by Andrea Bartz
“Can you hop on the phone?” I typed back. I wanted to just call, since I knew he was literally holding his cell. Ten years ago I would’ve just dialed. Fuck this era.
He took longer to write back this time. “I could call in like an hour? Hope everything’s okay???”
“Please do, and thank you!!” I stood up and walked to the bathroom, staring into the sink and watching the water swirl into the drain. I began to feel that urgent drive, faraway at first and then with growing intensity, somewhere deep in my low back and groin: Keep going.
I opened the notes from the interview with Kevin gingerly, as if winding a jack-in-the-box. It occurred to me that he could be my tiebreaker, the third vote on whether or not I’d made it to the show; then I remembered he’d left for his own concert while we were still pregaming on the roof.
The notes began the same as the others, how they’d met in spring 2009 when Edie and Alex started dating, how she’d moved in with them along with Sarah in April. It was hard to picture the conversation—little Kevin shifting between bad postures while two detectives gave him the third degree, arrested for the first time in his cheery life. It sounded like Kevin started to get emotional next, noting that he and Edie had become better friends and that she’d cried to him about fights she’d had with Sarah and me.
Which would have been surprising enough in its own right, since I could barely imagine them exchanging more than pleasantries, but then this sentence boomed out of the document like a cannon:
Accomp decedent to ER early August, likely 8/4, when she complained heavy cramping; visible blood. Assume miscarriage. Left + not discussed/told friends. CHK.
Jesus. The ER visit he’d mentioned. I pulled up my email index from that era and searched for August 4, apparently a Tuesday: mundane emails to coworkers and one from Sarah mentioning an upcoming party, reminding Kevin he still owed rent and finishing with “BTW, anyone seen Edie in like a week? Is she officially avoiding everyone or just me?” Kevin had responded about the rent the next day, diplomatically ignoring the stuff about Edie, and the thread had petered out.
Back in the cops’ scribbles, I saw that Kevin went on to say that he’d had a show the night of Edie’s death and had taken his bandmate’s van to Greenpoint. They’d been the headliners, taking the stage around 11 p.m., and he’d only heard the news when he turned his phone back on around 1:00. I verified it on fact-checking autopilot: a tweet from the venue from early August 22, 2009, thanking Static Pony for a BRUTAL NIGHT.
I set aside the detectives’ notes and searched for Edie’s medical records. I saw dental records, an annual OB-GYN visit, and then bingo: admission forms from Mt. Sinai Medical Center, dated “8/4/09, 9:06 p.m.” Retrieved on official police business about a week after the interviews took place. I scanned Edie’s frantic handwriting on the intake forms, noting that symptoms had begun around 5:00 p.m. but she’d never had cramps this intense before and she was experiencing bleeding heavier than any period. Poor thing, on a scale of 1 through 10 she rated her pain a 9. I hit page-down; she was seen by 10:48, where, according to her discharge forms, a doctor determined she’d had a completed miscarriage—confirmed with a surgical dilation and curettage, which sounded scary, and then an ultrasound, which sounded expensive—and had been approximately six weeks along. She was given relaxants, monitored overnight, and released in the morning. And off Edie went, back to Calhoun Lofts. No longer pregnant and with no one to confide in but, oddly, Kevin.
Oh, that poor girl—holing up in her sunless room to mourn and heal in solitude. I returned to the autopsy report, poring more carefully over the organ-by-organ rundown at the end of the document. And there it was, ripe for the noticing:
Thickened uterine tissue suggested early pregnancy; progressing normally before spontaneous abortion.
Six weeks before early August. Mid-June, shortly before she and Alex split. Had Alex known? Had she been planning to keep it? And why the hell had Kevin been the one to accompany her?
I returned to the main index. There was a folder named D_ASUSEEEPC that I’d been avoiding because I found its name so inscrutable, but finally I opened it and gasped, all the blast-from-the-past sensations pinging around my skull. There was a screengrab of an old computer desktop, files and icons everywhere like stickers on a little girl’s notebook. Asus was a kind of computer. I Googled the folder name and there it was, Edie’s clunky old laptop: the Asus Eee PC 100HE. There was just one other file in the folder, a Word document. I clicked on it and felt my breath catch in my throat.
The suicide note. The Word document had been opened at 8:12 p.m. and then auto-saved at 11:44, around the time when the first responders appeared. I cross-referenced time stamps: My Flip cam video ended at 11:11; the 911 call came in at 11:32. Damn—a part of me had hoped I’d absolve myself here, that somehow I’d wandered into the room with a camcorder minutes after Sarah had called the cops. A video I’d coincidentally deleted shortly after, assuming it was a gross drunk record of us embarrassing ourselves. Only to rediscover it almost exactly ten years later. It rushed up through me again like a geyser, a sharp What the fuck?
But an autosave told us nothing. I opened the Word file; it was so old I could only view it, not access it. It blinked back at me, three mini sentences I hadn’t actually seen with my own eyes (as far as I knew), but that we’d heard about and discussed among ourselves:
I love you. I’m sorry. Goodbye.
All at the top left of the page, uncentered, unstyled, ugly. That didn’t seem like Edie, either—she was a visual creature, she liked symmetry and pretty, arty things. She would have centered the note, a few inches on the top and bottom, that middle I’m marking the center like a spire.
How easy it’d be for someone else to fake the note. Three sentences, no detail. Really, it couldn’t have been more than a two-step cover-up, one easily gleaned from decades of TV watching: Press her fingerprints onto the gun and leave it near her; grab her laptop, open a file, and hastily type something out. (Had she used a password? If so, her closest friends would have known it; we were constantly passing around computers, pulling up YouTube videos or photos or music for all to enjoy. Which meant our fingerprints would be on everything as well.)
I checked for tags on the file, any additional information. I rubbed the edges of my fingernails across the flat pads of my thumbs and stared hard. What was I missing?
I got up and poured a glass of water, an old trick a former boss had taught me to do whenever I was stumped. Walk away, come back to it with fresh eyes. I slid the suicide note aside and checked online what metadata a circa 2009 .doc file typically shows. Something slid into place: Date Created. Why had the embedded info on this file shown me Last Opened and Saved At, but not the creation date? I checked again—the Created On listing was blank, two little hyphens where a date should have been. What a bizarre thing to be missing.
There was nothing else in this folder, nothing else from her Asus. I selected another one and felt something rip through me.
Five death-scene photographs—all time-stamped JPEGs. They were still just a string of letters and numbers, their file names, but if I double-clicked I could see Edie the last way that any of us saw her.
My heart banged. I guzzled my glass of water, spilling a little onto my chest. My hand shook as I set the cup back on its coaster.
I filled my lungs up with air and pushed it out. One look, all at once, careful and thorough just to see if there was anything odd in the periphery, anything investigators had missed. I would keep my eyes moving, not on Edie’s, not on her bruise-ringed gaze.
I moved the pointer, ready to click, then sat back again. Could I do it? Face the nightmare that’d haunted Sarah for months? Would this fuck with me, too, weave its way into a dream or vision or made-up memory of the moment after the gun went off, me standing there with the recoil still pulsing through my arm?
I balled b
oth hands into fists, mashed them into my chin, a bad silent-film actress pantomiming indecision. Then my right hand jolted out and double-clicked.
A notification. Password-protected. Pursuant to New York State law, inaccessible without a key.
Annoyance took over, and I played around with different apps and programs and ways of seeing previews, all to no avail. I gave up and Xed out of the folder, awash in relief. Tomorrow I’ll ask Tessa to find a way to access them for me, I thought showily, knowing full well I never would.
I chose a folder labeled SWMODEL399MM, then realized it contained technical specifications about the bullet and gun. I moved on to the next folder and gasped: the 911 call, a recording and a transcript. My mouse hovered over the audio file, but I couldn’t do it; instead, I opened up the text.
NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT
Brooklyn, NY
9-1-1 CALL TRANSCRIPT
9-1-1 CALL FROM: Sarah Kwan
CALL TO: NYPD 9-1-1
DATE: 8-21-09
RE: 11-441957
Q: Christopher Fuchs
NYPD Dispatcher
A: Sarah Kwan
A: Oh my god!
Q: (Inaudible) 9-1-1 (inaudible) this call is being recorded.
A: Is this 9-1-1? Oh my god. Hello?!
Q: It’s 9-1-1.
A: Hello?! (Unintelligible.)
Q: Ma’am, I need you to stop screaming so that I can hear you.
A: My friend, she (unintelligible)! Oh my god!
Q: What’s happening?
A: Oh god! No! Oh my god! My friend is all bloody! She needs an ambulance!
Q: What’s wrong with her?
A: Oh my god. You need to send someone! Quickly!
Q: Ma’am, listen to me. I need you to calm down so I can understand what’s going on. What’s wrong with your friend?
A: I think she’s been shot!
Q: You think she’s been shot?
A: There’s blood on the ground, oh my god, oh my god.
Q: Listen to me. I need you to stop screaming so I can…
A: (Unintelligible.)
Q: Ma’am, are you listening? Take a deep breath and calm down so I can understand you.
A: (Unintelligible)…touch her, don’t touch her! Is it OK if he checks her?
Q: Before anyone touches her I need you to give me the address so I can send the ambulance right away. OK?
A: [redacted] Hurry, oh my god, please hurry.
Q: OK, the ambulance is on its way, now listen, I’m going to transfer you to the paramedics so they can give you CPR instructions, OK? Don’t hang up.
A: Wait! So he shouldn’t touch her?
Q: Listen to me, I’m going to transfer you to—
A: There’s no pulse! Oh my god, he said there’s no pulse, please hurry, please hurry.
Q: I’m transferring you, don’t hang up! (Call is transferred to NYFD.)
Mr. Gonzalez, NYFD Dispatcher
Q: New York Fire Department.
Mr. Fuchs, NYPD Dispatcher
Q: NYPD with a transfer (inaudible).
A: …please, oh my god!
Mr. Gonzalez, NYFD Dispatcher
Q: Fire Department, what’s the address of your emergency?
A: [redacted] She’s not breathing, she doesn’t have a pulse.
Q: [redacted]
A: Oh please hurry!
Q: What’s the phone number you’re calling me from?
A: [redacted] Quickly! Please?
Q: [redacted]
A: That’s right, yes.
Q: What’s your name?
A: Sarah Kwan. Oh my god, I don’t know what to do, she doesn’t have a pulse, oh my god.
Q: OK, exactly what happened?
A: Please hurry!
Q: (Inaudible.)
A: It looks like she got shot! In the head!
Q: With a gun?
A: Yes! Oh my god, I see the gun, oh my god, oh my god! It’s by her hand!
Q: OK, ma’am, I’m sending the paramedics right now. They’re on their way. Please do not touch the gun.
A: Oh my god, oh my god! (Sobs.)
Q: How old is she?
A: How old is she?
Q: Yes, her age.
A: Twenty-three. (Inaudible.)
Mr. Fuchs, NYPD Dispatcher
Q: Hey, FD, hold on a second. Did she shoot herself?
A: I don’t know! It looks like it! There’s a gun! Oh, please!
Q: You see the gun?
A: Yeah, it’s right by her! It’s on the ground next to her.
Q: OK. We’ll get the police and the paramedics…
A: Where are they? Where are they?
Q: I need you to not touch the gun, OK? Can you do that?
A: I don’t know what to do, oh my god, I don’t know what to do. (Sobs.)
Q: Ma’am, I need you to calm down and listen to me. Do not touch the gun, OK?
A: OK. OK. Please hurry. Oh my god.
Mr. Gonzalez, NYFD Dispatcher
Q: Ma’am, the paramedics are on their way, I need a yes or no answer, is she breathing?
A: No!
Q: Can you feel again for a pulse?
A: He just did, there’s nothing.
Q: Who did?
A: Anthony, he’s the landlord. He came in when he heard me.
Mr. Fuchs, NYPD Dispatcher
Q: Are you the only people in the room?
A: No, more people are by the door now. Wait, I hear sirens, are they here? Is that the ambulance?
Mr. Gonzalez, NYFD Dispatcher
Q: Sarah, the police are there. I need you to go to the front door and let them in and lead them upstairs. Can you do that? Stay on the line.
A: OK. OK.
Q: Make sure someone clears a path so they can get through. OK?
A: (Inaudible.)
Q: Sarah, they’re going to need to be able to get inside in a hurry, make sure people get out of the way.
A: OK. OK. Over here! Please hurry, she’s up here! Get out of the way!
Unknown Officer
Q: OK. (Inaudible.)
A: Where’s the ambulance?
Q: The ambulance is on its way.
A: (Unintelligible.)
END OF CALL.
I sat back, my heart pounding. Then I reached out and closed the file; I felt dirty, like I’d just done something unseemly.
Anthony. At the peak of the night’s party, drawn by the sound of screams, Anthony had appeared. Calhoun’s sketchy landlord, the creepy and cryptic Anthony Stiles. The memory of him mushroomed in front of me, so vivid I felt it like a force: Anthony Stiles, who half behaved like a slumlord and fucked a number of tenants and always had a thing for Edie. Jesus Christ. Anthony Stiles.
What had he been doing, skulking around Calhoun within earshot of SAKE? Why hadn’t Sarah mentioned him? I picked back through the detectives’ notes until I found him: He’d told them he’d been alone at home, in his fancy apartment just steps from Calhoun, when a tenant had called to alert him of the commotion. The notes didn’t specify which tenant, because the NYPD wasn’t big on competency that night, apparently.
I Googled his name and a headline came up, an old news article on a snarky city website: BUSHWICK LANDLORD FOUND DEAD IN HOUSE FIRE. I clicked through to the article and the photo on top made me squirm—eight years later, he was fatter but still smirking, still far too confident for his lot in life.
Anthony Stiles, the 51-year-old owner of Bushwick’s Calhoun Lofts, was found dead after firefighters brought a massive blaze in a Bushwick apartment under control
Tuesday morning, officials said. The victim was pulled from 250 Boerum Street, near Bushwick Avenue, after flames erupted around 2:35 a.m., NYPD and FDNY officials said. Stiles, who lived in the building, was found on the first floor and pronounced dead on the scene. Three firefighters were treated for minor injuries at the scene, an FDNY spokesman said. Investigators believe there were no other tenants in the two-story building. About 140 firefighters helped bring the blaze under control at 5:47 a.m., according to an FDNY spokesman. The unit’s fire alarm failed to deploy and firefighters only responded after neighbors called in to report the blaze, officials said. Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the fire.
What the fuck? I returned to my search results for further updates but found none. In my job, this was the kind of detail I hated, the one that pushed the other, neater facts out of place, forking off into too many possible explanations. It could have simply been a fire, that kind of thing happens. It could’ve been arson but unrelated to Edie, of course. There were so many tenants in that building, all those possible enemies, and so many sleazeball slumlords winding up dead around the city for reasons that never became clear. Hasidic landlords with buildings in Williamsburg and tens of thousands of dollars of debt turning up broken and bloodied in car compactors, that kind of thing.
Or it could have something to do with Edie. He knew something, maybe, or someone knew something about his guilt and made sure he paid for it. God, dying in a fire. If you’re already asleep, do you die of smoke inhalation, or are you awake and screaming, burned at the stake?