“Into the park. There are no cameras in there. But no one else goes in or comes out while she’s there.” He fast-forwarded. “There’s five minutes of nothing. Then this.”

Finally my sister reappeared, only she was moving very slowly, hunched over like she’d aged seventy years. Her left hand was on her chest, and her right was touching the back of her head. She faded off camera again and materialized at the top of the steps beside the Isaiah Wall. Suddenly, both hands went to her heart, and she convulsed. Her body made a graceful little quarter-turn and she dropped, disappearing from the camera’s view until her body fell onto the stone landing. Even though there was no sound on the video, I could hear a sickening thud.

“You saw her clutching her chest?” Villaverde asked. “She was already in cardiac arrest then. That’s why she fell.”

“Why was she touching her head?”

“Dizziness from her heart, probably.”

“Did she have a head wound?”

“I told you she got a concussion,” he said. “You saw her fall. She hit those steps hard.”

He had an answer for everything, but we were drawing different conclusions from the video. I was absolutely certain about one thing: there was a reason Caro had run a mile south to the United Nations area that morning, and no one had bothered to find out why.

“There’s more to this story,” I said. “Why did she even go into that park?”

“Being completely honest, I think she was meeting someone there,” Villaverde said.

I gulped for air. “Why?”

“Here’s the list of what she had on her when she died.” He pulled out a folder. My eyes felt bleary, but I could make out a list: Watch (Cartier). Diamond wedding band. Diamond stud earrings. Memory card.

“Memory card?” I said. “She was out jogging. She wasn’t carrying anything.”

“There was a little zipped pocket in the waistband of her leggings,” he said. “You could fit a house key there, maybe a credit card. But all your sister had was this little memory card.”

“Where is it now?”

“With her husband,” he said. “Theo Thraxton took possession of everything.”

CHAPTER 13

DEIRDRE

It was stupid to walk from the police station to the spot where my sister had collapsed. I knew that. Caro had died over a week ago. What could I possibly find? But I had to see it for myself.

The iconic United Nations building with the international flags flying in front was a little to the north. The UN headquarters was directly across, a mirrored-glass skyscraper that looked like a lonely domino on the empty landscape by the East River. Caro had dropped in front of Ralph Bunche Park, a tiny green oasis named for the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The curving Isaiah Wall was on my right, brushing against a spiral staircase that led one story up. There was a Bible verse on it:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

I appreciated the antiwar sentiment, but I was ready to pick up a sword for my sister. The cops weren’t going to listen to me. Bring him to justice, no matter what you have to do, my sister had written about her husband. But I couldn’t see a way to do that. It wasn’t even clear if Theo had been involved in her death. What had made my sister write that panicked message in the early-dawn hours the day she died?

I wanted to head home and study the memory card she’d given me. There had to be something important on it I’d missed. But my phone buzzed at nine a.m. sharp, reminding me I had to work. I’d taken an unpaid day off when Caro died, then another for the funeral, and I couldn’t afford to lose more money. I worked for a company called Snapp, an app that allowed New Yorkers who couldn’t make time to buy toilet paper outsource their shopping and domestic chores. Plenty of other services did that, too, but Snapp’s edge was in giving clients a warm body to organize all the stuff they bought. That was where I came in. In Snapp parlance, I was a curator. It was an exalted title for someone who spent her days opening toothpaste and soapboxes, cleaning the contents, and then arranging them in Olympic-sized bathrooms scented with candles that cost more than what I spent on food in a week. To most of the clients, I was like a friendly ghost. They never met me, and that was by design. The app’s tagline was Snapp and it’s done. Normally, I communicated with clients by text or email. Some of them never got in touch at all.

The text was from my boss, an angry Gen Xer whose hair was always greasy and who had weirdly short arms, which had led to the predictable nickname T-Rex. He hated everyone he managed on Snapp’s payroll, and the feeling was mutual. This was his message to me: WTF, D? What are you doing at Tudor City?

I gritted my teeth. One of the worst things about Snapp was that bosses liked to spy on my location. Had to talk to the police about my sister, I texted back.

T-Rex’s reply popped up ten seconds later. You took yesterday off for your sister’s funeral.

I could feel my face flush.

The police are investigating her death, I texted back. This is serious. And I’m on my way to work anyway.

I was hurrying north as I typed. I was a little over half a mile from the Sutton Place apartment where I needed to be.

Irresponsibility has consequences, T-Rex typed back.

His veiled threat made me ball my fists. He was a creep who knew how to push my buttons.

I’d started at Snapp as a marathoner—that was the person who ferried heavy bags between shops and apartments—but I’d been promoted during the pandemic, because clients only allowed workers with proven antibodies to enter their homes. I’d gotten sick early on, and my monthly tests had made people think I was a safe bet, so clients paid a premium for my work. Of course, Snapp didn’t lower those rates after most people had gotten vaccinated. It was a weird fit, because I was a minimalist who disliked extra stuff, and I was organizing kitchens for people who kept a dozen types of salt on hand.

My first client of the day was an older lady I liked, even though I’d never laid eyes on her. She always tipped well, and more of her purchases were for her three schnauzers than for herself, which seemed weirdly sweet. I worked at her place for two hours, walked six blocks to the next one, which was a little more chaotic—that home had three kids, who were way more destructive than dogs. The doorman had the bags the marathoner had dropped off. Afterward I ate a protein bar and checked my email. There was nothing from the mysterious X, and I emailed the address again. There was a sweet message from Jude. Just wanted to check in, she’d written. How are you doing? Sending hugs.

I flinched slightly. I wasn’t good with hugs, even virtual ones.

I kept moving, because I was on the clock and there were no breaks.

Things went well until the middle of the afternoon. My work had a kind of mindless drone quality to it that I hated, but it also left me alone with my thoughts. I didn’t have much contact with humans, which was fine with me. But when I saw the address on my next client—Beekman Street, barely three blocks downtown off City Hall Park, I texted T-Rex.

I was direct: I’m not going there.

As was he: You are. Consider it penance.

Not happening. Last time ASB tried to rub up against me.

There was a tiny pause in our exchange.

I thought you were able to take care of yourself, T-Rex shot back.

It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

ASB was Aubrey Sutton-Braithwaite, widely considered by Snapp employees as the world’s worst human. He was twenty-nine years old and had never worked a day in his life, thanks to his hedge-fund-manager father. But that didn’t mean Aubrey didn’t have his own colorful career. He’d been a suspect in a series of arsons in the Hamptons. He’d been arrested for DUIs on multiple occasions. At least two women had restraining orders against him. Of course he’d never spent a day in jail. Aubrey was like a free-floating cancer cell, wreaking havoc wherever he landed, but suffering no ill consequences himself. He was always home when I went to his apartment. That day was no exception.

“Deirdre.” He looked me over from head to toe when he answered the door. Aubrey’s eyes were small and close-set, which made him appear shifty. Whenever the reboot of America’s Most Wanted launched, there’d be an episode devoted entirely to his exploits. “Nice boots. You come here from your dominatrix job?”