Page 47 of The Night We Lost Him

“Do you think if you had a photograph, it could help?” I ask. “Would you potentially recognize him that way?”

“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know. It was pretty dark out.”

Sam mimes holding a phone to his own ear, mouths, “Dad’s phone.”

I nod at him, nod at the reminder.

“Can I ask you just one more thing?” I say. “Do you happen to remember seeing my father’s cell phone?”

“No, I don’t actually…” She pauses, considers. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in his jacket pocket. When I tried to get to his chest, I think I would have felt it.”

“That’s helpful. Thank you. Sorry that’s a weird question.”

“Don’t be. There aren’t weird questions when you’re grieving,” she says.

That penetrates. The truth of it. And the kindness. Then while I sit there breathless, the connection cuts out, the line clicking off, and Meredith Cooper is gone.

* * *

The Starrett-Lehigh Building—home to Noone Properties—has always been one of my favorite buildings in West Chelsea.

It’s a lauded building, particularly in neuroarchitecture circles, for its expressionistic design, which you rarely see in industrial buildings. The space creates a mood, an emotionality, pulling you in with horizonal ribbon windows, alternating between brick and concrete spandrels, large setbacks, incredible brickwork. All of the design choices move together to become the thing you can only feel when you walk inside. How, despite all the reasons a large New York City building shouldn’t feel personal, this one has figured out how to comfortably hold you.

Noone Properties headquarters is on the two top floors. It has an open office plan with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the West Side Highway and the Hudson River just beyond it. The late-day sun, loose and white, coating that water gently.

We’re sitting in our father’s office, which is still intact, like he just walked out for the day. Not like it’s been more than a month since he’s stepped inside here. There’s a large conference table in the middle of the room, an array of hotelier awards still framed on the walls, his desktop computer powered on. Sam and I hover in front of it.

Uncle Joe’s East Coast assistant is pacing just outside the office door, short and fierce, and failing to hide that she wishes we would hurry this along. I don’t blame her for that. From her refusal to stop peering at us through the glass, it feels safe to assume that Joe expects a full report on what we’ve done while we are here.

Sam keeps driving through the files on our father’s desktop anyway. He is searching for anything related to Cece or the sale while we wait for Nate, the Noone Properties IT guy. Nate is supposed to be coming back in with answers about our father’s cell phone, about what backups are in the cloud, the whereabouts of his missing laptop.

Sam shakes his head. “No paper trail in any of these emails,” he says. “Not in any internal memos I’m finding, either.”

He leans closer to the screen.

“Nothing really seems to have been downloaded from his phone. No messages have been shared, no personal photographs or texts I can find.”

I’m not entirely surprised to hear this. From how Sam described the system, it seemed to me that anything we’d see on our father’s desktop would have been on Sam’s laptop.

“Okay, so this is not great…” Nate says.

I look up and see Nate walking back into the office, tapping on his tablet. He takes a seat across the desk from us.

“The last time your father’s phone pinged on a cell tower was eighteen days ago in Santa Barbara, California.”

Nate turns his tablet so we can see for ourselves.

Santa Barbara, California. That’s close to Carpinteria, but not Carpinteria. Why was our father’s phone there? And why was it findable eighteen days ago—almost two weeks after we lost him? If the phone had broken during our father’s fall or had ended up in the ocean, it would have stopped being findable that night. That means it either survived the fall and someone removed it from him—or someone removed it from Windbreak.

Regardless, it seems, someone has it who shouldn’t. Sam sits up, and I wonder if he realizes the same thing.

“So, if his phone was still online after he died, is there any way to access that activity?” I ask.

“Theoretically, assuming there was any. But that is going to involve law enforcement and warrants and all sorts of things above my pay grade.”

“How about his laptop?” Sam says.

“Not on the premises,” he says. “And I just confirmed with security that it’s not in his New York apartment, either.”

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