Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery (31 page)

“I’m a fool,” I whispered. Why had I believed Andrey? Of course he killed Olivia and Rachel.

Panda patted my hand. “You’re not the only one. Rachel trusted Kaminski, too, and there were probably plenty more before her.”

It was because he was good looking. Like Scott Peterson and Joran van der Sloot, Natalee Holloway’s presumed killer. Or Ted Bundy, who murdered, raped, and battered more than forty women before they caught him the first time, or Charles Manson, whose body count is still unknown. By the time their victims saw the monster behind the good-looking face, it was too late.

We got up to leave. Once we were outside, I asked Panda where he was heading. “New Jersey with Ehlers,” he said. “To that lab, actually.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Orchid Cellmark?”

He nodded.

“Can I go?”

Panda rocked on his heels. “No way, kid. I can’t take a reporter on a fact-finding mission. This isn’t even technically my case.”

I clenched my molars. “I’m not a reporter anymore.”

He flashed me a look. “You’re close enough.”

We walked together to his squad car in silence. At the curb he promised to let me know what they found out at the lab, but I had to make him a promise. “Anything,” I said.

“We can’t be sure Kaminski was the one who drugged you and broke into your place. Whoever was in there was real careful not to leave behind any prints. It’s gonna take some time to sift through everything they bagged and figure out if they’ve got anything useful. In the meantime, there may still be someone out there who wants to hurt you. For the time being, you can’t stay in your apartment. I know they’re gonna tell you that you can go back there tomorrow. But you gotta promise me you won’t.”

I offered my hand for a shake. “You have a deal.”

That night, I had Alex’s place to myself. He arranged to stay with Sabine again. I imagined she’d put her foot down with him after what she’d witnessed that morning. I showered and ate a dinner of takeout Chinese while watching Georgia’s taped interview with Monica and Delphine. There were no surprises. Mostly the women talked about Charles’ career, Olivia’s philanthropic endeavors, and how the family was coping in the aftermath of such a terrible loss and with Charles’ failing health. At the end of the interview, I changed the channel, disheartened.

My phone buzzed on the coffee table with a text from Sutton Danziger. She wanted to know if we could have lunch after Olivia’s memorial service the following morning. I picked up my phone. There was one more favor I had to ask of her.

Thursday

Thursday

I
woke up at eight a.m., groggy from a restless night of sleep. I showered and dressed in the black skirt suit and pumps I’d been allowed to pick up from my apartment along with a few other necessities. By the time I left the apartment, Alex hadn’t made an appearance. After what had almost happened between he and I yesterday morning, I couldn’t blame her for keeping him on a short leash. I locked the door behind me, made a stop for coffee and a bagel, and took the subway uptown to Lexington and Seventy-seventh, walking the rest of the way to the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel on Eighty-first and Madison.

I was two blocks away, on a quiet street between Lexington and Park when I saw Michael Rockwell striding from the opposite direction. At the corner, I crossed Park. He followed. I kept walking uptown, quickening my pace, but he stayed in step. “I want to apologize,” he said, catching up to me.

I stopped abruptly. We were on a stretch of open sidewalk. It was broad daylight, plenty of eyewitnesses around, and there was a cop car not more than fifty feet away. Rockwell wasn’t stupid enough to try anything on me right there.

He ran a furry hand down the length of his blue silk tie. He was dressed in a dark suit and starched white shirt, his hair slicked back with an overabundance of gel. I surmised he was headed the same place I was. “I said some things the other day in the woods behind my house that were uncalled for.” That was an understatement, but I let him finish muddling through his mea culpa. “Rachel and I didn’t have the perfect marriage, but I loved her. I never wanted anything like this to happen to her.”

I crossed my arms. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Her parents are fighting me for custody.”

In other words, Rockwell was afraid I was going to testify against him in court, that I’d tell the judge what a brute and bully he was. Rachel’s parents had been on Georgia’s show almost every day since I’d wrangled them for our show, and Rockwell, not knowing that I wasn’t working for the network anymore, had assumed that I’d been getting close to the Harts, possibly commiserating with them about the upcoming custody battle.

I decided to make use of his fear and vulnerability. “Why didn’t you tell me Rachel and Olivia met through you? Why hide that?” I asked.

“The Kravises were clients of my firm. They find out I’m blabbing to the press about how their murdered daughter stole my wife from me, how do you think that’s going to blow over with my partners? Lawyers are paid for their discretion.”

“That’s cliché.” I felt a slight wind at my back. The forecast predicted heavy rains, but not until the afternoon. “So is being the husband who threatens to take away the kids when his wife decides she’s had enough. You roughed her up, didn’t you Michael? Did you fool around, too? Good for Rachel for having the courage to leave you.”

“I wasn’t sleeping with anyone and I never once hurt her. Not once. That’s what she told people to make her affair with that trainer of hers seem less awful,” he protested, his voice rising. “I found her with him. Did you know that? And he was such a sleazebag. I couldn’t let a guy like that near my kids. I was hoping she’d tire of him and come back to us. But the next thing I knew, she’d hired a lawyer and was spending nights with Charles Kravis’s daughter.”

“You filed first.”

He nodded soberly. “On advice of counsel.”

“Did you know Rachel liked women?”

Rockwell looked at his feet. “I knew it wasn’t the first time.”

“But it was for the money, right? She was attracted to Olivia because she liked her lifestyle?”

He looked back up at me, squinting in the morning sun. “Rachel grew up on an American Indian reservation. She was the third girl in a family of five. She wore hand-me-down clothes, played with hand-me-down toys, and she had an uncle who couldn’t keep his hands off her when he had too much to drink, which was every week, like clockwork, right after he got his paycheck.”

“The Harts, they never said anything.” And Olivia had obviously never mentioned it to me. I wondered if she’d even known.

“Why would they? Rachel got out, but not without her demons. She liked to drink; she liked to shop. It made her feel like she was a million miles away from being that little girl on the reservation, clutching her one-armed Barbie, hoping her uncle would pass out before he got to her bedroom door.” He stood there, his massive size somehow diminished, like a balloon that had come back down to earth after spending a long time lost in the clouds.

“Then why Kaminski?” I pressed. “He has no money.”

He shrugged. “I guess there’s only so much you can truly understand about a person.”

Sutton was waiting for me out in front of the funeral chapel, her face pinched and pink from being made to wait for me outside. She knew nothing about what I’d been through the last week, and met my somewhat haggard appearance—the dark circles under my eyes and patchy skin—with a disapproving stare. “You have got to take better care of yourself,” she hissed in my ear, linking her arm in mine as we filed in line to make our way inside the home.

Sutton craned her neck to look around as I did the same. By the looks of it, there were over 150 people crowded into the receiving room. We spotted Delphine and Monica, who were seated next to Delphine’s husband, Naomi Zell, Mitchell Diskin, his wife, and a few members of the FirstNews board. Noticeably absent was Charles Kravis.

Sitting down on an empty bench near the back of the room, we put our phones on mute as a string quartet began to play a somber piece by Mendelssohn. Then Monica read a poem and Delphine recalled memories of their childhood. Naomi Zell spoke of Olivia’s tireless efforts at the foundation and all the lives she’d touched. I would have liked to say a few words, and kicked myself for not insisting on it when I spoke to Delphine.

At the end of the service, the Kravis clan began to make their way down the aisle and out of the chapel. Monica, Delphine, Naomi, and Diskin filed past us, ignoring me deliberately. Sutton nudged me in the ribs. “You should say hello.”

“Another time,” I whispered back.

I hadn’t told Sutton about losing my job. I’d have to explain the circumstances, and Sutton, despite her best intentions, wouldn’t be able to keep from passing along the news to our former classmates. By sundown, everyone would know I’d almost had sex with an alleged murderer. And not just any murderer, but the one who’d killed our friend.

Outside, the block was littered with reporters and news vans, including one belonging to FirstNews. Alex spotted us coming out of the funeral home and beat a path through the crush of onlookers and mourners. “Are you ready?” he asked Sutton. In lieu of having lunch with me, I’d gotten her to agree to give FirstNews a quick on-camera after the service. It was my parting gift as Alex’s producer. Not that the network deserved my help.

She fluffed her hair. “How do I look?”

“Perfect.” I stepped aside and asked Alex if we could meet up after he wrapped up filming. He glanced behind him to Sabine. She had her eyes trained on us. I waved and smiled. She did the same. “Say no more,” I told Alex.

He caught the tightness in my voice. “Hey, I’ve been thinking about you.”

“That and a buck fifty,” I said lightly, waving goodbye to Sutton and my old crew and walking away.

Goodbye, indeed. Goodbye producers screaming in my ear. Goodbye, blowhard newscasters and prima donna correspondents. Goodbye, crime-scene gore. Now what? At times like these you’re supposed to think about the big picture, but I found it a hell of a lot easier to focus minute to minute. It was easier to think about going to Alex’s apartment and then mine, briefly, to pack my bags. It was easier to think about going to see my dad upstate and the really decadent slice of chocolate cake I’d buy on the way to the train station. It was easier to think about anything but Olivia. Or my job. Or Alex.

I passed by a boutique with silver picture frames in the window and thought of the photograph of Olivia and me I’d taken from her apartment. Overhead the sky had turned slate gray. A few drops of rain fell on my shoulders and hair. I took refuge inside the store, digging for the picture in the depths of my bag. A sales lady glanced over my shoulder. She plucked a simple beveled-edge silver frame from a display table and handed it to me. I didn’t bother to ask the price.

“Do you want me to throw that away for you?” She gestured at the envelope I was holding in my hand, one of the ones that had fallen from behind Olivia’s vanity. I’d stuffed the photo in it for safekeeping.

I turned it over in my hands. The envelope was old and yellowed, and addressed to Charles Kravis. There was something familiar about it. “Wait,” I said, flipping the envelope over and back to the front again. There was no return address. But that didn’t matter. Looking closer, I realized I recognized the handwriting.

It was my mother’s.

And it was postmarked the year before I was born.

I
n the drizzling rain, I walked back toward Alex’s apartment, losing myself in my thoughts, attempting fruitlessly not to jump to any conclusions. Maybe Charles Kravis and my mother were just friends. Maybe this meant nothing. But why then had no one ever told me they knew each other? And why would Olivia have had the envelope? Eventually I arrived at Alex’s apartment. I was in the living room, unbuttoning my suit jacket when my phone rang. I scrambled to answer it.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” Panda said.

“Is it about the case?”

“We’re on our way back from the lab now. It took longer than expected. They wouldn’t hand over the information without a subpoena,” he said stiffly. “It turns out that Olivia wasn’t doing a paternity test. It was a sibling test.”