I follow him inside. Taking the seat opposite him, I scan the room more thoroughly. He hasn’t scrubbed the place clean; that’s for sure.
Before saying anything, I take a moment to calm myself. I don’t want to come on too strong. I’ll lose him right off the bat.
“I know Charlotte’s disappearance has been tough on you. For me too, of course. The reason I’m here is because you and me, Zach, we’re the people who know Charlotte best. We need to work together to help find her. And that means you need to cooperate fully with the police.”
He isn’t making eye contact with me as I tell him this. Instead, he stares at the floor.
“Zach, look at me,” I say, using a sterner voice.
This causes him to raise his head. His gaze is unsteady. Alternating between my eyes and my shoes.
“Are you wearing a wire?” he finally says.
“What?”
“Are you tape-recording this?”
“No. God, no. Zach, I’m here to talk to you. To convince you to help the police. Every hour that you don’t is another hour that Charlotte’s in danger.”
Zach exhales loudly and then focuses on me with much more conviction than he had a moment ago. “I didn’t kill her. I swear to God I didn’t.”
“I know you didn’t,” I say, hoping I sound convincing. “You loved Charlotte, and she loved you. That’s why I know that you want to help the police find who did this. If you do that, there’s a good chance that Charlotte’s going to come home safe.”
“You never thought I was good enough for Charlotte.”
“No,” I lie. “All I ever wanted was for Charlotte to be happy, and you made her happy. And I also know that you always wanted the best for her. Don’t you still want that?”
“Of course. I love her.”
His use of the present tense is a hopeful admission. Then again, Zach is too smart to be tripped up by wordplay.
“Then why won’t you talk to the police?”
“They think I killed her. And I didn’t. But they think I did.”
He says this with an accusatory tone. As if he’s the victim with whom I should sympathize.
“No, they don’t,” I say softly, as if talking to a child. “I’ve known Lieutenant Velasquez a long time. He may come on strong, but he’s always been honest with me. He would have told me if he suspected you of anything. The truth is the opposite, in fact. He told me there’s evidence pointing to other people. It’s your refusal to cooperate that’s raising suspicions. Until you told him that you wouldn’t cooperate, he’d assumed you’d be just like me—willing to do anything to help them find Charlotte.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it!”
I’m shocked by Zach’s sudden flash of anger. It reminds me of Charlotte’s description of the fictional Marco—how his rage could be triggered as easily as flipping a light switch.
“I’m her boyfriend, not her sister,” Zach says. “And I’m a goddamn black man! The police were looking to put the blame on me from day one, and they’re not going to look anywhere else if they can pin it on me.”
He’s right. He knows it, and he knows that I know it too. Nevertheless, I try to convince him that he couldn’t be more off base.
“The only thing that I can think of worse than Charlotte being gone is the wrong person being accused of it. And look, Zach, I’m not going to lie to you. Like I said, I’ve always liked you, and I liked you with Charlotte because she was happy with you. But Charlotte is my family. If you guys broke up, you and me, we’d probably never talk again. But I don’t want the police falsely accusing you any more than you do. If they did that, we wouldn’t be any closer to getting Charlotte back.”
“The difference is that I know I didn’t hurt her, but you don’t know that,” he says, calmer now. “And so if the police tell you that I did it, you’re going to believe them. But I didn’t do it, Ella. I swear to God I didn’t.”
One of the occupational hazards of being a prosecutor—or a defense lawyer, for that matter—is that people lie to your face every single day. I can’t even begin to count the number of suspects who’ve made the exact same pronouncement as Zach. They’ll swear their innocence to God, on their children’s eyes, on all that’s holy, and yet they’re still as guilty as sin.
Despite my training, I still can’t get my head around the idea that Zach killed Charlotte. There’s something he’s hiding—that I can feel in my bones—but I don’t believe it’s that he murdered her. Perhaps that’s only because I want to believe—hope—that no one murdered Charlotte.
I stop, and quiet fills the room. My father preaches that silence is the best interrogator. “I learn more about the other side’s evidence by letting them talk than by asking pointed questions,” he told me once. “You’d be surprised what people will reveal if you give them the chance to do it.”
This silence is not an ally in the interrogation, however, but a wall between us. Zach isn’t going to budge. I decide to change tack. Perhaps I can get something out of him about whether Matthew or Jason exist outside the pages of Charlotte’s manuscript.
“Did you read Charlotte’s book?” I ask.
Even though Gabriel asked me not to disclose the manuscript’s existence, I assume that Zach already knows about it. He and Charlotte were living together, after all. I can’t imagine she could keep such an extensive project from him, even if she had been so inclined.
“What book?” he says, indicating my assumption is incorrect.
“She wrote a novel. A romance.” Far better that he not know Charlotte’s novel involved a murder. “Some of the characters are based on people in her life. For example, there’s a boyfriend who seems to be loosely based on you. She calls him Marco. He’s someone she loves and who is very talented, although she made you a painter in the book.”
Zach stares at me, stone-faced. It occurs to me a beat too late that Charlotte might actually be having an affair with a painter named Marco.
“And there’s a character based on me too,” I continue quickly. “The protagonist’s older sister is named Emily, which is my middle name. And she’s a lawyer. Among the other characters . . . one is a banker and the other is a student at NYU. The banker she calls Matthew and the student is named Jason. I know this is an awkward thing for me to ask, but . . . was there anyone like either of them in Charlotte’s life? Past or present?”
“I don’t know,” Zach says, but his voice clearly belies his claim. He knows things. Things he isn’t sharing.
“Zach . . . please. I’m begging you. Help me.”
More silence. Then he says, “I have a friend over at the law school, and she told me that the smartest thing for me to do is keep my mouth shut. Maybe I should call her now.”
He’s lawyering up. The piece of shit.
In a police interrogation, when the suspect asks for a lawyer all questions must cease. The police are precluded from trying to talk someone out of invoking his right to counsel. If they do, anything that’s said after the request for counsel is inadmissible at trial.