“Jesus,” is all he says next.
“Yeah,” I confirm. “We need to strategize. Now that they have a body, it’s definitely a murder investigation, and they’re going to be looking hard at you.”
He initially doesn’t offer any response. Then he says, “Why do you say that? The looking at me part, I mean.”
The question at first confuses me. How could he be so obtuse? Then I remember that he doesn’t know about the diary.
“The police found her diary,” I say flatly.
More silence. I wonder if he’s still going to deny the affair, but instead he says, “Okay. I guess we need to talk, then.”
“I’m busy during the day today, but we can meet later tonight. Does seven o’clock work for you?”
I don’t tell him that I’ll be engaging in a search for my sister’s body this afternoon, adhering to my father’s commandment about not sharing anything personal with the client.
“That’s fine, but if it’s all right with you, I’d rather not be going to your office after hours on the weekend. How about if I buy you dinner?”
Normally alarm bells sound when male clients want to meet with me outside the office. In my three months at the firm, I’ve had half a dozen overtures to meet in hotel bars—or worse, hotel rooms. But Paul’s right. Our building makes everyone sign in and indicate who they’re visiting, and I’d rather not leave a paper trail showing that the same day Jennifer Barnett was found dead Paul Michelson showed up for a late-night, weekend strategy session with his lawyer.
“Okay,” I say. “Somewhere quiet, though.”
“How about we meet at Mas? I know the owner, and he’ll give us a table in the back.”
17.
The weather is absolutely beautiful. Eighty degrees, no humidity, not a cloud in the sky. A perfect day for a stroll in the park—if only our purpose wasn’t to find my sister’s corpse.
My father picks me up at my apartment with his car and driver. We arrive at Riverside and Ninety-Sixth Street, where my father’s PR guy, Phillip Lashley, is waiting.
I have never before met Phillip in person, but he fits the image I’ve had of him, and PR guys in general. Sharp featured, tall and trim, and well dressed. For our day in the park, he’s wearing a blue blazer and cream-colored pants—what someone else might don to attend a country-club dinner.
“Clint,” he says as my father alights from the back of the car. “It’s all set up. The local TV news, the Times, and the tabloids have all agreed to cover it. I even got some network interest. George Stephanopoulos’s kid goes to school with my kid, and I asked for the favor. No promises, but my guess is that today’s event gets national exposure.”
Phillip seems very pleased with himself. For an instant it bothers me that he’s living off someone else’s misery, but then I realize that’s also what I do for a living. Of the two of us, he likely has the nobler calling.
“We’ve plastered Charlotte’s picture and the notice for the hundred-thousand-dollar reward everywhere in the city,” Phillip continues. “You’ll see the pink fliers throughout the park. I think we’re going to have more than five hundred people here today, and we’ll tell the press we got twice as many. A lot are volunteers, but some are the people we go to when clients need to fill a room for an event or something, and those we pay. It doesn’t cost very much, and it’s well worth it because it makes for a good shot on the news to see a high-volume search going on. The way it’s going to work is that half of the volunteers will walk down from Ninety-Sixth to Seventy-Second, and the other half will go north to One Hundred and Sixteenth. We’re giving out these silver wristbands so the volunteers can identify one another, and we’re encouraging everyone to keep them on until Charlotte comes home. We’re also going to be distributing them throughout the city.”
He hands me one. It’s rubber, like the yellow bracelets everyone once wore to support Lance Armstrong’s cancer foundation. I slide it around my wrist, and then my father does likewise.
Phillip keeps on talking. “We’ve set up a podium. I think you should say a few words, Clint. Ella, you can too if you want. Be brief, because we want to be able to control the message. I recommend you don’t say anything about Jennifer Barnett. Stick to Charlotte. Something along the lines of thanking the volunteers for coming and then a word or two about what a wonderful person Charlotte . . . is. I’ve taken the liberty of jotting down some talking points, but I know, Clint, that you prefer to speak off the cuff, so just use them for guidance.”
He thrusts an index card at my father, who scans it, then hands it to me. The card contains five bullet points that recite what Phillip just said. He has actually written the words, “We love Charlotte.”
I put the card in my pocket. Like my father, I don’t need a PR flack to tell me how wonderful my sister is.
In the distance, the flashing of police lights comes into view. A black SUV with four squad cars behind it pulls up along Riverside Drive. Gabriel is the first one to get out of the SUV.
“Please excuse me,” I say. “That’s the lieutenant in charge of the investigation.”
Despite the summerlike weather, Gabriel is in all black, wearing a long-sleeve Henley and flat-front slacks. He has on what look like designer sunglasses, not the standard aviator ones most cops wear. As usual, his badge is on a chain around his neck.
He looks over at the crowd. “It looks like you’ve got a very good turnout.”
“Something like five hundred people,” I say. “But . . . I know this is going to sound strange because we scheduled the event, but I feel really odd about doing it. I mean, the last thing I want is for someone to find Charlotte’s body, and here we’re essentially asking people to give up their Saturday to look.”
“I get it. You want closure, but only if it’s the good kind. That’s perfectly understandable. If it takes some concern away from you, your sister isn’t here. We’ve already been through the park with cadaver dogs.”
Cadaver. The word jolts me as if it were a racial slur, taking away Charlotte’s humanity. To those dogs she’s nothing but rotting flesh, a scent.