The Ex

by Alafair Burke

  “I am,” I said coolly. “I also know Mr. Harris well personally. He’s a man of some significance in New York City. If he’s here, I assume you have an explanation.”

  Police like to say that they’re straight shooters, all about the justice, color blind, fair and balanced, yada yada. But the truth is that they’re used to both victims and perpetrators who are poor and powerless. When someone rich and powerful collides with the criminal justice system, it’s a big fucking deal. No harm in flashing your feathers early and often.

  But the desk sergeant who spoke up was unfazed. “You say you know Jack Harris? Well, I’ll be honest, I might’ve thought I did, too. It’s a damn shame what he’s gone through. Yesterday, I would have rolled out the red carpet if he walked in here. But now?” He made a pssshht sound.

  Once again, I was a step behind, but I knew I wasn’t going to get information out of a glorified receptionist.

  He picked up the handset of the nearby phone.

  “I’m sure you know, Sergeant, that under New York’s right to counsel laws, you must immediately inform Jack Harris that a lawyer is here for him.”

  He jiggled the phone in his hand. “Who d’ya think I’m calling? Ghostbusters?”

  THE MAN WHO EMERGED MINUTES later from the stairwell was immediately identifiable as a multigenerational cop. Young but confident. The pale skin, red hair, and freckles of an Irish kid from the city. The introduction he offered sealed the first impression. His name was Jimmy Boyle.

  “Wow, that’s a real name, or did the NYPD give it to you as a promotion?”

  “One hundred percent authentic. Not James. Not Jim. Jimmy Boyle on the birth certificate.”

  I told him I needed to see my client, and he told me that’s what he’d heard. I followed my gut and asked if Jack was here because of the Hudson River shooting.

  Jimmy Boyle nodded. All business. “Likely to be three counts.”

  That would be of murder, I surmised. Three counts of murder against a guy I could only imagine being arrested if he accidentally walked out of a Whole Foods with a raisin granola bar. Buckley Harris’s worst fears about her father’s situation were quickly becoming a reality.

  I asked Jimmy Boyle if we were talking about the same Jack Harris. “The one I know couldn’t possibly—”

  “Nice try, Counselor. You’ll hear the details eventually. But Harris? From hometown hero to bad guy zero, just like that.”

  Chapter 2

  AS I FOLLOWED Detective Boyle up two flights of stairs, through a squad room, and down a narrow hallway lined with interrogation rooms and holding cells, I tried to prepare myself mentally.

  I hadn’t seen Jack in person for nearly twenty years, only pictures. The Sunday Styles announcement when he and Molly née Buckley got married (“Mrs. Harris, 25, is a substitute high school teacher. She graduated from Boston College. She is the daughter of Pamela and Daniel Buckley of Buffalo, New York.”) The author photos on three different novels, all typical fare for male literary writers—no smile, intense stare: the opposite of Jack. The annual Christmas card pictures on our friend Melissa’s refrigerator—pictures that would eventually turn up in all those “remembering the victims” retrospectives after Molly died.

  I knew from all those photographs that Jack, like the rest of us, had aged. A little extra weight softened the angles of his thin face, and a few lines added character to his green eyes. Some flecks of gray lightened what was still a full head of messy brown waves. But despite the subtle changes, he looked in pictures like the boy I’d first met when we were eighteen. If anything, he was one of those people who’d grown more attractive with time.

  The man I glimpsed through the one-way glass when Boyle paused outside an interrogation room was not what I had expected from all those photographs. Think of every beauty tip for looking one’s best: good sleep, plenty of water, no stress. Getting arrested means the opposite of all that. Jack looked tired and disheveled. Sweat marks pitted his plain white undershirt. Don called it getting hit by “custody’s ugly stick”—fear, exhaustion, bad fluorescent lighting: it wasn’t pretty.

  Jack flinched at the sound of the interrogation room’s door opening. His eyes brightened as he recognized me.

  I tried to reassure him with a quick smile, then turned to Boyle. “We’ll need a private room, please.”

  “It’s private once I shut the door, Counselor. The recording equipment’s off.”

  “Look at it this way, Detective. When your hard work and savvy investigative skills lead you to some nugget that could have been gleaned from the conversation I’m about to have with my client, do you really want me claiming that you got it through a Sixth Amendment violation? Judges know how easy it is to monitor these rooms with the touch of a button. And let’s face it, these days a lot of them aren’t big fans of the NYPD.”

  I could see Boyle picturing a courtroom scene in the distant future. “No skin off my ass. Give me a second.”

  Jack started to speak once Boyle was out of view, but I raised an index finger to my lips. He was staring at me like I might not be real, his eyes searching mine for something—comfort, an explanation, an apology, what? The room, already small, seemed to shrink with every second that passed in silence, and I finally had to look away. Two minutes later, Boyle reappeared, instructed Jack to stand, and handcuffed his wrists in front of him.

  “Really, Detective?”

  “You’re the one who wants him moved from this comfy room with a big sturdy lock. Can’t have it both ways, Ms. Randall. Or did you forget that your boy’s the suspect in a triple homicide?”

  THERE WERE NO ONE-WAY WINDOWS or recording instruments in sight in the conference room Boyle ushered us into. I thanked him as he closed the door. He rolled his eyes.

  Jack was still looking at me in disbelief. “How did you know—”

  “Your daughter called me.”

  “But how did she—”

  “She pieced it together and got worried. From what I can tell, you raised a clever girl.”

  There was an awkward pause, and he looked at the door that Detective Boyle had just shut. “They really eavesdrop?”

  “He needs to know you’ve got a lawyer who’s not going to make his job any easier.” Boyle would be back here any minute to say the clock was ticking on the next transport to MDC. After the standard spiel about attorney-client privilege, I got straight to the point. “They seem to think they have something on you. What is it?”

  He muttered something so low that I could barely make out the words. Howard Johnson.

  “The hotel?” I asked.

  “No. Your first mock client interview in law school. The professor gave you a fake case file, a robbery. The client’s name was Howard Johnson, and you were practicing on me. We were on that lumpy futon in the living room, don’t you remember? And you got so mad at me for laughing every time I said my name was Howard Johnson. We kept starting over and over again until you told me to change my name to something else so you could get through the questions, exactly how you wrote them.” Jack was staring into the table, seeing a scene that had played out twenty years earlier. “So I started throwing out alternatives: Mel Content, Jerry Atric, Drew Blood. You didn’t see the humor until Seymour Butts. You don’t sound like a stressed-out first-year law student anymore.”

  Jack was suffering not only the physical, but also the cognitive tolls of custody. For some people, this part was almost like going into shock. There was no time to reminisce. I had to shake him out of it.

  “Jack, you’re under arrest, apparently for murder. There were shots fired at the football field at the Hudson piers today. People died. Did they explain any of that to you?” From the quick news searches I’d done on my phone during the cab ride to the precinct, I had yet to see any identification of the victims, or any mention that a suspect had been arrested. “Listen to this question carefully: what would make the police think you did this?”

  I had learned the careful phrasing from Don. As worded,
the question allowed for distance. It gave the client a chance to tell me what evidence the police might have, but still allowed me ethically to let the client take the stand and offer an entirely divergent story.

  “I—I heard the shots by the West Side Highway. I didn’t even know they were shots. Then I got home and heard the news. Obviously, I was rattled. I mean, after Molly. That I had been so close to another shooting—”

  Back when Molly was killed, I had thought about reaching out. But how? A phone call? A sympathy card? Does Hallmark have a special section for, “Sorry I haven’t talked to you since I shattered your life, and now I’m sorry you lost the woman who pieced it back together?” Probably not.

  As Jack described how he ended up in an interrogation room wearing a sweaty undershirt, I could picture every step, starting with Jimmy Boyle’s knock on Jack’s apartment door. Boyle told him they were canvassing for witnesses, like it was standard door-to-door protocol. The police were looking for “folks” who might have seen something. If he could come down to the station, that would be helpful. And Jack was Jack. He was as helpful as they came.

  I interrupted to double-check whether the police gave him the option of “helping” from the comfort of his own apartment.

  “Um, yeah, I guess so. But Buckley was home, and I could tell she was worried. You know how kids are.” Actually, I didn’t. “And, well, things with Buckley—she’s a tough, brave girl in a lot of ways, but she’s sensitive about certain things. The way she lost her mother—it damaged her. So the thought of police coming to her home and asking about anything gun related—you can imagine that it’s upsetting. So when the detective said maybe we could talk at the station instead, I figured it was because he saw me distracted by Buckley.”

  “So you agreed to come in?”

  “Basically. But I said at least half an hour ago that I needed to get home, and he just keeps saying they need a little more time.”

  I pressed my eyes closed. Jack really was still the same: kind but gullible. The police had played him. “Your daughter was worried for a reason, Jack. You’re not a witness. You’re a suspect. And that detective seems pretty confident that they have a case against you. What have you told them?”

  “This morning—Oh God, Olivia, talking to you, of all people, about this. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Well, right now, I’m all you’ve got, and Boyle will be back here to process you soon.” Booking. Transport. A holding cell. This was no time for him to be shy. “I can’t help you if you don’t start talking. So let me ask the question again: what would make the police think you did this?”

  When he was finally done answering my carefully phrased question, he slumped back in his chair and looked up at the acoustic-tiled ceiling. “Jesus, they’re never going to believe me.”

  I managed to keep my response to myself. Damn straight they won’t.

  I PRESSED JACK TO TELL me exactly how much of this information he had given to the police.

  “All of it,” he said.

  “Seriously? The party dress and the basket and the book?”

  “The detective said he was curious. He said he was single, too. Every time I asked him why he needed all these details, he seemed to have an explanation.”

  Boyle had pressed for details because they now knew Jack was locked in—on tape—to a complex explanation for being near the site of the shooting. And complicated stories don’t sound as true as simple ones.

  Jack was saying he never should have mentioned the woman to Charlotte. “She runs that website, the Room. And she loves romance posts. Jesus, I even said the woman reminded me of Molly—that, for the first time, I was open to the idea of another shot at happiness.”

  Not a second shot at happiness, but another one. Molly was already the second, because I was the first. Twenty years later, and still so much guilt.

  “I should have realized,” Jack was saying, “that Charlotte would take me literally and try to find the woman. And when Charlotte sets her mind to something . . . the next thing I knew, she’s got this post on the Room’s home page. I was mortified. She didn’t use my name, but she may as well have with all the biographical details. I actually forgot about it, but then Charlotte got a response a few days later. We started e-mailing, and I was supposed to meet her today. I swear, that’s all I know.”

  And he had fed every detail to the police, who would twist and turn the information to suit their needs.

  “This woman Madeline’s the one who picked the football field as the meeting spot? The e-mails will back that up?”

  “Absolutely. Well, with a few connections of dots. Once she responded to the post, I asked her what book had her so engrossed. It was Eight Days to Die. It’s one of my favorites.” I had never heard of it, but, then again, I wasn’t a big reader these days. “So last night, when she suggested that we meet in person, she said meet at chapter twelve. Flip to that chapter of Eight Days to Die, and there’s a scene at the football field.”

  His bizarre, complicated story about Missed-Moment Madeline had taken on one more absurd layer, but as long as the woman backed him up, we could show that it had not been Jack’s idea to place himself at the sports field that morning.

  I asked him exactly what happened when he got there.

  “Nothing. No big dramatic moment. I saw a few people on the far end of the field, but no woman who seemed to be waiting for me. I wondered for a second if I was on some kind of Candid Camera show. I mean, was the entire setup someone’s idea of a cruel joke? I felt pretty stupid. Then when it started pouring rain out of the blue, I took it as a sign. Enough of this, back to real life.”

  I pointed out that he hadn’t completely given up. He had left the basket and the note.

  “I guess part of me wanted to believe she’d come through. But I don’t know what any of that has to do with the shooting. Or why Malcolm Neeley was there. I swear, when the detective said his name, it was like, thwack. An anvil descending from the sky in a cartoon, right onto my head. It still doesn’t feel real.”

  Yet he didn’t ask for a lawyer.

  Everyone thinks he’s somehow going to convince the police he’s innocent as long as he doesn’t lawyer up. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I asked Jack where his shirt was, even though I suspected I knew the answer.

  “When we first got to the station, he said they were running tests on everyone who’d been near the waterfront. He said it would be quick. They swabbed my hands.”

  “You didn’t think it was weird when they asked for your clothing?”

  “You don’t have to talk to me like I’m an idiot, Olivia.”

  One of our first fights had begun with the identical sentiment: I didn’t have to treat him like an idiot. “I’m not treating you like an idiot,” I had said. “You’re actually being an idiot.” And then instead of defending himself, he told me I was emasculating him. I said something even meaner.

  Now, I simply said, “Jack: your shirt.”

  “The shirt came later. After I told him that I needed to get home, he said we could clear some things up if he could run another test on my shirt. Whatever I need to do to prove I’m innocent, I will do. How long do those tests take?”

  I held my tongue.

  Gunshot residue. GSR tests were a one-way street for law enforcement. A positive test made the suspect look guilty. A negative test could be explained away by some soap and water.

  “I wish you’d tell me this isn’t that bad,” he said. “I assume the missed-moment post is still floating around online. The police can read my e-mails, whatever they need. I know it’s kind of nutty, but that doesn’t mean I shot anyone. How could they even think that?”

  “Jack, it’s Malcolm Neeley. How could they not think it?”

  He looked like he was about to cry, but then regained his composure. “You know the irony? When I first saw Madeline on the pier with some kind of package next to her, I thought, maybe she’s a runaway bride who has fled her hotel room with a frantically packed go bag, ready t
o catch an early train out of Penn Station. And then there it was. Penn Station—a reminder of the reason I don’t look at and wonder about and conjure up entire imagined backstories for women I don’t know. Something always sneaks up and reminds me that I don’t have normal anymore. The minute I thought about Penn Station, I should have run away and never looked back.”

  Chapter 3

  EVERY GENERATION OF Americans had at least one day where they all could remember where they were when they heard the news. Pearl Harbor. The Kennedy assassination. Nine-Eleven.

  And then there were some dates that left the same kind of mark, but in a smaller and more regional way. Columbine in Colorado. The federal building in Oklahoma. The marathon in Boston. A bell tower in Texas. Riots in Los Angeles. A club fire in Rhode Island.

  For New York City, the most recent of those searing, scarring events was the Penn Station massacre. Until that morning three years ago, we moved like cattle through the turnstiles and corridors of our crowded public transportation systems, complaining about delayed trains, bumped briefcases, or a fellow passenger in dire need of a shower. But then a mass shooting broke out in the heart of the city during peak commuting hours. What seemed unimaginable suddenly felt inevitable.

  Thirteen people dead, not to mention the wounded, or the shooter who fired a final bullet into his own jaw at the first sight of police coming his way, which was less than two minutes after the first sound of gunfire. Roughly one shot every 2 seconds for 108 seconds was the gruesome estimate later bandied about by the media.

  These weren’t the only shocking details to come out in the aftermath. The killer wasn’t a foreign jihadist, as most of us assumed when we first heard about an attack in Penn Station. He was a local. And he wasn’t even a man yet. Just a boy, fifteen years old, all of five feet seven and 127 pounds. His name was Todd. Todd didn’t need physical size to inflict that kind of damage, not when he was armed with a Bushmaster rifle and two .40-caliber pistols, all three weapons semiautomatic.