Genuine Fraud(21)

“In the newsagent’s. Which is apparently what they call newsstands over here.”

“You should step outside.”

“All right.” Jule waited while he walked. “What is it?” Forrest asked.

“I found a note, in the flat. From Imogen.”

“What kind of note?”

“It was in the bread box. I’m going to read it.” Jule held the note in her fingers. There were the tall, loopy letters of Immie’s signature, her typical phrases, and her favorite words.

Hey, Jule. By the time you read this, I’ll have taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Then I’ll have hailed a taxi to the Westminster Bridge.

I’ll have stones in my pockets. Lots of stones. I’ve been collecting them all week. And I will be drowned. The river will have me and I will feel some relief.

I’m sure you’ll wonder why. It’s hard to give an answer. Nothing is right. I don’t feel at home anywhere. I haven’t ever felt at home. I don’t think I ever will.

Forrest couldn’t understand. Neither could Brooke. But you—I think you can. You know the me that nobody else can love. If there is a me, at all.

Immie





“Oh God. Oh God.” Forrest said it over and over.

Jule thought of the beautiful Westminster Bridge with its stone arches and its green railings, and of the heavy, cold river flowing underneath it. She thought of Immie’s body, a white shirt floating around her, facedown in the water, in a pool of blood. She really did feel the loss of Imogen Sokoloff acutely, more than Forrest ever could. “She wrote the note days ago,” Jule told Forrest when he finally went silent. “She’s been gone since Wednesday.”

“You said she went to Paris.”

“I was guessing.”

“Maybe she didn’t jump.”

“She left a suicide note.”

“But why? Why would she?”

“She never felt at home. You know that was true about her. She said it in the note.” Jule swallowed and then said what she knew Forrest would want to hear. “What do you think we should do? I don’t know what to do. You’re the first person I told.”

“I’m coming over,” said Forrest. “Call the police.”





Forrest arrived at the flat two hours later. He looked hollow and disheveled. He brought his bags from the hotel and declared he would sleep on the couch in the den until things were settled. Jule could take the bedroom. Neither of them should be alone, he said.

She didn’t want him there. She was feeling sad and vulnerable. With Forrest, she preferred to have her armor on. Still, he was good in a crisis, she gave him that. He set himself to texting and telephoning people, and he talked to everyone with an extreme gentleness Jule hadn’t known he possessed. The Sokoloffs, their friends from Martha’s Vineyard, Immie’s college friends: Forrest got in touch with everyone personally, checking them neatly off a list he’d made.

Jule called the London police. They came in, bustling, while Forrest was on the phone with Patti. The cops took the note in Imogen’s handwriting, then asked for statements from Jule and Forrest.

They agreed it didn’t look like Immie had gone traveling. Her suitcases were in the closet, as were her clothes. Her wallet and credit cards were in a bag they found. Her laptop wasn’t in the flat, however, and her driver’s license and passport were missing.

Forrest asked a police officer if the suicide note could be a forgery. “Maybe a kidnapper wanted to put suspicion elsewhere,” he said. “Or maybe it was a note she was forced to write? Is there a way you could tell if she was forced to write it?”

“Forrest, the note was in the bread box,” Jule reminded him gently. “Immie left it for me in the bread box.”

“Why would Miss Sokoloff be kidnapped?” asked the officer.

“Money. Someone could be holding her for ransom. It’s strange that her laptop is missing. Or she could have been murdered. Like, by someone who made her write the note.”

The officers listened to Forrest’s theories. They pointed out that he himself was the most suspicious person: an ex-boyfriend who had recently arrived in the city looking for Imogen. But they also made it clear they didn’t really suspect a crime of any kind. They looked for signs of a struggle but found none.

Forrest said Imogen could have been abducted from outside the apartment, but the police officers reminded him about the bread box. “Suicide note makes it clear,” they said. They asked if that was Immie’s handwriting, and Jule said it was. They asked Forrest, and he said it was, too. Or at least, it looked like it.

Jule gave them Imogen’s UK phone. It showed only calls to local museums and emails from her parents, Forrest, Vivian Abromowitz, and a few more friends Jule could identify. The officers asked for Immie’s bank records. Jule gave them some papers printed out from the missing computer. They were in a drawer of the desk in the living room.

The officers promised to search the river for Imogen’s body, but they also noted that if her body was weighted with stones, it wouldn’t surface easily. It had probably been moved away from the Westminster Bridge by the current.

If they found her at all, it might take days or even weeks.





END OF DECEMBER, 2016