Dead Certain

by Adam Mitzner

  I flag down a taxi and then open the door for her. Before shutting the door, I lean in to the backseat.

  “Promise me that you’ll call the second you’re done with the police, okay?” I say.

  “I promise.”

  As I watch the cab pull away, I contemplate whether running is now the smart move for me. With the discovery of Charlotte’s body, it’ll become a murder investigation. Should I get on the first Amtrak to Canada? Or better yet, board a plane for some country without an extradition treaty with the United States?

  Just a little longer, I tell myself. Keep Ella in play for another day or so.

  I know I sound like one of those guys in Vegas wanting to play just one more hand in a losing game, but breaking contact with Ella now means a lifetime of waiting in the dark for the police to show up at my door, and that simply isn’t an option I’m willing to entertain.

  I walk a few blocks away from Ella’s building before getting into my own taxi. I don’t want a cab driver to be able to tell the police he picked someone up in front of Ella’s home at precisely the time she left for the police station. I continue the subterfuge on the other end, asking the cabbie to drop me three blocks away from my apartment.

  During the ride home, my mind swirls with the thought of possible loose ends I’ve left untied. The affected accent of Hercule Poirot plays in my head. “It was almost perfect, except for one little thing. One minor detail you overlooked . . .”

  What is the one little thing I’ve forgotten? The minor detail I’ve overlooked?

  I imagine the movie version of my life. Shots of me lying in bed intercut with the evidence that will lead to my arrest. But what is in the second image? Her body? The suitcase? Someone who works at the W Hotel?

  I decide to think about it methodically. To go over each piece of new evidence now in the police’s custody.

  First, there’s Charlotte herself. Now the police know that she’s certainly dead, and they’ll undoubtedly test her body a million ways to see if it yields any clues that will help to identify her killer. We always used a condom, so my semen, at least, won’t be inside her. But could they find something else linking to me? My fingerprints? A strand of my hair?

  No, I tell myself. Not after a week in the East River. All her corpse will tell the police now is that she died of strangulation.

  Then a different thought hits me. Another thing the police now have that they didn’t know before: Charlotte’s body was disposed of in the East River. That means that the police’s best lead might be to canvass the area for someone who remembers a man pulling a large suitcase the night she went missing.

  But I didn’t see another soul in the park that night, so I can’t imagine that someone saw me. And even if there was someone at a distance that I hadn’t noticed, at most they saw a silhouette. There’s no way that anyone could identify my face from that night. It was pitch-black.

  Last is the suitcase. I scrubbed it clean, but could I have missed something? A hair caught in the zipper? I try to take solace in the belief that immersion in the East River for a week would destroy anything linking back to me, but I have no idea whether that’s actually true.

  The discovery of the suitcase also gives them the brand. I remember Marcia Clark’s famous claim that the bloody footprints belonged to O. J. Simpson because they were made by “rich man’s shoes.” I wonder if Tumi will be considered “rich man’s luggage.” Does Tumi change models every couple of years, like car manufacturers? With any luck, they’ve been selling the same model I used as Charlotte’s coffin for years. Tens of thousands of people might own one exactly like it.

  I try, without success, to recall where I bought it. I remember it was purchased shortly before I went on a twenty-one-day African safari. What year was that? 2012? 2013? I went with Stephanie and broke up with her the week we returned. Would she remember that I had a Tumi suitcase that matched the one Charlotte was found inside? For the life of me, I couldn’t remember her luggage. Why on earth would she remember mine? Does she have any photos? Us at the airport, surrounded by our bags? Our jeep with the luggage in the back, secured by a bungee cord?

  Get a grip, I tell myself. A million things would have to happen before the cops start looking at my ex-girlfriend’s old photos for proof that I once owned a large Tumi suitcase.

  What about the bellhop at the W hotel? Will he remember I had a large Tumi suitcase? Is it unusual in his line of work for a man to wheel a large piece of luggage out of a hotel after midnight? Would my refusal to ask for a cab be something that would stick in his mind? What about my not checking the bag? Then again, how many large suitcases does that guy see in a day? A hundred? A thousand? And I’m certain the brand couldn’t have registered. Why would it? Besides, what are the odds he follows the news close enough to realize that a dead girl was found in a suitcase? And even if he knew this fact, would he want to get involved in a high-profile murder investigation? Is he the kind of guy who would reach out to the police?

  But if he does, it would be the beginning of the end for me. I’m on the hotel registry. My real name. My American Express card is on file. A copy of my driver’s license. The hotel’s surveillance cameras would show Charlotte and me entering the hotel. A few hours later, I’ll be on camera leaving by myself, only to return an hour after that with a large, black Tumi suitcase. Then an hour after that, the video will show me leaving yet again, this time with that same suitcase—with it looking much more difficult to handle.

  And, of course, the cameras will never show Charlotte leaving.

  Once I’ve returned to my apartment, the realization that things could be closing in on me causes me to immediately go to the liquor cabinet. My good friend Mr. Johnnie Walker is front and center. I pour myself a double. Drink in hand, I settle into my living room and reflect on what I’ve wrought—and what might follow.

  Eventually the alcohol does its job. I fall asleep in my chair. I might have slept through the night had it not been for the ringing of my phone. My burner phone.

  Ella.

  “Hello?” I say.

  I can hear the drunkenness in my scratchy voice. Sober up and focus, I tell myself. There’s no room for error here. One slip with Ella and I’ll make myself a prime suspect.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “No, it’s all right. Where are you?”

  “At my father’s. I’m going to stay here tonight. I don’t want him to be alone.”

  “Okay. How’d it go with the police?”

  She starts to answer, and then her voice cracks. When she begins again, she says, “I saw her, Dylan. I saw Charlotte. I saw what that animal did to her. I’m never going to get that image out of my mind. And I swear to God, I’m going to . . .” Her voice trails off into sobs.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  I know that there’s nothing she’ll ask for. At least not tonight. So I feel safe in making the overture. Still, I prepare a lie if she actually calls on me to perform any service.

  “No. Thank you, though. Actually, there is something. I’d like to see you tomorrow. I know this sounds . . . I don’t know . . . we barely know each other, but I guess there’s something about our not having any history that makes it easy for me to escape from all this for a little bit when we’re together. Is that okay?”

  It’s better than okay. I need to know more. Has Charlotte’s body revealed any additional evidence? Do the police have any new leads? Most important of all: do they know anything about Christopher Tyler?

  “I want to see you too. How about if I come to your place after work tomorrow? I have a meeting at five. I can be there around six thirty or seven.”

  “A meeting? I didn’t know doctors had meetings.”

  Shit. “It’s with my practice leader. I’m not sure exactly what it’s about, but I think he’s going to ask me to go back to Peru with him.”

  “I hope not too soon.”

  “I hope not too. I’ll find out more tomorrow.”r />
  “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow at around seven, then.”

  “Good night. And Ella . . . I’m so sorry.”

  “I know you are. And like I said, thank you. I don’t know if I’d be able to handle this without you.”

  DAY EIGHT

  TUESDAY

  Ella Broden

  Christopher Tyler

  36.

  I wake up on Tuesday morning at 6:00 a.m. I can hear my father puttering in the kitchen. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee fills the air.

  “How long have you been up?” I ask.

  “I’m not really sure,” he says. “An hour, I guess. Do you want some coffee?”

  “Please.”

  My father is wearing his robe, and it appears he has not yet showered or shaved. If he plans on going to work today, he’ll have to start that process shortly. I’ve already decided that’s not how I’m going to spend my day.

  “I just can’t come to the office today,” I say.

  I don’t tell him that I’m never going back, although I suspect he already knows that my career in the practice of “real law”—as he puts it—is over. I simply can’t defend the Paul Michelsons of the world any longer.

  “I totally get if you want to go in,” I add. “Either to make sure everything is under control, or simply to take your mind off everything.”

  “I need to make arrangements,” he says.

  It isn’t clear if that means he’s going to the office. He could just as easily make the funeral arrangements from home.

  “Do you want me to help you with that?”

  “No,” he says. “I’ll do it. It’s my obligation. I hope it’s a very long time before you have to do anything like that.” Then he laughs. “Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll be able to help you then, as I suspect those arrangements will be for me.”

  I weakly smile at his attempt at humor. The last thing I want to think about, however, is his death.

  “But there is something you can do for me, Ella.”

  He says this grimly. He’s not going to ask for a favor, but impart a life lesson.

  “Of course. What?”

  “I want you to focus on yourself more. You don’t need to be there for me.”

  “Okay.”

  “No. I mean it.” He offers me a soft, albeit sad, smile. “I’ll be okay, Ella. I promise.”

  On my way to Maeve Grant, I buy the New York Times from the newsstand a few blocks from my apartment. I haven’t read the news from my computer, or even my phone, for fear I’d be leaving evidence. It takes me a moment before I find what I’m looking for. It’s in the Metropolitan section. Front page. The headline: BODY OF MISSING LAWYER’S DAUGHTER FOUND.

  I scan the newsprint looking for the word suitcase, but it’s not there. I go back to the top and read it more carefully. The story reports that Charlotte’s corpse was found in the East River and that the working police theory is that she was killed elsewhere and then deposited in the water, likely on the day she went missing. My careful read confirms that there’s nothing about the suitcase.

  They must not have it, I think. Maybe, somehow, the suitcase tore open under the water and Charlotte floated to the top alone.

  I breathe a deep sigh of relief. Without the suitcase, the police barely have any more evidence than they had before. All they know is that she was thrown in the East River. The Times article made no reference to witnesses, and the newspaper didn’t suggest that there was any DNA, fingerprints, or anything else that the police were testing.

  Only one weak link remains. The only possible way the police will be able to tie me to Charlotte’s murder: Ella.

  The path forward is now clearer than ever before. I’ll see Ella again to ascertain with certainty that the cops haven’t found the suitcase. Once that’s established, I’ll kill her and thereby tie up the last loose end. With her death, Dylan Perry will never have existed, and Christopher Tyler can go back to living his life.

  I return to my apartment before nine and immediately climb back into bed. I had thought that I might be able to escape into sleep, but no matter what I do to calm my mind, I can’t shake the image of Charlotte’s lifeless body lying in that morgue drawer. When I try to focus on something else, anything else, it only results in my conjuring an even grimmer image regarding Charlotte’s final moments. How terrified she must have been. Did she cry out for help? Did thoughts of being reunited with our mother provide her any comfort?

  In my toughest cases back when I was an ADA, when I was truly stymied, I’d close the door to my office, pull out a yellow legal pad, and scribble. I didn’t do flow charts or diagrams but simply jotted down the evidence. Then I’d stare at it the way you’d look at one of those optical-illusion images that hides a 3-D picture within it. Relaxing my vision in hope that all would be revealed.

  I pull myself out of bed and go to my dining table. There, I take a yellow legal pad from my briefcase and begin to list the evidence the police have uncovered:

  Tumi suitcase

  East River

  Missing since Tuesday

  To that, I add the things I know about the fictional Matthew Harrison:

  Tall, black hair, handsome

  Banker

  Patek Philippe watch

  Art gallery/topless out-of-focus photo

  Married

  Scar/initial/hip

  I call Amoroso at 8:00 a.m. my time, which means it’s about 2:00 p.m. in Milan. With any luck, he’s still having his espresso in some café and I’ll get to leave a message.

  I’m not in luck. His assistant tells me to hold.

  “Pronto,” Amoroso says.

  “Paolo. Christopher Tyler.”

  “Oh, Tyler,” he says, switching to English.

  “I’ve got a good news/bad news situation.”

  He doesn’t state a preference for which he’d like to hear first. I get the sense that he feels as if he’s losing a piece of his soul every second we interact and just wants to get the call over with.

  “Good news first, then,” I say. “I got the financing in place. In fact, the offering is oversubscribed. So that gives us some flexibility if you want to sell more.”

  “No,” he says. “The point is to raise the hundred million but keep as much equity as possible.”

  “And that leads me to the bad news. The price is going to top off at seven dollars and seventy-five cents. So to get to the hundred million you want, you’re going to have to give up more equity.”

  As I’m still staring down at my evidence list, the phone rings. It’s Gabriel.

  “The ME has a cause of death,” he says.

  I brace myself until he says it.

  One word: “Asphyxiation.”

  Even though I know the answer, I ask the question. “How?”

  “The ME said her windpipe was fractured. He thinks it was probably done by hand.”

  “She was choked to death?”

  “That’s the preliminary determination, yes.”

  “My God.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” He waits a moment, likely for me to say something, but when I don’t, he says, “We’re canvassing East River Park. From Battery Park to Thirty-Fourth Street, showing Charlotte’s photograph and asking if anyone saw a man with a suitcase last Tuesday night. Hopefully that will give us a hit. Someone wheeling a large suitcase in the park late at night is not the usual occurrence.”

  I’m in no mood to be optimistic. It seems like hope is simply a luxury I can no longer afford. And even though I know Gabriel is just trying to help, I want to make that clear to him.

  “Homeless people do it,” I say.

  “Not thousand-dollar luggage. We’ve also followed up with Josh. He let us search his place. He has a set of luggage, but it’s not Tumi. The local cops even got the okay from his parents to look through their home. Same story. No Tumi luggage.”

  “They could have tossed it,” I say.

  “They could have, but Josh and his parents had different
luggage. Much lower-end stuff and all the pieces—even Josh’s—were from the same set. I’m not saying that they couldn’t have had one larger piece that was high-end in addition to a complete set that was low-end—or even two completely different sets, and like you said, they tossed the Tumi—but that’s not the way most people are. And don’t get me wrong, I’m also not saying that we’ve cleared Josh on this, but I am saying that the luggage doesn’t point to him.”

  “So what’s it going to be, Paolo? Do the hundred-million raise? Or can you live with less?”

  I’m sure the answer he wants to give me is “none of the above.” Actually, that’s probably his second choice, right after “Fuck you, Tyler.”

  “I need to talk to my board,” he says. “I’ll get back to you within the hour.”

  The 21 Club is almost a caricature of a power spot. It’s housed in a former speakeasy on Fifty-Second Street, just west of Fifth Avenue. Diners are greeted by thirty-three porcelain statues of jockeys standing on a ledge on the exterior of the building, all wearing bright colors. The famous barroom—where Charlie Sheen lunched with Michael Douglas in Wall Street—features assorted sports-related memorabilia hanging from the ceiling. Much of it was donated by famous patrons: Willie Mays’s bat, John McEnroe’s tennis racquet, Jack Nicklaus’s golf club.

  Paul is already seated when I arrive. As I’m led by the maître d’ to his table in the back, I scan the faces of my fellow diners. Not more than a handful of women, no people of color. As per the dress code, every man is in a jacket, with most wearing neckties.

  Paul stands when I arrive and greets me with a kiss. It takes all my energy not to wince.

  “Thank you for bumping your real date on such short notice,” I say.

  It was comically easy to get Paul to cancel on whomever he was supposed to meet at 21 today for lunch. All it took for him to rearrange his schedule was the suggestion that I might end up in bed with him after the meal.