End of Secrets (5 page)

What struck Kera as even more unusual than that, though, was Gabb
y’s
location. Fourth and Bowery was only blocks from their apartment. She stepped into the bedroom with her phone. Through the open door she could see the screen on Parke
r’s
laptop, still open to Gnos.is.

“That was my reaction too. Until I saw it for myself,” Gabby said. “I need you to get over here, Kera. I want you to take this case.”

“A
case
? This thing with the singer? How is that a case for us?”

“
I’l
l show you when you get here. Use the back entrance. The front is a total shit show. Cameras everywhere. Oh, and Kera?”

“Yeah?”

“Do
n’t
take any shit from these cops. W
e’r
e here with permission from the mayo
r’s
office, and nobod
y’s
happy about it.”

Kera exhaled, rousing her body from the sleepy buzz of wine. “All right,
I’m
just a few blocks away. I can be there in ten minutes.”

She hung up and retrieved her shoes and jacket from the closet.

“Something urgent?” Parker said from the doorway.

“
I’m
sure sh
e’s
overreacting.”

“Breaking news in Iran?”

“I ca
n’t
say.” She wanted to listen to him talk more about Dubai. She wanted to curl up next to him in bed. Anything but have to lie to him. She flashed him a look they both hated:
do
n’t
start this now
. Sh
e’d
been up front about her job when they first met. She worked a lot. She could
n’t
talk about much of it because she had sources to protect. H
e’d
known what he was in for, and h
e’d
agreed to tolerate it. It would not always be like this, she promised. Just a few years. Then her career track at the
Global Report
would be made, and she could choose her own hours. She could work from home and have kids, if tha
t’s
what she wanted, though she did
n’t
want them now and suspected she might never. “Look, I gotta go.”

“Of course. Your editor calls. The news cycle must go on.”

“Do
n’t
wait up for me. Yo
u’r
e exhausted,” she said, feeling for her
TGR
media credentials in her pocket.

“Babe?” Parker called out to her when she was at the door. She turned. “Be safe.”

She blew him a kiss and then she was gone.

THREE

Red and blue light bathed the entryway of Rowena Pet
e’s
three-story town house. A half-dozen cruisers flanked a waiting ambulance, poised at the curb below the singe
r’s
front door as if a lifesaving dash to the ER might still be in the cards. The town hous
e’s
facade looked surreally familiar to Kera. The fire hydrant on the sidewalk, the thin trees planted along the block, the tips of their branches sprouting May buds. The wide maroon steps and solid white banister that rose to the landing outside the open front door. Kera recognized it all from the Gnos.is coverage.

Onlookers persisted well past nightfall. She swung wide of a gaggle of bored paparazzi, telescopic lenses swinging from their necks, and cut down a narrow alley. She was stopped before the rear entrance by a pair of cops who took turns scrutinizing her credentials.

“Yo
u’r
e with the
Global Report
?” one of them asked.

“Tha
t’s
what it says.”

The cop shook his head. “No media. You can wait out front with the rest of
’e
m. Ther
e’l
l be a news conference soon enough.”

“Check with your supervisor,” she said. “I have clearance through the mayo
r’s
office. W
e’r
e doing an exclusive, behind-the-scenes-with-the-NYP
D’s
-finest kinda thing.”

The cop flashed his partner a look that said,
What the fuck? Do we really have to do this?

The other cop shrugged. “Call it in.” The first guy got on the radio, and within a minute he was stepping back and gesturing a sarcastic welcome with one arm as he lifted up the tape for her with the other. “Hoppe
r’s
gonna love this. Good luck in there,” he said.

She was asked to produce ID twice more between the perimeter and the entryway, where Gabby was waiting for her with an NYPD spokeswoman who did
n’t
seem too happy to be working overtime on account of a media request from the mayo
r’s
office. The spokeswoman waited downstairs while Gabby led Kera through the town house.

“What are we doing here?” Kera whispered as soon as they were alone.

“An all-access piece on forensic evidence. Everything we see tonight is on background.” Kera had
n’t
really been asking about their cover, but she heard Gabb
y’s
response loud and clear:
shut up and go along with it
. “Come on, everythin
g’s
on the middle and top floors.”

Kera followed her up the stairs. She had to jog the final steps to keep up. The second floor was an open, loftlike space stretching from large, street-facing windows past a living area, dining table, and then finally to a spacious kitchen. She was now in unfamiliar territory. The cameras uploading footage to Gnos.is had not penetrated this far. Kera shut her eyes for a moment to focus.
See everything,
she reminded herself.
Keep an open mind. You can only see a scene for the first time once.

Gabby pointed out clusters of evidence as she walked through the room. A translucent orange prescription bottle lay lidless on the rug by the coffee table. Small red and white capsules dotted the couch, collecting near the cracks in the cushions. It felt a little staged, Kera thought, a little cliché, like the opening scene to an episode of
Law & Order
. Deeper in the room, a cop with a video camera was shooting something on the kitchen counter. Gabby paused, allowing him to finish before they approached. “Her
e’s
the note,” she said.

Kera stared down at the message, scrawled in fat blue marker on the back of an opened envelope:
I dream every day of flying off the Brooklyn Bridge.

“A little precious, if you ask me,” Gabby said.

Kera reached for the gloves she carried in her pocket and looked around to make sure the NYPD spokeswoman had
n’t
followed them upstairs. “May I?” she asked Gabby.

“Go ahead. Everythin
g’s
already been photographed and dusted.”

Kera flipped over the envelope to check the return address. A talent agency in Midtown.

“Mean anything to you?” Gabby asked.

“Her managers,” Kera said. “Probably routine correspondence. A royalty statement, something like that.”

Gabby raised an eyebrow. “Should I ask why you know who Rowena Pet
e’s
managers are? You a fan or something?”

“Something like that,” Kera said. Sh
e’d
come across a mention of the singe
r’s
manager in the Gnos.is coverage sh
e’d
read back at her apartment. The coverage had also mentioned that both the talent agency and the recording label that Rowena Pete was signed to were owned by the ONE Corporation. “Could mean something that she used this particular envelope,” Kera said. She looked around until she spotted the neat stack of mail—mostly envelopes and
magazines—slanting
out of a bowl perched atop a nearby credenza. “Or it could have just been the closest piece of paper to write on.”

“Wait till you see the rest. This is a girl who thought things through.”

In the master bedroom on the third floor, Gabby showed her the space in the walk-in closet where hanging skirts, jeans, and T-shirts had been parted to make room for a nylon cord secured tightly around the hanger rod. The noose was as crude as the act it suggested: a thin, simple loop formed by a series of inexpert knots.

Kera wondered whether it was too obvious to ask where the body was. Their tour had featured pills, the note, and now the noose, but still no corpse. Its absence grew more distracting with every room they entered.

“Ther
e’s
more in the bathroom,” Gabby said.

Two NYPD detectives huddled outside the threshold of the master bath. They glared territorially at Kera and Gabby, but the
y’d
gotten word to let the two women in for a look. When Kera stepped into the large bathroom, her eyes went immediately to the floor. At some point hours earlier, a pool of pink bathwater had splashed from the tub and dried against the white tile, leaving a papery, mortal pink dust. It would have been this very spot, Kera guessed, where Rowena Pete might have stood, unclothed, testing the wate
r’s
temperature with a hand, her toes curled against the cool tiles, until finally she slipped into the tub.

The knife was at the bottom, shimmering through the pink water.

“What do you think?” Gabby asked after she gave Kera a minute to take in everything.

“
I’d
say sh
e’s
trying to send a message.”

“Not a very clear one. A normal suicide letter would have been more helpful.”

“Where—” Kera began, but then stopped. There was writing on the mirror behind Gabby. Sh
e’d
noticed it as she turned, and then the rest of the room disappeared. She stared at the words for a long, blank moment.

“You with us?” Gabby asked.

“Yeah, sorry. I was just wondering.” She pulled her eyes away from the mirror. “Wher
e’s
the body?”

She felt the detectives look her way. Kera glanced back at them and then looked to Gabby.

“Ther
e’s
no body.”

Ker
a’s
lips parted slightly to take in a breath. Her mind raced backward, back through the apartment—to the pills, the note in the kitchen, the nylon cord, and the knife in the tub behind her—but her eyes remained level, staring past Gabby to the short string of words on the mirror.

“What about the bridge? The note downstairs mentioned—”

“NYPD has frogs in the East River. But I do
n’t
expect the
y’l
l find anything,” she said quietly so that the detectives could
n’t
hear. “Do you?”

“No forced entry?”

“Nope.”

Ker
a’s
eyes scanned the counter around the sink, taking inventory of the toothbrush, makeup, blow-dryer. Gabby seemed to understand.

“Wherever she went, she took nothing with her. Her phone, tablet, wallet, keys—i
t’s
all downstairs.”

Kera nodded.

“You two, time to clear out,” one of the detectives said. Kera glanced at the badge hanging around his neck.

“Detective Hopper.
I’m
Kera Mersal.” She did
n’t
bother with a handshake. Instead, she held out her business card. The detective took it. “
I’d
love to see the lab results from the blood in this bathwater.
I’m
also curious how you process smartphone, tablet, and computer data as evidence in a case like this. In the meantime you can call me anytime if you get word about the girl.”

The detective held up her card between two fingers as if he might fling it aside. “My advice, do
n’t
wait by your phone. Someone down at City Hall owes you favors, not me.”

Aware that Gabby was watching her, Kera kept her eyes level on Hoppe
r’s
. “Look, mayo
r’s
orders. You can take it up with him, if i
t’s
worth your time. But it seems like yo
u’v
e got bigger problems than me. Yo
u’r
e one body short of a crime scene, and pretty soon someon
e’s
going to have to tell that pack of reporters outside that you have a missing celebrity on your hands. You keep me in the loop,
I’l
l stay out of your way, and we can both keep the mayor out of it.” Kera gave the detective a cooperative smile, but he only moved aside to let them leave.

“All right, w
e’l
l get out of your hair,” Gabby said. “It looks like yo
u’r
e in for a long night. When you find the girl, or come up with a good reason why you ca
n’t
, please let Kera know.”

Kera let Gabby get a few steps ahead of her before she paused at the bathroom door and glanced back at the mirror. The words were clumped in two slanting lines near the base of the glass. They had been written in the same blue marker and the same lowercase handwriting that had crafted the vague note on the envelope in the kitchen. The words said:
have you figured it out yet?

Parker awoke as Kera got into bed.

“Everything OK?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“You know I ca
n’t
.”

“I know.”

She laid her head on his chest. Parker resented the secrecy. She knew it. He took it personally. He had asked, “Want to talk about it?” but what she heard in his voice, even through the half-sleep haze, was, “W
e’r
e engaged. W
e’r
e going to spend our lives together. Is there really something—anything—you ca
n’t
tell me?”

You do
n’t
trust me
. Was
n’t
that what he was saying?

Sh
e’d
learned to live with this guilt, both with Parker and with her parents. It was unavoidable, but it was supposed to be manageable.
Never forget ther
e’s
a difference between your undercover life and your real life,
Lionel would say occasionally when he recognized that guilt in her eyes.
They are not the same. Your real life matters more.

Maybe,
she thought. Either way, it seemed impossible to earn complete trust in one without betraying it in another.

She lay on her back, listening to Parke
r’s
breathing and thinking too much about the sleep that would not come.