The Ex (23 page)

“It’s typical bluster,” I said. “The legal equivalent of trash talk. The DA is just trying to panic us into a plea deal.”

I was lying through my teeth but didn’t know what else to tell her. She walked me into the living room, and Jack emerged from the back of the apartment, his hair still damp from a shower.

“Guess all pop-ins are unannounced when you’re on electronic monitoring.”

I wasn’t about to apologize. “Can we talk for a second?”

He gave Buckley a look that had become shorthand for “beat it.” She couldn’t be within earshot if we were going to preserve attorney-client privilege.

The second we were alone, I said two words: Tracy Frankel.

“I don’t know why she tried to call my old number.”

Still lying. “This whole time, you’ve been saying it was
so unseemly
to point out that she was a drug addict.
Basic human decency.
You are so full of shit, Jack. You didn’t want us digging into Tracy’s background because you were afraid we’d come right back to you. I called the Stinson Academy. You taught one of your workshops while she was a student. Tracy’s mother told me she had a crush on a poetry teacher. The condoms that Ross Connor saw. It all makes sense now; she was one of your girlfriends.”

I saw Jack’s gaze move toward the back of the apartment. Even
with a life sentence on the line, he was worried about his daughter finding out he was a cheater.

“I screwed up, okay?” He sat on the sofa and gripped his knees with his fingertips. “It was a few times, and it was colossally stupid.”

Finally. “So what happened, Jack? Did Tracy get a little too clingy after Molly died, calling you at home, talking about becoming the next Mrs. Jackson Harris? So you dropped her cold and disconnected your phone, and thought you’d gotten rid of her. But fast-forward, and now Mommy and Daddy won’t pay her bills. You’re in the news, a beloved widower and plaintiff in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a hedge fund manager. Suddenly you’re back on her radar.” I was pacing, my words flowing quickly. I could see every part of the story I was telling. “She calls the old number three times in a row, then starts showing up at your building. And when you don’t give her what she wants, she moves on to another target. She wasn’t calling the Sentry Group for Max; she was calling Malcolm. She was going to tell him everything she knew about you. And now she and Malcolm are both dead.”

“You really think that? You think I could do something like that?”

Yes, after all these weeks, with all this evidence, I finally did.

Jack could see the answer to his question in my eyes. “I disconnected our phone line because she kept calling me after Molly died, and I just couldn’t even look at her without feeling sick. Then she showed up at the building a couple of months ago. She was blackmailing me.”

“I found a witness who saw Tracy talking to Buckley. Was she threatening to tell your daughter, too?”

Jack shot another look toward the back hallway. “She doesn’t know anything. Tracy asked her for directions or something, and then told me she’d met my daughter. Yes, she threatened to tell her everything.”

“This wasn’t just about your affair with a seventeen-year-old girl,” I said. “This had something to do with Penn Station. Your lawsuit. Why else would Tracy go to Malcolm Neeley?”

When I first realized Tracy had been trying to call Jack, I had
assumed that it had something to do with an affair. But once I connected them both to the Stinson Academy, I had seen the common link to Todd Neeley. He had also been a student there, in love with an older girl named Tee, with dark hair and pale skin.

“She saw the lawsuit in the paper. She cornered me when I was coming out of my building and said, ‘I wonder what Mr. Neeley would think if he found out that you had a role in the shooting, too?’ I honestly never made the connection until then.”

The connection.
I felt the links in the chain beginning to form, but I still hadn’t managed to hook them together. “Todd found out about you and Tracy.”

Jack nodded. “He was obsessive. I guess he followed Tracy around enough that he saw her get in my car.”

“And Penn Station?” I asked.

“The witnesses said Molly was talking to Todd before he pulled out the gun. Everyone assumed she had seen something—some kind of gesture or a flash of the weapon, or maybe heard him say what he was about to do. She was the heroic teacher, the one who tried to talk him out of doing it.”

“But Tracy told you otherwise,” I said, “when she showed up this summer.”

“At first, I had no idea what she was talking about,” Jack said. “But then she tells me that she knew Todd from school. When he asked who her boyfriend was, she actually told him—that’s how she was. Bold. Reckless. And smart enough to figure out the truth. I should have told you, but I was afraid no one would believe me. I mean, falling for some girl who threw herself at me—”

“Really, Jack?”

“She did,” he said. “
Repeatedly
. But you’re right; she was seventeen years old. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I was—I wasn’t happy with Molly. I always had one eye open, looking for something else—someone else. You of all people should understand.”

It was a low blow. “That’s not the same. I wasn’t a teacher sleeping with a teenager.”

“No, you were just fucking my brother.”

I felt myself flinch. All these weeks, he had acted like he had forgiven me. I had convinced myself he didn’t know it was Owen. “Jack—”

“I helped him pick out that watch.” His voice sounded distant. “Nice enough to be presentable, cheap enough to take an occasional beating on the job.”

I searched his face for some explanation for why he hadn’t said anything earlier, but his eyes were dead. I had no idea who I was looking at.

“You keep accusing me of lying?” he said. “The biggest lie I’ve told was that I don’t blame you for what happened. Of course I do. I called him so I could beat the crap out of him. But when he walked into the bar, I realized I’d have no one else. I wasn’t going to let you take away the only family I had left. I wallowed all night about you, but never said what I knew. That’s why he drank so much, because of what you made him do.”

“I didn’t
make
him do anything.” I stopped myself, knowing that he was manipulating me again. He’d been saving up this moment for when he really needed it. “You have no idea how much I’ve punished myself, but don’t try comparing that to what you’ve done.”

“It’s exactly the same, Olivia. Don’t you see that? You didn’t put Owen behind the wheel, but the circumstances you created—that all three of us created—did. I may have set all this in motion, but I didn’t pull the trigger. Todd followed Molly from the apartment that morning so he could expose my affair with Tracy. Knowing Molly, she didn’t believe him. She always thought the best of me, even when I didn’t deserve it. Todd must have moved on to Plan B and pulled out the guns. That’s why there was a pause after they spoke; he’d been trying to get her to see the truth about her husband. Molly died because of me—because I cheated on her with some screwed-up teenager, and she refused to believe it.”

I was not going to let him use Owen to keep lying to me. “There’s no way you were going to allow Tracy to tell the world this information.”

His expression shifted again. “Well, I definitely wasn’t going to let her shake me down.” His voice was stronger now, his fists tucked under his arms. I had never seen Jack this aggressive. This was the same guy who used to eat food he didn’t order rather than point out a waiter’s mistake. “I was terrified, but made it absolutely clear I’d rather be exposed as some adulterous creep than let her control me for the rest of our lives. I assume that’s why she was calling the Sentry Group—to tell Malcolm what she knew, for a price. When the prosecutor said her name at my arraignment, I literally felt like I was going to vomit. But I swear to God, Olivia, I have no idea who killed them.”

“It does work out very well for you that both of them are dead.”

“And that’s why I couldn’t tell you, don’t you see that? You never would have believed me.”

He was right. And I still didn’t.

I WAS HAILING A CAB
at the corner when I heard someone call out my name. I turned to see Buckley walking toward me.

“Wait, don’t go,” she said as a taxi started to roll in my direction. I waved off the driver.

“What’s up, Buckley?”

“You have to help my dad. You promised.”

This was the last thing I needed to deal with right now. “You’re not supposed to eavesdrop on us. It’s attorney-client privilege. The prosecution could make you testify. Do you understand that?”

She flinched as my words got louder, as if she’d never been scolded before.

“I didn’t eavesdrop. I could just tell something was wrong after you left. Dad almost ran after you, and I had to remind him about the monitor.”

“Well, that’s good then. Go back home.”

“Are you going to be able to keep him out of jail?”

She couldn’t possibly believe I had an answer to that question. Her brow was furrowed, and she looked like she was about to cry. This was about more than sensing that “something was wrong.” She had definitely heard something.

“You’ve been following your father’s case. I know you’ve seen pictures of Tracy Frankel.” She’d been staring at Tracy’s mug shot on Charlotte’s iPad right before Jack came home on bail. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Buckley might think of herself as smart, but she was sixteen years old, and I’d learned a skill or two as a lawyer. I let my question sit between us. If my suspicions were wrong, it was a non sequitur. If not, she’d eventually reply.

“I—she just came up to me on the street. She asked me where she could find a WiFi connection.”

“Are you sure that’s all she said?”

“Yeah, she was some stranger on the street.” Buckley was looking at the sidewalk, tapping one foot nervously. She may have thought Tracy Frankel was a random woman last month, but she certainly knew more now. If I had to guess, she’d heard my entire conversation with Jack. “Did I screw up? I didn’t say anything about recognizing her because I thought it would look bad for my father. I was confused.”

Maybe some part of her had known all along that her father was guilty. I heard my cell phone chime in my purse. I held up an arm toward an approaching cab before she could argue.

“It’s fine, Buckley. Just go back home. I’ll see you at the bail hearing. Everything’s under control.”

I waited until she reached her lobby before climbing into the cab. The driver had already started the meter. “Are we going somewhere or not?”

If he hadn’t been so snarky, I might have ignored the buzz of my
phone. Instead, I made a point of checking my screen before closing the door. It was a text from Einer: Jack’s medical records from the Silver Oaks Psychiatric Center had finally arrived. Einer was leaving them in my office.

I DROPPED MY BRIEFCASE IN
one of the guest chairs and headed straight to the small box that had been added to the chaos of my conference table. I recognized Einer’s handwriting on the note dropped on top:
Finally! Maybe something in here to help an EED claim?

Extreme emotional disturbance. Manslaughter instead of murder. Einer had picked up some legal knowledge over the years.

I grabbed the letter opener from my desk and used it to cut through the tape around the box’s edge. I pulled out a three-inch stack of files and placed them in front of me. As I did a cursory flip through the pages, I saw references to all the grief Jack had suffered in just a few years. His mother’s death when he was just a teenager. His father a few years later. Then Owen. I caught my own name a few times.

The notes were roughly in reverse chronological order. It was going to be a long night. I flipped to the very back page to start from the beginning.

The initial intake notes were dated six days after Owen’s car accident. They resembled every scribble I’d ever seen my own physicians make—completely illegible.

When I realized what I was reading, I saw the file begin to shake in my hands. I looked away, and then forced myself to check to see whether I’d somehow misunderstood. I needed—I didn’t know what I needed. To get out of here. To have never taken that phone call from Buckley. To be someone else.

I moved to my desk, opened my browser, and searched for “Robin Scheppard doctor.” Jack’s psychiatrist was still at Silver Oaks. According to the hospital website, Dr. Scheppard had attended the
U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Boston University School of Medicine before completing her residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

I picked up my phone and dialed the phone number listed on the website. “May I please speak with Dr. Robin Scheppard?”

An hour and a half later, I was pulling a Zipcar rental off I-95 in Stamford, Connecticut. When I passed the brick wall with a discreet sign that said Silver Oaks, I turned into the hospital parking lot and came to a stop.

As I reached for the stack of folders on the passenger seat, I clicked on the car’s dome light. I looked one more time at Jack’s intake form, knowing that the words wouldn’t have magically transformed during the drive from New York.

Ptx presents requesting inptx hosp. “Thinking of possibility” of killing gf after death in fam.

Jack had checked himself into the hospital because he had found himself thinking about killing me.

D
R. ROBIN SCHEPPARD
met me at the reception desk with a chilly handshake—both literally and figuratively. “Thank you so much for seeing me after hours, Doctor. And on such short notice.”

She led me to an office that felt more like a cozy study than a medical office. “So, Ms. Randall, I reviewed the release that Jack Harris signed. It does authorize me to speak to you directly, but this is certainly unusual.”

“I’m aware. But Jack’s on trial for murder, and we have an important hearing tomorrow. I only got his medical records today.”

“Does this mean Jack is pleading insanity? Surely testimony from a doctor who has treated him more recently would be more helpful. I haven’t seen him for—it must be twenty years. I was barely out of my residency.”

“So you remember him.”

“Of course. But I assure you, my notes will be far more complete than my memory at this point.”

“I want to know your reaction when you heard that your former patient had been arrested for murder. That won’t be in your notes.”

“No. But I can’t imagine why it’s relevant, either.”

“Because you saw him when he wasn’t well. You’d know better than anyone whether the current charges seem like the kind of thing his illness could lead to. I’m not asking you to testify, Doctor, or even your medical opinion per se. I’m asking you simply as a person who knew a side of Jack that no one else ever saw: how did you respond to the news when he was arrested?”

“Well, as long as we’re clear that that’s what you’re asking, I was shocked. When Jack was a patient here, he was initially unresponsive, with severe depression. Even when he started to communicate, he was stoic. If there were any concerns about violence, it was more about self-harm. He presented as someone who may never have had any onset of mental illness had it not been for this tremendous reaction to grief.”

“His brother’s death.”

“Yes, that. But grief can be cumulative, even over years, especially to a personality that might be described as fragile. His mother’s death when he was a teenager, followed by his father’s death a few years later. Then his brother. And a breakup, which I believe you know about?”

“Yes, I’m that Olivia Randall. The one he thought about killing if I read your notes correctly.”

Her face went blank momentarily. “It’s funny. I had actually forgotten about that.”

“Seems pretty significant to me, and not especially funny, but I’m the one he wanted to kill.”

She shook her head. “If I had ever taken his comment about hurting you seriously, I would have been obligated to do something to protect you. But the very fact that he chose to come here—simply because the thought even crossed his mind—made me think that the last thing he wanted was to harm others.”

“But on the other hand, you also can’t tell me with any certainty that Jack’s innocent, can you?”

“Of course not, and you know that. Maybe this will help: I had a
reporter call me a few months ago. She was covering a murder case where a seemingly nice, normal college student came up with an extensive plan to kill a fellow student over some slight grudge. Because I’ve testified in numerous homicide trials, she wanted my insight about how a quote-unquote normal person can come to commit cold-blooded, premeditated murder.”

“And?”

“I’ve spent a good number of hours of my career talking to people who admit to being murderers. These seemingly normal people tell me how it starts small. They get fired from their job, or dumped by their husband, and they begin to wish some kind of bad upon the person responsible—typically, that the world will come to see the person for what they really are. And when karma or fate or whatever doesn’t come through, the seemingly normal person starts to think, ‘What if they died?’ And that turns into, ‘What if I killed them?’ And eventually, ‘How would I do it?’ and ‘Would I get away with it?’”

“That doesn’t sound normal to me.”

“Really? Many people, if they were being honest, would admit to having thought about it. It’s all hypothetical, mind you—just a fantastical and devilish daydream. But what happens psychologically is that the seemingly normal person is now becoming conditioned to the idea of killing, no different behaviorally than a dog hearing the doorbell over and over again. It’s no longer shocking. So the idea develops. And for most people, the idea remains exactly that. It stops right there. But for others, those thoughts become a training ground. And then when something happens to trigger and heighten the emotion toward the contemplated victim, the conditioning kicks in.
Bam.
The person kills. And it may seem premeditated because the thoughts were there all along. But they only became real at that second.”

“And you’re saying that Jack is like most of these people, where it all remained hypothetical.”

“Clearly. You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

ONCE I WAS ON I-95,
I listened to the hum of the Toyota Corolla, tires against concrete, my own breathing. It was almost like meditation.

I replayed the doctor’s tutorial in my head.
For most people, the idea remains exactly that.
When the thoughts were about me, Jack had made them stop by locking himself up for a year.
But for others, those thoughts become a training ground
. By the time he came to hate Malcolm Neeley, Jack no longer had the luxury of inpatient treatment. He had a daughter to take care of.
So the idea develops.

Jack knew where Malcolm Neeley could be found on Wednesday mornings. He could research information about surveillance along the Hudson River. Find the magazine article detailing the location of the cameras. He was a gifted novelist. He knew how to tell a story. He would know that truth could be stranger than fiction. He would know that the story of a mysterious beautiful woman would seem too bizarre to be a lie. How had he described it to Detective Boyle? Surreal, like he was narrating a tale for a reader.

I pictured him at the firing range, learning how to shoot a Glock. Driving to Jersey to buy one on the street. Opening a temporary e-mail account to hire Sharon Lawson. Telling her where to sit, right where a camera would catch a fleeting glimpse of the lady in the grass. I imagined him pulling the gun from the basket, aiming it at Malcolm.

Or had he shot Tracy first? The woman who looked like a younger me.

Tomorrow, Scott Temple was going to try to put Jack back into custody. I had seen what Jack looked like after only a couple of days in jail. And I had seen how anxious Jack was to know one way or the other whether he’d be convicted. I knew exactly how the uncertainty of the future, combined with pretrial incarceration, could change a defendant’s fortitude. Once Jack was in jail awaiting trial, he would become the kind of client who’d plead guilty just to get it over with.

What did I still owe him?

AT 9:52 THE NEXT MORNING,
the courthouse elevator doors opened. From the hallway outside Judge Amador’s courtroom, I saw Charlotte, Jack, and Buckley, side by side in a row. I’d grown accustomed to the picture, like a three-person
American Gothic
—two grim, worried faces, Jack the unreadable pitchfork in the center.

Jack was having a hard time maintaining eye contact with me. “I was wondering whether you’d even show up.”

“I’m your lawyer, Jack.”

I fought for clients all the time, even when I knew they were guilty. It wasn’t my job to know the truth. That didn’t change just because my client was Jack Harris.

When I walked into the courtroom, Scott Temple was already at counsel table. He shot me a sideways glance as I crossed the bar, and then continued to look at his notes.

“Can we talk about why we’re here?” I asked. I wished Don was here to ask the question, but he had texted me to say he was stuck in Judge Gregory’s courtroom and might be a few minutes late.

“The way you talked to me before pulling me in here on a so-called Brady violation? The frog and the scorpion, Olivia. No more side deals.”

Scott had always been one of my best resources at the DA’s office. I may have resolved to continue working for Jack, but I did regret burning a friend on his behalf.

“He hasn’t violated any of his release conditions, Scott. I really don’t understand why we’re here.”

“Because you ran over that incompetent ADA Amy Chandler at the original bail hearing. The case against your client is a lot stronger than you know. It’s time we got that on the open record.”

I turned to face the galley and realized the media were here. I recognized Jan Myers, along with reporters from the
Times, Daily News,
and
Post
. Max Neeley had just walked in, hand in hand with his ex-girlfriend Amanda Turner. She looked at me blankly, clearly not wanting me to show any sign of recognition.

I heard a door open at the front of the courtroom, and Judge Amador walked out of chambers in his robe. The bailiff called us to order.

“I SEE FAMILIAR FACES,” THE
judge said. “The People are moving to revoke bail? What’s the alleged violation?”

Temple rose from his chair. “If I can clarify, Your Honor. This is a motion to reconsider your original decision to grant bail in the first place. At the time, Your Honor concluded that Mr. Harris was not a flight risk, in large part because our case did not appear particularly strong. I take responsibility for that, Your Honor. I should have attended personally to present evidence that the arraignment ADA was not aware of.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, ADA Temple, but isn’t that Mr. Harris right there? If so, the house arrest appears to be working. What exactly is the problem here?”

“The problem, Your Honor, is that although the People have already complied with our obligations to disclose exculpatory evidence, eventually we will need to disclose additional information that will make the strength of our case quite clear. We believe that once this happens, Mr. Harris might indeed be motivated to flee.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that. What exactly is it that you’d like me to know that I didn’t hear at arraignment?”

Temple was starting to talk about the deposition transcript found among Jack’s files, revealing Malcolm Neeley’s habit of going to the football field on Wednesday mornings, when I interrupted. “This is clearly an attempt to get around the gag order, Your Honor. The courtroom is filled with reporters. I have no idea what evidence Mr. Temple thinks he has, but he’s trying to advertise it to the jury pool before I’m able to rebut it.”

As if on cue, a voice erupted from the galley. I turned to see Max
Neeley on his feet, Amanda grabbing his hand, trying to return him to his seat. “Judge, I deserve to have a private lawyer intervene on my behalf. Jack Harris’s lawyer has continually slandered me in these proceedings.”

“Okay, everyone.” Judge Amador was banging his gavel. “In chambers, lawyers only. Go on home, reporters. You, too, Mr. Neeley. There’s nothing to see here.”

AMADOR UNZIPPED HIS ROBE AND
took a seat at his desk. “Okay, kids. What exactly is going on? Does this have something to do with our last hearing miraculously ending up on
Eyewitness News
even though the courtroom was empty?”

Temple was having a hard time not looking smug. “You’re a very smart man, Your Honor.”

“All right, let’s cut to the chase. Ms. Randall, I think you probably leaked something to the press the last time you were here. Mr. Temple, I suspect you haven’t exactly been tight-lipped with Max Neeley, who must have a publicist working for him at the rate he’s giving interviews. Enough. I’m not letting this motion be used as a run around my gag order.”

I thanked the judge, but he said, “Not so fast. I took a huge risk releasing your client given the severity of the charges. I think we all know Amy Chandler’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the DA’s kitchen, so if she didn’t give me the full picture the first go-round, I want to hear it now.”

I had been expecting Temple to lay out the evidence of Jack’s affair with Tracy Frankel. What he actually had was far, far worse.

JUDGE AMADOR LOOKED LIKE A
high school student trying to understand advanced physics as Scott Temple brought him up to
speed. The prosecution had established at arraignment that Jack had a motive to kill Neeley, was at the waterfront the morning of the shooting, and tested positive for GSR, but now Temple was explaining the rest of the story: the missed-moment post, the Madeline e-mails, and the homeless man who’d found the picnic basket containing the murder weapon.

“I might officially be a loony tune,” Amador said, “because I think I followed all that. But I’m afraid I still don’t see your point, Mr. Temple.”

“The point is that Jack Harris has been absolutely clear that the only reason he went to the football field that morning was because this woman Madeline told him to. So naturally we were interested in finding this Madeline person to confirm or disprove Mr. Harris’s story.”

I had been waiting until we knew more to tell Scott about Madeline, but now it was obvious he’d known all along. I tried to breathe evenly as Temple explained that “Madeline” had used an account with an anonymous service called Paperfree.

“The Paperfree address was used not only to
respond
to the missed-moment post and contact Jack Harris, but also to hire a prostitute to pose as Madeline in the first place.”

Amador took off his glasses. “You finally lost me.”

I had no way of stopping Temple as he detailed the e-mails between the anonymous Paperfree account and an online escort. “Though the escort used a pseudonym on the escorting website, we have now identified her as a woman named Sharon Lawson. She has invoked her Fifth Amendment right to counsel, but we know from the e-mail messages that the person using the Paperfree account told her precisely where to sit, to bring champagne and a picnic basket, and to read a book called
Eight Days to Die
. She was given a photograph of Jack Harris and instructed to try to catch his eye as he passed.”

This was the evidence that I had planned to use to save Jack. Now Temple was the one presenting it. I had managed to intimidate Sharon
into signing an affidavit, but she hadn’t bothered to update me with the fact that the prosecution had located her, too.