My focus is on the police. What do they have? How close are they to me?
I’m hardly an expert on criminal justice, but when a young, affluent woman living in a doorman building in a $1,000-per-square-foot neighborhood vanishes without a trace, even I know the police are going to zoom in on the “boyfriend” as the most likely suspect. And when the boyfriend is black and the victim is white, well, the police probably don’t look any further. I smile to myself that I’m making Mr. McDouche’s life even more miserable. Of course, the irony isn’t totally lost on me that my vitriolic dislike of the guy was because he treated Charlotte so poorly, and here I’m the one who killed her.
And what about the other guy? Strange how Charlotte’s utterance of his name had set me into a murderous rage and now I can’t even remember it. Jason? Jared? Something lame that started with a J. The mysterious J-man must have left evidence of the relationship. Maybe he’s been to her apartment, which means fingerprints, and quite possibly DNA. Unless he’s married, he likely didn’t use a burner phone, so there’ll certainly be phone calls and texts if nothing else. That means he’ll wind up being suspect number two.
The question in my mind is whether I will become suspect number three.
DAY FIVE
SATURDAY
31.
Saturday morning, I learn that America’s now second-most-famous missing twentysomething woman is dead. My only reaction to the news about Jennifer Barnett is the concern that law enforcement will now focus greater resources in finding Charlotte, which only reinforces my need to keep one step ahead of them.
And that’s why I head to Riverside Park.
I arrive ten minutes before the advertised noon start time. I had expected there to be twenty or thirty people in attendance but, looking around, I find the volunteers number in the hundreds. On virtually every tree hangs a pink leaflet with Charlotte’s picture, offering a reward of $100,000 for information leading to her safe return.
I wade through the crowd until I come upon an information booth manned by three people. Two of them look to be twentysomething. I assume they were friends of Charlotte. The other has a definite law-enforcement vibe: closely cropped hair, clean-shaven, highly starched shirt.
As my bad luck would have it, the cop becomes free when it’s my turn. “Thanks for coming out today to help us find Charlotte Broden,” he says.
I wonder if finding Charlotte is truly the purpose of today’s event. I would have thought that the goal would be not to find her lying dead in Riverside Park.
“Glad to help,” I say.
“Good. Here, put this on.”
He hands me a rubber bracelet. It’s silver and says CHARLOTTE BRODEN in white letters.
As I’m sliding the band around my wrist the cop says, “Please sign in, sir.”
A clipboard is on the table in front of him. The paper on it has four columns: name, address, e-mail, and cell phone. I hesitate for a moment, but quickly conclude there isn’t much risk in giving out phony information.
“Thank you,” the cop says after I’ve completed the form. “Please wear the bracelet as much as you can. In about ten minutes, there’s going to be some brief introductory remarks by Mr. Broden.”
The snippets of conversation I hear among the volunteers almost all concern Jennifer Barnett. How terrible it is that she’s dead, and what an absolute horror it must be for her family.
The crowd continues to thicken. It feels a little like going to a concert, a throng of people just standing around waiting for the music to start.
Charlotte’s father takes the mic. Even from a distance, I can clearly see the man has been suffering. I have taken away his daughter and now I’m putting him through the further agony of not knowing—for no reason other than my own self-preservation. Nevertheless, I don’t consider for a moment reversing my path.
What I’m doing, no matter how heinous, I do for self-preservation. It’s no different from those stories you hear about survivors of shipwrecks resorting to cannibalism. You can’t judge unless you’ve been there.
He squints, and for a moment I wonder if he’s going to be able to speak at all, or if it will be a repeat of what happened at the press conference. But then he smiles and says, “Thank you all for coming today. I can’t tell you how touched I am by the outpouring of love for Charlotte. Of course, it doesn’t surprise me. Everyone who met Charlotte instantly fell in love with her. So thank you. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.”
My team leader for the search identifies herself as Eva, claiming she’s a classmate of Charlotte’s at NYU. She has thick, curly red hair and freckles, which I suppose some men like, but I never have. She speaks very quickly, and there’s something about her that makes me doubt that she and Charlotte were actually friends. More likely, I suspect, this is just another do-gooder cause that Eva has glommed onto.
“Our team has been assigned section twelve,” she says, “and our street coordinates are Eighty-Sixth to Seventy-Second. We’re the team closest to the river. The way we’ve been told to do it is to fan out about three feet from one another and then just walk. Obviously, we hope that no one in our group finds”—she gives a theatrical sigh—“Charlotte. But if anyone comes across anything suspicious, please call out my name. Again, it’s Eva. I’ll come to you and blow my whistle. That’ll cause a supervisor to come over to check it out. Sound good?”
I scan my fellow section-twelve volunteers. No one voices any objections to walking ten blocks and raising your hand if you see a dead body.
“Good. When we’ve reached Seventy-Second Street, we’re going to move over one chain length. So whoever is on the easternmost end of our group will then move over five feet and become the westernmost walker, and then we’ll head back to Eighty-Sixth Street that way. We’re supposed to do four passes, and it’s expected to take about two hours. When we’re done, there will be refreshments back where we originally all met. The place Mr. Broden made his remarks. Any questions?”
One of the men in our group asks if there will be water available. He’s an older guy, so I cut him some slack. Eva tells him that there are stations set up along the search, and he can always leave the group to find a water fountain or to buy a bottle of water from one of the vendors in the park.
“I guess that’s all the instructions,” Eva says. “But, like Charlotte’s father said before, I also want to thank you all for coming out today. I don’t know how many of you knew Charlotte, but we were in a creative-writing seminar and she’s so . . .” Eva starts to break down, which strikes me as a bit over the top.