“Do you remember Ross Connor? Owen’s old partner?”
“Drunk gropey Irish boy who tried jamming his sloppy tongue down my throat at Bowery Bar?”
“That’d be the one. I tried to get him to vouch for Jack at his bail hearing, and it led to this whole conversation about Ross thinking Jack has a secret side to him. He said that when he went to tell Jack that Molly was killed, Jack dropped his book bag and condoms fell out. But now Ross has found out that Molly couldn’t even have children anymore. He went to Jack’s apartment hoping he’d say something incriminating.”
“Because of a suspected affair? I hear some people cheat, and it doesn’t make them murderers.”
“The point is, Jack lied to me, and not just about Ross’s little social visit. It’s bad, Charlotte. Seriously bad.”
She rose from my desk and sat next to me at the conference table.
“I’ve had some girlfriends over the years, a couple of them who were really pretty great. But I’m not sure I’ve ever loved anyone the way I love Jack. The way I loved Owen.”
“You guys are like siblings.”
“Not like siblings. We are family. Except better—truly connected. But Jack’s not perfect. No one is. We both know that Owen wasn’t.”
I turned and caught her intense gaze. She knew. I had never told anyone except Melissa the complete story of what happened that night.
That Seiko Jack found on our bed? If he’d looked a little closer, he would have recognized it. The watch belonged to his brother, Owen.
Owen had been with me. Only once, and not for very long. There had always been a silent recognition that we were more alike than Jack and I. Jack even mentioned once that his brother and I had the same kind of energy in the way we talked and moved. We may have looked at each other too long across the table a few times, but neither of us had ever even mentioned the possibility of an attraction.
He stopped by unexpectedly after testifying at the courthouse. I’d just gotten the final rejection letter on my applications for a federal judicial clerkship. It was a plum job, practically a requirement in some circles. It also would have been a reason to bump the wedding for another year. I let Owen console me, and then made it very difficult for him to stop. Like I had convinced myself about Gregg, it just happened.
That’s how Owen was able to meet Jack so quickly after his distraught phone call. Had he come clean with Jack? Or had he just nodded along as the two of them drank into the night?
I still had no idea. All I knew was that six hours after Owen ran out of our apartment saying he couldn’t believe what we had done, he died in a car accident. For the next month, I would sleep on the sofa because I couldn’t bring myself to climb back into that bed.
“How did you know?”
“Owen came to my apartment that night, after you guys—ugh. He was frantic, completely out of his mind. I was pissed as hell, screaming at him for letting himself become yet another notch in your very busy belt. Jesus, Olivia, what the fuck were you thinking? I always had a feeling you were messing around on Jack, but his brother?”
“I know.” I had nothing else to say for myself.
“And then Jack called Owen’s cell phone, needing someone to talk to. I should have stopped Owen from going. He’d already had three drinks at my place, plus whatever he had with you—and I knew Jack was going to want to drink, too. Owen would have been drunk as a skunk by the time he was driving home. The police somehow managed to leave that out of the reports.”
“Does Jack know?”
She shook her head. “At least, not from me. I’ve never told him, and I never will.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s not for you. It’s for him. That’s not something he needs to learn about his only brother. You know why I never liked you with Jack?”
“Because you and I are so much alike?” I gave her a small smile, which she actually returned.
“You never really understood him. You treated him like a one-dimensional character—the sweet, preppy guy who loved you more than anything. But Jack’s always been more complex than you realized. He loved his parents, but they did a fucking number on him, because that’s what all parents do. His dad was always angry—resentful that he didn’t have more to give his family. And his mom was always trying to keep the peace. It made Jack learn how to be passive. It’s why he’s always got to play the good guy. It’s not healthy. Everyone’s got to be bad on occasion. Don’t you realize that he was drawn to you because you let him be a little bit naughty? The condoms Ross Connor saw? Jack had affairs. Multiple.”
“I can’t picture that.”
“He loved Molly—don’t get me wrong. It’s like Molly was to Jack, as Jack was to you. Does that make any sense?”
Unfortunately, it did. I had known in my head that I should be devoted to Jack. That I should love him and marry him and grow old with him. But we never actually felt right together. Being with him was so much work, like I was constantly pretending to be a nicer, better, more generous person than I really was. “This sounds awful, but our relationship was so—”
“Uninspired? That’s what Jack said to me once about his relationship with Molly.” Charlotte began to fiddle with a pen on the table. “Eventually third parties got involved—no one that really mattered, but who filled the gap in his life with Molly and Buckley. It’s kind of ironic: you always thought Jack was too nice for you, but he always had an edge, a darkness, that he didn’t show you.”
“How dark? Dark enough to kill three people? Because, I’ve got to be honest, Charlotte: I think that’s what we’re looking at.”
“That’s why I came here, Olivia. To tell you, I honestly don’t know if Jack did it or not. The minute Buckley pulled out Jack’s laptop at my apartment, I thought, maybe somewhere deep in her unconscious, even she knows it’s possible her father did this.”
“You’re the one who’s been telling me the whole time that it’s ridiculous to even imagine Jack hurting another person.”
“Because I wanted you to help him. I still do. And I was probably lying to myself, too. But I’m not blind; I’ve seen the evidence trickling in. The reason I’m here is because I’ve thought about it: Jack could tell me he did this horrible thing, and I’d still fight for him to my last breath. I’m not talking about excusing him. I’m talking about supporting him. I still love him, and I need to know that you’re still fighting for him.”
What she was saying would probably sound crazy to someone who wasn’t a criminal defense lawyer, but I knew exactly what she was talking about: the parents, spouses, and siblings who came to understand their loved ones were guilty, who helped them get through the court process, who visited in prison. People don’t stop existing just because they’ve done something terrible.
“I don’t know, Charlotte. I’ve been lied to by clients, but this is Jack. It feels personal.”
“That’s because it is. You owe him, Olivia. Help him however you can.”
I WOKE TO THE SOUND of people screaming at each other. My left ear, resting on my pillow, was killing me. I slipped my hand beneath my cheek. I had fallen asleep with my earbuds in, repeat episodes of Law & Order still playing back-to-back on my iPad.
It was four in the morning. A half-empty bottle of wine was open on my nightstand. I resisted the temptation to pour another glass.
There was a reason I had jammed those earbuds in. Without the distraction of a television show, I kept hearing the clash of competing voices in my head. Ross Connor, saying Jack had a dark side. Scott Temple, telling me that Jack was playing me. Then the sound of Jack, begging me to do what I could to keep him out of prison. Followed by Charlotte, saying that I owed him.
I pulled out my earbuds, sat up, and opened my nightstand drawer. I found the black velvet box at the very back, covered in dust. I hadn’t looked inside it for years. I pulled out the watch first and placed it next to the clock. The necklace was tangled but I managed to smooth out the chain and slip it around my neck. It
was Jack’s present to me for my twenty-first birthday, the first time I’d ever received a little blue box with a white ribbon.
I had returned his mother’s ring to Charlotte after the breakup, but these things I’d kept: the watch because how could I return it, and the necklace because I wanted it. The tiny silver clasp locked on the second try, still a familiar maneuver after all these years.
I rolled onto my back, closed my eyes, and ran the tip of my index finger around and around the infinity-shaped pendant. Over the last twenty years, my relationship with Jack had been condensed down to a single day—no, the single moment when he had walked into the apartment and seen the evidence that would finally convince him to leave. But there had been all those other moments when he had stayed.
THE LAST TIME I SAW my mother in person was during winter break of my senior year in college. It was January third. I remember the date because Dad put her in the emergency room with internal bleeding in the early hours of the New Year. The next-door neighbor called me on the second because she thought I “ought to know.” From what she’d heard, the emergency room had called the police, and my father was in custody.
I had to max out one credit card and dip into another for a full-fare ticket on the earliest flight the next morning. I would have spent ten times more if necessary. Jack insisted on coming with me. I suspected it was the only time in his entire friendship with Charlotte that he asked her for money.
When I got to the hospital, I found my mother watching Wheel of Fortune in a shared room. She turned her bruised face away the second she saw me. “Thought you were staying in New York for the holidays.”
“Marla called.”
“Of course she did. Does your father know you’re home?”
“We came straight here from the airport.”
“He picked you up all the way in Eugene?”
“No, Jack came with me. We rented a car. He’s in the waiting room.”
“Still got him fooled, do you?” She winced from the pain of a chuckle.
“Marla told me Dad got arrested.”
“Got out last night.” My father had always managed to confine the proof of his violence to our home. Naively, I had thought that his getting arrested meant that he would actually stay in jail for more than a day.
“The nurse told me they sent in a social worker to talk to you about options. Support groups. A part-time job. Pretty soon, I’ll be in a position to help. You can do this.”
“You’ve got to stop being so judgmental, Olivia. I don’t know where you got that from.”
“Mom, I’m not judging you. I’m trying to help.”
“No, you’re telling me once again how to live my life. I’ve never heard of a child so convinced she’s better than her family.”
It escalated quickly, the way these things always did with my parents. Within minutes, she was screaming that I should mind my own damn business and telling me to “go back to that school of yours.” She got so loud that her roommate pressed the call button, and I was asked to leave so “the patient could get her rest.”
When Jack woke up alone in the motel that night, he asked the clerk where to find the nearest bar. He found me playing quarters with two guys in blue jeans and work boots. I was to the point of grabbing the glass before waiting to see where the coin landed.
Jack had thrown some bills on the counter and turned the empty glass upside down. “Let’s go home.”
My drinking buddies rose from their stools, begging to differ, but something about the look in Jack’s eyes made them back down. Had they seen his dark side?
At the motel, Jack held my hair in the bathroom until I had nothing but dry heaves. He washed my face and helped me into bed. As he wrapped his arms around me, he whispered, “I’m so sorry, Olivia. I understand you now. I know you. And I love you, forever.”
In the morning, we flew back to New York. I pretended not to remember anything after leaving the bar, and we never talked about that trip again. Five months later, he proposed.
I SPENT THE NEXT HOUR flipping from one side of the bed to the other. The second the clock clicked to five o’clock, I took off the necklace, jumped up, and pulled on a pair of jeans.
The office was pitch black. I was careful to lock the door behind me immediately.
I hit the lights and headed straight to the conference room, where an entire wall of brown boxes stood, threatening to tumble. I scanned the Sharpie notes I had scrawled on the ends of each box. “Penn Station.” I pulled that box from beneath the one resting on top of it. It contained everything Einer had been able to compile about the Penn Station shooting.
I had skimmed the contents a couple of weeks earlier, and then quickly packed them up again because it was so upsetting. The video surveillance showing the entire shooting had never been released, but the media had published several still photographs from the scene. Thirteen dead bodies. Others splattered with blood. Some victims still alive, crawling, appearing to beg for help.
Inside these boxes was a way for Jack to not spend the rest of his life in a cell, even if he was guilty.
I hadn’t gotten Jack’s psychiatric records yet, but an insanity defense was out of the question. In New York, we’d have to prove that Jack lacked “substantial capacity” to appreciate either the nature of his conduct or the fact that his conduct was wrong. The problem was, Jack obviously went to great lengths to hide what he did, proving that he knew what he was doing and that it was wrong.
But if I could show that Jack acted under an “extreme emotional disturbance,” he would be convicted of manslaughter instead of murder. Plus, the jury would weigh the reasonableness of an extreme emotional disturbance claim from the perspective of a person in the defendant’s situation “under the circumstances as he believed them to be.” Last year, a woman had gotten an EED verdict when she claimed that she killed her child to save him from being tortured by his father. Even though she offered no proof that the father had ever hurt the child, what mattered under the law was that she believed the child would be tortured and that a painless death was the better alternative.
The facts as Jack believed them to be. Jack believed that Malcolm Neeley had neglected his son Todd, and nurtured his antisocial tendencies to the point where the father was to blame for the deaths that occurred at the son’s hands.
I was already picturing our arguments in court. Scott Temple would claim that the photographs from Penn Station were inflammatory, but the jury would need to see them to understand Jack’s psychological reaction when the civil suit against Malcolm Neeley was dismissed, stifling the one hope he retained for justice.
He could serve as little as five years. The judge would probably sentence him to more given the other victims involved, but it was still better than a life sentence for murder.
I had represented far worse people for doing even more horrible things. Jack might be guilty, but I could still help him.
I SET THE PHOTOGRAPHS ASIDE and began flipping through the police reports. The first four pages were devoted entirely to a list of the victims—some dead, some wounded; some female, some male; birth dates and races listed; last known addresses and phone numbers. Their next of kin.
Molly Buckley Harris. W/F. DOB 8-5-73. NOK: Jackson Harris, 212-929-4145, 177 W. 13th St.
It’s a funny thing. When you’re tired, general cognitive ability drops. There’s scientific evidence to back that up, no question. Because you’re slacking off, some other part of your brain—the base, the lizard, the id, whatever you want to call it—tries to compensate. Eighty-five percent brain-dead, fifteen-percent instinctive genius.
Maybe if I had slept more than three hours, I would have missed it. But I was exhausted, so my inner lizard kicked in. What my eyes might normally have skimmed past became a magnet drawing my full attention.
The phone number listed for Molly Buckley Harris’s next of kin. I’d seen that phone number before.
Chapter 21
THREE HOURS LATER, I appeared at Jack’s
apartment door in one of my best suits—a slate Armani—a black coffee in hand for me, cream and sugar for him.
“This is a nice surprise.”
I never had returned his phone calls yesterday. “It’s officially been a month since you’ve worn that state-provided jewelry on your ankle. I figured I should be here when the police come by for your home inspection.” In theory, the visit was a routine monthly appointment to monitor the equipment and sweep for any obvious violations of release conditions, but with the prosecution trying to pull Jack’s release, I assumed they might be looking for problems. “I brought caffeine.”
I held out a cup, but his hands were occupied by the two ties that he held up at either ear. “What do you think? A or B?” One was blue with white and red stripes, the other red with blue and white stripes.
“Either indistinguishable white-boy tie is fine.”
“Got it. We’ll go red.”
As he looped the silk around his collar, I led the way into the living room and set his coffee on an end table. “Have you ever noticed how things that seem like big decisions turn out not to be? Do you pick red or blue? And then you just get used to something and never think about it again.”
“I’m one hundred percent positive that I never cared about the contrast between those two ties. I think I bought them at the same time because they were on sale.”
“Right. But for all you know, red or blue could look totally different to the police officers who come here to check you out. Blue is honest, red is cynical, or vice versa.”
“Seriously? You can’t possibly think this is going to make me feel better.”
“Sorry, I’m just rambling. The check today is no big deal. But, just in case, wear the blue one. It’s perceived as calming. There’s research, actually, by overpaid jury consultants. My point is that sometimes we make decisions without really making them. Like, there’s a ton of articles out there about the number of people who have decided to give up landlines. It’s a huge cultural shift. Political polling even gets thrown off because some of the pollsters only call landlines and miss out on all the younger people who are cell only.”
The Ex Page 22
