The Ex (22 page)

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.

T
HREE 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.”

“That’s a far cry from red versus blue ties.”

“I know. But what I mean is that sometimes you decide things accidentally. Like Einer mentioned a few weeks ago that I was the rare forty-something-year-old who was cell only. But I never consciously made the decision. In the old days, I had a shitty apartment with a home phone because everyone automatically set up a phone account when you got an apartment. And then when I finally had some money in my pocket, I moved into a not-shitty place a few blocks away, and I just never hooked up a phone. Before I realized it, anyone who needed to find me called my office or cell. I ended up being one of those people who didn’t have a home phone number, just a mobile.”

Jack was adjusting the blue tie. Double Windsor. It looked
good. He was one of those men who looked better at forty-four than twenty-four.

“So, you don’t have a landline, either,” I said.

“Uh-uh.” His tie was straightened. He was now fiddling with his hair in the mirror above the fireplace.

“But you’ve lived here since—what—2001?”

“Yeah, right after Buckley was born.”

“So that’s what I don’t understand. No one was cell phone only in 2001. But now you don’t have a landline. It’s one thing to never get around to hooking it up. But at some point, you actually took the time to call Verizon and tell them to disconnect your phone. Why? To save thirty bucks a month?”

He had moved on to taming a stray eyebrow. “We never used it, I guess. I really don’t remember.”

It was the same breezy tone he’d used when he lied to me about Ross Connor’s attempt to interrogate him:
Oh, yeah, I guess I did have one break from routine
. When I’d asked him about making a threatening comment about Neeley:
Did I?

“Now that I can tell when you’re lying to me, I can’t help but wonder how many times I missed the signs.”

He turned away from the mirror and faced me. “Go ahead and ask the question, Olivia.”

“It’s not a question, it’s a fact. Tracy Frankel’s phone records—Einer thought she dialed the wrong number to a Soho shoe shop three times in a row. But he was wrong. Tracy was trying to call
you
.”

He punched the side of a fist against the edge of the mantelpiece. “This is just like you to dance around the issue for ten minutes, setting up some kind of test that’s impossible for me to pass. Can’t you just talk to me like a normal human being? It’s not what you think. I didn’t do this.”

My legs were shaking as I rose from the sofa. I had never seen Jack like this. “I saw your face when the ADA read Tracy’s name at
the arraignment. I thought you were freaked out because she was so young, but you recognized her name.”

Jack opened his mouth but nothing came out.

“By the way, you’re on your own for this inspection,” I said, dropping my cup in his office garbage can. “And once the police are gone, I’d spend the rest of your time coming up with an explanation for why Tracy would be calling your old number. I figured this out, and it’s pretty obvious that Scott Temple did, too. The bail hearing’s in two days. You’re going back to jail.”

I EXITED THE ELEVATOR TO
find Nick the doorman buttoning his blue blazer around his thick torso. “Good morning, Miss Randall. Normally I see you here when I’m on my way home.”

“I’m the early bird today, I guess. Hey, Nick. Do you mind if I ask you a question?” I rifled through my briefcase until I landed on a manila file folder, and then plucked out an eight-by-ten printout. “Have you ever seen this woman before?” It was Tracy Frankel’s booking photograph from her one drug arrest.

“Um—maybe? She looks familiar, I guess.”

“Do you mean from the newspaper?” I prompted. The media coverage of the shooting had been so focused on Jack and Malcolm Neeley that Tracy Frankel’s and Clifton Hunter’s photographs were rarely shown. But they had been featured in a few articles. “Something about the shooting down at the waterfront?”

Nick looked left and right, monitoring the lobby traffic before speaking in a hushed voice. “We’re under strict directions from the co-op board not to gossip about Mr. Harris’s . . .
situation
. Let the justice system do its thing, you know? Not for the neighbors to be all up in his business.”

“Sure. That sounds sensible.”

I was heading toward the revolving door when Nick called out behind me. “You know what? Come to think of it, now that you mention
Mr. Harris, I do remember where I’ve seen her. She came here looking for him once, or maybe twice.”

I turned around and pulled the picture again from my bag, laying it on the marble counter before Nick. “This woman? She came looking for Jack Harris?”

“Yes. It was a while ago. You know, before the, uh—”

“Situation?”

“Yeah, exactly. But not long before, because I remember she wasn’t wearing a lot of clothes, you know? So it was hot out already. I described her to Mr. Harris, and he made it clear that I should ask her to leave if she came back. I thought maybe she was some bad-influence friend of Buckley or something, but it’s not my place to ask. Oh, wait, that’s right—yeah, it’s coming back to me. After he said tell her to leave if she comes back, I saw her one more time, talking to Buckley on the street, but she never showed up again, not that I saw. That was the end of it. Does that maybe help Mr. Harris with his . . . you know?” he whispered.

I thanked Nick effusively for his help, but, no, it was definitely not helpful to Jack’s case.

Jack had an affair with one of Buckley’s friends? No, Tracy was four years older, an entire generation in teen years; I couldn’t imagine a connection between them. There was another explanation.

The second I hit the sidewalk outside Jack’s building, I called Don. He picked up immediately. “That former client who works at CUNY, the one who told you that Tracy Frankel only enrolled in one class before dropping out? Any chance you can call him? We need him to look up Tracy’s college application. Her mother said she bounced around from school to school.”

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“A list of every school she went to, hopefully with the dates.”

“That’s a tall order.”

“And don’t say anything about this to Jack or Charlotte yet.”

“Okay. Am I allowed to ask what’s going on?”

“Jack’s been lying to us this entire time.”

BY THE TIME I GOT
to the office, Don had the information I’d asked for. “I got hold of my guy at CUNY. I’ve never heard of any of these places, but I’m no expert on schools for rich, troubled city kids.” He handed me a sheet of paper. “What the hell’s going on?”

According to her one and only college application, Tracy had attended three high schools: the French School, Halton Girls’ School, and the Stinson Academy. “It’s a connection to Jack. Or at least it might be.” I showed him the crime report from the Penn Station shootings, listing Molly’s next of kin as Jackson Harris, along with his phone number. “Remember how Einer said Tracy called a shoe store in Soho three times? It bugged me at the time because if it had been a wrong number, she eventually would have called someone just one digit off. But she didn’t. She was trying to call Jack. The shoe store number used to be Jack’s landline at home, before Penn Station.”

Don looked confused. “And why would Tracy Frankel be calling him?”

“My guess is for money. She was an addict, and her parents had cut her off.”

“What am I missing here?”

“I think Tracy was blackmailing Jack. I just need to make a phone call to confirm it.”

I CALLED THE LAST HIGH
school Tracy had attended.

The headmaster at the Stinson Academy sounded nothing like a headmaster. No snoot or toot. In a heavy Bronx accent, John DeLongi confirmed that he’d been what he preferred to call the “head coach” at Stinson Academy for eleven years.

“Oh good. That means you’ll probably be able to help me. My name is Olivia Randall, and I’m one of the lawyers representing Jackson Harris.”

“Oh my. Well, that’s certainly been in the news.”

“Yes, that always makes our job interesting. We’re gathering background information in the event we decide to put on character evidence. Of course one aspect of Mr. Harris’s good character is the volunteer work he’s done discussing literature and writing with kids.”

“I’m no lawyer, but is that really the kind of thing a court will look at in a murder trial?”

I flipped the bird at my phone. Just give the information! “Well, as I said, we’re just collecting background for now. I assume that if the time came for it, someone there could tell the court about the work Mr. Harris did at the Stinson Academy?”

“Yeah, sure, no problem. I mean, he hasn’t come around for—I don’t know—two or three years, I guess, but, yeah, he was very generous with his time. Our students need modes of teaching that go beyond the traditional. With creative outlets, they can see that not everyone has the same cookie-cutter, billion-dollar jobs as their parents, and that’s okay.”

“So, just to confirm, Jack Harris volunteered with his writing workshops during the 2011 to 2012 academic year?”

“Well, that’s quite specific. Just one second and I can check this fancy machine here. Yep, sure enough, that was his last visit.”

I now knew for certain how Jack had met Tracy Frankel. I hung up the phone and took the seat next to Don in the conference room.

“I’m still completely confused,” he said. “Jack knew Tracy? How does this fit into his case?”

“Jack and Tracy weren’t the only people at that high school.” I found a copy of Malcolm Neeley’s transcript from the Penn Station civil suit on the table. I flipped to page forty-two. “Look. Right there.”

Don followed my finger to the critical sentence:
Let’s talk next about your son’s move from the Dutton School to the Stinson Academy.

I REMEMBERED THAT AMANDA TURNER
worked at a high-end PR firm in the Flatiron District. I took the liberty of showing up unannounced.

The security guard at the front desk made a quick call, and minutes later, Amanda—perfect hair and makeup—stepped from the elevator.

“Max has made it perfectly clear that I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she said.

“Please,” I said, “I can call you to the stand if necessary—Max, too—but something has come up in our investigation. It’s important. Doesn’t Max want to know the truth about his father’s murder?”

Amanda let out a sigh. “Do you know what it’s like for him to be the crazy shooter kid’s brother, the one with the stupid asshole father? But Malcolm being a bad person doesn’t justify what Jack Harris did—”

“Please, just one question about Max’s brother, okay? You told me that Todd was pining over a girl before the shooting at the train station. Was that another student at the Stinson Academy?”

“Seriously? This is what you’re worried about?”

“I think it matters, yes.”

Amanda waved at an attractive blonde who whisked through the lobby toward the elevator, then stepped toward me and lowered her voice. “Yes, it was some girl he knew from the Stinson Academy. We never actually met her. Todd would talk about how beautiful she was, and—this is mean—but no beauty was going to give Todd the time of day. Max and I called her his imaginary girlfriend.”

“Did Todd at least say what she looked like?”

“Um, a little, but again, we’d sort of goof on it. He said she had dark hair and pale skin and looked like something out of a fairy tale. She was a couple of years older, I think.”

“Do you remember anything else about her?”

“Not really. But I remember he called her Tee. That’s all I know.”

I WAS DISAPPOINTED WHEN BUCKLEY
answered the door at Jack’s apartment.

“Is something wrong?”

For a teenager, the girl’s people-reading skills weren’t too shabby. “Just need to run something by your dad. Sorry for not calling.”

“He told me the DA’s trying to put him back in jail until trial?”