“I had an appointment at one o’clock on Wednesday with a Dr. Elaine Erling—at her New York City office, not the Larchmont one—but I didn’t keep it. There’s a chance that at some point over those two days I showed up at WorkSpace on West Fifty-Fifth Street, where I rent a small office. I hadn’t planned to go in those days—my intention was to work from home—but who knows?”
He stuffs the notebook back into his pocket and reaches across the table to shake my hand.
“We’re going to figure this out for you, Ms. Linden,” he says. “And we can start immediately.”
“Thank you.” His words have triggered a rush of relief, though there’s still fear pulsing lightly beneath it. “What can I do to assist in this?”
“For the moment, the most important thing is to be available so I can check in with you regularly and ask you questions as they come up.”
“You can count on it.”
Mulroney raises a finger for the check, and the waiter nods with a smile.
“You do a lot of meetings here?” I ask.
“A fair amount. I also like to stop by at the end of the day and think through my cases.”
I offer to pay for my own coffee, but Mulroney insists it’s on him.
“Oh, wait,” I exclaim as he lays down a few bills. “I almost forgot.”
I fish through my purse and extract the gallon-size Ziploc bag I’ve stuffed with the bloodied tissues. Mulroney’s right eyebrow, the one with the scar, shoots up.
“These were in my coat pocket, though I don’t have any memory of putting them there.”
He cups the bag in one hand and peers at the contents intently.
“Did you have any cuts or bruises last week?”
“No, but I’ve gotten nosebleeds in the past. Can we do a DNA test to find out whether the blood is mine or not?”
“DNA’s going to take a few weeks. Plus, you’ll need to buy one of those home paternity tests. Actually, I think we should start instead by checking the blood type on the tissues, which can be done quickly and might tell us all we need to know. What type are you?”
“O negative.”
“That’s rare. If the blood on these turns out to be O negative, it’s probably safe to assume it’s yours. If it’s not, we’ll decide from there how much more testing we want. Why don’t you give them to me, and I’ll drop them off at the lab we use.”
I feel a tiny swell of reluctance about handing over the whole bag but decide I’m going to have to put my trust in this guy. He was a cop. That’s no guarantee he’s ethical but at least he’s experienced. Mulroney accepts the bag and tucks it into the soft black leather briefcase resting next to him.
As we’re sliding out of the booth a few minutes later, another man approaches us.
“Jay, hey,” Mulroney says. “Ms. Linden, I asked my partner, Jay Williams, to stop by to say hello. Since he’ll be involved, too, I thought you should meet him.”
He appears to be slightly younger than Mulroney, maybe in his midforties, African American, and handsome. Unlike his partner, he bears an exact resemblance to his online photo.
“A pleasure,” Williams says, firmly shaking my hand. “Did you two have a good meeting?”
“We did,” Mulroney says, lowering his voice as we move toward the front of the diner. “I’m going to make Ms. Linden’s case a top priority.”
Out on the sidewalk, Mulroney briefly recaps the conversation for his partner. I realize the meeting has gone longer than I planned, so I say good-bye and step off the curb and hail a cab. Less than ten minutes later I’m sinking into the backseat of a cab hurtling toward the studio on Ninth Avenue and Forty-Fifth Street. This all seems so crazy—hiring a couple of gumshoes—and yet I feel bolstered by my decision.
Once I arrive at the studio, I take the elevator to the ninth floor and proceed to the small suite rented by the production company that does my program. The guy manning the desk in the reception area nods hello and announces, “They’re all inside, Ally.”
I pray he doesn’t mean Sasha, too. I’d been hoping to beat her here and have a few minutes to chat alone with Casey about the final segment of the show. But as I step into the outer part of the studio, I spot Sasha in the sound booth, shuffling a stack of papers. Casey and Rex, the engineer, are busy at their