“No . . . not on the cooperation,” Detective McCorry says. “I’m surprised that you’re representing Paul Michelson. It just seems . . . odd, given what’s going on with your sister.”
It’s more than a fair point, so I drop the attitude. I could explain that Paul retained us before my sister went missing, but that would violate the attorney–client privilege.
“The two really have nothing to do with each other, Detective. Paul is innocent.”
“Okay,” he says with the same tone as if I’d told him that I think Santa is real. “I know you know this, but we focus hard on anyone who won’t cooperate with us. So if Mr. Michelson isn’t the guy, the best thing is for him to just tell us that.”
“Thanks for the advice. I can tell you that he’s not the guy, and we’re going to have to leave it at that for the moment. He’s now going to go about his life. He and I are both confident that, if something did happen to Ms. Barnett, your investigative skills will be good enough to find the person responsible.”
Less than a minute after I hang up with McCorry, my phone rings. The call is from the same number I had just dialed—the main line at One PP.
“Did you forget something, Detective McCorry?” I ask without so much as saying hello first.
“It’s Gabriel. Jim just filled me in.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Yeah. Oh. Look, I know everybody’s got to make a living, and the way of the world is that the toughest ADAs sell their souls for big money, so I’m not complaining about that. But you don’t want to represent Paul Michelson. Not now. Not on this.”
This doesn’t sound like the normal police posturing. Gabriel has taken on the tone of a friend staging an intervention.
“Care to share why not?”
“You playing coy, or do you really not know?”
“Why don’t we pretend that my father follows a policy that it’s not our job to prove our client’s innocence but to rebut evidence that you come up with indicating otherwise. There was no reason for us to ask Mr. Michelson anything about his relationship with Jennifer Barnett or the circumstances behind her disappearance.”
“Hell of a way to earn a buck, Ella.”
I let the comment go without response. He’s right, but so is my father.
“Let’s just say that you should probably talk to your client about the affair he was having with Ms. Barnett. While you’re at it, ask him if the muckety-mucks at Maeve Grant heard that he was diddling a research analyst on his desk, whether that’d be the end of his seven-figure bonuses.”
“What evidence do you have about the affair?”
“She kept a diary,” he says.
My father returns to the office an hour later. He looks like a beaten man, which is the last thing I’d normally say about my father, especially when he returns from court.
“How’d it go with Judge Koletsky?” I ask.
“Fine. I got the adjournment. He said he had no problem with an open-ended continuance—as a courtesy to me. The prosecution cried bloody murder, of course, and so he ended up cutting the baby in half. He granted the continuance but said we have to come back next month and tell him if conditions concerning Charlotte’s disappearance have changed. As if he lives under a rock and wouldn’t find out on his own.”
“Garkov must be happy.”
“I haven’t told him yet. But I’m sure this isn’t going to disappoint him.”
“There’s news about Paul Michelson,” I say.
“Ashleigh told me that he called. What’s going on?”
“A lot. The police likely have a match of Paul’s prints at Jennifer Barnett’s apartment, and they’ve invited him to come down and chat. I met with him and gave him the pros and cons—”
“Emphasis on the cons, I hope.”
“Yeah, don’t worry. He was con all the way. So I called over to One PP and told the lead detective no. And then, like two minutes after I told Detective McCorry that Paul wasn’t cooperating, Gabriel called me. He said that Jennifer Barnett kept a diary and it leaves no doubt that she was having an affair with Paul.”
“So? If he said it was an affair, doesn’t that, by definition, mean it was consensual? Why would he need to kill her when he can just break it off? Paul’s not married, right?”
“No, he’s not married. But it’s still the twenty-first century, Dad. Maeve Grant’s policies prohibit superior-subordinate relationships. Big firms have cracked down on that sort of thing. If Jennifer Barnett were to claim sexual harassment—which she could just by virtue of Paul being her boss—Maeve Grant might well fire Paul.”
“So you’re saying that Paul has a decent motive.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
My father doesn’t look the least bit fazed about the possibility that we’re representing a murderer. I’m not at all surprised. He’s represented them in the past and swears that they have been some of his nicest clients.
“All the more reason to hunker down,” he says.
14.
I come home on the early side and order my favorite pad thai for dinner. My original plan was to watch a movie, but all the titles on pay-per-view remind me of Charlotte in one way or another. I give some fleeting thought to heading over to Lava, just to drink surrounded by people rather than drinking alone. I decide against it and open a bottle of chardonnay waiting in the fridge.
The thought of Lava makes me think of Dylan. I figure that now is as good a time as any to do some cyber-snooping about my one-night stand. Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about him beyond his name and that he’s a doctor of some type temporarily living in Brooklyn.
I type “Dylan Perry” into Google. The first hit is the Wikipedia page for the character on Beverly Hills, 90210—Dylan McKay, who was played by Luke Perry. I refine my search to focus on Brooklyn. That turns up some real people—a seventy-year-old lawyer, the Facebook profile of someone who looks like a science teacher I had in middle school, the LinkedIn page for a banker at Citibank who’s bald as a cue ball. None of them is my Dylan.
I click on to Lava’s website, but Dylan doesn’t have a profile there. Next I check my own profile to see if he’s left me a message, but my inbox contains nothing but spam.
I’m considering what other searches might bear fruit when my cell phone rings. As has been my Pavlovian response whenever I’ve received a call over the last two days, my entire body clenches, preparing itself for the call I’ve been dreading. The fact that the caller ID reveals it’s from One PP makes that likelihood all the greater.
“Hello?” I say, tentatively.
“It’s Gabriel. I’ve called to share some good news. We found the student your sister was involved with.”
“Jason?” I say, and immediately realize that isn’t his real name.
“His name is Josh. Josh Walden.”
The name means nothing. I’m quite sure that Charlotte had never mentioned a Josh Walden to me before.
“Have you spoken to him?”
“He’s sitting in our interrogation room as we speak.”