Tell No One

David drives to the bit of interstate, off exit 163 at a town called Gardensville, where Elizabeth’s body was found. He goes to the Sussex County’s coroner’s office where he meets Dr. Timothy Harper. Dr. Harper blanches when David asks him if he remembers Elizabeth and the KillRoy case, which he did the autopsy for. David asks to see the Polaroid death photo, but Harper claims that it is at a storage facility in Layton, New Jersey. David asks how long it took Hoyt Parker to identify his daughter, but Harper is unsure and is suspicious about why David is now making inquiries in a “hostile” (150) tone. David wants to ascertain whether Elizabeth was really KillRoy’s victim, and Harper says that he could not see whether she was branded with the letter K because the federal authorities appeared straight away. David suspects that Harper might be “fabricating” (150) the story. When Harper stalls on delivering Elizabeth’s file—which should be available under the Freedom of Information Act—David threatens to expose Harper to the media and insists that he will be back tomorrow. 

Two members of the NYPD’s homicide division, Dimonte and Krinsky, are questioning Arturo and Gary. When Dimonte asks Arturo if Rebecca had been up to anything unusual, Arturo reveals that Rebecca had received an upsetting phone call from a man named Beck, who came to see her.

Two members of the FBI turn up at Shauna and Linda’s house. When Linda refuses to let them in, Shauna alerts her to the fact that David is in trouble.

Krinsky and Dimonte unite with Carlson and Stone to go into David’s house in his absence and videotape everything. “They were moving fast in the hope of staying a half-step ahead of Hester Crimstein” (155), who they mutually despise because she has a flair for publicity. They want to “nail down the evidence fast—before Crimstein mucked up the waters” (156).

Suddenly, there is a shout from a street corner. Carlson thinks to do a gun residue test. Then they hear another cry, coming from the garage. Under the newspapers in the recycle bin is a handgun that has recently been fired. Stone considers that they have the evidence to inculpate David, but Carlson begins to be uncertain. 

Sat at a conference table, Carlson, Stone, Krinsky, and Dimonte meet with District Attorney Lance Stein. They attempt to frame David for Rebecca’s murder, on the grounds that she was shot in the head with a 9mm automatic pistol, which matches the gun they found in David’s garage. They also retrieved a latex glove from the trash can, on which was one of Rebecca’s hairs. All of feds, apart from Carlson, seem content to go ahead with the plan of framing David for the murder. However, Carlson cannot help noticing that David’s home has been bugged.

Hester Crimstein comes to Shauna and Linda’s to announce that the feds think that David killed Rebecca. Shauna says that she had been with David the previous night until 10:30. However, Hester receives a call, saying that they are arresting David and that she has an hour to surrender him to the authorities.

David is walking to Washington Square Park but gets a call from Hester, saying that he is about to be arrested for Rebecca’s murder and that the feds found the murder weapon at his house. Hester says that she will meet David at the clinic, but all he can think about is going to Washington Square Park to meet Elizabeth there at 5 o’clock. David suspects that he has been framed but tells Hester that she will have to stall the police so that he can make his important meeting at the park. He is running from the police, “the image of Elizabeth looking into that camera kept shoving [him] forward, pumping [him] up” (172). He ends up diving into a dumpster to escape the police, whose footsteps are approaching. He ends up in a fight with a young officer and breaks his jaw. David kicks the officer until he loosens his grasp on him and then runs away.

Lance Fein announces to Linda, Shauna, and Hester that David is on the run, which makes him look guilty, as does his assault on a police officer. When the media makes an appearance, Hester worries about her reputation.

David is still running down Lower Manhattan and accidentally plunges into a dark pit; he has landed in a dark basement. An old woman he encounters charges him $20 to use her phone. David hesitates about who to call and settles on Tyrese, the drugdealer father of TJ, one of his young patients, who has said that he will do anything to help him. 

Hester tells Shauna that she is giving up David’s case because “innocent men don’t run” (187)and his actions will ruin her reputation. The two women threaten to run a media war against each other. Then “gunfire ripped through the air” (187).

David also hears gunfire while he is waiting for Tyrese, who turns up with Brutus, another “black man, early twenties, only slightly smaller than this building” (188). They get into a black BMW with tinted windows and drive through the Bronx. They go to a crack house, filled with wounded bodies and their acrid smells. David tells Tyrese that he has to get to Washington Square. When David tells Tyrese almost all of the story, Tyrese hands him the “gun of champions” (195) and a stolen cell phone that cannot be traced back to him.

Waiting for David at Washington Square, Wu and Gandle have the place “covered” (197) with six men, plus two in a white van which has a phony company name and logo. They wonder if David will ever make it and announce that his presence might draw Elizabeth out. They know about the meeting because one of their operatives worked at Kinko’s internet cafe. There is an elm (the Hangman’s Elm) in Washington Square, and Wu announces that his mother was tortured and hung from one just like it, on suspicion for spying.

David showers and changes into the clothes Tyrese has laid out for him, which include a baseball uniform shirt, black jeans, and “up-yours” (200) sunglasses.

Meanwhile, as the other feds are on the hunt for David, Carlson, fastidious and “orderly to the point of obsessive” (203), cannot help but think that there are multiple holes in the portrait of David’s guilt, such as the .38 gun found in Sarah Goodhart’s safety box. For example, someone had been paying for that security deposit box for eight years, which is unusual when it belonged to a dead woman. The last registered owner on David’s gun, the .38 found in Elizabeth’s safety box, was Stephen Beck, his father. Carlson wonders why Elizabeth would put the gun in the safety box and feels that he is missing information. Stone, on the other hand, wants to forget about Elizabeth’s eight-year-old case and concentrate on arresting David for Rebecca’s murder.

Stone considers that it is best “to let sleeping dogs lie” (204) because some influential people at the Bureau do not want the case dug up again. But Carlson wants the truth, thinking that David’s murder of Rebecca is unusual, given that they already suspected him of killing Elizabeth, and would fit “a little too beautifully” (205). Carlson’s point is that David executed Elizabeth’s murder impeccably, killing every witness and getting rid of the bodies, whereas Rebecca’s was clumsy, given that her assistant saw him visit hours before and would be able to testify. Carlson knows about David’s visit to the medical examiner and wants to know why he went there. 

Elizabeth has checked into the Chelsea Hotel, where she used to have friends. She has only been home to New York twice in eight years. She wears a wig and mouth implants to change the shape of her face. She plans to run away with David to London and then Nairobi, where they would do a three-day hike of Mont Meru in Tanzania. The names on their tickets are Lisa Sherman and David Beck.

Meanwhile, Tyrese drops Davidoff four blocks East of Washington Square park. He sits on a bench and waits for Elizabeth. Using his cell-phone, Wu informs Gandle that David is here.

Elizabeth approaches and can see David is there for her, but so are Scope’s people, alongside the van, with its fake company logo: “They’d found them. Despite all her precautions, they were here” (211). Elizabeth feels stupid, having “fooled herself into believing that she could turn a devastating catastrophe—the two bodies being discovered near the lake—into some sort of divine windfall” (212). Elizabeth decides to leave again, this time for good. She hails a taxi for JFK Airport.