Bridget steps away from the window, still restless. She wanders into the bedroom, casts her eye upon this second unmade bed. She walks around it to the bedroom window and stands there, listens to the muffled sounds of the city through the pane of glass, feeling anxious. She berates herself, for at least the hundredth time, for allowing herself to get into a compromising relationship. For putting everything at risk. Herself. Her husband. His future.
I’m such a fool, she thinks. Such an idiot. I have everything and I’m throwing it away. Need to control my impulses. There’s that weird car again. What is that on—
Hears something behind her. Starts to turn.
Everything goes white.
She cannot breathe.
NICOLE is finished. She has retrieved the cell phone from the target’s purse. She is preparing to leave when she hears the door open. It’s too soon for the cleanup crew. She has only just made the call.
The roommate. It must be the roommate. She’s supposed to be at work. She’s come back to the apartment during the day.
Shit shit shit.
From the kitchen, a woman calls out, “Bridget?”
Bridget?
Nicole’s briefing for this job included two names: the target, Allison Fitch, and Courtney Walmers, the woman with whom she shares this Orchard Street apartment.
If the woman Nicole has just killed is Bridget, then the person entering the apartment could be the target. Or it could still be Walmers.
Doesn’t much matter. It could be goddamn Britney Spears, for all Nicole cares. It’s a complication she must deal with.
Nicole intends to move around the bed, flatten herself up against the wall before the woman comes into the bedroom. But before she can make the move, the woman appears in the doorway.
Her eyes move from Nicole to the dead woman and back again. In an instant.
That’s all it takes for Nicole to see who she is. She recognizes her from the photos she was provided beforehand. This is Allison Fitch. She’s about the same size and height as the dead woman. Roughly same color hair.
Fitch screams, turns, runs.
Nicole knows she has to move quickly to shut the woman up. Forever.
Twice the work for the cleanup crew. They’ll have to deal with it.
Nicole intends to take the same shortcut out of the room that she used to enter it. Straight across the bed. Sees the moves in her head without even having to think about them. Push off the floor with left foot, right foot hits the bed, left foot lands on other side.
Should save her a full second.
Fitch has just slipped from her sight, tearing through the kitchen for the door. Nicole leaps onto the bed, but her foot gets tangled in the rumpled bedspread. Nicole tumbles forward off the far side of the mattress, dragging the bedspread with her as she slams into the wall.
She untangles her foot from the spread, comes through the bedroom door like a sprinter charging out of the blocks. The door to the hall is open. She can hear frantic footsteps, at least a floor below.
Not good.
Nicole descends the two flights of stairs three steps at a time. Bursts onto the street. Stops, looks both ways.
No sign of Allison Fitch to the north.
No sign of Allison Fitch to the south.
Nicole takes out her cell and calls Lewis. “You’re not going to like this,” she says.
LEWIS calls Howard. Tells him the wrong woman was killed. That Fitch got away. And that it’s even worse than that.
The dead woman is Bridget.
“Mother of God,” Howard says. “What are you telling me? Bridget? She killed Bridget?” He is saying all this in heated whispers so Agatha will not hear him on the other side of the office door.
“Goddamn it, Lewis, you said this was the way to handle it! I listened to you! You said you knew someone who could handle this! Sweet Jesus, Bridget?”
“Howard, you can vent later. Right now, we have to think. Fast.”
Howard wants to rant some more, but appreciates that time is not on their side here. Lewis is right. They have to move quickly. “She can’t be found there,” Howard says. “Bridget can’t be found in that apartment.”
“I agree.”
“But she has to be found. She can’t just…disappear. That’ll drag on for months.”
“I agree.”
Howard is thinking. He doesn’t know the condition of Bridget’s body, and does not want to know any details, except for one. “Is it possible to make this look like an accident, or better, self-inflicted?”
Lewis is quiet for three seconds. “Yes. Maybe.” Then, “Morris and Bridget have several residences in the city.”
“Yes.”
“We need the one that’s easiest to get into. One without cameras, or a doorman. I have people who can do this. They’ll be dressed as movers.”
Howard forces himself to concentrate. “Bridget’s apartment, the one she had before she met Morris. Off Columbus. No doorman, and I remember her saying the surveillance cameras were for show. They’re not hooked up to anything. She hung on to the place for when friends came into town. The key should still be on her ring.”
“Address.”
Howard gives it to him.
“Okay,” Lewis says. “I know how we can do this. I have her phone. You’ll get a call within the hour. From Bridget’s phone. You’ll take this call in front of Agatha. When you answer it, you’ll pretend to talk to her.”
“I’m not an idiot, Lewis.”
“Howard, just let me work this out. You take the call, you ask her what’s wrong, she’s upset. Then she’s going to hang up, and when Agatha asks what’s going on, you say, ‘Bridget said, “Howard, I’m so sorry, but he’s sucking the life out of me. I can’t take it anymore.”’ Does that work for you?”
“Yes.”
“Then call Morris. Tell him you’re worried about Bridget. You got this strange call from her.”
“I’ve got it.” Howard’s thinking of loose ends. “A note,” he says.
“Way ahead of you,” Lewis says. “Found a sample of her handwriting in her purse. Piece of cake. Done it before.”
There are things Howard still does not know about Lewis. But as angry as he is, he’s also grateful at this moment for his skills.
“Go,” Howard says.
Lewis ends the call.
Howard takes a moment to attempt to decompress. He places his palms on the desk, leans back in the chair, closes his eyes, hoping he can go to that place where he can just catch his breath, but that place is a hundred thousand miles away.
Dear God.
Agatha, he suddenly remembers, is planning to go out to lunch with friends. He needs her here. She’s his witness.
“Agatha,” he says, walking out to her desk, making sure he has his cell with him, “I need you to pull together all the polling numbers we’ve done on Morris in the last six months.”
“All those reports are in the computer,” she says. “I can show you.”
“I know, but what I want you to do is summarize the lot of them into a one-page memo for me. A hard copy.”
“I’ll get to that right after lunch,” Agatha says.
“I need it now. As soon as you can get it to me.”
Agatha glances at the time in the corner of her computer screen. “Of course, Howard. I’ll get right on it. I’ll just—I’m just going to have to make a call and reschedule something.”
“Thanks, that’s great.”
His cell rings and it’s as though a grenade has gone off in his Armani suit jacket. He attempts to disguise his alarm, takes out the phone and puts it to his ear without looking to see who it is.
“Howard here.”
He is waiting to hear nothing. He is getting ready to say something like, Bridget? Are you okay? What’s wrong?
Morris says, “Hey, we still a go for tonight?”
“Morris. Hello.”
“Did you forget?”
“No, of course not. We have to t
alk.”
“The Times hasn’t been able to advance the story, but they’ve got to be trying.”
“Agreed.” He pauses. “Will Bridget be joining us?”
“No. This whole thing, it’s making her so anxious, the last thing she wants is to hear about it through dinner.”
“She’s not the only one,” Howard says.
“I still think it was the right call,” Morris says. “If I had to make the same decision again, I’d do it. And if it comes out, that’s what I’ll say. See you tonight.”
Howard slips the phone into his jacket and looks at Agatha, who is printing something off her screen. “I’m sorry. You had a lunch planned, didn’t you?”
“It’s okay,” she says.
He returns to his office but leaves the door open. Tries to look busy, in case Agatha walks in. But it is impossible to focus on anything. He is waiting for the call. And thinking about how this could have happened.
He should have told Bridget to stay away from that Fitch woman. He hadn’t thought it necessary. Not for a minute did Howard think she was going to connect with her again.
That she would go to Fitch’s apartment. At the same time as—
His cell rings.
Howard grabs the phone, looks at the call display: BRIDGET.
“Hello?” he says, getting up from behind his desk, strolling out past Agatha’s desk. She is stapling some papers together.
“Bridget, Bridget, what’s wrong?” he says, standing by Agatha’s desk. She senses something is amiss and stops what she’s doing.
“Bridget, are you okay?” he says. Pauses. “Where are you? Tell me where you are.”
Agatha’s expression becomes increasingly concerned. Howard exchanges a worried glance with her.
“Bridget?” He takes the phone from his ear and says, “She hung up.”
“What’s wrong?” Agatha asks.
“She wasn’t making any sense. She said she was sorry, and then something about how Morris was sucking the life out of her, and she couldn’t take it anymore.”
“She said what?”
“It was—it made no sense. She didn’t sound like herself.” He fumbles with his phone. “I’m calling her back.”
He enters the number. “She’s not answering. Come on, come on. Goddamn it, Bridget, answer the phone.”
“Did she say where she was?”
“No. She’s not picking up.” He taps the phone. “I have to call Morris. Maybe he knows where she is.”
Of course, Morris does not. He tries to get her on her phone, too. He, Howard, and Agatha start calling Bridget’s friends. They try her favorite shops to see whether she has been there. The restaurants where she lunches with friends and clients.
Morris can’t imagine where she might be, or what she meant by what she told Howard.
It isn’t until hours later that Howard comes up with the idea of checking her old apartment. He and Morris get there before the police.
IT is determined to be a suicide.
Most people, when they make the decision to kill themselves, choose more traditional methods. An overdose of pills. A gun to the temple. A leap off a tall building.
Bridget Sawchuck, the police determine, chose a more unorthodox, although not unheard of, technique. (Several people close to the investigation say it is reminiscent of how the Ben Kingsley character in House of Sand and Fog takes his life; there is speculation that she got the idea from the film, but neither Morris Sawchuck nor any of her friends know whether she ever actually saw it.)
First, she writes a note to her husband. Four words: “Morris: Forgive me. Bridget.” Investigators will conclude it looks like her handwriting. Maybe a little off in a couple of places, but the woman was about to end her life, after all. Penmanship was not uppermost in her mind.
Once she has completed the note and places it on the carpet just inside the apartment door, she takes a garment bag from the closet and pulls it over her head. She secures it around her neck with several turns of duct tape. Forensic investigators will find traces of tape adhesive on her fingers.
With what little air she has left, she lies on the bed and secures her wrists to the bedpost with a set of handcuffs, so that once she starts panicking about being unable to breathe, she won’t instinctively try to stop what she has set in motion. Morris will say he has no idea where she got these. Police will conclude she purchased the cuffs at some point from a sex shop—with cash—for the express purpose of using them to help end her own life.
There is, admittedly, much about the death that is suspicious. A woman cuffed to a bed with a plastic bag secured around her head. But there are no other signs of violence or any kind of struggle. No indications that anyone else was there. There is the short note.
Most persuasive of all is the call from her cell to Howard’s. The cellular provider is able to determine the call came from the area where Bridget was found. Agatha tells the police she was right there when Howard got the call. She heard his side of the conversation. Bridget was clearly in distress.
Howard tells the police it was definitely Bridget on the phone. He knew her voice. And she did not sound coerced in any way. The call sounded entirely genuine.
Everyone involved knows this is a sensitive case. As sensitive as they come. The dead woman is the wife of the attorney general. Morris Sawchuck, through Howard, exercises his influence. There will be a complete lid put on this, given that the evidence tips toward suicide and not foul play. After a couple of days, a statement is released to the press that Bridget Sawchuck “died suddenly.”
Code for “suicide.” No further details are released.
A totally distraught Morris Sawchuck puts his political ambitions on hold and attempts to put his life back together.
Meanwhile, police conduct a cursory investigation into the seemingly unrelated disappearance of Allison Fitch. Lots of people go missing, and she has, according to her mother, vanished for extended periods before, usually surfacing when she needed money.
Courtney Walmers, more annoyed than freaked out by her roommate’s disappearance—she assumes Fitch ran off to avoid paying off her debts—is approached by a man who identifies himself as an undercover policeman. He tells her Allison Fitch, during the day, had been selling crack out of this apartment—Courtney didn’t think much of Allison, but is shocked beyond belief, and baffled that if Allison was dealing drugs, why was she always broke?—and that the place is still under surveillance. He wants to sublet her apartment, maintain the appearance that it is still a place where drugs are sold. He will pay her first and last months’ rent in a new location, as well as make up any money Fitch owed her.
Courtney is horrified. Courtney wants out. Courtney takes the deal.
Lewis Blocker sets up the motion-activated camera in the apartment door.
Nicole goes to Dayton in her search for Allison.
Morris grieves.
Howard wonders every day whether he will have a heart attack.
And then, nine months later, a man comes knocking on the apartment door with a printout of a murder that the entire world can see if they only know where to look.
FORTY-ONE
JULIE said, “Okay, so let’s go through this again.”
I had my clothes on now, sitting on Thomas’s bed, and he was back in his chair in front of his three monitors. Julie and I sat like pupils in front of a teacher who was reviewing what was going to be on the final.
Julie said, “Thomas here sees this picture on the Net, manages to get you to go to this address in Manhattan to check it out, which you do, but not really, since your heart’s not really in it, but you do talk to some lady who lives next door.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And Thomas, who’s totally unimpressed with your investigatory skills, calls the landlord and finds out two women used to live in this place, but they’ve both moved out, and the place has been sitting empty since then, but the rent’s being paid by some guy named Blocker. How’m I doing
so far?”
Thomas nodded. “Excellent.” He looked at me. “She’s doing very well.”
“Go on,” I said.
“And within a couple of days of your little mission, the image on Whirl360 is altered,” Julie said. “That kind of blows my mind.”
“Yeah, mine, too,” I said. “But it doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t say anything to the woman down the hall about seeing the image online. Thomas, did you say anything to the landlord about what you saw in the window, on your computer?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“So then, what’s the connection?” I asked.
Julie was thinking. “You didn’t tell why you were at that address? Did you tell that guy you had lunch with? Your agent?”
“No. I didn’t mention a word of it to him.”
“Nobody followed you?”
I gave Julie an eye roll. “Really.”
She grimaced. “Okay, maybe that’s a bit out there. But think back to when you got to the place on Orchard Street.”
I sighed. “After I finished the meeting I grabbed a cab and got out at Orchard, a few blocks north of where I needed to be. I headed down, slowly, with the printout in my hand, comparing the window patterns and the brick and everything until I was sure I had the right building. It had the same air-conditioning unit in the window and everything.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Some guy was coming out and I slipped in. I went upstairs, knocked on the door, no one answered. Nothing else to tell.”
Julie was thinking. “What were you going to say, if someone had opened the door?”
“I was going through several ideas in my head and finally decided to play it straight. That we’d seen this image on Whirl360 and were curious to find out what it was.”
Thomas shook his head disappointingly.
“So you had the printout in your hand the whole time,” Julie said.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
“So the person heading out of the building saw it, the neighbor lady saw it, and anyone else you walked past saw it.”