I have borne witness to my fair share of dead bodies. Gruesome ones too. Gunshot wounds, stabbings, drownings. I’ve seen a decapitation and an old lady who had been rotting in her home for almost three weeks before she was found. Even so, I know that my prior exposure to death will not prepare me for the horror of seeing Charlotte’s lifeless body.
“Remember what I told you,” Gabriel says. “Because your sister was in the East River for several days, there’s going to be extensive bloating and skin discoloration. The suitcase she was in didn’t keep out much water, and so she looks kind of . . . blue.”
“Suitcase?” I say.
He gives me a patient look, but overly so. Like when you’re explaining something to a three-year-old for the second time.
“Yes. As I told you back at the station, Charlotte’s killer put her in a large Tumi suitcase. We consider the suitcase to be a major lead, and for that reason we’re not going to release that detail to the press. I also asked that you keep it a secret too. It’s a way for us to root through the tips we get. It’ll also give the killer a sense that we don’t have him in our sights.”
I don’t remember him saying any of this previously. Not about the suitcase or even that Charlotte was found in the East River—which is about as far away from Charlotte’s apartment as you can get and still be in Manhattan.
I try to imagine Charlotte blue and bloated, and the image that pops into my head is of Violet from the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Charlotte and I watched that movie so many times when we were kids that we knew most of the dialogue by heart. She never failed to giggle when Augustus fell into the chocolate river or when Veruca went down the bad-egg chute, and she especially enjoyed it when Mike Teavee became tiny. But “the big blueberry girl,” as Charlotte called her, always made my sister cry. Violet, you’re turning Violet! Eventually it became a running joke between us, as in: One more word out of you and I’ll show you a picture of the big blueberry girl!
“Are you ready?” Gabriel asks.
I don’t answer. The tech pulls open drawer number eighteen anyway.
When we were younger, Charlotte would come to my bedroom in the middle of the night and we’d have what we called sister sleepovers. She’d climb into bed next to me and whisper, “Sister snuggle.” Our parents would find us the next morning, wrapped tightly together.
Gabriel later tells me that I tried to get into the drawer with Charlotte. That’s something else I don’t recall.
After, Gabriel drives me to my father’s apartment. He offers to come upstairs with me, explaining that my father might have questions I can’t answer. I thank him, but tell him that it’s unnecessary. He’s already done so much, and I know there is still more for him to do tonight.
“Is your father expecting you?” Leo the nighttime doorman asks.
“No,” I say, pulling out my phone. “I’ll call up now, just in case he’s asleep.”
My father’s “hello” reveals he’s wide awake.
“Ella?” he says, curling the last syllable of my name to bend it into a question.
“I’m downstairs. I’m going to come up.”
“Okay.”
He doesn’t ask me why I’m visiting at such a late hour. His lack of inquisitiveness makes it clear that he knows exactly why I’m there.
A minute later, my father greets me wearing a bathrobe over his pajamas. His face looks as if I’ve already told him. A mask of unfathomable grief.
Still standing in the open doorway, I say, “The police found Charlotte’s body. I just came from the morgue. She’s dead, Daddy. Charlotte’s dead.”
Telling my father that his little girl is dead is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It feels like I’m killing him. As the words leave my lips, the light goes out in his eyes.
For the third time tonight, I embrace a man with all my strength. This time, however, I’m the ballast keeping him upright.
I don’t know who told him about my mother’s passing. A nurse, I suspect. He told me, and it was something of a relief when he did. For the last few weeks of my mother’s life, the three of us—my father, Charlotte, and I—had stood vigil in the hospital, taking shifts sitting at her bedside. Throughout, my mother lay there unresponsive. The only sign of life was when she writhed in pain, curling her body in the most unnatural positions with each moan. No one could bear witness to such suffering and not hope for its end.
My father’s reaction to the news of Charlotte’s death is different. Against all odds, and contrary to his professional training, he has been holding out hope that Charlotte would come back to us. He’s now paying the price for clinging to that dream.
After our hallway embrace, I deliver him back to the living room. I offer to make us some tea but he shakes the suggestion away, still unable to speak.
Finally, he says, “You’re all I have, Ella.”
My father is very precise with language. Words are my business, he often told us when we were growing up. And yet, the truth of the matter is that I’m not all he has. He has his work to sustain him. If history is any guide, he’ll immediately throw himself into Garkov or some other high-profile case, and thereby allow himself to heal—or at least to focus on something else.
It’s me, not my father, who actually has nothing now.
DAY THREE
THURSDAY
Christopher Tyler
29.
On Thursday morning, the sun is shining brightly and a cool wind blows. It’s one of those days that makes you happy to be alive, and I wouldn’t otherwise have a care in the world except that, thirty-six hours ago, I murdered my lover.
I stop at the newsstands in front of my office to peruse the headlines. It’s the usual nonsense: some type of explosion in Syria that killed six; the death of some scientist I’d never heard of; Mets win; Yankees lose.
No mention of another missing young woman in Manhattan.
At 8:00 a.m. on the nose, I’m sitting at my desk, staring at my Bloomberg terminal. Underneath the market quotes is a news ticker, like the one you see on the bottom of CNN. The top bar runs the stock quotes, and beneath is a news scroll. I watch the words pass across the screen.
Still nothing about the disappearance of Charlotte Broden.
Bill Fitzgerald is a beefy Irishman with a thick head of brown hair. He might have been a half-decent trader if it weren’t for the fact that—ever since I’ve known him, which is going on fifteen years now—he’s been desperate for a big payday to get him out of debt. Any gambler will tell you—from Kenny Rogers on down—that if you want to win, you can’t think about the money. It’s the same thing with trading. You make the trade because of the opportunity. If you focus on the risk or the payoff you’re always going to blow it, either by pulling out too soon or not getting in early enough.