After the call, I put on a T-shirt and sweatpants and wait for the police to arrive.
The cops show up only a few minutes later. A man and a woman in full police blues. The man is about my age. Big, with red hair and pasty, white skin. His badge says McKeege. His partner is younger, a Latina. She’s barely five feet tall and with the bulletproof vest looks like she might fall over. Her name is Rosario.
McKeege is the lead, apparently, because he’s the one who speaks first.
“Are you Ella Broden?”
I nod. “Come in. Thank you for getting here so quickly.”
I lead them into my bedroom and directly toward the dead body splayed on my bed. The knife is still sticking out of his neck.
Rosario must not have been to many gory crime scenes because she instinctively turns away. McKeege looks on as if nothing’s amiss.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” McKeege asks.
For some reason, I find the use of the term “ma’am” comical. Like McKeege is a character in some 1950s police drama.
“As well as I can be, all things considered.”
McKeege turns back around to look at my bed. “Did you move anything?”
I shake my head that I haven’t, but, because he’s still not looking at me, I follow up the nonverbal communication with a quiet, “No.”
“Lieutenant Velasquez will be here any second now,” McKeege says, turning back around to face me. “Our instructions are to wait with you until he gets here. Is there anything we can do for you in the interim?”
“Do you mind if we sit in the living room?” I ask. “I don’t . . . I don’t want to see him anymore.”
Gabriel must have flown over from One PP, because he arrives only a few minutes after the uniformed cops. He’s a sight for sore eyes. So much so that I immediately embrace him.
His professionalism, however, is front and center. He pushes me back. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Shaken . . . but feeling very lucky to be alive.”
“You are lucky, Ella. Wait here. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Gabriel walks into my bedroom with McKeege a step behind him, while Rosario is left to babysit me. Through the open doorway, I see Gabriel reach into his pocket and pull out latex gloves. He says something that I can’t hear to McKeege, which causes McKeege to reach into his own pocket and toss Gabriel what appears to be a leather wallet. I don’t recall him taking it from Dylan’s pants, but he must have. I can’t imagine McKeege giving Gabriel his own wallet.
Gabriel catches it with one hand and then, with the other, he pulls out a few cards. After a quick examination, Gabriel returns the cards to their sleeves and hands the billfold back to McKeege.
“His name is Christopher Tyler,” Gabriel says when he returns to me. “He’s a banker at a firm called Harper Sawyer.”
“Matthew Harrison . . . ,” I say. “It makes perfect sense. Classic Charlotte.”
“I don’t follow.”
“She was always playing word games. William Henry Harrison was an early president. He’s most famous for dying a month after taking office. His vice president and successor was John Tyler.”
Gabriel looks over his shoulder at the uniformed cops. In a whisper, he says, “You know as well as I do that presidential wordplay is not evidence that he killed your sister. And you were right—Paul Michelson’s luggage is the same model and color as the one the killer used.”
“Paul didn’t do it. This guy did.”
I explain it all in less than a minute. How he told me his name was Dylan Perry when he approached me at Lava, the second meet-up at Riverside, the notepad I’d stupidly left on my dining table, and his effort to kill me before I killed him in self-defense.
Then I tell him the clincher. “He has a scar on his hip. It’s in the shape of his first initial. Just like in my sister’s book.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows arch and he hurries back to my bedroom. I watch as he slides down the sheet, exposing Christopher’s lower abdomen. He doesn’t look at it long before he turns to walk back out to me.
I’m about to ask Gabriel if he believes me now when my father enters the apartment.
“Dad?” I say, confused by his presence.
“I called him,” Gabriel says.
My father walks more quickly than I’ve ever seen him move, rushing to embrace me.
“Oh my God, Ella. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Dad. It’s all over,” I whisper in his ear.
He’s slow to release me, and I take a moment to enjoy the sensation of his hug. When he lets go, he looks at me with tears in his eyes.
“What happened?” he asks.
“He was having an affair with Charlotte. I met him before Charlotte went missing. Actually, it was after he’d killed her, but before I knew she was missing. He gave me a fake name and must have sought me out to shadow the investigation. I had no idea he knew Charlotte . . . but, like I said, it’s over now. He killed Charlotte, and now he’s dead.”
“Do you know why he killed her?”
“No. Not really. Jealousy, maybe.”
My father considers this. He’ll never know why this man took his daughter from him. He looks as if this reality is yet another assault. The not knowing.
“We’re almost finished here,” Gabriel says.
I can see my father’s antennae perk up. His lawyer hat is back on.
“Did Ella give a statement?” he asks.
“In a matter of speaking,” Gabriel says.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means she said it was self-defense, and I believe her. It didn’t go further than that.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” I say.
Gabriel nods. “I’m going to leave you two alone for now. I can’t guarantee that I won’t need to get back to you about some things, but I’m going to try to limit that as much as I can. In the meantime, Ella, if you need anything, anything at all, please call me.” He smiles. “And that’s not just something I say. I mean it.”
I’m touched by Gabriel’s offer. I know it’s not just something he says.
“Thank you. For everything, Gabriel.”
He nods again and then places his hand softly on my shoulder. He doesn’t say anything further, just walks back over to his colleagues.
By now, the police tech crew has arrived and put the body in a bag on top of a gurney. They wheel my sister’s murderer away.
Gabriel is the last of them to leave. He waves as he shuts the door, and I wave back at him.
DAY TEN
WEDNESDAY
Ella Broden
39.
Charlotte’s funeral is held two days after I killed her murderer, ten days after her own death.
It’s raining. Not a driving storm, but more than a romantic mist.
Had it been any other day, I likely wouldn’t have minded, or even noticed. But today it seems like yet another form of divine punishment. I wanted my last day with Charlotte to be gloriously sunny, as if her warmth had descended from the heavens to envelop the earth.