“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.