Choose Me

by Tess Gerritsen

  “When she finds out, I doubt she’ll be in any mood to vouch for you. So you might as well tell us the truth.”

  “I have told you the truth.” He stares straight at Mac. “I didn’t write that text. And I sure as hell didn’t hurt Taryn.”

  Frankie knows that her partner is ready to clap on the handcuffs, but she is feeling the first stirring of doubt. She sits studying Dorian, bothered by his responses to their questions. How can anyone deny something as undeniable as a text message? With all the evidence they have, he must know it is futile for him to lie.

  If he is lying.

  She stands up. “We’ll be speaking with you again, Professor.”

  Mac shoots her an astonished look. After a few grudging seconds he, too, rises to his feet. He is silent as they walk out of Dorian’s office, still silent as they head down the stairwell. Only when they push outside the building does Mac finally blurt: “What the hell, Frankie, we have him. We’ve got enough.”

  “I’m not sure we do.”

  “You really believe his bullshit? ‘I didn’t write that text!’ Yeah, and the dog ate his homework.”

  “His cell phone never pinged near Taryn Moore’s apartment that night. We can’t prove he was in the area.”

  “He’s not stupid. He left his phone at home when he killed her.”

  “No, I think he’s very smart.” They climb into the car, where she sits thinking for a moment.

  “What’s it going to take to convince you?” says Mac.

  She starts the engine. “Let’s go talk to the wife.”

  CHAPTER 41

  JACK

  Pick up, Maggie. Please pick up.

  He sat at his desk, his heart racing as he listened to Maggie’s cell phone ring. Three times. Four.

  Then she answered. “Hey, I was just about to call you.”

  Had she already heard from the police? Was that why she was going to call him? He couldn’t suppress the squeak of panic in his voice when he said, “Maggie, I need to tell you something.”

  “Why don’t you tell me over dinner? I feel like going out tonight anyway. Someplace nice. What do you think?”

  She sounded so cheerful and warm, wanting to meet for dinner. So husband-and-wife normal. After tonight, nothing would ever be normal again.

  “Listen, Maggie. There are two detectives coming to see you right now. They’re going to ask you—”

  “Detectives? Jack, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m at the office. They were just here, and now they’re heading to the clinic to talk to you.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “They’re going to ask you about last Friday night. Where I was, where you were.”

  “Last Friday? I’m not following you. What happened?”

  He paused to steady his breathing. “You know that student who died last week, Taryn Moore? The police don’t think it was a suicide. They think she was murdered.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “And they’re talking to people who knew her. Asking everyone to account for where they were the night she died.”

  “Why are they coming to see me? I hardly knew her.”

  “Look, let’s meet. I don’t want to do this over the phone.”

  “Why do they want to talk to me?”

  “Because I did know her, and they want to confirm where I was. So when they ask you about Friday night, just tell them the truth. Tell them exactly what we did, that we had dinner with your dad and then we went to bed. They need to know we were together that night. All night.”

  “Last Friday? But we weren’t together all night.”

  He paused. In the silence, he could hear his blood roaring in his ears. “What? But we were.”

  “Around midnight, I got called into the hospital for a patient who had chest pains. I didn’t get home until around four in the morning. Didn’t you hear me climb back into bed?”

  “No.” Because he was zonked out on Ativan.

  “Then you must have slept through the whole thing.”

  Midnight till four a.m. That was a four-hour window he couldn’t account for. Four hours during which he could have gotten dressed, could have driven into the city. It was more than enough time for him to have killed Taryn, gone back home, and jumped back into bed.

  “The police don’t have to know that,” he said. “You don’t even have to mention it.”

  “Why wouldn’t I tell them the truth?”

  “It will just complicate things.”

  “Jack, all they have to do is look in my patient’s hospital chart to know I was there. They’ll see that I wrote a note around three in the morning.”

  He tried to steady his voice, but panic was making his breaths come fast. Any minute now, the police would be knocking at her office door. And they’d almost certainly tell her about Taryn and him. About how he had betrayed his wife.

  She cannot hear it from them.

  “Maggie, I need you to drop whatever you’re doing. Leave the clinic right now. Meet me at . . .”

  They couldn’t meet at home or any other place the police would certainly look. They had already subpoenaed Taryn’s phone records; what if they were listening to this call right now?

  “Maggie,” he said. “My phone may be tapped.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain everything. But I need to talk to you before they do.”

  A long pause followed as she processed his words. “Jack, you’re scaring me.”

  “Just do this for me. Please. Meet me at . . .” He thought about it for a moment. “Meet me at the spot where I proposed to you. And leave now.”

  He hung up. He had no words of reassurance to offer her, no promise that everything would turn out fine, because everything was not fine.

  And it was about to get a lot worse.

  As he stood before Renoir’s Dance at Bougival, he wished he had chosen some other place to meet, but this was the only locale that had popped into his head during the phone call. Twelve years ago, this gallery in the MFA was where he had dropped to his knees and presented Maggie with a diamond engagement ring. This was where they had kissed and promised that they would spend the rest of their lives together. Now he stared at the Renoir and prayed this wouldn’t be the end of them. That Maggie wouldn’t throw him out and divorce him. That their baby wouldn’t come into the world without him at Maggie’s side. Despite what he was about to confess to her, there had to be some way to keep them all together.

  He just couldn’t think of what he could say to make that happen.

  Twenty minutes later, Maggie walked into the gallery, bundled in her shearling coat and cashmere scarf. “What are we doing here, Jack?” she asked.

  Without a word, he took her by the arm and led her toward a quieter spot, past the poster of Abelard and Heloise locked in a passionate kiss. It was a damning reminder of how he had landed in this personal hell; a Hieronymus Bosch painting would have been more appropriate. He took her to a viewing bench at the far end of the gallery, and they both sat down.

  Maggie’s face was pale from the cold, and he could feel the evening’s chill lifting off her clothes. “What’s going on?” she whispered. “Why do the police want to see me?”

  He paused as a security guard strolled in. The guard eyed them, then moved on into the next gallery. When he was out of earshot, Jack said: “I have something to tell you. This isn’t going to be easy. In fact, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say.”

  “You’re scaring me. Just say it.”

  He took a deep breath. “That student, Taryn Moore. You know I was her faculty adviser. I helped her get into the doctoral program.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “She was extremely bright. An excellent student. But after her boyfriend broke up with her, she was an emotional wreck. She had no one else to confide in, and we . . . we got close.”

  “How close?” Maggie leaned toward him, her gaze fixed on his. “Do you have something to confess?”
>
  He sighed. “I do.” I do. It was an echo of his wedding vows, the vows that, in a mania of lust, he had briefly forsaken. “I slept with her, Maggie. I’m sorry. I’m truly, deeply sorry.”

  She stared at him as if she had not understood a word.

  “It meant nothing. I never loved her,” he said. “I only ever loved you.”

  “How long did it go on?” Maggie’s voice was strangely, frighteningly calm.

  “It was over as soon as it happened. Just once.” Twice was the truth, but he couldn’t say it. And it made no difference anyway. Not now. “I’m sorry.”

  “Where did it happen? This momentary little affair?”

  “Amherst. The conference. I had too much to drink, and one thing led to another . . .”

  “Oh my God.” She pressed her hand to her mouth. “I don’t believe this.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  Over the museum PA system, a voice announced that the museum would close in thirty minutes.

  “But I am,” he said. “I am sorry.”

  “And now that girl is dead. The girl you had sex with.”

  “It’s probably a suicide. But just to be sure, the police are questioning everyone who knew her.”

  “And you need an alibi for that night.”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “If you say that one more time, I’m going to fucking scream.” She shot to her feet and started to walk away, then paced back to stand over him. “We’ve been married twelve years. We have a child coming. And you go and fuck a student?”

  The guard had walked back into the gallery, drawn by the sound of their voices, and he stood watching them from the far end of the room.

  “Please, Maggie. They’ll hear us.”

  “I don’t care. Why are you a suspect? Why are the police even looking at you?”

  Jack rubbed his face, then looked up at her. “Because she was pregnant,” he murmured.

  An involuntary gasp rose in Maggie’s throat. “I can’t believe this.”

  “She’d just broken up with her boyfriend. It’s probably his.”

  “Or it could be yours. Jesus.” She closed her eyes to regain her center. “Do the police know you had an affair with her?”

  “They know we were involved.”

  “How do they know that?”

  “There were text messages. Between us.”

  She nodded, her face tight with disgust. “And where exactly were you the night she died?”

  “I told you. I was home, asleep.”

  “And you want me to tell the police I was with you all night.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I wasn’t. I told you, I had to go to the hospital to see a patient.” She paused as a thought occurred to her. Quietly she asked: “Did you do it, Jack?”

  “Did I do what?”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “No! I can’t believe you’d even ask that.”

  “But you did have a motive.”

  And I’d swallowed a killer combo of wine and Ativan.

  Without another word, Maggie spun around to leave.

  He jumped up and grabbed her arm. “Maggie, please.”

  She yanked herself free. He didn’t want to cause more of a disturbance by chasing after her, so he sat back down and stared dully at the Abelard-and-Heloise banner hanging on the opposite wall.

  “Sir? The museum is closing.”

  Jack looked up to see the security guard standing in front of him.

  “Rough day?” the guard asked.

  With a sigh, Jack rose to his feet. “You have no idea.”

  CHAPTER 42

  FRANKIE

  “What if the wife backs up his alibi?” says Mac, as they pull into a stall in the clinic parking lot.

  Frankie turns off the engine and looks at Mac. “If your wife killed her lover, would you give her an alibi?”

  “It depends.”

  “Come on, Mac. Put yourself in Maggie Dorian’s position. When she finds out her husband’s cheating on her, she’s not going to be in any mood to protect him.”

  “You’re assuming she doesn’t already know about the affair. Maybe she does know. Maybe she’s still willing to protect him.”

  “Protect a husband who’s cheating on you?”

  “I don’t know. Women put up with all sorts of crazy shit. Why do they stick with men who smack ’em around? Being in love makes people stupid. Or blind.”

  Frankie sits for a moment, staring at the clinic entrance, thinking about her own marriage, her own blindness. She thinks about the day her husband, Joe, was found dead of a heart attack in the stairwell of his mistress’s apartment building, the building that Frankie cannot seem to stay away from. The building she obsessively visits. Joe was fifty-nine years old, and the emotional strain of the affair must have been too hard on his heart. Or maybe it was the three-flight climb to his girlfriend’s apartment, along with his sky-high cholesterol and the extra thirty pounds he hauled around like a sandbag on his belly.

  Two days after he died, she visited that stairwell. It was a grim pilgrimage that Mac had pleaded with her not to make, but she needed to see the place where Joe had collapsed. Maybe it was the cop in her, wanting to visit the scene, wanting to understand how it all went down. She felt oddly detached, almost clinical, as she looked at the concrete steps, at the dented stairwell door and the smudged walls. By then she already knew about the mistress; Mac had reluctantly broken the news to her after she’d demanded to know why Joe had died in that stairwell, in that building, when he was supposed to be on a business trip in Philadelphia. Rather than anger or grief or any of the normal emotions she should have felt that day, what she felt instead was bewilderment that she had missed all the signs of his infidelity. She was a homicide detective; how could she not have known about the other woman?

  Only later, weeks later, did rage finally boil up inside her, but then she could do nothing about it because Joe was already dead. There is no point in screaming at a corpse.

  She can feel that same anger bubbling up inside her now, on Dr. Maggie Dorian’s behalf. Anger against Jack Dorian for betraying his wife. Anger about his likely role in Taryn Moore’s death.

  Oh yes, Frankie is ready to take the man down. She just has to prove he is guilty.

  As she and Mac walk into the clinic’s crowded waiting room, she is already rehearsing how to break the news to Maggie Dorian. Dr. Dorian is the innocent in all this, the clueless wife whose life and marriage are about to be demolished. There is no easy way to tell a woman her husband has betrayed her, and Frankie is bracing herself for the woman’s reaction. She also hopes they can use it to their advantage. An angry wife might be their most powerful ally.

  The clinic receptionist slides open the glass partition and smiles at them. “Can I help you?”

  “We’re here to see Dr. Dorian.”

  “Did you have an appointment?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I’m sorry, but this clinic doesn’t take walk-ins. I can schedule an appointment with one of our other doctors for a few weeks from now.”

  Mindful of the patients sitting nearby, Frankie slides her badge across to the receptionist and says quietly: “Boston PD. We need to speak to Dr. Dorian.”

  The receptionist stares at the badge. “Oh. I’m afraid she’s not here.”

  “When will she return?”

  “I’m not really sure when she’ll be back. Maybe tomorrow? She asked me to cancel the rest of her appointments for the day. She had to leave for a family emergency.”

  Frankie glances at Mac and sees, in his face, the same sense of alarm she is feeling. She keeps her voice steady, her expression neutral, as she asks the receptionist: “What time did Dr. Dorian leave the clinic?”

  “It was about half an hour ago. I’ve been trying to reschedule all her patients. Any minute now, they’ll start showing up here, expecting—”

  “Do you know wh
at the family emergency is?”

  “No. She got a phone call, and a few minutes later, she ran out.”

  “Where did she go?” Mac snaps.

  The woman glances at the patients in the waiting area, where everyone is now tuned in to the conversation and staring at them. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me.”

  CHAPTER 43

  JACK

  As he walked to the university parking garage where he’d left his Audi, he called Maggie twice. She didn’t answer, and Jack couldn’t blame her. Classes were over for the day, and the frigid wind that swept the deserted campus sliced straight through his coat. He had not eaten since breakfast, and he yearned to simply collapse into a coma and never wake up. He’d heard that hypothermia was not a bad way to die. It was simply a matter of falling asleep as your body temperature plummeted and your organs shut down. A merciful end that he did not deserve. No, he was condemned to suffer through the consequences of his actions. A divorce. The loss of his job. Maybe even prison.

  As he approached his car, he barely registered the sound of another vehicle’s engine rumbling to life.

  He was just a dozen feet from his Audi when he looked up and saw a black SUV roaring toward him, its headlights blinding. Jack stumbled backward, flattening himself against the grille of his car, but instead of swerving onto the down ramp, the SUV kept rolling straight toward Jack, so close that he could hear the squeal of the proximity sensors. It did not screech to a stop until it had him pinned against his Audi.

  “Hey!” Jack yelled.

  No one answered.

  Through the tinted windshield, he could just make out the silhouette of the driver: a man wearing a baseball cap. Affixed to the windshield was a student-parking sticker.

  “Cody!” Jack yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Still no answer.

  “Cody, back up!”

  The SUV only revved louder, the fumes stinging Jack’s eyes. He tried to squeeze free, but Cody took his foot off the brake, and the SUV inched forward, pinning him even tighter.

  “Please don’t do this!” Jack said. “Cody?”

  Through the windshield, he saw Cody’s hand move to his face. He was crying. So this was how Jack would pay for his sins, crushed to death by a lovelorn kid who was too grief stricken to see reason or to care about the consequences. One tap on the accelerator pedal, and three thousand pounds of metal would crush his pelvis. Even if he screamed for help, at this hour in this nearly empty garage, who would hear him?