Of course, Morris does not. He tries to get her on her phone, too. He, Howard, and Agatha start calling Bridget’s friends. They try her favorite shops to see whether she has been there. The restaurants where she lunches with friends and clients.
Morris can’t imagine where she might be, or what she meant by what she told Howard.
It isn’t until hours later that Howard comes up with the idea of checking her old apartment. He and Morris get there before the police.
IT is determined to be a suicide.
Most people, when they make the decision to kill themselves, choose more traditional methods. An overdose of pills. A gun to the temple. A leap off a tall building.
Bridget Sawchuck, the police determine, chose a more unorthodox, although not unheard of, technique. (Several people close to the investigation say it is reminiscent of how the Ben Kingsley character in House of Sand and Fog takes his life; there is speculation that she got the idea from the film, but neither Morris Sawchuck nor any of her friends know whether she ever actually saw it.)
First, she writes a note to her husband. Four words: “Morris: Forgive me. Bridget.” Investigators will conclude it looks like her handwriting. Maybe a little off in a couple of places, but the woman was about to end her life, after all. Penmanship was not uppermost in her mind.
Once she has completed the note and places it on the carpet just inside the apartment door, she takes a garment bag from the closet and pulls it over her head. She secures it around her neck with several turns of duct tape. Forensic investigators will find traces of tape adhesive on her fingers.
With what little air she has left, she lies on the bed and secures her wrists to the bedpost with a set of handcuffs, so that once she starts panicking about being unable to breathe, she won’t instinctively try to stop what she has set in motion. Morris will say he has no idea where she got these. Police will conclude she purchased the cuffs at some point from a sex shop-with cash-for the express purpose of using them to help end her own life.
There is, admittedly, much about the death that is suspicious. A woman cuffed to a bed with a plastic bag secured around her head. But there are no other signs of violence or any kind of struggle. No indications that anyone else was there. There is the short note.
Most persuasive of all is the call from her cell to Howard’s. The cellular provider is able to determine the call came from the area where Bridget was found. Agatha tells the police she was right there when Howard got the call. She heard his side of the conversation. Bridget was clearly in distress.
Howard tells the police it was definitely Bridget on the phone. He knew her voice. And she did not sound coerced in any way. The call sounded entirely genuine.
Everyone involved knows this is a sensitive case. As sensitive as they come. The dead woman is the wife of the attorney general. Morris Sawchuck, through Howard, exercises his influence. There will be a complete lid put on this, given that the evidence tips toward suicide and not foul play. After a couple of days, a statement is released to the press that Bridget Sawchuck “died suddenly.”
Code for “suicide.” No further details are released.
A totally distraught Morris Sawchuck puts his political ambitions on hold and attempts to put his life back together.
Meanwhile, police conduct a cursory investigation into the seemingly unrelated disappearance of Allison Fitch. Lots of people go missing, and she has, according to her mother, vanished for extended periods before, usually surfacing when she needed money.
Courtney Walmers, more annoyed than freaked out by her roommate’s disappearance-she assumes Fitch ran off to avoid paying off her debts-is approached by a man who identifies himself as an undercover policeman. He tells her Allison Fitch, during the day, had been selling crack out of this apartment-Courtney didn’t think much of Allison, but is shocked beyond belief, and baffled that if Allison was dealing drugs, why was she always broke? — and that the place is still under surveillance. He wants to sublet her apartment, maintain the appearance that it is still a place where drugs are sold. He will pay her first and last months’ rent in a new location, as well as make up any money Fitch owed her.
Courtney is horrified. Courtney wants out. Courtney takes the deal.
Lewis Blocker sets up the motion-activated camera in the apartment door.
Nicole goes to Dayton in her search for Allison.
Morris grieves.
Howard wonders every day whether he will have a heart attack.
And then, nine months later, a man comes knocking on the apartment door with a printout of a murder that the entire world can see if they only know where to look.
FORTY-ONE
Julie said, “Okay, so let’s go through this again.”
I had my clothes on now, sitting on Thomas’s bed, and he was back in his chair in front of his three monitors. Julie and I sat like pupils in front of a teacher who was reviewing what was going to be on the final.
Julie said, “Thomas here sees this picture on the Net, manages to get you to go to this address in Manhattan to check it out, which you do, but not really, since your heart’s not really in it, but you do talk to some lady who lives next door.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And Thomas, who’s totally unimpressed with your investigatory skills, calls the landlord and finds out two women used to live in this place, but they’ve both moved out, and the place has been sitting empty since then, but the rent’s being paid by some guy named Blocker. How’m I doing so far?”
Thomas nodded. “Excellent.” He looked at me. “She’s doing very well.”
“Go on,” I said.
“And within a couple of days of your little mission, the image on Whirl360 is altered,” Julie said. “ That kind of blows my mind.”
“Yeah, mine, too,” I said. “But it doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t say anything to the woman down the hall about seeing the image online. Thomas, did you say anything to the landlord about what you saw in the window, on your computer?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“So then, what’s the connection?” I asked.
Julie was thinking. “You didn’t tell why you were at that address? Did you tell that guy you had lunch with? Your agent?”
“No. I didn’t mention a word of it to him.”
“Nobody followed you?”
I gave Julie an eye roll. “Really.”
She grimaced. “Okay, maybe that’s a bit out there. But think back to when you got to the place on Orchard Street.”
I sighed. “After I finished the meeting I grabbed a cab and got out at Orchard, a few blocks north of where I needed to be. I headed down, slowly, with the printout in my hand, comparing the window patterns and the brick and everything until I was sure I had the right building. It had the same air-conditioning unit in the window and everything.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Some guy was coming out and I slipped in. I went upstairs, knocked on the door, no one answered. Nothing else to tell.”
Julie was thinking. “What were you going to say, if someone had opened the door?”
“I was going through several ideas in my head and finally decided to play it straight. That we’d seen this image on Whirl360 and were curious to find out what it was.”
Thomas shook his head disappointingly.
“So you had the printout in your hand the whole time,” Julie said.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
