“What did he say?”
“It’s more what he didn’t say. It started off fine. He said everything was good between him and your sister. No recent fights. No talk of breakup. The last time he saw your sister was yesterday morning. He claimed she was still asleep when he left for the day, and places the time at around eight thirty a.m. But when I asked him to account for his whereabouts on Tuesday, he started getting cagey. So I asked if he’d be willing to take a polygraph. He said something about how he thought they were unreliable. I told him that they were inadmissible in court but that as a law-enforcement technique we find them useful because if he passes, we’d know not to question anything he’s telling us.”
“He refused to take the polygraph?” I ask.
“Not exactly. He said he wanted to think about it. He said the same thing with regard to whether he’d consent to a search of their home.”
“He’s on his way home now to scrub the place clean, that asshole.”
“Maybe. On the other hand, he’s been in the apartment alone for enough time already that if there was something incriminating there, I’m relatively certain he’s smart enough to have gotten rid of it by now.”
“Why do you even need his consent? My father bought the apartment for my sister. Zach’s name isn’t on any lease. It’s her apartment, not his.”
Gabriel smiles at me. “Assistant District Attorney Ella Broden would rip me a new one if I searched someone’s home without a warrant on the technicality that his name wasn’t on a lease. It’s Zach’s home too, right? He doesn’t live anywhere else? That means we can’t go in without a warrant.”
I’m thinking like a family member. Gabriel’s right: there’s no way to get a warrant to search through Zach’s belongings based on the present facts. One night missing doesn’t even create the probability of a crime, and a boyfriend’s refusal to take a poly or consent to a home search doesn’t even come close to meeting the probable-cause standard necessary for the issuance of a warrant. Plenty of innocent people don’t like being hooked up to a machine and asked personal questions about their relationships, or to have the police rummage through their underwear drawers.
“Just because we can’t search her home doesn’t mean we’re stuck,” Gabriel continues. “I may be able to convince a judge to issue a warrant for your sister’s e-mails and cell phone. That might help us trace her movements.”
“Okay,” I say. “Please tell me if that leads you to anything.”
“I will,” Gabriel says.
Gabriel walks me back to the elevator. I’m able to maintain a veneer of calm, but inside I realize that a seismic shift has occurred. I arrived thinking that the police might be able to find Charlotte and bring her back to us. Nothing Gabriel said indicated otherwise, but I could see it in his eyes. A happy ending is very unlikely.
9.
Standing out in the plaza in front of One PP, amid a throng of pedestrians, I begin to break down again. I don’t even try to stanch the flow of tears. Instead I let the emotion crash over me like ocean waves in the surf. I imagine them just like that, considering the relief that would follow if I succumbed to the grief and let the water sweep me out to sea.
My father’s call wakes me from this escapist fantasy. I pull myself together as best I can before answering.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, sweetheart. Everything going okay down there?”
“I just met with the detective running the investigation. I know him and he’s really the best they have, so that’s good.”
I’m about to explain to him that Zach isn’t cooperating when he interrupts me.
“I had a thought and I wanted to raise it with you because . . . well, my whole strategy with Garkov for these past few years has been to delay so he can continue living under house arrest in that palace of his. And now with Charlotte missing, the trial will have to be delayed, despite Judge Koletsky’s dictate that we pick a jury next week. Garkov couldn’t have asked for a better gift.”
That, in a nutshell, is the problem with representing sociopaths. They’ll do anything to protect themselves, including turning on their lawyers. I know from my father, and from the press coverage, that Garkov had already blackmailed his prior lawyer and the original judge presiding over his case. So kidnapping his current lawyer’s daughter to gain another year’s delay would be consistent with his modus operandi.
“I don’t think we’re in a position to rule anything out, Dad. I’ll mention to Lieutenant Velasquez that he should talk to Garkov too.”
“Don’t do that,” my father says quickly.
He’s using his lawyer voice, assertive and confident. I haven’t heard it since I told him about Charlotte’s disappearance.
“I’m still Garkov’s lawyer, and . . . as crazy as this sounds, I’d never let him talk to the police about the disappearance of a young woman. Besides, even if I told him to do it now, he’s got a dozen other lawyers who will tell him not to. The better way is for me to talk to him. On second thought, you should come too. I’ll tell him that the conversation will still be subject to the attorney–client privilege so we can’t share it with anyone.”
I’m certain my father knows that the privilege permits disclosing attorney–client communications to prevent the commission of a violent crime. Hopefully Garkov isn’t so informed.
One of the advantages of having a client under house arrest is that he’s always available to meet with you. As a result, less than an hour after I get off the phone with my father, the two of us are met at the door of Garkov’s apartment by a butler wearing a morning suit. He leads us to what he refers to as the formal living room, allowing for the fact that there are others that are less grand.
Nicolai Garkov is already standing when we enter, and the scene reminds me a little bit of when Anthony Hopkins first met Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs—how he seemed to sense our presence. I thought I was prepared for meeting Garkov because I’d seen him in photographs and knew he was a freakishly tall, blond Russian terrorist. Nonetheless, experiencing him was much different than reading about him.
His hair is yellow straw, and his eyes are an almost iridescent blue. He’s so tall that my father and I look like children beside him, barely coming up to his waist. And he’s clad in a purple velvet bathrobe that falls to midknee, channeling Hugh Hefner in his heyday.
The room we’re in is indeed formal. It’s at least thirty feet long, with views on all sides that rival those from our office. Six armchairs in an embroidered red-and-gold jacquard float on an enormous Persian rug, and every fixture is gilded.
“Welcome,” Garkov says. “Please, sit.”