A Good Marriage(73)

“Okay,” Zach said, but he seemed so utterly dejected.

I wondered if I should come back, give him a chance to process. It wasn’t as if there was some big rush to get all the details now. His trial wouldn’t be for months. But then, I was there already. It was probably best to get to work.

“Why were you looking into plane tickets to Brazil?” It was the one fact that Wendy Wallace had raised that did trouble me. Prosecutors loved consciousness of guilt. Wendy would probably try to use this “proof of flight” at trial to show premeditation.

“Oh, jaguars,” Zach said, like this should have been obvious.

“The car?”

Zach’s eyes snapped up to mine in that sudden, too forceful way of his. “No, no, the animal. There’s this place in Brazil, the Pantanal, where you’re supposed to be able to see them really easily,” he said. “Case is obsessed with jaguars. I was thinking about taking him to see them in Brazil when he got back from camp. You know, a father-and-son adventure.” He was quiet for a moment. “Let’s face it, I probably never would have actually taken the time off from work. But I do think about things like that. It’s the following through I’m not so good at.”

It was a decent explanation, one that I was hoping would hold up once I cross-referenced it with the dates of the actual tickets and his assistant’s recollection.

“Do you know why an accountant for the foundation would have been trying to meet with Amanda?”

Zach shook his head, but seemed unconcerned. “Not to sound like a jerk, but when you get to a certain point financially, money becomes more of an administrative detail. I hire accountants so I don’t have to deal with that sort of thing. But if it had been something serious, Amanda would have come to me. And she didn’t.”

“I’ll follow up myself. If that’s okay with you,” I said. “I’m going to need to access some funds anyway to pay our experts. Lab tests aren’t cheap. I’m assuming the accountant can help me with that, too?”

“Definitely,” Zach said. “You’ll need an authorization, though.”

“I assumed. I brought a form that should work. Before I go, I’ll get the guard to have you sign it. I’ll need the firm name and the name of the actual accountant, too.”

“I know it’s PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the guy’s name is Teddy. I don’t know his last name. I only remember his first name because it’s ridiculous. There can’t be more than one adult man named Teddy working there, right? And let me know what he says,” Zach said. “It would be good to know if I’m about to be sandbagged by something else.”

“Speaking of being sandbagged …,” I began. “I know we touched on this. But just to revisit that warrant from the loitering for a second, are you sure—”

“Jesus, let it go, Lizzie!” Zach’s outburst was so loud and sudden I flinched. Immediately, he held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. I know the warrant looks bad. Believe me, I do. But it was, what, thirteen years ago? Anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Zach looked beaten and defenseless on the other side of the plexiglass.

“It’s okay, it’s fine,” I said, though it wasn’t really. “I do have one potential piece of good news. I mean, good news might be a poor characterization. But it looks like Amanda’s father is a legitimate alternate suspect.”

“Her father?” Zach looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“He was harassing her. Calling and hanging up. Following her, too. And he … I think he was abusive, sexually, when she was younger. Amanda recounts a series of rapes in her older journals when she was twelve, maybe thirteen.”

“What?” Zach looked disgusted, then enraged. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“I don’t know,” I said, though Zach had said himself that he and Amanda had a distant marriage. Why was he so surprised? “I think we should at least try to track him down. What was Amanda’s maiden name?”

“Lynch,” he said without hesitation. “But I don’t know her dad’s first name or where he lives now or anything like that. I never met the guy, and the few times Amanda mentioned him, it was only in passing: ‘my dad.’ Actually, I think she called him ‘daddy,’ which now seems even creepier.” He grimaced. “Twelve? Case is ten. That’s disgusting.”

I nodded. “It is.”

I wrote down “Lynch” and underlined it. Now I had a last name, and the town—St. Colomb Falls—even the name of her old church from her journals. Enough to build on.

“It shouldn’t be our job to provide alternate suspects. But a jury will want somebody else to blame,” I said. “It will be good to find him.”

But was I seriously going to be the person defending Zach by the time a jury was empaneled? It had been one thing to handle Zach’s bail appeal, but a full-blown murder trial? Because Paul had a thing for Wendy Wallace? Because I felt guilty I’d let Zach down easy a million years ago? Because I was angry at Sam? Or was it actually something else, someone else, I was compensating for? The thought had occurred to me. But none of those were good reasons for staying on as Zach’s lawyer. Not when what I really needed to do was deal with the mess my life had become.