got to the business at hand. The desk looked cluttered, as if Lielkaja had left her work with every intention of picking up exactly where she’d left off. An events calendar was open to the month of February, and a ballpoint pen lay next to the calendar. Lielkaja had scribbled notes on a pad next to it.
A cream colored sweater hung off the back of her desk chair. A computer sat at the far end of the desk. It was turned off. A coffee mug next to the computer served as a pen and pencil holder. The message on the mug read Make Someone Smile Today! There were other inspirational messages in the room, too. We Inspire, We Connect, We Are Caregivers was the affirmation on a poster taped to the wall behind the desk chair. A poster on the wall across from the door featured a quote from Maya Angelou: If you find it in your heart to care for someone else, you will have succeeded. Had Lielkaja personally believed in these inspirational words, or were they simply motivational tools for her staff?
Codella opened the left desk drawer. Lielkaja was apparently an Earl Grey tea drinker, and she had a plastic sandwich bag filled with dark Dove chocolates. Her right hand drawer held a stapler, three hole punch, paper clips, and tube of Origin’s lip gloss.
Codella powered on the computer. While she waited for it to boot up, she stepped into the corridor. From this vantage, she could see into the parlor, the dining room, and the kitchen. Breakfast had been served and was now being cleared from the tables. Several residents sat in the parlor in front of the large flat-screen television. Few, if any, eyes were focused on the screen, however. Some of the residents slept sitting up. Others pulled at their garments or stared at their hands as if their limbs didn’t really belong to them. They were like cars, Codella thought—luxury cars, to be sure—warehoused in long-term parking on the lowest level of an exclusive Rapid Park garage.
In the kitchen, a caregiver was wiping off the counter. At one table in the dining room, a professional-looking staff member held up cards in front of a smiling resident. “What color is this?” Codella heard the woman ask.
The resident squinted at the card for several seconds as she considered her answer. “Blue,” she finally said.
“Blue?” The staff member pointed. “Look again, Mrs. Knight. Are you sure that’s blue?”
“Yes,” the resident insisted. “Are you trying to trick me?”
Codella turned back to Lielkaja’s office and noticed a cork bulletin board on the wall between the office and the small staff room. Large typed letters at the top of the board spelled out Farewell to a Beautiful Neighbor, and below these words was a collage of photos mounted with green, white, red, and blue pushpins. There were glossy date-stamped photos as well as pixelated digital printouts from a color copier. Together, the photos were a hastily made tribute to Lucy Merchant’s eighteen months at Park Manor.
Codella moved closer. In one photo, Lucy stood in the parlor in front of a Christmas tree next to Brandon Johnson, who was dressed like one of Santa’s elves. In another, she sat at a dining room table in front of a birthday cake. Baiba Lielkaja was hugging her and smiling at the camera in another photograph. A big black caregiver danced with her in another. Thomas Merchant appeared in just one photo, sitting uncomfortably next to his wife at a Thanksgiving table filled with other dementia sufferers. Codella scanned the photos for Julia, but didn’t find her image.
Her eyes kept returning to one photo in particular, a glossy colored one with a date stamp that indicated it had been taken only weeks after Lucy Merchant had moved into the Nostalgia Neighborhood. There was something haunting about this photo. Lucy Merchant stood in her bedroom next to the window, arms folded, mouth closed, eyes staring into the camera. They were sentient eyes, Codella thought, eyes that seemed to say, I know why I am here. I know what is happening to me. But the detail that was even more compelling than those eyes was located on the windowsill of the bedroom. What Codella saw there made everything fall into place. She heard her own voice whispering, “Oh my fucking God. Why didn’t I see it?” But she
already knew the answer. Her desire to see one thing had blinded her to what was actually in front of her. She’d violated her own rule of the game and allowed her personal history to impose a narrative on the present—the wrong narrative.
She removed the blue pushpin holding the photo in place, pocketed the photo, and rushed out of Park Manor. There was no need to search Baiba Lielkaja’s office now.
CHAPTER 64
“Well, here we are alone again—just like old times.” Merchant smiled.
Constance Hodges knew that smile so well. Flirtatious. Insincere. Manipulative. “Not exactly alone.” She gestured to the lunch crowd in the Four Seasons Pool Room.
“Would you rather be alone in my apartment?”
“No, thank you.” But that wasn’t entirely true, and he probably knew it, too, she thought. “Why did you ask to see me, Thomas?”
Merchant laughed. “Don’t play my therapist, Constance.”
“But it’s what I am.” She shrugged. “Even after all these years.”
He sipped the dry white wine in his sweating glass. She waited. He had never been able to outwait her.
“I hate the media,” he finally said.
“They’re not very nice to high-paid financiers or cheating husbands, are they?”
He sipped again. She craved a drink, but she wasn’t going to have one. She was the therapist right now, and she wouldn’t show her vulnerabilities, although Merchant would test her sorely. She would go back to Park Manor after this lunch and calm her nerves in private.
“You could help me, Constance.”
“Help you how?” She sipped her ice water.
“We could hold a press conference at Park Manor. You could tell them how I supported my wife.”
“I’d rather tell them all the things I can’t tell them about your past.”
“Why are you being so hostile, Constance?”
“You know the answer to that perfectly well. Your bank is financing the end of my career.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t pretend with me, Thomas. BNA is behind Eldercare Elite’s bid, and when the deal goes through, my job goes away. You know that as well as I do.”
He laughed. “Come on. They’ll still need an executive director.”
“An Eldercare Elite director. Not me.”
“What are you saying?” he asked. “What do you want from me?”
“I want that deal to go away. Permanently.”
“And how am I supposed to make that happen?”
“I don’t care how you do it.”
“And that’s your price for saying a few nice things about me to the press?”
She let her silence be her answer.
“They’re going to crucify me,” he said. “And I did not kill Lucy. You must know that.”
She stared into his pleading eyes. As a patient, he had never wanted to acknowledge the truth about himself. He had flirted his way through their sessions without doing any transformative work. And now, twenty-one years later, he was still the same man who had walked into her office grudgingly. She had treated so many men like him. They went a little too far with a female employee, endangered their career, and did their “rehabilitation” time with her. But they never really changed. At best, they just got a little more careful. But Merchant hadn’t been careful. “What about Baiba Lielkaja?” she asked.
He leaned forward. “I didn’t kill Baiba,” he whispered.
“You know what? I almost believe you. You know why? Because you don’t like them dead. You just like them playing dead.”
He looked at her coldly. “That is not a therapeutic thing for you to say, Constance.”
“You said you didn’t need a therapist anymore.”
“Why are you provoking me?”
She wasn’t going to answer the question, but at least she was willing to admit the truth to herself. Despite his massive flaws of character, she had felt a powerful attraction to him all those years ago. She had imagined becoming the commanding wife who would keep him in check. But he had married Lucy Merchant. And after all these years and all his bad behavior, Constance still wished he had chosen her.
Eighteen months ago, when she’d sat beside him on her office couch and showed him the layouts of two available suites in Nostalgia for his wife, she’d still felt that attraction. As his dark eyes compared and contrasted the features of the two apartments available for his wife, she’d inhaled the scent of his subtle expensive cologne, and when he turned those eyes in her direction, she’d felt an exquisite little explosion of adrenaline in her chest. “Which rooms get the best light, Constance?” he had asked, and although the words were a question, his tone was a confident statement. I know you want me. His knee had brushed hers “accidentally,” and her excitement had turned into pulsing desire. She still wanted him, she thought now, but he had shown far more interest in Baiba than in her.
Hodges stared at his wine glass. She examined her fingernails and resisted the urge to bite them. “I just don’t like to see you act like a fool,” she said. “It doesn’t become you. Why do you do it? Why do you feel the need to dominate every woman in your life?”
“I don’t,” he said.
“You do,” she insisted. “And now you’re trying to dominate me with this Eldercare deal. But I’m not Lucy. I’m not your daughter. I’ll fight back, Thomas. I’m not going to let you destroy my career.”
He narrowed his eyes, and she could see the anger in his clenched jaw and tight mouth.
“How many times did you drug her, Thomas?” Hodges pushed him even harder. “Lucy, I mean.”
“Stop it, Constance.”
“You shouldn’t have asked me here if you didn’t want me to go all the way. We’re both grown-ups. I know you, and you know me. There are very few secrets here. So why don’t you tell me why you really called me.”
When he didn’t answer after a full minute of silence, she leaned across the table and said, “Then I’ll tell you why. You can control everyone else, but you can’t control yourself anymore. You went too far with Baiba. You knew it was foolish, and yet you couldn’t stop yourself.”
“I had nothing to do with her death.”
Hodges shook her head. “Maybe not, but you’re in trouble and you’re terrified. And inviting me to lunch is as close as you can come to asking for help.”
Merchant finished the rest of his wine, waved at the waiter, and asked for a bourbon. He didn’t speak for the four minutes it took the waiter to return with the glass. Then Hodges watched him drink it in two large gulps. “You really piss me off, Constance,” he finally said.
“That’s not my problem.”
“Talk to the press. Tell them I’ve been there for my wife.”
“Kill the Eldercare Elite deal,” she countered. “Do that, and I’ll tell them anything you want me to. You can write my script.”
Merchant signaled the waiter and pointed to his glass. “Fine,” he finally gave in. “Schedule a five o’clock press conference and consider it killed.”
CHAPTER 65
Julia looked surprised and a little nervous.
“May I come in?” Codella asked.
“Of course.” Julia opened the door tentatively.
“Thank you.” Codella walked in. The young woman was still wearing pajamas. Her hair was uncombed. She looked as if she’d just gotten out of bed. “I wanted to give you an update on our progress,” Codella explained.
Julia sighed. “I’ve read all the papers. It’s so upsetting. I can’t believe Baiba is dead, too. Please, have a seat.” She gestured to a gold couch, but Codella remained standing. “Can I get you some water? Coffee?”
“Water would be great.”
When Julia disappeared into the kitchen, Codella walked around the spacious living room. The decision-making of a talented professional interior designer was evident in the lush upholstery, carpeting, and curtain patterns that complimented each other. She noticed the fresh-cut flowers in a v
ase on the fireplace mantle. She saw the shopping bags on the floor near the built-in bookshelves. She read the titles of novels on the shelves and studied the souvenirs that had come from many continents. Julia Merchant had been raised in privilege, and she continued to enjoy it.
Julia returned with a glass of sparkling water and set it on a Museum of Modern Art coaster on the glass coffee table in front of the couch. Then she sat and stared at the detective.
“We’re making progress,” Codella told her. “I think we’re actually close to knowing how your mother died.”
“It was murder, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was murder.” Codella sat.
“Who do you think did it? Was it Brandon Johnson? Was it the nurse?” She paused. “Or was it my father?”
Codella sipped the sparkling water. “I can’t tell you that, Julia. I’m not really at liberty to tell you everything we’ve got, but you have to trust me. We’re going to have a resolution soon. We’ll arrest the person responsible for your mother’s death. I give you my word on that.” She smiled. “But I need your help.”
“Of course,” said Julia. “Anything. What? Just tell me what you need.”
“When you first came to my office, you showed me a video you recorded on a hidden alarm clock camera, the video that jump-started this investigation. You remember?”
“Of course. How could I forget that?” Julia nodded earnestly. She pushed her long hair behind her left ear. “I’m just so glad I looked at that recording.”
Codella nodded. “Have you ever heard the term chain of custody, Julia?”
“No. What is it?”
“It’s an expression police and prosecutors use. It refers to the evidence we collect. Every piece of evidence we use to build a case and convict someone of a crime has to meet chain of custody rules. For example, when you brought those rug fibers to my office on Monday afternoon, they did not meet chain of custody. I couldn’t have stood up in court and testified that those fibers truly came from your mother’s room. I couldn’t prove it. I had to go back to Park Manor and collect my own samples, put them in an evidence bag, fill out forms, and then voucher them before I sent them to toxicology. Now every time those fibers move from one individual to another, they will be signed for, and the chain of custody will be unbroken. You understand? That makes for solid evidence.”