When I’m done, he pushes the pad aside and leans on the table with both forearms. “Okay, so first things first. Liberty Air released Will’s name before contacting you?”
“Yes. Only by a half an hour or so, but long enough my mom called me before they did.”
“What a bunch of incompetent morons.” He shakes his head, and a scowl screws up his face. “You know you can name your price now, right? If you threaten to take their blunder to the press, they’ll pay you any amount you want, just to keep you quiet.”
Ann Margaret Myers’s face flashes across my mind, her mask of exaggerated empathy at the Family Assistance Center when she pushed the check for fifty-four thousand dollars across the desk, her smug-ass smile when she told me there would be more coming.
“I don’t want anything from them, least of all their blood money.”
“You say that now, but what about a couple of months down the road, when the bills are piling up and your bank account is down by one salary? What if you are pregnant? You’re going to need every penny.”
“No, I won’t. I found Will’s life insurance policies a couple of days ago. There are three, and for a total of two and a half million dollars. Financially, I’ll be fine.”
Evan cocks his head. “Are you telling me you didn’t know he had those policies?”
“I only knew about one. The smallest one. The other two he bought without telling me.”
“Why do you think he did that, and why for so much? The national average for someone in his shoes—married, no kids—is less than half that amount.”
I lift my shoulders up to my ears. “I never thought he’d steal or commit arson, either, so your guess is as good as mine.”
“Murder.”
“What?”
“If he was the one who set the fire that killed his mother and those two kids, then technically he committed murder.”
A chill shimmies its way down my spine.
Evan takes a long pull from his glass, then crunches on a chunk of ice. “Okay, so we’ve got a couple of things going on here. If his boss is able to prove Will’s the one behind the embezzlement, he can come after you now but only if Will used any of that money to pay for things you own together. Georgia is an equitable property state, which means if any of those funds benefited you in any way, AppSec can and will hold you accountable for restitution, maybe even fines. They’re going to come after the ring, for sure.”
I roll the Cartier as far as it will go up my finger, squeeze my hand into a fist. “Will gave it to me the day he died. They’ll have to chop off my finger to get it.”
“I’ll make sure they don’t have to, though more than likely, you’ll have to fork up the cash to cover the cost. And if they find out about the two and a half million insurance payout, they’ll come after that, too.”
“They can do that?”
“I didn’t say they’d get it, only that they’d try. And I know it doesn’t feel like it, but in terms of your liability in the embezzlement charges, this hidden-past angle is a good thing. We can use it to demonstrate there were a lot of secrets in your marriage, parts of your husband you weren’t privy to. His past life in Seattle, the father-in-law you never knew about, all these things are going to work in our favor.” He gives me a few moments to digest this news, filling the silence by refilling both of our waters. “Okay. Let’s move on to the texts. Did you report them to the police?”
“Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“As much as I applaud your waiting—you wouldn’t believe how many convictions I’ve nailed because some idiot didn’t think to consult his attorney first—you’ve been physically threatened now, twice.”
“From someone who wants money I didn’t steal and don’t have access to. Won’t the police have lots of questions?”
“Oh, you can count on it, especially if Will’s boss has started up an investigation already. But, Iris, as your lawyer, I do have to ask. Have you told me everything I need to know? I can’t help you unless I know all the facts, and I hate walking into anywhere blind.”
“Yes, of course. I don’t have anything to lie about. Honestly. I’ve told you everything I can remember.”
A niggle of guilt pings me between the ribs, and I look away before he sees. There is one thing I haven’t told him, one thing I don’t dare to say out loud. It’s too far-fetched, and it will make me sound too crazy.
“In that case...” He slaps both palms to the table, pushes to a stand and flicks his head at the door. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“To the police station. To file a report.”
“What, now?”
He gives me a crooked grin. It’s tight and it’s forced, but I catch a whiff of the old, playful Evan, before plane crashes and empty cribs sucked the joy out of life. “I won’t charge you extra, I promise.”
* * *
Evan drives us to the station closest to my home, a gray stone building on Hosea Williams Drive, one that seems much too small to be serving a city of more than six million. The inside is like a public bathroom, crowded and dingy and reeking of industrial-strength cleaner mixed with body odor and the stench of fear. Men in rumpled clothes line the lobby’s right wall bench, their wrists cuffed to a metal bar. Their oily gazes slide over me, and I shuffle a little closer to Evan.
The desk sergeant, a grizzly-haired man easily in his sixties, greets Evan by name. The acknowledgment is courteous but not the least bit friendly, despite Evan’s easygoing manner. He leans an elbow on the desk like it’s a bar, explaining the situation and requesting an aggravated harassment form in a tone that makes it sound like the sergeant is an old drinking buddy. The man passes Evan the form without comment.
“He doesn’t seem very nice,” I whisper behind the paper as Evan and I are sinking into a row of empty chairs by the far wall.
“That’s because he hates my guts.” Evan doesn’t bother lowering his voice. He leans back in the chair, crossing an ankle over his knee, and bounces a so what shoulder. “I’m a defense attorney. I make my living defending the same person his buddies just went to a great deal of trouble to arrest. From where he’s sitting, I’m batting for the wrong team.”
The sergeant purses his lips and nods, but he doesn’t look over.
“How am I the wrong team?” I say, stung. “I didn’t do anything.”
“It’ll be fine. Just fill that thing in so we can go make our statement.”
I return to the form, and ten minutes later, we’re stepping back up to the front desk.
“Detective Dreesch in?” Evan says.
The sergeant doesn’t look up from his papers. “Nope.”
“What about Detective Willoughby?”
His pen stills against the paper, and after a great sigh, he leans back in his chair, cranes his neck around the corner. “Detective Johnson’s available.”
Evan frowns. “Is he new?”
“He’s a she, and yup. Fresh from patrol.”
“Excellent,” Evan says, but in a tone that makes it obvious it’s not.
“Wait over there.” The desk sergeant aims his pen over our heads, at the row of chairs we just came from, and Evan and I return to our seats.
It’s a full forty minutes later by the time he shows us to Detective Johnson, a petite officer with a freshly scrubbed face and pretty features pulled high and tight in a ponytail. Her posture is rigid, and her expression overly serious, a young woman with something to prove and a glass ceiling to bust through. She gestures for us to sit at the edge of her immaculate desk, an anomaly in this cluttered, crowded room, where most horizontal surfaces seem to be hidden under piles of paper files and dirty coffee mugs. She studies my form, looking up with a knitted brow. “Who’s the perpetrator?”
“We’re hoping you could tell us th
at from the cell phone number,” Evan says before I can draw a breath to answer. Not for the first time, I think how glad I am he didn’t send me here alone. I’ve never done this before, never even had a reason to walk into a police building until Seattle, and now here I am for the second time in a week. I feel completely unequipped for this task.
“Assuming it’s not a dump phone,” Detective Johnson says. She flips through the copies of the screenshots Evan’s assistant printed out, the ones detailing my text conversation with the 678 number. When she gets to the one with the first threat, Tell me where Will hid the money or you’ll be joining him, she looks up. “What money?”
“Four and a half million in missing funds, allegedly stolen by Mrs. Griffith’s husband from his place of employment.”
She glances at me but directs her question at Evan. “Where is the husband now?”
“He was a passenger on Liberty Airlines Flight 23. Mrs. Griffith is a widow.”
The detective’s eyes widen, but as far as I can tell, not in sympathy. “So then, where’s the money?”
“My client only learned of the alleged embezzlement yesterday. She’s not apprised of where her husband might have stored the funds before his death. It’s certainly not in any of their shared accounts. We can confirm all of this with bank statements, of course.”
Detective Johnson leans back in her seat, suddenly a lot more interested. “So let me get this straight. Mr. Griffith embezzles millions—”
“Allegedly,” Evan interrupts. “As far as I know, no formal charges have been brought.”
She gives him an unamused look. “Mr. Griffith allegedly takes off with more than four million dollars, then disappears in a plane crash.”
“He didn’t disappear,” Evan says, both his words and tone careful. “He died, and in about the worst possible way you can imagine.”
“Meanwhile, the money’s disappeared, too.”
Beside me, Evan grows an inch in his chair. “I don’t like what you’re insinuating, Detective. Mrs. Griffith lost her husband last week, along with 178 other families who lost husbands, wives, parents and children. Surely you can’t be accusing him of what I think you are.”
But of course, Evan knows exactly what she’s accusing Will of.
And so do I. My heart takes off, fluttering like a bird trapped behind my ribs, because I know, too. It’s the same thing I’ve spent the better part of the past nine days obsessing over. I’ve come at it from every possible angle, come up with every possibility, and every time, one answer keeps rising to the top like cream.
Evan reads it on my face. He doesn’t say a word, but the look he gives me does. It orders me to shut the hell up, to keep whatever I’m thinking to myself.
“I’m not accusing anyone of anything, sir. I’m only trying to get a thorough understanding of the situation so I know what steps we need to take in order to ensure Mrs. Griffith’s safety.” She turns back to me. “I’d like to hear it from Mrs. Griffith.”
“I don’t really have anything to add, other than that I found the 678 number on a receipt. Will listed it as his own.”
“Does your husband have any reason to be threatening you?”
Evan slaps a palm to the desk and leans in. “Her husband is dead, Detective. Remember?”
She doesn’t take her eyes off me. “Does he?”
“Absolutely not.”
“And you’re sure your husband was on that plane.” It’s neither a question nor a statement but somewhere in between. “You’re absolutely positive.”
I want to spring over this lady’s pristine desk, grab her by the ears and kiss her full on the mouth because, no, I’m not positive. I’ve not been positive since the very second Mom called before Liberty Air did. What if it wasn’t a blunder but confusion, because Will was behind a computer somewhere, hacking his name on to that passenger manifest?
“No,” I say, at the same time Evan barks, “Of course she’s positive.”
The detective ignores him, her gaze hot on mine. “No, you’re not positive, or no, it’s not true?”
I swallow, flashing an apologetic glance at Evan, who is shaking his head. “No, I’m not positive.”
Evan’s lawyer face clamps down, and he latches onto my biceps, hauls me out of my chair and steers me over to the edge of the room, up against an empty spot of wall, pressed between a filing cabinet and a watercooler.
“I don’t even know where to start. No, scratch that. I do know. Iris, Will is dead.”
“Allegedly,” I say, using his own term on him, and he throws up his hands. “Look, I know how weird it sounds—”
“It doesn’t sound weird. It sounds certifiably insane. Will’s name was on the passenger manifest. They found his ring at the crash site.”
“Without a single scratch on it. How does that even happen? And they still haven’t found any of his DNA.”
“Because they’re still pulling body parts from the earth! Jesus, Iris, think about it! It’ll be months before they identify everyone.”
“Okay, so what about the texts from the blocked number? Will’s the only one who stands to lose anything by me being in Seattle, and he could track my phone to see when I was there and when I got back. And he would for sure know how to text me from an untraceable number. And then there’s the letter that mysteriously appeared on my bathroom countertop, in Will’s handwriting and postmarked after the crash, telling me he’s so sorry. I think he meant for leaving, for making me think he’s dead, for breaking my heart.”
“The letter didn’t mysteriously appear, it was delivered to your house by the United States Postal Service. It could be ten years old, for all we know. Do you know how hard it is to fake your death?”
“I’ve already done this, you know, had this argument with myself. Over and over and over, a million times in my head. And of course I know how certifiably insane it makes me sound. It’s the reason I kept quiet for over a week now, even though I should have been listening to my gut, which is telling me he’s not dead. It’s telling me to find the money, because that’s where Will is, too.”
Evan pulls a hand down his face. “I really wish you told me this before we walked through the door.”
“Why, so you could give me my five bucks back and tell me to hit the road?” My tone is teasing, my voice stretched with a smile—my pathetic attempt at an apology even though I’m not sorry. If the detective and I are right, if Will is not dead, then whatever I say or do to find him is something I’ll never apologize for.
But Evan doesn’t crack the slightest smile. “No, so I could tell you that faking your death isn’t technically illegal, but it’s impossible to do without committing a crime. Beyond the identity fraud and tax evasion, that money from Liberty Air and Will’s life insurance? If you take it, you’ll essentially be stealing it.”
His message sinks my smile. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” His gaze fishes over my shoulder, and his expression goes carefully blank. I turn and the detective is still at her desk, watching us with an expression I can’t read. He gives her his back and steps between us, so that all I see is Evan. “Okay, new plan. Let’s go back over there, explain to Detective What’s-her-name that you’re a grieving widow with an active imagination and some very wishful thinking, then get the hell out of here.”
* * *
On the ride back to the office, Evan and I agree to a couple of things. First, to table the is he or isn’t he argument until either the airline finds biological evidence of Will being on that plane, or I receive another message from the blocked number. I’m also to document every text I receive from both numbers by making screenshots and saving them to a mutual Dropbox account Evan’s assistant will set up for us. And finally, Evan will pass the 678 number along to a private detective he’s worked with in the past for tracing.
“The At
lanta PD are good,” he says, pulling to a stop behind my car in the parking garage, “but they’re monumentally overworked and underpaid. My guy’ll be much faster. In the meantime, set your house alarm and call me the second you receive another threat, okay?”
I agree, but I don’t reach for the door. “Evan, I want to apologize for what happened back there. I know I should have shared my suspicions long before we sat down with the detective, but who even comes up with that? Not a sane person, that’s for sure. Until someone else voiced the idea that Will might still be alive, I didn’t permit myself to think it even in my own head, because I didn’t want to get my hopes up.” I shake my head. “I’m not doing a very good job of explaining, am I? None of this makes any sense.”
“No, it makes perfect sense. And you’re not crazy, this situation is. For the record, my response was less about an attorney looking out for his client, and more about me trying to muster up genuine happiness for someone who found her husband alive, and then coming up empty. All I found was envy. I know that makes me sound like a miserable, petty asshole, but there it is. I’m a miserable, petty asshole.”
“You lost your family. You’re allowed to be all those things.”
The shadows under his eyes seem darker suddenly, the line of worry indented in his forehead deeper.
We say goodbye, and I yank on the door handle, then think of one more thing. “What was her name?”
“Whose name, the detective’s?”
The Marriage Lie Page 20
