Eyes on You (29 page)

Despite my protests, she picked up the check, and we parted with her promising again to keep me in the loop. As I walked home, I felt several emotions wrestling inside me: anger, sadness, and regret. I wasn’t sure the friendship could ever really be repaired.

“So your friend found you?” the doorman said as I collected the flowers and groceries. “She came by a couple of times looking for you.”

She’d been persistent, then. Could I give her a second chance? I remembered what Jake had told me the other day, that I’d refused to even entertain the idea of forgiving him. Maybe that was a trait in myself I needed to face: a reluctance to forgive.

I ordered food in and ate alone. Later, I ran out and around the corner for a vanilla ice cream cone. I couldn’t even bear looking at the chocolate in the case.

“You seem to be enjoying that,” the doorman said when I returned.

I was. Thanks to Lisa and now Sharon, I had a sense the nightmare could end

I woke the next morning, thankful to see sun streaming in my window. Good weather meant that Sharon would have no difficulty finding a cab. Nine o’clock came and went. I pictured her telling her story, prayed that it sounded as plausible to Lisa as it did to me. At ten-fifteen the phone rang. Lisa’s name was on the screen.

“So how did it go?” I asked.

“Not good,” Lisa said. “She never showed.”

“What?” I felt as if I’d just been shoved from behind. “Maybe she’s lost. She wanted to travel downtown by herself.”

“We assumed at first that she had trouble finding the place. That’s why we gave her extra time. But we’ve tried her cell four or five times. No answer.”

Sharon had bailed, just as Alex feared she might.

“Okay, let me head up to where she’s staying. She might not have left town yet.”

I flew out of the apartment, dressed in jeans and a tank top. I hailed a cab this time, on Madison Avenue, and was at the building in under ten minutes. I was crazed, but I knew that if Sharon was still there, I couldn’t let my panic show. I had to calm down and reason with her.

I rang the buzzer twice, but no one answered. I wondered if she
was
lost. Maybe she’d taken the subway instead of a cab and was trying to find her way back from the far reaches of Brooklyn. There was no cell service underground. I let myself into the building, rode the elevator to the sixth floor, and hurried to the apartment. I knocked twice and, when Sharon didn’t answer, opened the door with the extra key.

The first thing I noticed was her big yellow purse squatting on a table in the foyer. She was still here, I realized gratefully. But then I detected that the AC was off and the apartment was hot as hell. There was a smell, too, I realized. Something spoiled, like meat left a day too long.

I froze in place, scared. “Sharon?” I called out.

I forced myself to tiptoe into the living room.

One step through the doorway, I saw that something was wrong. The wall by the fireplace was spattered with brown droplets, as if someone had sprayed a drink there. I took two more steps, and my gaze was yanked to the floor.

Just beyond the lavender sofa, Sharon was lying facedown on the rug, dressed in the floral sweater she’d worn yesterday. Her body was saggy, lifeless, and one side of her face was mashed into the carpet. To the right side of her head was a dark half-halo of blood.

I cried out and jerked backward, fear knocking me onto my heels. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away. As I peered closer at Sharon, I saw a huge gash on the back of her head, clotted with dark, ropy blood. A few feet away, on the floor by the wall, was one of the urn-like sculptures from the mantel, lying on its side.

“
Sharon
,” I called again, my voice strangled.

It was clear she was dead. Her right cheek was turned upward, and through strands of her long blond hair, I could see that her eye was open and cloudy.

The words formed in my head: She’s been
murdered
. I stepped back. What if the killer was in the other room?

I spun around and staggered into the foyer. Flung open the door. I ran to the elevator and jabbed again and again at the call button, twisting my head every second to make certain no one had emerged behind me from the apartment.

From the elevator, I fled through the lobby into the street, and with my hand shaking hard, tapped 911 on my phone. “Someone’s been murdered,” I told the operator. “A woman. Send the police.” It took me a second to remember the address.

“The police have been dispatched,” he said. “Please stay on the line.”

“I—I can’t.” I had to call Lisa. “But I’ll wait outside.”

“Ma’am—”

I hung up and phoned Lisa’s office. When I told the secretary it was an emergency, she put me right through. My voice faltered as I told her the news.

“I’m on my way,” Lisa said.

“What should I do until you arrive?”

“When the cops show up, be cooperative, but say as little as possible.” I could tell by her breathing that she was already on the move. “If detectives get there before I do, explain that Sharon was about to make a statement in an investigation and that you’ve asked your lawyer to join you to help provide information. Do your best to avoid any press.”

Next I texted a single word to Alex: “
Urgent
.”

In under five minutes, two uniformed patrol cops pulled up in a cruiser. I stepped forward and introduced myself. Briefly, I described the scene and turned over the key.

“We need you to come upstairs with us, okay?” the older one said.

I didn’t want to go back up there, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good to protest. I’d reported the crime, and they needed to keep me in their sights until I could be questioned.

We rode to the sixth floor with them asking for a few more details. As we stepped off the elevator, I pointed quickly to the apartment, a few doors to the left. The older cop whispered that I should go to the end of the hallway and wait there. As I retreated, I saw one of the cops touch his hand to his gun as the other unlocked the door and opened it. They vanished inside.

I leaned back against the wall, steadying myself. I felt my whole body being compressed downward, crushed by grief and guilt. I kept flashing back and forth between the Sharon of last night, so excited to have dinner alone in the city, and the Sharon lying on the floor with her head bashed in.

Had Vicky done this? Was she more ruthless and dangerous than I’d even imagined?

How would she have known Sharon was here? I recalled something Sharon had said to me about her boyfriend last night:
He’s proud of me for doing this.
Though Alex and I had stressed to her the importance of guarding our plan, she’d obviously leaked it to her guy. And maybe someone else.

The corridor was stifling, as if there were no AC flowing through it. The foul smell from the apartment seemed to be seeping in my direction, and I kept fighting the urge to gag.

The two patrol cops reemerged. They took down basic info from me and then began going up and down the length of the hall; they looked in the room with the trash compactor and strung yellow crime scene tape across it. After they’d finished, one of the cops boarded the elevator, and the other walked back toward me. Detectives would be arriving soon, he said. Then he returned to the door of the apartment and stood guard.

I felt desperate to talk to Lisa. I wondered how I’d be able to connect with her. The cops weren’t going to allow me downstairs yet, and they surely wouldn’t clear Lisa to come up here. Discreetly, I sent her a text explaining where I was.

Two detectives arrived about ten minutes later, an older white male and a younger female, African-American. I could tell from her eyes that the woman recognized me, though she might not have known from where. After introducing themselves—Hogan and Stainback—they asked me a few basic questions and told me to wait. Then they snapped on latex gloves, slipped on booties, and entered the apartment.

For the next twenty-five minutes, I waited, feeling more and more frantic. A few people poked their heads out of their apartments, curious about the noise in the hallway, but they were told by one of the patrol cops to step back inside and wait for the police to come by. Soon another group of cops arrived, wearing jackets imprinted with CSU.

Finally, Detective Hogan appeared again and strode back down the hall toward me. “Ms. Trainer,” he said, “we’ll need you to stop by the precinct to make a full statement, but I’d like to ask you a few more questions here first, if that’s okay.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Why don’t we go downstairs and have a seat in the lobby. It’ll be more comfortable.”

“Thanks. I’d appreciate that.” Cooperative, just as Lisa had advised.

There were two plaid armchairs against the far wall of the lobby, and Hogan gestured for me to sit in one while he took the other. Detective Stainback stood near my chair. Hogan tugged a notebook from his inside jacket pocket. Something about that notebook made everything more real. I could feel grief welling up in me. Sharon had come to my rescue, and now she was dead.

“I know this is upsetting,” Hogan said. “But do the best you can.”

He asked me to describe my relationship with the victim and how I happened to be at the scene. I kept it short and basic, as Lisa had recommended: who Sharon was, how I’d arranged for her to travel to the city to make a statement in an investigation, and how I’d hurried here when she failed to show for an appointment.

“What kind of investigation?” Hogan said. “Are we talking investigative journalism?” Stainback must have filled him in on who I was. I told him no, it was more complicated than that, and as pleasantly as I could muster explained that I would prefer to have my lawyer with me when I shared the details.

He shrugged, not pleased, and then moved on to questions about the crime scene: Did I touch anything, was the door locked or unlocked, was the AC off in the living room when I arrived, did I see anyone at all in the vicinity?

While we spoke, another vehicle arrived, and two men rolled a stretcher into the lobby and onto the elevator. It wouldn’t be long before the press descended. I kept slipping a look at my watch, praying Lisa would show.

And then there she was. I could see her through the glass half of the front door, dressed in a beige suit and standing next to a guy of about thirty.

“My lawyer is here now,” I said, leaning forward. “I need to fill her in.”

A look passed between the two detectives, one I couldn’t interpret. Hogan announced that he’d like me to go to the precinct on Sixty-seventh Street as soon as possible and give a full statement. Detective Stainback, he said, would meet me there. I nodded in compliance.

As soon as I’d stepped outside, where a throng of people had gathered on the sidewalk, Lisa touched a finger discreetly to her lips in warning and then introduced me to her associate, Colin something. The three of us walked silently down Lexington Avenue for almost a block. People traipsed by in the heat, taxis flew down the street, but all of that seemed to be part of a parallel universe, a world I’d been accidentally dislodged from. When we neared the corner, I told the two lawyers that the police wanted me to make a statement at the precinct.

“Let’s talk for a minute first,” Lisa said, continuing to walk. “Could you tell how Sharon had been killed?”

I ran through everything I’d seen.

“Do you think the murder had just happened?”

I shook my head. “No. She was wearing the same clothes she had on yesterday, and there was a smell, like her body had been decomposing. It seems like she must have been killed yesterday evening sometime.”

“I need to ask you,” Lisa said quietly, “where were you last night?”

“What?” I said, coming to a complete stop. “You think—?”

“No, of course not, but the police are going to wonder.”

“I was home,” I said. “My doorman can vouch for me. I ran out once for ice cream, but I was gone just a few minutes.”

“This isn’t my area of law—and we may need to bring in a criminal lawyer at some point—but the first person the police focus on during a homicide investigation is the one who found the body. They may suspect there’s something you’re not telling.”

I felt another jolt of fear. “What if Vicky killed Sharon but made it appear somehow that
I
did?” I said. “That’s been her MO with everything else.”

Lisa pursed her lips. I could tell my comment worried her. “From what you’ve said about the crime scene, it sounds like the murder happened in the heat of the moment, and so whoever did it probably didn’t have time to frame you,” she said. “You have nothing to hide, so just tell your story. I’ll be in the room with you, so watch me, okay? I’ll flash you a sign with my eyes if you’re going somewhere I don’t like. They’re going to seem real sympathetic at first—lots of ‘This must be very upsetting’ stuff.”

“Yeah, they’ve already done that,” I said.

“Then they’ll start to narrow their focus, press you more, ask for your alibi.”

“Should I tell them about Vicky?”

“Yes,” she said. “You’re going to have to.”

We hailed a cab and took it to the precinct. The situation unfolded the way Lisa had predicted. Stainback was there with a new guy named Nowak, who seemed the most senior of all the cops I’d dealt with. For a few minutes, they employed the feigned-concern-for-what-I’d-been-through tactic and then began to lob tougher questions. I willed myself to stay calm.

When I explained about Vicky and Sharon’s connection to her, neither detective could disguise surprise. Though I hated dragging Alex into the investigation, I had no choice but to mention the role he’d played in locating Sharon.

“I’ve never had any actual proof that Vicky Cruz did those things to me,” I said at the end, “but there was circumstantial evidence, and Sharon’s story seemed to bolster it all. I had no idea I was putting Sharon in any danger when she came here. I just wanted to clear my name.”

“In addition to you and Mr. Lucca, who knew Ms. Hayes was here in Manhattan?” Nowak asked.

“Her boyfriend apparently. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

They asked for Potts’s contact info, and I wrote it out for them.