Dead Certain: A Novel

by Adam Mitzner

  “And what about my theory about Paul Michelson? The change to Tuesday makes it more likely he’s the guy. It means he hired us after he killed Charlotte. To stay close to the investigation about Charlotte. Classic sociopathic behavior, right?”

  “Yeah. It would certainly be that, Ella. I mean, if he’s the guy.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Despite my best efforts, I’m delayed at rehearsal. That means there’s going to be hell to pay with Marco for being late to his big night. Whether my tardiness is by ten minutes or two hours hardly matters. To him, my not showing up on time to “his” show means I do not respect his work—which is the same thing as not caring about him.

  The gallery is on the fourth floor. A tiny elevator takes forever to climb the few stories. When the doors finally open, I literally run into the space.

  I had assumed—wrongly, it turns out—that the art crowd would be fashionably late. Even though my iPhone tells me it’s only 7:15, the space is already wall-to-wall with people.

  A server wearing a tuxedo—sans jacket, but with a black tie and silver vest—offers me a glass of champagne from a tray. I take it and quickly look around for Marco. In the center of the room is a fifteen-foot-high minimalist, abstract sculpture entitled Infinity that can only be intended to evoke the thought of a penis. From my quick glance at the rest of Quinones Perez’s oeuvre, it seems phallus-shaped pieces are the common thread running through his work.

  I make my way through the room, assuming that Marco’s pieces will be near the back, but there’s no sign of him or his work. When I reach the far wall, I approach an elderly woman. She’s accompanied by a much younger man, and they’re holding hands.

  “I heard that there were some student artists also showing,” I say. “Any idea where that would be?”

  “Yes,” the woman says with a smile. “Go through those doors—it’s down the hall a bit.”

  Marco has been relegated to the bullpen. Now I’m certain he’ll be furious. The one bright spot of him being in Siberia is that at least I’ll be able to claim that I arrived on time but couldn’t find him.

  I don’t see anyone else in the hallway, so I fully expect Marco’s room to be similarly uninhabited. But when I enter, he’s talking to another man.

  I’m anticipating being on the receiving end of some type of death stare from Marco, his way of making it clear to me that he’s angry that I’m late. Instead, he greets me with a broad grin.

  “Speak of the devil,” Marco says.

  The man who has held Marco’s attention turns around.

  It’s Matthew. My Matthew.

  I can’t believe he had the nerve to show up at Marco’s event. And worse, he’s engaged him. I can only imagine the hell I’d have to pay if I pulled a similar stunt with Matthew’s wife.

  “Very nice to meet you,” Matthew says. “Clare, is it?”

  “Y-yes,” I manage to say even though my jaw is so tight it could press a diamond from coal.

  “Matthew here is interested in purchasing the piece I did of you,” Marco says. “He said it held . . . what was your exact turn of phrase?”

  “Transcendent beauty,” Matthew says with a smile.

  I can finally see Marco’s portrait of me. It’s propped up on an easel in the middle of the room. Me, in all my naked glory.

  I’ll give Marco this—the piece is magnificent. He’s captured almost my fantasy of myself, and even though I’m wearing next to nothing it isn’t prurient in the least.

  Words escape me. After all, what can you say when your lover is catfishing your boyfriend? But then it occurs to me that Marco might be expecting me to suck up to his potential buyer.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” is all I could come up with.

  Matthew looks deeply into my eyes, as if I’m totally in on this joke. Then, turning to Marco, he says, “Do I really need to take up the business arrangements with the gallery? I can’t just tell you to name your price for this piece and walk out with it?”

  Marco laughs. “I wish, but it doesn’t work that way. The gallery handles all sales for this show, but I can arrange a private showing of my work if you like. On those pieces, you can deal with me directly.”

  Marco reaches into his pocket and pulls out a scrap of paper. It looks like a receipt. On the side without the print, he scribbles his address and number. “Here you go,” he says. “You can reach me on my mobile. Day or night.”

  The transaction seems as if it’s unfolding in slow motion, the way you might witness a car accident. All I want is for the two of them to stop occupying the same space.

  “Thank you,” Matthew says, taking the scrap from Marco. “And now I better put in my claim on this beauty before someone else snatches it out from under me.” He extends his hand to Marco and as they shake, Matthew says, “I’m so glad that I wandered out of the main room. You’re very, very talented, Marco. I’m thrilled that I’ll be getting in on the ground floor of what I have every expectation will be a long and prosperous career.” He turns and smiles at me again. “And very nice meeting you too, Clare. I look forward to hours of staring at you . . . at least on canvas.”

  Marco waits for Matthew to leave. Then he gushes, “Can you believe that? ‘Transcendent beauty.’ You know, that’s what I should have titled it. Well, at least I won’t have to split the price with Henry when Mr. Wall Street buys my other pieces.”

  I know there’ll be no other purchases. In fact, I consider it a fair possibility that Matthew won’t even buy this one of me. And if that’s the case, there truly will be hell to pay with Marco—even if he doesn’t figure out that I’m in love with his would-be patron.

  23.

  When I arrive at Charlotte’s apartment, there’s a duffel bag in the living room.

  “Going somewhere?” I ask Zach. “I would have thought you’d have no reason to run now.”

  “I have the definite feeling I’ve worn out my welcome here.”

  He’s right about that. In fact, he’s about a week late in coming to the conclusion.

  “You can’t blame us for that. Even if you didn’t kill Charlotte—and I’m far from certain of that still—your courageous decision to mislead everyone as to when she went missing might very well have ended her life just the same.”

  He can’t make eye contact, which pleases me. Even so, I’m certain he doesn’t feel nearly bad enough for the havoc he’s wreaked.

  “When will you be out of here? The sight of you in my sister’s apartment sickens me.”

  He doesn’t rise to the bait. His self-control surprises me—a sign of just how much my understanding of Zach has merged with Marco the painter.

  “Another hour or so,” he says.

  “Let me guess. You’re taking up residence with your little law-school friend?”

  This time he looks at me. I can see the anger just beneath the surface, even though Zach’s trying mightily to suppress it.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  I laugh in the patronizing way I perfected back when I was an ADA and suspects thought they had the upper hand. It unequivocally told them that they had no idea how out of their depth they really were.

  “Suit yourself. You won’t be living with her long, anyway. Lying to the police makes you guilty of obstruction of justice. That’s a class E felony in New York, punishable by three to five years in jail. I’m going to make sure you serve every day of it. A pretty boy like you . . . I’m quite confident you’ll become the girlfriend of some animal at Rikers soon enough.”

  In reality, under New York law, obstruction of justice is a class A misdemeanor. Jail time is limited to one year by statute, and I’m not aware of any first-time offender going to prison for a misdemeanor infraction. Zach, of course, doesn’t know the law. I’m hoping the specter of jail time will unnerve him.

  But he doesn’t show the slightest reaction. It’s as if there’s nothing I can say that matters to him any longer.

  His nonchalant attitude pushes me over the
edge. Even before I realize it’s happening, I hear myself screaming.

  “Get the fuck out of here right now, you fucking lowlife piece of shit!”

  Next thing I know, my hands are around the handle of Zach’s duffel bag and I’m running toward the door. I throw it into the hallway and am coming back to do the same to Zach when I see his palms in front of his chest. He’s telling me to stop.

  “Please,” he says. “Sit down. I know we’re likely not going to talk again after today, so we should talk now.”

  Still enraged, I follow Zach over to the sofa. If he has something to say, I’ll hear it. But that’s all the civility I’m prepared to provide him.

  “Thank you,” he says softly when I’m finally seated. “I know what you think about me, Ella. And I don’t blame you for hating me. I hate myself for what I did. I know you don’t believe me when I say this, but I truly loved Charlotte. And, I think, in her own way, she loved me too.”

  “She wouldn’t love you now.”

  “Probably not. But I think she’d understand why I did what I did.”

  “Help me with that, Zach. Because to me, it seems like you didn’t give a flying fuck about Charlotte. All you cared about—all you ever cared about—was Zach.”

  To my surprise, these words seem to sting him. His eyes begin to tear, and although my first instinct is to remind myself that he’s a trained actor, I actually believe that his emotion is sincere.

  “That’s just not true. Your sister . . . she was the most amazing person I’d ever met . . . I mean, I don’t have to tell you. I never could see what she saw in me. And part of me, I suppose, knew that she’d figure it out soon enough, and then it would be over. But I didn’t care because every day I was in her company I was a better man for it.”

  “So you repaid her for making you such a good man by lying to the police so they couldn’t find her?”

  “No. No. No. That’s not the way it happened at all.”

  “Then tell me. How did it happen?”

  He sighs loudly and exhales a mouthful of air. Then he shakes his head, as if silently rejecting his own advice not to talk to me.

  “I don’t remember exactly when I first started to think about it, but around Christmas, I got the sense that something had changed. She was out a lot. Much more than usual. And then when I questioned her about it, she’d claim that she was at rehearsal until one or two in the morning, or something equally implausible. I understood what was going on. I knew there was someone else.”

  “So it’s all Charlotte’s fault. Is that what you’re doing here? Blaming the victim?”

  “No,” he says with another shake of his head. “The motherfucker who did this to Charlotte . . . if I knew who he was, I’d fucking kill him myself. But what I’m trying to say is that your sister was out a lot over the past few months, and I decided that two could play that game, so I went to Carly’s for the night. I didn’t realize that Charlotte hadn’t been home on Tuesday night because I was out all night. When she was out late the next night, I figured it was because she was pissed at me. That’s why I wasn’t worried. To be honest, I was sure she was safe and sound—in somebody else’s bed. So of course I wasn’t calling the police. But when none of her friends knew where she was, and I couldn’t track her iPhone . . . that’s when I called you.”

  I follow Zach’s train of thought and know full well what dysfunctional relationships can make you do, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to cut him any slack.

  “I couldn’t care less who you’re fucking. I feel sorry for her. That’s all. But you crossed a very serious line when you lied to the cops. That lie might have cost Charlotte her life. You’re going to have to live with that, and I’m going to hate you forever for it.”

  “I know. And I . . . I can’t even begin to understand what this has been like for you. But at the same time, I don’t think you can begin to understand what it was like for me when she disappeared. I mean, I’m her boyfriend. I’m a black man. I’m cheating on her. I think she’s cheating on me. And now she’s missing? Who’s going to believe that I didn’t kill her?”

  “You got that right.”

  “But I didn’t. I swear to God, Ella. I didn’t. I never would have hurt Charlotte.”

  “I know that’s not true, Zach. You hurt her plenty.”

  24.

  Dylan arrives at my place exactly at seven. He’s clad in blue jeans with the kind of fade that only comes with years of ownership, and a dark, long-sleeved, collared shirt that’s tight enough to remind me of what he looks like without it.

  While getting ready, I briefly considered breaking into Cassidy’s wardrobe for an outfit, but then I realized that he’d seen the real me at Riverside Park, which meant that I should stop pretending around him, especially given the circumstances. So I opted for something that was in keeping with Ella Broden’s life—jeans and a loose-fitting top, although I did select my favorite of each.

  Dylan hands me a bottle of wine. “I don’t know much about wine,” he says. “But the guy in the store said that this was good.”

  I can’t help but contrast Dylan’s unabashed ignorance about wine with Paul’s flawless pronunciation of the fancy chardonnay we ordered at Mas. I much prefer Dylan’s unpretentiousness.

  “My motto is that every wine goes with Italian food,” I say. “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,” he says.

  The wine turns out to be a rosé, which must have been refrigerated in the store because it is reasonably cold. Over dinner—pizza with prosciutto and figs, and penne alla vodka—Dylan Perry tells me his life story. He’s thirty-nine but has no trepidation about turning forty and has never been married, although he lived with a girlfriend for three years in his early thirties, claiming, “It was fine, but I kind of knew all along that she wasn’t the one.” He was born in Wyoming, of all places, but spent most of his formative years in Manhattan, Kansas, where his father taught in the English department at the university. “So, I like to tell people that this is the second time I’ve lived in Manhattan, even though I actually live in Brooklyn.” He attended college at Duke—“Go Blue Devils!”—and med school at Johns Hopkins, practicing for a few years in San Francisco before coming to New York to work with Doctors Without Borders. He’s spent the last six months in Peru.

  He asks about my time as a prosecutor. I answer the way I always do, telling him that the best part of the job was knowing you were making the city safer and delivering justice for the victim and her family.

  It isn’t until I’ve emptied the last of the bottle of wine into our respective glasses that he asks the question I can only assume he’s been dying to pose since he learned my true identity: “What was a nice girl like you doing all vamped out under an alias at open-mic night at Lava?”

  “I’m a cautionary tale,” I begin. “I went to the high school for the performing arts here in New York City. You know, the one that the movie Fame was based on. College at Columbia, majoring in theater, with every intention of becoming a singer after graduation. Then my mother died the fall of my junior year, and . . . I guess it made me feel like I needed to do something more solid, more grown-up. I suppose a shrink might also surmise that I wanted to curry favor with my father. Anyway, I went off to law school. Fast-forward fifteen, sixteen years, and here I am, wishing I had made vastly different life choices.”

  I’ve never said it so forcefully before. But there it is. The tragic story of Ella Broden in less than a hundred words.

  “And that’s why you turn into Cassidy at Lava?”

  “That’s why. To live the life not taken. If only for one night a week.”

  Dylan smiles in a way that makes it impossible for me not to smile back. It’s okay, he’s saying. We all feel that way. Or at least that’s how I choose to interpret it.

  “So now it’s your turn,” I say. “How’d
you end up at the Lava Lounge?”

  “You mean how, of all the open-mic nights in the world, did I happen to walk into yours?”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  “I’ve always enjoyed singing and was in a band in high school, but I never seriously considered that music could be a career for me. It was just a way to screw around with my friends and get girls. But there’s something about living in a third-world country that makes you take stock. One of the things I decided was that when I came back home, I’d try to get back into singing. You know, let my creative side out a little. I saw that Lava holds an open-mic night on Wednesdays and thought, what the hell, I’ll check it out. I didn’t intend to sing, but then we met. I thought I’d have a better shot with you if you thought I could sing.”

  I laugh, and the sound still seems strange coming from me. “I’m not that shallow, Dylan. The reason you had a shot with me had nothing to do with your singing. It was because . . . you’re a doctor.”

  After the table is cleared, I lead him to my living room and suggest we watch a movie. He lets me choose, and I settle on one starring Reese Witherspoon called Wild.

  Once the movie is queued up, I snuggle into Dylan. He strokes my hair. With each stroke of his hand, I fall further under his spell.

  “I don’t want to be a downer,” I say as the opening credits roll, “but I still feel a little guilty. I’m really enjoying myself with you, and my sister is . . .”

  “You need to take care of yourself too. You know, like what they say before the plane takes off. Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.”

  He says this looking deeply into my eyes. I want to kiss him so badly. Instead, I decide to let him into my thoughts, to share what’s going on in the hope that it’ll make me feel better.

  “Because I used to be a prosecutor, I know the police lieutenant who’s running the case. His name is Gabriel Velasquez. He keeps me up-to-date with the investigation. At first they 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 Charlotte was seeing too, named Josh. He cooperated from the very start, but Josh’s 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.”