The Ex

by Alafair Burke

  I flashed back to all the times that Jack would lecture me for being so impatient when lines were long, service was slow, or any number of things didn’t happen on what he called “Olivia time.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “You can’t afford to be the nice guy right now. What happened to telling me to do whatever I needed to keep you out of prison, Jack? Murder defendants don’t get to be polite.”

  “It’s not polite. It’s basic human decency. Can we at least agree to leave out the other victims?”

  “Jack—”

  “Jesus H., Olivia. Did you forget that my wife—my daughter’s mother—is also a murder victim?”

  “Okay, time out,” Don said. “I agree we can’t think about other people’s feelings right now. But, Olivia, we do need to think about how this is going to play with the DA, and eventually the jury. If you’re pointing the finger at everyone but Jack, it feels desperate. You told Charlotte we didn’t need a media backlash—well, you could trigger one if you’re perceived as trashing the victims. That’s what I meant about a clear narrative. Just stick with Madeline—or Helen, or what’s her name?”

  Einer, Charlotte, and I all spoke in unison. “Sharon Lawson.”

  “Stick with that,” Don said. “We have her affidavit. Someone hired Sharon specifically to look for Jack on his usual running route. Same e-mail address as whoever told him to go to the sports field the morning of the shooting. The prosecution needs to explain that or they can’t win. Reasonable doubt’s all we need.”

  Don was right. The missed-moment and subsequent e-mails were complicated enough. Anything else was information overload.

  I looked again at the rows of boxes filling the office.

  Something was in there that Scott Temple was hiding. I needed to find out what it was before I told him about Sharon.

  BY THE TIME I LEFT work, it was after ten o’clock. I knew I should go home, but I was feeling antsy and wanted a drink. I hailed a cab and automatically gave the driver the address for Lissa’s.

  He had driven two blocks when I said, “Actually, drop me at Grand and Baxter instead.” He sighed even though the route was the same.

  “Where am I stopping?” the cabbie asked as we approached.

  “That place with the red pillars on the right.”

  Unless you’ve been a woman who walks into a bar late at night by herself, you have no idea how it feels. It shouldn’t feel like anything. This city is filled with single adults, busy adults, tourists and businesspeople traveling alone. No one cooks. People are out more often than they’re home. Men show up on their own at bars and restaurants, and no one gives them a second thought. I tell myself it’s the same for me. But I know it’s not, not to the people who see me scanning for a place to sit. Probably not to me, either.

  Tonight, my eyes were scanning for more than a chair. I was certain that I’d find the face I was looking for. I don’t know why I bothered to feel disappointed when my hopes weren’t satisfied. It had been a shot in the dark. But now that I was here, I still wanted a drink. I spotted one empty seat at the bar, with a half glass of wine on the counter and a cloth napkin folded across the back of the stool. That was bar-speak for smoke break. Until the human chimney returned, I could stand here in the meantime to get the bartender’s attention.

  I had ordered a Hendrick’s martini up with a twist and was listening to the rattle of shaken ice when I felt someone brush up next to me.

  “You’re stealing chairs now?”

  I caught a whiff of lingering cigarette smoke, and turned to see Scott Temple. My gut hadn’t been off after all.

  “Just ordering an end-of-the-day libation.”

  “Would that be a bad day or a good day?”

  Funny how that works. Whether everything goes right or nothing goes your way, booze always seems like a good idea.

  He pulled out the barstool and offered it to me. “After you.”

  I accepted and took a generous sip of my martini. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I don’t, but every once in a while, with the drinks—old habits, I guess. The bartender lets me bum them off her. Now why do I have the feeling bumping into each other isn’t pure coincidence? You and I have had some pretty meaningful conversations here.”

  “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes lawyers need gin near the courthouse.”

  “You’re fishing for information, aren’t you?”

  “You’re acting like you have information you want me to catch.”

  “Sure, why not? Today I spoke to one of your client’s fellow plaintiffs in the Penn Station suit. His name’s Jon Weilly.”

  I did my best to act unconcerned. “You don’t think jurors have also said things in anger?” I asked. “You have to be desperate if that’s the best you’ve got. I was hoping you might tell me why you sent over seventeen boxes of discovery, months before trial.”

  His eyes were already glassy but he took another sip of his wine. “I love it. A defense attorney bitching that I sent over too much evidence.”

  “I’m not some rookie, Scott. If you flood me with irrelevant evidence, I know you’re hiding something. You may have technically complied with the discovery rules, but you can only get so cute before a judge calls you out on your shit.”

  “I’m not sure what you want here, Olivia. I’ve told you from the very beginning that our case is tighter than you think, but you won’t believe me.”

  “Is the slam-dunk evidence in those boxes? Because, if so, I don’t see it.”

  “Your request was for Brady material—that’s the exculpatory stuff, remember?”

  So I was right. Scott may not have turned over everything, but something that helped Jack was buried in the avalanche of paper spilled across our conference room. “Give me a hint. A little help for both of us. I don’t rat you out to the judge, and you tell me what’s hiding in those boxes.”

  “You know that story about the frog and the scorpion? The scorpion bites the frog even though it means they’ll both die. The frog says, ‘Why?’ and the scorpion says, ‘It’s in my nature.’ You’re a defense attorney. In my book, that makes you the scorpion.”

  “Except you’re the scorpion for assuming you can’t trust me. You know I don’t vouch for clients unless I mean it. And I know you want to get convictions the right way. This hide-the-ball stuff might be par for the course for your office, but not you. You’re too good for this.”

  He pulled out his wallet, dropped a couple of twenties on the counter, and drained the rest of his wine.

  “It’s always a tough call, Olivia.” His hand squeezed my forearm. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  I left fifteen minutes after Temple, my martini softening the edges of my anxiety. I pulled up Einer’s number on my cell once I hit the sidewalk, and hit Enter.

  “Hey.”

  “You still going through the discovery?” I asked.

  “I’ll say yes if I’m supposed to, but do you know what time it is?”

  I looked at my watch. Five minutes past midnight.

  “Some of the documents are phone records, right?”

  “Yeah, a bunch. The LUDs from both of Neeley’s homes and his cell. And Jack’s cell, of course. Plus call records for the Sentry Group. I told you: they flooded us with paper.”

  “Whatever they’re hiding, it’s got something to do with the phone records.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  It’s always a tough call, Olivia. That was my hint.

  I JERKED AT THE SOUND of my own cell phone on the nightstand the next morning.

  Barely morning: 10:45. It was Einer.

  “Hey. I was just walking out the door.”

  “I don’t know how you had magical information at midnight, but your inner soothsayer was right. All those boxes of paper, and somehow you nailed it. It was in the phone records. The incoming calls to the Sentry Group, to be exact.”

  “Please don’t tell
me that Jack called him.” When I first learned that the police had pulled incoming calls to the Sentry Group, I had assumed they were looking for evidence that Jack—true to their stalking theme—had phoned Malcolm Neeley. But Jack had assured me that there would be no such evidence. And I was sure that whatever the prosecution was hiding in those boxes would help us, not hurt.

  “No, thank God,” Einer said. “I can’t believe I missed it, but the list of calls is long. The Sentry Group records are only for the main switchboard, so I was paying more attention to Neeley’s home and cell phones. And the records only have the phone numbers on the other side of the line, not the name of the caller or anything.”

  “I got it. Just tell me.”

  “You ready? In this very long list of incoming calls to the Sentry Group during the week before the shooting, three of them came from the same number.” He rattled off ten digits. “You wanna take a guess? Because, trust me, there’s no way you’d ever guess—”

  “Einer!”

  “It’s Tracy Frankel. That number belongs to the cell phone found in Tracy Frankel’s purse after she was killed at the football field with Malcolm Neeley. She was calling the Sentry Group. Now does that blow your mind, or what?”

  Chapter 18

  TWO DAYS LATER, I showed up at Judge Amador’s courtroom during his afternoon motions docket.

  “Well, good afternoon, Ms. Randall. I didn’t see you on the list. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Something has come up in the Jack Harris case, Your Honor. You oversaw his bail hearing? It’s a touchy discovery issue that I thought you might be able to oversee informally if you have the time.”

  Amador had his clerk call Scott Temple to see if he was available. Five minutes later, Temple walked into the courtroom, a legal pad in hand. “Very mysterious,” he whispered as he joined me past the bar.

  “Predictable is boring,” I said. I felt bad for what I was about to do to him, but it was all part of the job.

  “YOUR HONOR, I’M HERE TO request a subpoena for the phone records of Tracy Frankel.”

  The judge squinted. “Remind me again of who that is?”

  “She was one of the other victims—the youngest one, the female.”

  “Oh, of course. I should have realized. I’m sorry. What is this all about?”

  Temple gave me a worried look.

  “We believe the phone records are Brady material, but have serious doubts about the prosecution’s willingness to disclose it voluntarily. Unfortunately, after a week spent reviewing several boxes of unlabeled and unorganized documents produced by the People, we finally realized that they had intentionally buried important and exculpatory evidence that should have led them on their own to obtain the information we’re requesting.”

  “What kind of evidence are we talking about?”

  Temple opened his mouth, but I jumped in before he could answer. “The prosecution hid concrete evidence linking two of the shooting victims, namely, direct proof that Tracy Frankel phoned Malcolm Neeley’s hedge fund, the Sentry Group, three times in the week before the murder. Just as I said at the bail hearing, there is another side to the prosecution’s story. Their case rests entirely upon my client’s supposed animosity toward a single victim—Malcolm Neeley—with the other two victims caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s why the prosecution tried to bury any connection between Tracy Frankel and Malcolm Neeley.”

  “How exactly did they bury it?” the judge asked.

  Temple finally found a chance to jump into the conversation. “Your Honor, this is a completely unnecessary conference. If Ms. Randall had simply called me—”

  “Given her allegation, perhaps she doesn’t agree, which is why I asked my question.”

  “They produced nearly twenty boxes of unsorted documents,” I said. “A few of the pages listed incoming calls to the Sentry Group. We had to read every line of every page of every document multiple times before we finally realized that one of the phone numbers on the list belonged to Tracy Frankel’s cell phone.”

  Judge Amador tapped his eyeglasses on the bench while he processed the information. “Mr. Temple, a yes or no question: did you know this?”

  “To our knowledge, there are no direct communications between any of the victims—”

  “Yes or no: did you know that Tracy Frankel’s phone was used to call the Sentry Group three times in the week before the shooting?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Not another word. I’ve seen this from your office before, Mr. Temple. You flood the other side with a bunch of garbage hoping they can’t separate the wheat from the chaff. The defense made it quite clear at the bail hearing that other people may have had a motive to kill either Mr. Neeley or perhaps one of the other victims. A link between two of the victims—two people who, until now, appeared to share no connection whatsoever—could clearly be relevant to the defense. Do I seriously need to spell that out for you?”

  “That’s not necessary, Your Honor.”

  “So what do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Temple? How is the way you’ve handled the disclosure of this information consistent with a prosecutor’s ethical obligations?”

  “If I may, Your Honor—”

  “Of course you may. I just asked you to speak. I really want to know how you can justify this.”

  “I understand that the defense would like to portray this as some kind of smoking gun—”

  “Bad analogy, Mr. Temple.”

  Scott took a deep breath and tried again. “I believe Ms. Randall used the words ‘important’ and ‘exculpatory,’ but I would not agree with either description. This was a long list of incoming calls, not to Mr. Neeley’s direct line, but to the general company switchboard. More than thirty employees work in that firm. Tracy Frankel could have been calling any one of them.”

  “Does Ms. Frankel have an account with Sentry Group? I did not get the impression that she was a big mover and shaker in the finance world.”

  “No, Your Honor. But Ms. Frankel had a prior conviction for drugs, and there are indications that she struggled, let’s say, financially. It is no secret that people who work in finance sometimes have interactions that involve drugs and perhaps other activities, such as prostitution.”

  “So you’re saying that your victim was either selling drugs or sex to someone at the Sentry Group?”

  “No, I didn’t say that.”

  “Right, because you don’t know. Am I correct?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “And that’s exactly why you were hoping Ms. Randall and Mr. Ellison would not put two and two together and force you to deal with this inconvenient piece of evidence. I get it. But I don’t like it, and if I had to guess, Mr. Temple, you wouldn’t have done things this way if it were totally up to you.”

  “It’s not how I dealt with it, Judge. I had a private conversation with Ms. Randall just two days ago. I basically told her to look at the phone records.”

  “You basically told her? What does that mean? I must have missed that phrase in law school.”

  Temple turned to me to save him, but I looked away. Just as I anticipated, he was trapped. To defend himself by saying he gave me a tipsy hint at a bar would be to admit that he’d been intentionally elusive in the first place.

  “We could have been better about organizing the discovery,” he finally said. “But I think it should be noted that we produced disclosure far earlier than required. This case was arraigned less than a month ago, and no trial date has been set.”

  “Mr. Temple, tell your bosses I’m not impressed. Now, Ms. Randall: what exactly are you asking for?”

  I was ready to go. “A subpoena for Tracy Frankel’s cell phone records. Our hope is to turn up witnesses who may know more about a connection between Ms. Frankel and Mr. Neeley, perhaps a common enemy. Or, possibly, a link between Ms. Frankel and someone at the Sentry Group who may have had a motive to harm Mr. Neeley. I don’t want to speak prematurely, but one
employee in particular stands to gain a significant financial benefit and apparently even made threats against Mr. Neeley.”

  Judge Amador was waving a hand, telling me not to get ahead of myself. I didn’t tell him that my comments were intended for an entirely different audience.

  Temple glared at me while the judge signed the subpoena I had prepared. He barely waited for Amador to step from the bench before turning to leave. “Just like I said, Olivia, it’s in your nature. You’re a goddamn scorpion.”

  When I walked out of the courtroom, I saw Jan Myers from Eyewitness News sitting on a bench just outside the door, tucking a small recorder into her purse.

  She smiled at me as I passed.

  JACK DIDN’T BOTHER WITH A greeting when he opened his apartment door.

  “We talked about this, Olivia. Malcolm Neeley was a horrible person, but I don’t want to vilify the other shooting victims.”

  Jan Myers had worked quickly, already reporting the shocking news that one of the other waterfront victims had been calling Neeley’s hedge fund in the days prior to the shooting. She was a good journalist. She’d find out about the terms of Neeley’s will and Max’s Princeton disciplinary hearing soon enough. Walking the edge of the gag order, I had told Jan that an after-lunch trip to the fifth floor of the courthouse might be worth her time. She’d owe me next time.

  I set my briefcase down and followed Jack into the living room. I explained that we started looking into Tracy only after her phone number appeared in the Sentry Group phone records.

  “Jack, remember telling me that in is in, out is out, and you just want to be out? I promised to do everything possible to keep you out. I can’t ignore this kind of evidence.” I was not about to check with him every single time I followed up on a lead.

  “That girl is dead, Olivia. Her family is mourning her. And now there are pundits on television speculating about all kinds of scenarios, most of them insinuating that she somehow brought this on herself.” Jack was pacing, and his eyes were darting around the room. I was wishing that the police had cut off his cable in addition to his Internet connection.