“This is a good thing, Ella. Now we can rule Zach out, and we have the correct timeline. Wednesday-night alibis don’t matter. It’s Tuesday night that we need to focus on.”
The last time I saw Zach, I didn’t want to believe that he could have killed Charlotte, largely because I couldn’t accept that she might be dead. Now I’m certain that she’s gone, and I want Zach to pay for it. Even if he’s not guilty of killing her, he still bears culpability for the crime.
“If Zach’s so goddamn innocent, why’d he take so long to tell us this?”
“He told me what he told you. Everybody thinks it’s the boyfriend. On top of that, there’s the whole race thing. He’s a black man dating a white woman, and he’s cheating on her. And, needless to say, he knew he wouldn’t pass the poly because he’d boxed himself into a lie about when he last saw her. He figured if all that came out, we’d just lock him up and throw away the key.”
Zach wasn’t wrong. If I were representing him, I would have told him the same thing. Don’t cooperate. The police will eat you alive with that story.
“And so why the change of heart, then?”
“He said he thought we’d find the guy who did this without his help. When the weekend passed and we still didn’t have someone in custody, his conscience got the better of him and he decided to help. At least, that’s his story.”
“And you believe that crock?”
“You know how it is. Nobody’s ever totally cleared until we get the guy who did it. But, yeah, for the time being, we’re focusing away from Zach. We might still throw an obstruction charge at him, but that would wind up being a sideshow, and I want to direct all our resources to finding your sister. Believe me, I would have loved it if the evidence took us right to Zach, but the fact is that all indications now are that your sister went missing Tuesday night, and Zach’s got a solid alibi. Not just the law student’s say-so, although like I said she passed the poly too, but her dorm has video surveillance. Zach comes in that night around a quarter of ten and doesn’t leave until seven a.m. the next day.”
“Yeah, but who’s to say he didn’t kill her before ten? Who’s to say that the law student and Zach didn’t do it together?”
“The timing is very tight. The law student claims that they were together all night on Tuesday. Charlotte left you at Tom’s at about two, right?”
“I actually don’t know how long she stayed after me, but I left at around two thirty. We ordered food but I didn’t stay to eat, so it’s possible she stayed a little later.”
“When she left doesn’t matter much because Zach didn’t get out of rehearsal until four thirty. Then he’s off the grid until he shows at Margarita Grill in the Village with the law-school friend. Now, we don’t have a positive ID from the waiters or anyone in the restaurant yet, but the law student puts him there, and her credit-card receipt shows they left at eight forty-two.”
Of course she paid, I think to myself.
“So, assuming dinner took an hour, he could have seen Charlotte between four thirty and seven forty-two, right?”
“Yes, that’s the only window. But logistically, it doesn’t work. His rehearsal was in the Village, and your sister was uptown. Now, it’s possible she came to him and they met at exactly four thirty, but if he went to her, that’s another thirty to forty-five minutes in which he couldn’t have committed the crime. He’s back downtown at around seven thirty, which eliminates another thirty to forty-five minutes. That’s an hour to an hour and half when he couldn’t have done it. So, at most, he would have had ninety minutes to commit the murder and get the body out of wherever he killed her. Aside from the timing being very tight, I don’t see how he kills your sister in her apartment and leaves with her body—even if he has it hidden in something—without the doormen remembering that. And they don’t remember your sister—or Zach—coming or going at all that day.”
“Okay, but if she went downtown to him, then he’s got three hours. That’s enough time. And there’s no doorman problem.”
“It’s enough time, but where and how does he do it? It’s broad daylight in a densely populated part of the city. On top of which, he’s perfectly put together—no ripped clothes or scratches or blood—when he sees the law student at seven thirty.”
“So she says.”
“So she says,” he confirms.
Gabriel’s right, though. It doesn’t make sense for Zach to lure Charlotte to some public spot in the Village and kill her there.
“What about after dinner?” I ask.
“That’s even less likely. Like I said, dinner was over at eight forty-two, and then there’s a receipt at a gelato store about three or four blocks away from the restaurant at nine ten. They next show up on the dorm security camera at nine forty-nine, and not again until the following morning.”
The facts indicate that Zach is a cheater, but not a murderer. Good news there. He and Charlotte were simply two people caught in a dysfunctional relationship. Period. End of story.
“Okay, so where does this leave us?”
“We have to redo a lot of our investigating now that the time of Charlotte’s disappearance has moved up a day. We’re going to start with Josh. He’s agreed to come in and meet with us again. But given that he can’t effectively be polygraphed, whatever he says to us is kind of meaningless.”
“And what about my theory about Paul Michelson? The change to Tuesday makes it more likely he’s the guy. It means he hired us after he killed Charlotte. To stay close to the investigation about Charlotte. Classic sociopathic behavior, right?”
“Yeah. It would certainly be that, Ella. I mean, if he’s the guy.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Despite my best efforts, I’m delayed at rehearsal. That means there’s going to be hell to pay with Marco for being late to his big night. Whether my tardiness is by ten minutes or two hours hardly matters. To him, my not showing up on time to “his” show means I do not respect his work—which is the same thing as not caring about him.
The gallery is on the fourth floor. A tiny elevator takes forever to climb the few stories. When the doors finally open, I literally run into the space.
I had assumed—wrongly, it turns out—that the art crowd would be fashionably late. Even though my iPhone tells me it’s only 7:15, the space is already wall-to-wall with people.
A server wearing a tuxedo—sans jacket, but with a black tie and silver vest—offers me a glass of champagne from a tray. I take it and quickly look around for Marco. In the center of the room is a fifteen-foot-high minimalist, abstract sculpture entitled Infinity that can only be intended to evoke the thought of a penis. From my quick glance at the rest of Quinones Perez’s oeuvre, it seems phallus-shaped pieces are the common thread running through his work.
I make my way through the room, assuming that Marco’s pieces will be near the back, but there’s no sign of him or his work. When I reach the far wall, I approach an elderly woman. She’s accompanied by a much younger man, and they’re holding hands.