Too Far

by Jason Starr

‘What’s going on?’ Maria glared at me.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘You knew this woman who was killed? Stacie –’

  ‘Sophie,’ Barasco said.

  ‘It was just a friendship,’ I said.

  ‘A friendship?’ Maria sounded angry and confused.

  ‘Look, I know you two are going to have a lot to discuss when I leave,’ Barasco said, ‘but right now I’m afraid I don’t have time to watch the fucking Young and the Restless.’ He smirked at his dumb joke, then he looked at Maria who was still looking at me. ‘If you want to leave, maybe take your son somewhere, then come back and discuss this later, that might be a good idea.’

  ‘What kind of friend was she?’ Maria asked me. ‘How do you know her?’

  Caught off-guard, I hesitated, then said stupidly, ‘What?’

  ‘Who’s Sophie?’ she asked.

  I couldn’t lie, not with Barasco there.

  ‘I met her online,’ I said.

  ‘Online?’ she said. ‘You mean Facebook?’

  ‘No, um… uh… a different website.’

  ‘What website?’

  When drinking was at its worst I did a lot of things I’ll never stop regretting. I insulted employers, got into bar fights, and was pretty much a total asshole on a daily basis. But I’d never felt more pathetic and ashamed than I did when I said, ‘Discreet Hookups.’

  ‘Discreet Hookups?’ She sounded shocked, humiliated, and enraged.

  ‘If the name isn’t self-explanatory, it’s a site for cheaters,’ Barasco said.

  ‘I’ve never cheated on you,’ I said to Maria.

  ‘I can’t…’ she had to get a hold of herself. ‘I can’t fucking believe this.’

  ‘You’re really going to have to have this conversation later on,’ Barasco said, smirking. ‘Right now I have to –’

  ‘I want to know the truth,’ Maria said to me. ‘Were you cheating on me or not?’

  ‘No,’ I said, looking right at her eyes, trying not to blink. ‘I swear to God, I never even spoke to her. It was just a flirtation, that’s it, that’s all it was.’

  Maria continued to glare at me, not blinking.

  ‘I need to ask you some questions now, Mr Harper,’ Barasco said.

  ‘What kind of questions?’ Maria asked.

  ‘He discovered her body,’ Barasco said. ‘He was…’ he looked at me, then continued, ‘Let’s just say, involved with her in the days prior to her death.’

  ‘I wasn’t involved.’

  Ignoring me, he said to Maria, ‘At the very least he’s an important witness in this case, maybe the most important witness.’

  ‘Very least?’ I said. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means whatever you want it to mean.’

  ‘I told you everything I know yesterday so talking to me again’s a total waste of time. Besides, I saw in the news you brought her husband in, so you got your guy.’

  ‘We released Lawrence Ward earlier today.’

  ‘What?’ I couldn’t believe this. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we had nothing to hold him on.’

  ‘Nothing to hold him on? He killed his wife.’

  ‘He has an alibi – he was at a work meeting in Stamford at the time his wife was murdered.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘We have witnesses who vouched for it.’

  ‘The witnesses are lying,’ I said. ‘She was terrified of her husband. He killed her. It was him.’

  ‘Look, Mr Harper, I suggest you –’

  ‘You have to talk to him again,’ I said. ‘Fuck his alibi.’

  ‘Mommy, I’m hungry.’

  Jonah had just come out of his room.

  ‘Maybe you should take him out to eat,’ I said to Maria. ‘Let me take care of this alone.’

  Maria gave me a loaded hateful look, as if warning me that she wasn’t through with me yet, and then said to Jonah, ‘Put your jacket on, we’re going out to dinner.’

  ‘Why?’ Jonah asked.

  ‘Just put your fucking jacket on,’ Maria said.

  ‘Hey, don’t curse at him,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t tell me what the fuck do,’ she raged at me. ‘You fucking cheater!’

  With my eyes closed, I asked myself, How did this happen? How did we get here?

  When they were gone, I launched into Barasco, saying, ‘This is ridiculous, barging into my apartment on a Saturday, trying to cause trouble for me, traumatizing my son, for absolutely no reason. I did the right thing. I discovered the body, I called the police. What exactly did I do wrong?’

  He waited a couple of beats, then leaned in and said, ‘You fuck me, I’m gonna fuck you back – harder.’

  ‘Huh?’

  He took out a small pad and a pen.

  ‘Where were you all day today?’

  ‘Westchester.’

  ‘I told you not to leave the city, then you take off?’

  ‘I didn’t take off. I went to a barbecue at a friend’s house.’

  ‘I told you not to leave town.’

  ‘Westchester’s New York; New York is town. Besides, I thought the case was solved anyway. You had her husband, I read about it in the news.’

  ‘New York City is town, Manhattan is town. When I tell you not to leave town and you leave town, that’s taking off. You know I can have you arrested for this?’

  As he stared me down, I realized that arguing with an NYPD detective who already had his suspicions wasn’t going to improve my situation.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if I felt I was guilty of anything, I’d get a lawyer. But I don’t want to have to get a lawyer and drag this thing out. I’m willing to tell you everything I know if you promise to respect my privacy as much as possible.’

  ‘You think I give a fuck about your privacy?’

  Now he sounded like Maria. Maybe I was the problem, not them.

  Going for a calmer, more diplomatic tone, I said, ‘So what do you want to ask me? I told you everything I know last night when you kept me till one a.m.’

  ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  He settled on the couch, and I reluctantly sat on the love seat adjacent to him.

  ‘Let’s talk about Discreet Hookups.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I’m trying to get ahold of your chat transcripts from Sophie,’ he said. ‘We don’t find anything on Sophie’s phone or her laptop or any other devices. Can you provide them or should I get a warrant?’

  Panic hit. I remembered the things I’d written to Sophie, how caught up I’d been, how it all would seem. If he got a hold of those transcripts and shared them with Maria my marriage would go from nightmare to something worse.

  ‘I deleted them,’ I said. ‘She probably deleted them, too.’

  ‘Why did you delete them? Oh, right, because you were cheating.’

  ‘I wasn’t cheating… I was just flirting.’

  He rolled his eyes a little and said, ‘Did you communicate with Sophie Ward in any other way aside from via the Discreet Hookups website?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t even have her email address and we never even exchanged phone numbers.’

  ‘If you won’t play ball, it’s okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll just get a warrant. These days information never disappears.’

  He was probably right – there could be cookies, or whatever, on my laptop. Should I destroy my laptop or my hard drive? But how would that look if I did that?

  ‘Why did you need the transcripts?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, overdoing the sarcasm. ‘She was killed and I’m a detective investigating her murder but there’s absolutely no reason at all why I should investigate that.’

  ‘You’re just trying to h
urt me,’ I said, ‘hurt my marriage, because you think I’m withholding information or something. But I’m not – I’m being one hundred percent honest and cooperative… I’m just saying, if you do this, I’ll sue you. This is totally illegal.’

  I had no idea if it was illegal or not. But Barasco didn’t exactly seem concerned.

  ‘How come you didn’t tell me you called nine-one-one twice?’

  ‘I didn’t call twice,’ I said, ‘I called…’ Then I remembered – hanging up the first time, trying to figure out how to handle the situation. ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said, ‘I did call twice, I got disconnected the first time, so what?’

  ‘How much do you think Sophie Ward weighed?’

  ‘Weighed?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  ‘I have no idea.’ I also had no idea what he was getting at.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘take a guess.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe a hundred twenty, hundred twenty-five. But why –’

  ‘You picked her up, didn’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean, picked her up? You mean at a bar?’

  ‘No, I mean you actually picked her up. You carried her from the hallway and put her in bed, right?’

  ‘I didn’t carry her anywhere,’ I said. ‘I found her in bed.’

  ‘Are you telling me the truth,’ he said, ‘or are you forgetting something, like when you forgot to tell me about the two nine-one-one calls?’

  ‘Look, if this is what this is about,’ I said, ‘if you’re going to be accusing me –’

  ‘I want to know what happened yesterday and I don’t want any more bullshit.’

  ‘I told you what happened.’ I realized I was practically screaming and this wouldn’t get me anywhere. In a calmer voice I continued, ‘Don’t you have DNA? I mean she was strangled, right, so there must be skin, DNA, in her fingernails. That’s what happens when people get strangled, isn’t it?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Barasco said.

  ‘Did you check her fingernails or not?’ I asked.

  Ignoring my question, he said, ‘You know so much, maybe you should be the cop and I should be selling real estate… that might’ve helped us, if she was strangled, but actually strangulation wasn’t the cause of death.’

  He paused, waiting for my reaction.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘When I got there, the tie was around her neck.’

  ‘We believe she died of a head injury,’ he said

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I said, aware of how stilted I sounded. I was trying so hard to act natural that I was coming off sounding phony, like I had something to hide.

  ‘There was wall damage in the foyer,’ he said, still watching me closely. ‘We believe she was thrown against the wall, or fell hard against it, and then she was carried upstairs.’

  Now I got why he’d asked me about her weight; he’d been trying to get me to slip up.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ I said. ‘He was trying to make it look like I killed her.’

  ‘Who was?’

  ‘Her husband,’ I said. ‘He somehow found out I was meeting Sophie at their place on 32nd Street, so he hired somebody, you know a hit man, to follow her into the city. Maybe the hit man was supposed to kill both of us, but I arrived late. Anyway, the hit man killed Sophie downstairs then maybe he called Sophie’s husband and said, “What do I do? She’s dead downstairs.” Then maybe her husband said, “Carry her into the bedroom, make it look like the guy she’s meeting did it.” I have no idea what actually happened, okay, I’m just saying, when you think about it, it all makes sense. The hit man carried her upstairs and wound the tie around her neck. Then he left, probably a minute or two before I got there.’

  I thought I sounded convincing and my theory made at least some sense, but Barasco seemed incredulous.

  ‘That’s very impressive,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I watch cop shows on TV too. But, just so you know, we’ve found nothing to back up this idea that her husband’s some crazed, jealous maniac. Actually we took him in last night because when a woman is killed you always have to look at her husband first. But Lawrence Ward’s a respected guy, a CFO.’

  ‘He was hitting her.’

  ‘Nobody’s telling me that except you.’

  ‘It’s in our chats.’

  ‘The chats that she doesn’t have and that you deleted?’

  ‘I’m not making it up, I swear.’

  ‘There was no history of domestic violence, no restraining orders.’

  ‘She was scared,’ I said. ‘She was hiding it.’

  ‘Or she was lying.’

  ‘No, he’s lying,’ I said. ‘And if somebody’s lying about one thing, he could be lying about everything, right?’

  ‘According to the friends and neighbors we’ve spoken to, there was no recent tension between them. We spoke to her family members, her brother and sister, and no one ever heard of any conflict between them at all.’

  ‘I guess she didn’t tell them. Like they say, you never know what’s really going on in a marriage, but she was seriously scared of that guy. She wasn’t lying. Why would she lie?’

  ‘Wild guess. She might’ve told you things were rough in her marriage to suck you in. If she told you her husband was a saint, would you still want to fuck her?’

  ‘No.’ I was shaking my head. ‘It wasn’t like that. There was real concern, real fear.’

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ Barasco said. ‘She didn’t tell her brother and sister about her husband beating her, but she told you, a stranger on the internet?’

  ‘We had a connection,’ I said. ‘I know it sounds crazy because we never met… but I think she felt safe with me. Or at least comfortable telling me, because of our connection.’

  ‘Your connection,’ Barasco repeated it back to me for effect. Then he added, ‘I don’t want to say you’re gullible, Mr Harper, but okay I’ll say it – you’re gullible. I mean, you meet a chick online, she says she wants to screw around, and you think she’s telling you the truth?’

  ‘She wasn’t “some chick,”’ I said. ‘She was a sweet, sincere woman, and yes, I believed her.’

  ‘Just like you believed it was her first time meeting a guy online?’

  ‘Yes, I believe it was her first time meeting a guy online,’ I said. ‘I mean, if she wanted to lie to me, why not lie to me about everything? Why give me her real name?’ I felt like I was making sense so I started talking faster, with more confidence. ‘I didn’t tell her about my past relationships so why would she tell me about hers? She’d want to get to know me first before bringing up something like that.’

  For the first time I felt that if Barasco didn’t one hundred percent believe me, at least he was listening.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ I said, ‘she wasn’t lying about her husband. That was all real.’

  ‘Did Sophie tell you about meeting other guys on Discreet Hookups?’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘So you really think you were her first, huh? You think she wasn’t a serial cheater and met other guys?’

  Was he right? Had there been others? Maybe I wasn’t special to her at all. Maybe I was just another conquest.

  ‘What difference does it make?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe she met another guy and he got jealous or possessive,’ he said. ‘I mean, if you say you didn’t kill her, then someone else did, right?’

  ‘Sorry, yes, that is important,’ I said. ‘But no, she didn’t mention any other guys.’

  ‘Did she mention anyone else she was scared of? Threatened her in some way?’

  ‘No, she didn’t mention anyone she was afraid of except her husband.’

  ‘But her husband has an alibi so we have to look at other options. You see where I’m coming from, right?’

 
‘How did you know he didn’t hire somebody to kill her?’ I said. ‘You know, like a hit man. Are you looking into that?’

  ‘We’re looking into everything, Mr Harper.’

  For the next half-hour or so, Barasco continued to question me, mainly rehashing questions he’d already asked yesterday and today. Maybe he was trying to get me to slip up or give him new information. I remained as patient as possible, continually telling myself that this was probably all routine, that he probably questioned all his witnesses extensively, and just because he was treating me like a murder suspect didn’t necessarily mean I was one.

  I tried my hardest to believe this was true.

  Finally, when he realized I had no more information to give him, he put the pad away in his inside jacket pocket and said, ‘Well, that should do it for now, but this investigation is ongoing… obviously. I’ll probably have to talk to you again later or tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said, ‘but I’m telling you, her husband did it.’

  ‘If he did, I’ll find out about it. Nobody gets away with murder, Mr Harper, at least not on my watch.’

  He held my gaze for a good five seconds, like a warning, then left the apartment.

  12

  When Maria and Jonah returned from dinner, Maria didn’t say anything to me. She seemed barely aware of my existence as she busied herself with getting Jonah ready for bed.

  I knew her wrath was coming. It was only a matter of when.

  Jonah was brushing his teeth and Maria was in Jonah’s room, unmaking his bed.

  ‘Before you say anything, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know we’ve had problems lately, but nothing justifies putting you through all this.’

  Without looking at me, Maria spewed, ‘We’ll discuss it later.’

  I agreed though that this was obviously going to be an involved conversation and we were better off having it when Jonah was asleep.

  Jonah, God bless him, was in his usual great mood. He was yapping excitedly about his friend Andrew’s birthday party at Chelsea Piers and, for tonight at least, seemed oblivious to the tension between his parents.

  At eight thirty I checked on Jonah and saw he was asleep. Maria had gone into our bedroom and shut the door. When I entered, I saw her sitting on the foot of the bed, talking on her cell phone. She looked up at me and I could tell how angry she was. I took a deep breath, gathering strength. We’d had some big arguments during our marriage, and I knew this would be another one of them. But I was willing to do whatever it took to convince Maria that I could be a great husband and to not give up on me.