The Wife: A Novel of Psychological Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  It was three knocks, actually. The sound of the brass gargoyle against wood is full and aggressive, not to be ignored.

  I was doing my nighttime ritual early that night, right after dinner. It seemed to gain an extra step with each additional year of my life as a woman—cleanser, toner, moisturizer, eye cream, neck serum, flossing, and brushing. I froze on instinct.

  I imagined the hand holding the knocker. Wondered who the hand belonged to. Wondered if they were alone.

  And then I heard Jason letting someone in. Did he even pause to ask who it was? Did he look through the peephole to see whether the fish-eyed face on the other side of the distorting lens appeared to be male or female?

  It was an argument we’d had before. That was back when he was still suggesting that I “talk to someone” about these lingering anxieties. I’ve told him it has nothing to do with the past. It’s rational for me to be more afraid than he is.

  What is it like to live without fear? Jason has tried to help me be more like him, unafraid, comforted by statistics showing that the odds of “people like us” becoming crime victims were at an all-time low. I try to help him understand that being like him is a luxury. Fear isn’t rational, it’s primal. And if he wanted to talk about statistics, he needed to look at two factors: the odds of something going wrong, yes; but also the severity of the harm should it in fact occur. In the real world, Jason might be the one who opened the door to a stranger, but I—statistically, I, as the only woman in the house—would be the one who truly suffered.

  So when he let some person into our home, I stood on the landing, toothbrush still in hand, mouth full of foam, and listened with all my might. I couldn’t make out the words, but the voice was female. Kneeling down, I saw two dark, fleshy calves. She was wearing black flats and a knee-length navy skirt. I walked to our bedroom window and looked down to the street. A generic light-colored sedan was blocking our driveway. I knew immediately it was a police car.

  “Jason?” I called out. “Is everything okay?” I thought about Spencer in his room and hoped that he had his Beats headphones blasting, as usual.

  Jason walked halfway up the stairs to speak to me. Unlike the house I grew up in, in this home we do not yell from room to room—one of the Mom Rules.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I guess there was an incident down the street.”

  He must have noticed me flinch at the word incident, because he quickly clarified: “A fight of some sort. They’re canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses. I told them we stayed in for dinner and hadn’t seen anything. They’re gone now.”

  He brushed my hair from the back of my neck and gave me a soft kiss. I smelled his soap and Pert shampoo. I actually believed his explanation.

  But later that night, once we were in bed, I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach again. I couldn’t sleep. I wrapped Jason’s hand in mine and took a deep breath.

  He could tell I was anxious. He told me everything was fine. He asked me if I wanted to play the alphabet game. “We can do vacation,” he offered. He knows it’s my favorite.

  I found myself smiling and started with A: Anguilla. He added beach. I followed with colada. The last word I remembered that night was iguana. I fell asleep with my mind in the Caribbean.

  But by the time I woke up the next morning, I realized what should have been obvious all along: police don’t block a family’s driveway with an unmarked car on a fishing expedition for witnesses to a random assault.

  After Spencer left for school, I walked down to the pay phone at the corner of Eighth Street and University, called the Sixth Precinct, and said I was wondering whether they’d identified the culprits involved in the assault on our block the previous night. “I’m a mom. I want to make sure my kids are safe,” I added for good measure. When they asked for my address, I gave them the apartment building two doors down from our carriage house.

  “You said this was last night?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, all the neighbors were talking about it. The police were going door to door a little before eight, looking for witnesses.”

  “Nope, I’m not seeing anything in your area last night. Sounds like someone on your block started a rumor. People will do anything for attention these days.”

  I replaced the phone in its cradle, knowing for the first time in my marriage that Jason had lied to me, right to my face, as if it were nothing.

  19

  The young woman at the concierge desk was race-ambiguous, with close-cropped bleached hair, deep-set eyes, and light brown skin. The black collared shirt of her uniform was buttoned all the way up, but Corrine could see the curve of a tattoo peeking from the side of her neck. Corrine gave a quick flash of her badge and said she was there to see the head of security.

  She noticed an older couple at the reception counter next to her exchange a nervous look. “Nothing to worry about,” she assured them. “Welcome to New York.”

  The hotel in question was the W in midtown. Kerry Lynch’s company was based in Nassau County on Long Island, but she frequently stayed in the city overnight when she came in for meetings. In response to a subpoena, the hotel’s general counsel had asked the security department to pull surveillance videos from the night Kerry said she was attacked by Jason Powell.

  Corrine was a big fan of surveillance cameras, but she could do without the private security guards who tended to come as part of the package. She was anticipating the inevitable questions. How long had she been on the job? What did she do before she was a cop? She told herself that it was the usual banter between wannabe cops and the real thing. But part of her always felt like she was being quizzed for another reason, as if it were her obligation to prove that this black woman deserved to have a detective’s badge and gun instead of the polyester uniform of an unarmed security guard.

  She heard a booming voice behind her. “I think I recognize that Duncan Donut.” Her last name always had provided a convenient nickname for a police officer.

  Corrine turned to see a familiar face, slightly rounder and older than the last time she’d seen it. Shane Fletcher had been her sergeant when she first moved into the detective squad. “Well, oh my goodness. We are seriously dragging down the coolness factor in this lobby right here.”

  “Tell me about it. The concierges tease me because they’d never seen a man wear pleated slacks before.”

  “Hate to break it to you, but they probably make fun of you for using the word slacks, too. What are you doing working at a snazzy hotel?”

  “Turns out retirement is boring as a bag of rocks. The wife’s the one who figured out a hotel gig comes with major travel perks. Went to Vieques last month, heading to Indonesia in August.” Fletcher pulled a folded sheet of paper from his suit pocket. “I almost called you when I saw your name on the subpoena. Figured I’d surprise you instead. You ready to watch some movies?”

  The surveillance video was slightly better quality than average, but not the best, meaning that the two figures they were tracking were somewhere between gray blobs and a blurry home movie.

  Fletcher had already explained the process he’d used to narrow down the footage. He started by looking for people going in or out of the room registered to Kerry Lynch on April 10, the night in question. Once he had eyes on Kerry, he looked for any other appearances between check-in and checkout by her or anyone else she was seen with. Usually Corrine wouldn’t trust a private security guard to select which clips she needed to see, but Fletcher was a good cop.

  As it turned out, the only person Kerry was filmed with was a man Corrine recognized as Jason Powell. According to Fletcher, Kerry checked in alone shortly after 4:30 p.m., left alone shortly after 7:15, and then returned with Jason at 10:12 p.m. “And go,” he announced, hitting the play button.

  The two figures moved through the lobby, both in business attire—open collar and a sports coat for him; blouse, blazer, and knee-length skirt for her. After a shift in the camera perspective, they rode the ele
vator together side by respectable distance by side. After another skip, they were in the hallway of the eleventh floor.

  Nothing unusual yet, but Corrine flashed Fletcher a thumbs-up. He had gone above and beyond the call of duty, editing the footage into one smooth scene.

  He nudged her, indicating that something good was about to happen.

  As Kerry fished what Corrine assumed to be a hotel key from her purse, Jason Powell placed the palm of his hand against her lower back and then followed her into the room as the door opened.

  Without prompting, Fletcher hit pause.

  “That was her back, right?” he asked. “Not her butt?”

  “That’s what I saw.”

  Fletcher raised his eyebrows. The gesture, combined with walking up to her hotel room for a private conversation, seemed more intimate than professional, but the moment moved quickly. It may have been a friendly after-you gesture.

  “So we’re at ten fourteen when they go inside,” Fletcher said. “Nothing more until this at ten thirty-six.”

  Twenty-two minutes later. The light changed on the left side of the video. It was the door opening. Jason stepped out, walking backward. The sports coat was gone. He was still speaking to someone inside the hotel room. Kerry appeared in profile, barely past the threshold of the door, handing him his jacket. No, insisting that he take it. She seemed to be telling him to leave.

  “Pause?” Corrine asked. Kerry was still dressed, but her blazer was off. So were the heels she’d been wearing when they entered. Corrine nodded for Fletcher to hit play again.

  Jason was continuing to talk, and Kerry was still pushing the jacket toward him, finally tossing it toward him and shutting the door. Jason knocked on the door, paused, then knocked again. He hesitated and then looked side to side, as if he were checking to make sure no one else was in the hallway.

  He ran his fingers through his hair and walked quickly to the elevator, pulling his jacket on as he moved. He pressed the button repeatedly, shifting his weight impatiently.

  Once in the elevator car alone, he rested against the wall, leaning his head back.

  “Look, he’s talking to himself,” Fletcher whispered. “Did you see it? His lips were moving.”

  The quality of the footage from the elevator was better than in the lobby and hallway. More light. Closer perspective. Probably better equipment.

  Fletcher skipped the footage back, and they both watched Jason’s lips move again. “I watched it a couple times but stopped to make sure I had enough time to get all the clips lined up. Best I got is, ‘Whoop dee doo.’”

  Corrine chuckled. “Only men in pleated slacks say ‘Whoop dee doo.’”

  After several additional viewings, she had a theory. After two more, she was sure.

  She spoke the words aloud, in sync with the silent movie. What did I do?

  Fletcher rewound, and this time they said it aloud together. Jason was saying “What did I do?”

  “Guilt?” Corrine said. “Or panic?”

  “Yeah, but about what?” Fletcher asked. “I know it was the guest’s name on the subpoena, but I recognize the man. That intern’s complaint is not the only one?”

  Corrine shook her head. Fletcher was the last person who’d speak out of turn about a case.

  He volunteered his first impression. “His hand on her back as they went in the room? She didn’t come forward until now? He’ll say it was consensual. He’ll say the tiff at the door was because he didn’t stay overnight. And ‘What did I do?’ He was mad at himself for cheating on the wife.”

  “Except that’s not what he said when I asked him.” When Corrine went to Powell’s house the night before and asked about Kerry Lynch, he’d immediately said that she worked for one of his consulting clients. She asked him directly whether he’d had sexual contact with Kerry, and he denied it, accusing the NYPD of going on a “witch hunt” based on Rachel’s accusation.

  “So now all you need is the DNA swab,” Fletcher said. “Not a bad case. Not a slam-dunk, mind you, but I’ve seen worse.”

  Corrine had the footage on a thumb drive on her keychain when she called King from the car. The conversation was quick. Now that they had the video surveillance, plus Powell’s denial of a relationship, he was ready to proceed, but AT&T had just confirmed they’d be sending Powell’s call log tomorrow. It was one more step to show a judge that they were being thorough. Once they had the AT&T phone records in hand, he’d ask for a warrant to collect a sample of Jason Powell’s DNA. With a positive match, they’d have enough for charges.

  Corrine was halfway back to Harlem when her cell rang.

  “Duncan,” she said.

  “It’s Kerry Lynch.”

  “Hi, Kerry. I was about to call you,” Corrine lied. One of her few complaints about sex cases was that victims tended to think of the case as “theirs,” as if they were private plaintiffs who employed the police and prosecutors.

  “Please don’t be mad. I should have called earlier.”

  “Mad about what? Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess. But Jason called me. Did you go to his house last night and ask him about me?”

  Part of not reporting to victims as if they were her boss meant that Corrine did not inform Kerry of every step in the investigation. “I needed to get a statement,” she said.

  “Well, he called me about it this morning.”

  Corrine thought about the call logs that were supposed to be on their way to her from the cell phone company. Hopefully they’d be recent enough to capture whatever call Kerry was talking about. “What did he say?”

  “That he’d kill me if I told anyone what happened at the hotel that night. Please help me. He’s not the man he pretends to be.”

  20

  When I got to FSS’s offices, Zack said Jason was out for a run. “Did he know you were coming in?” he asked.

  I wanted to tell him it was none of his business, that I could pop into my husband’s office unannounced whenever I felt like it. And, no, I hadn’t called ahead. I was sick of Jason trying to protect me from the truth. I needed to ask him face-to-face why he had lied to me about the police coming to our house the night before. Instead, I said, “Oh, I had to return something at Barney’s, so I figured I’d surprise him. I’ll wait in his office.”

  Two young men tried not to stare as I passed them in the hall. Interns. I recognized one as Wilson Stewart. I knew they’d be talking about me the second I was out of earshot.

  I didn’t get up from my chair when he walked in. His T-shirt had a V-shaped ring of sweat down to his navel. He was thinner than usual. Why hadn’t I noticed that earlier?

  He was still out of breath. “Hey you. Zack said you were here.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Sorry, I’m gross. It’s still May, and it feels like the middle of summer. Don’t tell me global warming’s a hoax.”

  “Can you close the door?”

  He did as I asked and then turned to face me. “Okay.”

  I had expected him to start explaining the second he saw me. He had to know why I was here.

  “Just tell me the truth, Jason.”

  “Babe, what are you—”

  “Don’t insult me. There was no assault on our block last night.”

  “You checked?”

  “No. You don’t get to do that, Jason. You don’t get to lie to your wife and then complain that I was smart enough to figure it out.”

  “Jesus, can I at least take a shower first?”

  He flinched when the porcelain pencil cup that had been in front of me on the desk—the one that said “World’s Best Dad”—hit the wall two feet to his left. “Damn it, Angela. You on my ass is the last thing I need right now.”

  “Why were the police really there, Jason? It’s about Rachel, isn’t it?” I thought again about those interns in the hallway. Did they know more than I did about what had happened between my husband and that girl in this office? “If you don’t tell me what you’re hiding, right now, I sw
ear to god, I am picking up Spencer from school and taking him to my mother’s house. Stop lying to me.”

  Jason looked defeated as he walked to his bathroom and grabbed a small white towel. He dropped into the adjacent chair and placed his head in the towel, his elbows propped on his knees.

  “They asked me if I knew a woman named Kerry Lynch.”

  I was glad he wasn’t looking up at me. I have a terrible poker face. I didn’t want him to know that I was already familiar with the name.

  “Why?”

  He shook his head back and forth. “It was the same detective who called me about Rachel when I was in Philly. She said a new witness name had come up. She asked if I knew her. I explained that Kerry’s the head of marketing for Oasis, that water company I told you about. I asked why she was asking. She said she wanted to know the nature of our relationship.”

  “So what did you say?”

  He shrugged. “That I know her from my consulting work.”

  I shook my head. “Didn’t you have a meeting with her a few days ago?”

  He stared at me blankly. “How did you know that?”

  “You told me, remember?”

  “I didn’t say her name.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Jason. You told me about the meeting when we were talking about that company. When the police came to the house, what exactly did they ask you?”

  “They said Kerry’s name had come up as a potential witness. They asked if I knew her, and asked how I knew her.” He paused, and I knew there had to be more to the story. “And they asked whether there was any kind of sexual relationship between us.”

  “And?”

  “I told you: she works for a client. That’s all, I swear.”

  “Why didn’t you refuse to answer, like you did when the detective called you the first time?”

  “I should have. But it’s a lot easier to talk tough on the phone than when a cop’s standing in the foyer making it sound like a straightforward question. I really didn’t see the harm in answering. Rachel met Kerry once at FSS. I figured that’s why they asked me about her—like maybe Rachel mentioned Kerry as a potential witness or something.”