Dead Certain: A Novel

by Adam Mitzner

  The cop says, “Now I would like to turn the microphone over to Charlotte Broden’s father, F. Clinton Broden, to say a few words.”

  The man who enters the screen looks like the very epitome of grief. His face is almost frozen in shock. He says something I don’t quite catch and then shakes his head, clearly unable to utter a word more.

  A woman comes to his rescue. A moment before, she was nowhere to be seen on the screen. She’s wearing a black business suit and her hair is pulled back tight into a ponytail. The resemblance to Charlotte is striking.

  “My name is Ella Broden. Charlotte Broden is my sister. My father is obviously overcome with emotion, as we all are. We miss Charlotte so much. On behalf of our family, I want to thank the NYPD for all the work they’re doing to find my sister. I also want to announce that tomorrow we will be holding a search for Charlotte at Riverside Park. It’s open to the public, so please join us. We will be meeting at Ninety-Sixth Street and Riverside Drive at noon. Our family has also established a reward of one hundred thousand dollars for any information leading to Charlotte’s safe return.”

  She pauses and then looks directly into the camera. If I didn’t know any better, I might have thought she was looking right at me.

  “If anyone knows anything about my sister’s whereabouts, or has any information at all, please call the police . . .” She pauses, and for the second time I think she might address me personally, but then she says, “And if you’re out there, if you can hear me, Charlotte, please know that we love you . . . that I love you, Char-bar.”

  I click off the link and place the phone receiver back on the cradle. It immediately starts ringing, but I leave it for Beth to answer.

  My focus is on the police. What do they have? How close are they to me?

  I’m hardly an expert on criminal justice, but when a young, affluent woman living in a doorman building in a $1,000-per-square-foot neighborhood vanishes without a trace, even I know the police are going to zoom in on the “boyfriend” as the most likely suspect. And when the boyfriend is black and the victim is white, well, the police probably don’t look any further. I smile to myself that I’m making Mr. McDouche’s life even more miserable. Of course, the irony isn’t totally lost on me that my vitriolic dislike of the guy was because he treated Charlotte so poorly, and here I’m the one who killed her.

  And what about the other guy? Strange how Charlotte’s utterance of his name had set me into a murderous rage and now I can’t even remember it. Jason? Jared? Something lame that started with a J. The mysterious J-man must have left evidence of the relationship. Maybe he’s been to her apartment, which means fingerprints, and quite possibly DNA. Unless he’s married, he likely didn’t use a burner phone, so there’ll certainly be phone calls and texts if nothing else. That means he’ll wind up being suspect number two.

  The question in my mind is whether I will become suspect number three.

  DAY FIVE

  SATURDAY

  31.

  Saturday morning, I learn that America’s now second-most-famous missing twentysomething woman is dead. My only reaction to the news about Jennifer Barnett is the concern that law enforcement will now focus greater resources in finding Charlotte, which only reinforces my need to keep one step ahead of them.

  And that’s why I head to Riverside Park.

  I arrive ten minutes before the advertised noon start time. I had expected there to be twenty or thirty people in attendance but, looking around, I find the volunteers number in the hundreds. On virtually every tree hangs a pink leaflet with Charlotte’s picture, offering a reward of $100,000 for information leading to her safe return.

  I wade through the crowd until I come upon an information booth manned by three people. Two of them look to be twentysomething. I assume they were friends of Charlotte. The other has a definite law-enforcement vibe: closely cropped hair, clean-shaven, highly starched shirt.

  As my bad luck would have it, the cop becomes free when it’s my turn. “Thanks for coming out today to help us find Charlotte Broden,” he says.

  I wonder if finding Charlotte is truly the purpose of today’s event. I would have thought that the goal would be not to find her lying dead in Riverside Park.

  “Glad to help,” I say.

  “Good. Here, put this on.”

  He hands me a rubber bracelet. It’s silver and says CHARLOTTE BRODEN in white letters.

  As I’m sliding the band around my wrist the cop says, “Please sign in, sir.”

  A clipboard is on the table in front of him. The paper on it has four columns: name, address, e-mail, and cell phone. I hesitate for a moment, but quickly conclude there isn’t much risk in giving out phony information.

  “Thank you,” the cop says after I’ve completed the form. “Please wear the bracelet as much as you can. In about ten minutes, there’s going to be some brief introductory remarks by Mr. Broden.”

  The snippets of conversation I hear among the volunteers almost all concern Jennifer Barnett. How terrible it is that she’s dead, and what an absolute horror it must be for her family.

  The crowd continues to thicken. It feels a little like going to a concert, a throng of people just standing around waiting for the music to start.

  Charlotte’s father takes the mic. Even from a distance, I can clearly see the man has been suffering. I have taken away his daughter and now I’m putting him through the further agony of not knowing—for no reason other than my own self-preservation. Nevertheless, I don’t consider for a moment reversing my path.

  What I’m doing, no matter how heinous, I do for self-preservation. It’s no different from those stories you hear about survivors of shipwrecks resorting to cannibalism. You can’t judge unless you’ve been there.

  He squints, and for a moment I wonder if he’s going to be able to speak at all, or if it will be a repeat of what happened at the press conference. But then he smiles and says, “Thank you all for coming today. I can’t tell you how touched I am by the outpouring of love for Charlotte. Of course, it doesn’t surprise me. Everyone who met Charlotte instantly fell in love with her. So thank you. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.”

  My team leader for the search identifies herself as Eva, claiming she’s a classmate of Charlotte’s at NYU. She has thick, curly red hair and freckles, which I suppose some men like, but I never have. She speaks very quickly, and there’s something about her that makes me doubt that she and Charlotte were actually friends. More likely, I suspect, this is just another do-gooder cause that Eva has glommed onto.

  “Our team has been assigned section twelve,” she says, “and our street coordinates are Eighty-Sixth to Seventy-Second. We’re the team closest to the river. The way we’ve been told to do it is to fan out about three feet from one another and then just walk. Obviously, we hope that no one in our group finds”—she gives a theatrical sigh—“Charlotte. But if anyone comes across anything suspicious, please call out my name. Again, it’s Eva. I’ll come to you and blow my whistle. That’ll cause a supervisor to come over to check it out. Sound good?”

  I scan my fellow section-twelve volunteers. No one voices any objections to walking ten blocks and raising your hand if you see a dead body.

  “Good. When we’ve reached Seventy-Second Street, we’re going to move over one chain length. So whoever is on the easternmost end of our group will then move over five feet and become the westernmost walker, and then we’ll head back to Eighty-Sixth Street that way. We’re supposed to do four passes, and it’s expected to take about two hours. When we’re done, there will be refreshments back where we originally all met. The place Mr. Broden made his remarks. Any questions?”

  One of the men in our group asks if there will be water available. He’s an older guy, so I cut him some slack. Eva tells him that there are stations set up along the search, and he can always leave the group to find a water fountain or to buy a bottle of water from one of the vendors in the park.

  “I guess that’s all t
he instructions,” Eva says. “But, like Charlotte’s father said before, I also want to thank you all for coming out today. I don’t know how many of you knew Charlotte, but we were in a creative-writing seminar and she’s so . . .” Eva starts to break down, which strikes me as a bit over the top.

  Without further delay, the walking begins. Every so often there’s a shrill piercing of the silence. Everyone comes to a complete stop, waiting in place to see if the search is now over because the whistle means someone has found Charlotte’s corpse.

  Of course, I’m the only one there who knows that each whistle is a false alarm. But I stop like all the rest and look around anxiously.

  After one whistle stoppage, the man to my left tells me he’d never met Charlotte, but had a case with her father once. “It’s so weird, right? I mean, you don’t want it to be her, and yet . . . there’s this odd sense that maybe it would be best if they found her already. You know, to give her family some closure.”

  “I guess it depends on whether you think there’s any chance she’s still alive,” I reply, because I assume that’s what someone like me would say if he didn’t know for a fact that Charlotte was dead and at the bottom of the East River.

  In all, there are probably seven or eight whistles. After the first three or so, I no longer see the anxious looks—the fear in people’s eyes—that a gruesome discovery is at hand. Now it’s more like when a penalty is called in a football game. Just a break in the action.

  By the time the volunteers are corralled back to Ninety-Sixth Street, I have worked out in my head what I’m going to say. I find her greeting the volunteers as they enter the refreshment tent.

  Ella looks shocked to see me. Shocked, but happy.

  “Dylan?” she says before I can say anything to her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  There are things that are too strong even for death to steal away.

  I suppose I always knew that. It’s a common lover’s refrain to profess that you’ll love each other forever. Matthew and I would say that to each other. I’ll love you for all eternity. That kind of thing. I think he said it half in jest, as if we were characters in some melodrama on Lifetime. But I meant it. Jason never used such language, but I’m certain he thought it was true. He could never imagine an existence in which his love for me was not the defining feature. Marco, of course, never made such a sweeping pronouncement, nor did I toward him. It wasn’t true for him, and if I’d said it, he wouldn’t have hesitated to call me a liar.

  It’s not to any of my lovers that I’m still bound after death. It’s only to Emily that I feel such a magnetic pull. In fact, my connection to my sister now feels stronger than ever, as it’s undiluted by any other.

  I take comfort in the knowledge that my father will survive my death, although whether he’ll be the same man on the other side is unclear to me. I hope that he is, and at the same time, that my death changes him too. A contradiction permitted to those no longer of this world.

  It’s ironic that, in my life, I parceled out my time to three men, and now, with eternity stretching before me, I have no interest in such meaningless pursuits. Even I am struck by the absence of any need for revenge. It is not present in me at all, no matter how deeply I search.

  That’s because I’m more convinced than ever that there is no such thing as justice. Many things happen—some good, some bad, some tragic, some retributive—and if you try to match them up against one another, you can convince yourself that there’s some balance, especially if you eliminate the ones without any logic to them whatsoever—the thirty-year-old mother of three who is mowed down by a hit-and-run driver, the terrorist who kills scores of children—as merely part of God’s unknowable plan, but the truth is that there’s a terrible randomness to life, and no cause and effect to give any of it meaning.

  Even if I could whisper the identity of my killer into Emily’s ear, letting her believe that it came to her in a dream, I would not do so. I keep my silence not out of any complicity with my attacker, but because I refuse to devote even that much energy toward him.

  It no longer matters. Nothing of that kind matters any longer.

  But I know it matters to Emily. For her, it’s all that matters now. She will not rest until my murder is avenged.

  In the end, if I could whisper anything to her, it would be to let go of that pursuit. To honor my life by being happy. And I’d tell her that my greatest fear is that, if she is not careful, my murderer will end her life too.

  PART TWO

  DAY FIVE

  SATURDAY

  Christopher Tyler

  32.

  “Hello, Ella,” I say like I’m James Bond.

  Everything about the woman standing before me is the opposite of Cassidy: her hair is pulled back, her clothing hangs loosely, and aside from lip gloss she appears not to be wearing any makeup. Nevertheless, I can see Cassidy clearly. She’s behind Ella’s eyes—that dead-on stare that signals she won’t be denied what she wants.

  “I’d wanted to get in touch with you, but I’m such an idiot,” I say in my best, aw-shucks way, just as I rehearsed it. “I never got your number the other night, and you never gave me your last name. I thought about dropping by your apartment building, but that seemed kind of stalkerish. I was just about to leave you a note at Lava, when I saw you on the news and decided that I’d come here to see you. I hope that was okay.”

  I know I’m playing with fire with this gambit. More than that, I’m doing so while wearing a suit made of gasoline. If somehow Ella learned that Dylan Perry, do-gooder doctor, was actually Christopher Tyler, and that Christopher Tyler knew Charlotte . . . that would be all she wrote. But I’m convinced the potential rewards outweigh the risk.

  When I made the decision to seek Ella out at Lava, it was because I needed to know why Charlotte’s death hadn’t been on the news. I figured that if Ella were singing at Lava, then that would mean that no one knew Charlotte was dead.

  My approach today is the next logical step. I need to learn what the police know, and Ella is in a position to tell me.

  I’m certain Charlotte never imagined that when she shared with me a little gossip that a high-school friend had been at open-mic night at Lava and said that one of the performers looked like Ella in heavy makeup it would lead to my seeking her sister out at the lounge. But it’s long been a firm belief of mine that information isn’t just power, as the expression goes. It’s freedom. It’s money. It’s knowledge. It’s . . . everything.

  There’s a tremendous irony in the fact that I suspect Charlotte only shared the story about Ella’s secret life with me to assuage her own guilt. Here she was keeping secrets from everyone in her life—McDouche, the J-man whose name she called out the night I strangled her, me, and, of course, Ella. She must have felt some comfort in knowing that everyone keeps secrets, even her perfect older sister.

  I’m fixated on an entirely different secret, however. Did Charlotte tell anyone about me?

  She swore that she hadn’t, but I can’t be certain of that. The one thing I know for sure is that if she had shared, it would have been with Ella.

  “Yes. I’m really glad you came, Dylan,” Ella says.

  I actually came up with the name Dylan Perry on the fly. I was thinking of a rebel. My first choice was to go with Dean James, but I worried that was too obvious. I’m embarrassed to say that the next image to pop into my head was of Luke Perry, who played a character named Dylan on Beverly Hills, 90210. I couldn’t remember the character’s last name, so I went with the hybrid.

  “I’m so sorry about your sister,” I say. “I can’t imagine what a nightmare this must be.”

  I’ve never considered acting to be one of my strengths, but I think I’m doing a passable job. I sound sincere, even to my own ear.

  “Thank you,” she says. “It’s been really awful.”

  I’m not a sociopath. A sociopath lacks any empathy for others, whereas I understand Ella’s suffering, and feel badly for her. Just as
I feel remorse for killing Charlotte. I’d take that back in a second if I could, and I’d also ameliorate Ella’s pain by confessing—if the repercussions were minor, but they’re not. The undeniable fact is that no matter how much Ella grieves, her pain will still be much less than mine if I have to spend the rest of my life in a maximum-security prison. So, in the end, you could say that I am a relativist, and that is why I continue on with my prepared speech to Ella.

  “I know this is going to sound odd because we don’t really know each other at all, but if there’s anything I can do, please just ask. Even if it’s just to talk.”

  I wait a beat, hoping that she’s going to ask for my number, or at least give me an opening to ask for hers. Instead, she makes a comment about the rubber bracelet. I decide that I need to push a little harder.

  “Normally I’d ask for your number, but I don’t want to reach out to you until you’re ready, so why don’t I give you my number instead? That way, you can call me whenever you want. No pressure, though.”

  She nods and takes out her phone. “Ready.”

  I recite the digits of the burner phone I purchased that morning on my way to Riverside Park for precisely this purpose. The same number I put on the sign-in sheet. She punches them into her phone.

  I programmed “Under Pressure” as my ringtone. She laughs when it comes through, which was my intent in choosing the song.

  “No pressure, huh?” she says, laughing.

  By the way she looks at me—as if she’s remembering our night together and wishing for more—I know that I won’t have to wait long to hear from her.

  DAY SIX

  SUNDAY

  33.

  On Sunday mornings, my usual routine is to go for a run. I do a five-mile loop along the Hudson River, starting out at Jane Street and making the turn at the Intrepid Museum, a World War II battleship docked permanently at Forty-Second Street. The path tends to be crowded, filled with joggers and cyclists, but I enjoy the cold wind whipping up from the river—the Hudson Hawk, they call it. Then I walk back home, the sweat trickling down my back and the sun on my face as I watch the other runners grunting by me.