The Ex (10 page)

“I need to get some stuff from my room to take back to Charlotte’s,” Buckley said. “You can go without me.”

“That’s okay. I’ll wait.” Charlotte had texted me ten minutes earlier, asking me to make sure that Buckley got back in the car with Barbie.

While Buckley packed a roller bag she pulled from her closet, I sat on the bed and looked around her room. The decor was tasteful compared to stereotypes about teenage girls. Not a pop of pink in sight. In a line above her headboard hung three framed album covers: Kanye West’s
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Abbey Road,
and an album by someone called Childish Gambino. Among the books on her shelves were a few trophies and ribbons, soccer and softball from what I could gather. A giant poster of One Direction was the only surprise.

She must have seen me looking at it. “My friend Jake gave it to me for my birthday. We say we hate them so much we sort of love them. So how long should I be packing for?”

I had no idea how to answer that question. For all I knew, she would never live here again. “The bail hearing’s this afternoon, but these kinds of things can take a few days to process. You can always come back if you need to.”

She pulled three more shirts from hangers, balled them together, and shoved them into the bag.

“Speaking of the bail hearing,” I said, “we haven’t talked about whether you should go, but—”

“I’m going. Of course I’m going.”

“Good.” The fact that Jack was a single parent was my best shot,
however slim, at getting him released pending trial. And Buckley’s presence was a reminder that Jack was also in some ways a victim of Malcolm Neeley. “Wear something conservative but don’t overdo it. Judges can tell when you’re faking it.”

She held up a short-sleeved, navy blue cotton wrap dress. “Is this okay? I wore it to my dad’s editor’s wedding.”

“Perfect. With flats, please. And Doc Martens don’t count.”

“Channel my inner One Direction fan—got it. Any chance you can help me convince Charlotte to let me stay here by myself? I’d be perfectly fine. Doorman out front. Takeout every night. I promise not to stick my fingers in any electrical outlets.”

“I don’t think Charlotte will go for that.”

“I know. And I already tried to convince her to stay here with me. She patted me on the head and said I was
adorable
. She thinks of anything south of Forty-Second Street as the ghetto.”

I was surprised when she sat next to me on the bed. “So how reliable is that gunshot powder test you told me about?”

“You mean gunshot residues? Well, basically, when a gun is fired, gunpowder gets ignited by hot gas, which causes it to explode. The expanding gas is what forces the bullet out. That process emits what people call gunshot residues.”

“And the police found that on Dad’s shirt?”

I nodded. “But here’s the thing. Have you ever used baby powder, and you keep finding it everywhere for days because it sticks to everything?” She was nodding. “So gunshot residues are even finer than talcum powder. You can’t even see them. They get transferred from surface to surface. So if a police officer fired a gun in training and then leaned against a wall in the police station—”

“And then my father leaned against the same wall—”

“Exactly.” I realized I should have explained all of that when I first told her about the GSR results.

“You’re a really good lawyer, right?”

“Reportedly.”

“Like, you get people off even when they’re guilty.”

“That’s probably happened more than a few times.”

“Just do your best to help my dad, okay?”

“Of course, Buckley. I promise.”

I heard her sniffle as she gave me a quick hug before zipping her suitcase.

I
BARELY RECOGNIZED
the bald, barrel-chested man in a custom-cut suit who welcomed me into his office at 1 Police Plaza. When I had known him twenty years earlier, Lieutenant Ross Connor was merely
Officer
Ross Connor, skinny, with big ears that stuck out from the backward baseball cap he always wore off duty. That skinny officer’s partner had been Jack’s brother, NYPD Officer Owen Harris.

When I’d asked Einer to track Ross down for me, I had expected him to be retired by now, living in Idaho or Florida or one of those other places where police officers moved to grow old. But with a Google search, Einer had told me that Ross was still with the NYPD, chosen to head the department’s Intelligence Bureau. I couldn’t think of a better person to support Jack’s request for bail.

“It’s not any defense lawyer I’d let into my office without an appointment. But when I heard your name, curiosity got the best of me. Now I’m just pissed. How do you look just the same when I look like an old guy who ate my younger self?”

We hugged awkwardly. “From that suit and these digs, I’d say
you’re doing pretty well. I was shocked that you were still on the job. You’ve got to be coming up on your twenty-two years.” Ross had been the younger of the Ross-Owen pairing.

“A little bit past it. But if I stay on two more years, my pension will be based on what I’m earning here in the Intelligence Bureau. So, yeah, I’m doing all right. But you’re not here to catch up on my retirement plans. This has to be about Jack.”

“His bail hearing’s today. He could use your support.”

“I don’t know what Jack told you, but I don’t know the man anymore.”

“But you used to, so you know Jack couldn’t have done this. Just having you there on his side would make a difference.”

“No offense, but I’m not in the habit of being used by defense lawyers.”

“Come on, Ross. You and Owen were like brothers.”

He shook his head. “So that makes Jack my brother by extension? I don’t think so.”

I knew that coming here would be a long shot; I was asking a member of law enforcement to stand up for a murder defendant. But I did not expect Ross to be this hostile. “Where’s this coming from?”

He paused before answering. “At one time, you were right: I thought that bond between me and Owen sort of tied me to Jack, too. But when Owen died, Jack totally blew me off. I got that he was hurting, but so was I. Owen was about as close to a brother to me as I was ever going to get, and I needed Jack after he died. Like,
really
needed him. I had to extend my leave from the job. I was drinking too much. My wife was starting to lose her patience. And Jack couldn’t even return my calls.”

I started to explain that Jack had gone through a difficult time, but Ross interrupted. “The psych ward. I know. Not because he told me, mind you, but I found out all the same. Tried to visit him. Tried calling when he got out. He eventually got back to me, but was always too
busy to get together—book deadlines, child care, some excuse. I only saw him twice over the next few years, and it felt forced both times. I finally stopped trying.”

“So he shut down, and shut everyone out. He probably just didn’t want to be reminded about Owen’s accident. But there’s no way he did this. We have to help him.”

“Did he tell you I was the one who delivered the news about Penn Station?”

The fact took me by surprise. I shook my head.

“When you lose a partner—even if it’s not on the job—it sticks with you in the department. Your fellow officers are respectful about it, you know? So when Molly was killed, one of the officers on the scene happened to be at the 44th with me and Owen back in the day and made the connection when she saw the name of Molly’s next of kin. I got the call, asking whether I wanted to be the one to notify Jack. I hadn’t seen him for fifteen years, but I thought he’d still rather hear it from me than a stranger, you know? When I showed up at his place, the whole situation was kind of weird—him pretending like he meant to call me, or that we’d only been sort of out of touch. He was just, I don’t know how to explain it—like I’d never known him. I was really starting to regret saying I’d deliver the news. Then when I did—I just pulled off the bandage, you know?
There’s been a shooting, Molly was there, she’s gone.
Done.”

“That can’t have been easy.”

“No, it wasn’t, but you learn how to do it when you’re a cop. And I’ve seen a lot of responses over the years. Jack’s was ice cold. I actually wondered for a second if he’d heard me.”

I pictured Jack repeating
I can’t believe this is happening
over and over again after his father died. Who knew what coping skills he had learned during his hospitalization. “Maybe that flat response was his way of handling the shock.”

“It wasn’t just that one moment,” Ross said. “I left my card and told
him I was there for him if I could help in terms of providing information about the case or facilitating anything else with the department. It’s not like I expected him to be my best buddy, but, man, he never even thanked me for coming. I called his house a few months later to see if he wanted to go out for beers. Left a message on his answering machine. But, just like before, he never called back.”

“He was grieving, Ross. Molly was the love of his life.” Or at least one of them, I thought. “I understand that your feelings were hurt because he didn’t return your attempts at friendship, but that doesn’t make him a murderer. Can you really picture Jack executing someone in cold blood?”

His expression was almost a wince, followed by silence. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded distant.

“Look, there’s one more thing. I wasn’t going to mention it, but you’re obviously not getting my point. When I broke the news, he dropped the book bag he was carrying—he hadn’t even set it down yet. A couple of condoms came falling out.”

“Awkward.”

“Very, but it didn’t need to be a big deal. If anything, it kind of provided some dark comedy. But Jack got all freaked out, stuffing them back into the bag, offering all kinds of reasons. I was like—hey, man, it’s nothing. And then basically he couldn’t get me out of the apartment fast enough.”

“You know Jack. He was probably just embarrassed.”

“That’s what I told myself, too. But not long after that, he started giving interviews to the press. You remember?”

I did. Molly was the heroic teacher who tried to stop the shooting; the loving and devoted mother; the wife who worked full-time and supported him while he wrote his first book. Jack was the adoring husband—a successful novelist who volunteered his time teaching writing workshops for the kinds of students his wife was so devoted to.

The Jack and Molly love story.

Ross continued. “So one of the guys at the house—who doesn’t know my connection to Jack, obviously—says something snarky about Jack milking the press, to sell books or something.”

I made a disgusted sound, but Ross cut me off.

“Hey, you got to understand—we see it all the time. Some thug gets hit by a stray bullet in a drive-by. What picture do the papers run? Not the one where he’s in colors, posing with a forty-ouncer and a Glock while throwing signs. No, they run the high school graduation shot, all shiny blue robes and proud smile.”

“Or maybe,” I said, “all the gangsta bravado was a pose, and the real kid was the one in that graduation picture.”

“Spoken like a true defense lawyer,” Ross said.

“So what’s your point about Jack’s interviews?”

“I still had a bad taste in my mouth about how he treated me like a total stranger—after Owen died, when he got out of the hospital, and again after Molly. And I got to admit, I started thinking: Maybe this is all a little too good to be true. It’s like to your face, he’s all honest and thoughtful, with that ‘just be happy’ demeanor. It wouldn’t be the first time that a family produced two sons—one a Boy Scout, the other a loose cannon. Despite all appearances, Jack’s got a dark side there.”

“Jack, dark? You’re forgetting how many years I spent with him.”

“And you’re forgetting how long I’ve been a cop. I saw a glimpse that day in his apartment when his bag spilled open. I’d seen something he didn’t want me to see. I had peeked behind the light, cheerful facade. And my guess is that his dark side is what landed him in a psych ward after Owen died. And now all these years later, with a man like Malcolm Neeley, who knows where the darkness took him?”

I should have realized it was a waste of time to come here. Ross was on the verge of retiring. There was no way he was going to rock the NYPD boat, even if that meant convincing himself that someone as decent as Jack might be guilty.

WHEN I WALKED INTO VESELKA,
I spotted Gary Hannigan at the front counter. Even though I was five minutes early, he was already a third of his way through a Reuben sandwich. He wiped his right hand with a wad of tiny paper napkins from a stainless steel holder before a quick shake. “I recognize you from around the courthouse.”

“Same.” Hannigan was the lawyer for the families of the victims killed at Penn Station. By reputation, he was an old school liberal who saw his multimillion-dollar lawsuits as a way to rage against the machine. When I’d called him on my way to police headquarters, he told me that he could give me thirty minutes over lunch—“your treat, of course.”

“You know that’s not a real Reuben, don’t you?” Veselka used dry sausage instead of corned beef or even pastrami.

“Don’t care. It’s delicious.” He moved his briefcase from the seat next to him, and waved at the waitress while I got settled in. I ordered a plate of pierogies without looking at a menu.

“A fellow regular,” Hannigan remarked. I didn’t tell him that my visits to this twenty-four-hour-a-day Ukrainian diner were typically at three in the morning. “Not too many lawyers left who are still fearless about going to trial. I respect that about your partner, Don Ellison. Looks like he gave you the bug. Wouldn’t in a million years have guessed that Jack Harris would ever need a criminal defense lawyer, though. The man’s clean, you know. Squeaky, like Soft Scrub. And not in that creepy way, the way some people are so nice you think they gotta have some bodies in the basement. He’s a good guy.”

There was that word “clean” again. What Hannigan saw as authentic, Ross had seen as a cover. “It was actually Buckley who called,” I said. “I went to college with Jack.”

He smiled at the mention of Jack’s daughter. “That kid’s tongue could cut through diamonds, but she’s all talk. I hope to God the police are wrong about this.”

I noticed that Hannigan didn’t say he was
sure
the police were
wrong. I explained how Jack had first become a suspect, with a primary focus on motive, before asking his impression about just how much anger Jack shouldered against Neeley.

“It’s probably bad karma to speak ill of the dead, but Malcolm Neeley really was one mean son of a bitch.” Hannigan licked a glob of Russian dressing from his thumb. “He was a shitty husband, a cruel and distant father, and had absolutely no empathy for other human beings.”

“Tell me that he kicked puppies on weekends, and I think I’d like to call you to the stand.”

“Look, I’m in a tricky situation here—with those pesky professional ethics and whatnot. We’ve got a mutual client in Jack, so I want to help. But I’ve got clients from a dozen other families, and if I had to guess, you’ll get around to arguing that any one of them might’ve pulled the trigger instead of your guy. To be honest, I can’t see any of them doing something like this, but at the same time, I guess I could see any one of them doing it, if that makes any sense. I mean, it’s an off-the-rails, jacked-up loony thing to do, but people do crazy stuff over far less disgusting people.”

“Disgusting? Sounds like you took this case personally.” The waitress was back with a plate of steaming-hot pierogies.

“I take all my cases personally, Ms. Randall. Let me tell you one story about Malcolm Neeley—just one of many—that kind of sums it up. You know how Todd had an older brother in college when the shooting happened?”

I nodded, remembering a few articles obliquely juxtaposing the idea of two such different boys emerging from the same household.

“His name’s Max. Works for the dad’s hedge fund. Decent enough kid from what I can tell, given the bloodline. Anyway, this is the kind of person Malcolm Neeley was. When I had him in the deposition, he became unleashed and strayed from the talking points his lawyer had fed him. He starts yelling about what a dedicated father he was—how hard he worked to make sure his boys had
character,
as he called it.
When the older son Max was sixteen years old, he wrecked dad’s Jaguar up in Connecticut and didn’t take it seriously enough for Poppa—you know,
insurance will fix it, what’s the big deal.
So Neeley throws Max in his car, drives him to their housekeeper’s, and bangs on the door. She’s probably wondering—what the hell, you know? And in struts Neeley with young Max in tow. He says,
See how other people live? Can you imagine living here? Clean up your act unless you want to end up like this.
That was the story he
chose
to tell about himself, mind you, as one of his better moments.”

“But you weren’t suing him for being a bad person. You blamed him for his son’s decision to commit mass murder.”

“I don’t know you, Ms. Randall, but do you have good parents? Not, like, perfect-1950s-television-style parents, but basically decent parents who loved you and supported you?”

“Yes. Very much.”

The lie came effortlessly. Hannigan didn’t need to know that Hank Randall was an alcoholic who told me that I was “selfish” for going away to a “fancy New York college” instead of staying in Oregon because my mother “needed me.” Or that the reason my mother needed me was that, when my father wasn’t hitting her, she made herself feel better by reminding me at every opportunity that I wasn’t nearly as good as I thought I was.

“Good for you, because there is no greater misery than to know that your own parents are disappointed in you. Malcolm Neeley was the kind of person who was disappointed in every single person who wasn’t named Malcolm Neeley, but he was especially unforgiving of the people he was supposed to love and protect. Okay, one more story, this one from Max’s ex-girlfriend. She came to me on her own, all too happy about the prospect of nailing the elder Neeley to the wall. I got the impression that Neeley basically controlled Max and it took its toll on their relationship. Anyway, the day Todd and Max’s mom overdosed—Vicodin and vodka, if you’re wondering—was two
days after Max went back to Princeton for his senior year. Afterward, whenever Todd would act especially withdrawn—staring into space, rocking back and forth, totally out to lunch—their father would yell at Todd:
This is why your mother didn’t want to be alone in the house with you.
It was a two-for-one mind fuck: Todd got the message that Mom killed herself because he was a head case, and Max got the message that it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been away at school. I asked Neeley about it in his deposition. His response? He was trying to get Todd to
learn from his mistakes and act more like a man
.”