A Good Marriage(80)
“Sorry to have bothered you.”
“That’s okay,” he said, like my call was the highlight of his day. “Anything else I can help you with?”
Zach. Help me with Zach.
“I don’t think so, but thank you for your time.”
“You have a blessed evening.”
Charles Lynch was next. Straight to a recorded message: “The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected.” Three down. Four to go. Fuck. There were other avenues to try, probably more unlisted Lynches out there, and a disconnected number alone certainly didn’t rule someone out. Amanda’s dad could also have moved from St. Colomb Falls. I took another deep breath as I dialed the next number: Xavier. I repeated the name in my head. Biblical. Righteous. The name of a prophet, not an abusive father.
“Hello?” The voice was low and clipped.
“Oh, yes, sorry. My name is Lizzie Kitsakis.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m trying to find Amanda Lyn—”
A click. Distinct but quiet.
“Hello?” I asked. There was no answer. “Hello?”
I redialed and immediately got a recorded message: “This number is not receiving calls at this time.” It was what happened when someone blocked your specific number. I knew this because we’d blocked the Anglers’ lawyer when he’d started calling our home at all hours.
Was it proof that Xavier was Amanda’s father? Of course not. But it was suspicious.
I ran a search on Xavier Lynch and was immediately swamped with results. There were two Xavier Lynches in the United States with a substantial digital footprint. One was a thirty-one-year-old dentist from El Paso, Texas, the other a nineteen-year-old sophomore at Florida State University who had a half-dozen vlogs of himself playing different video games. I got distracted for a second scrolling through the irrelevant links before adding St. Colomb Falls to my search. And there he was right at the top: a third Xavier Lynch. He was mentioned in the St. Colomb Falls Methodist Church newsletter from a year earlier, in an article about a church rummage sale. It was the very same church that Amanda had written about in her journal.
Xavier Lynch’s name appeared only once, in the caption below one of the photographs. In the photo, he was standing next to a much older couple, who each held a birdhouse in their hands. “Susan and Charlie Davidson and Xavier Lynch about to Treat Some Birds Thanks to Our Annual RUMMAGE!” Xavier Lynch was a very large man, several inches taller than the couple and very, very broad, with short gray hair, a wide face, and heavy-framed glasses. He was standing stiffly, with not even a trace of a smile.
Now what? When I’d been a US attorney, the answer was simple: send the FBI to shake the truth out of Xavier Lynch. But I didn’t have armed professionals at my disposal anymore. Managing law clerks paid fines. They didn’t go interview murder suspects.
“Um, hello?”
When I looked up, my legal assistant, Thomas, was standing in my office doorway, knuckles resting against the door as though he’d already knocked once. He was dressed in slim-fit pants and an expensive-looking bright-yellow-and-orange-striped polo shirt. Thomas had lively eyes and a sly grin that always left me feeling like he’d just heard some gossip, maybe about me. He’d proved a great legal assistant, though, and a loyal ally.
“What’s up?” I sounded more annoyed than I’d intended.
He raised an envelope like a shield. “The warrant documents from Philadelphia?” He stepped forward to hand them to me. “You wanted me to bring them to you as soon as they arrived?”
The warrant. What difference did it make now? The judge knew it had been cleared, and she’d refused to grant bail on the murder charge.
“Right. An unpaid loitering ticket?” I asked.
“I deliver envelopes; I don’t inspect their contents unless specifically directed to,” Thomas said. “Remember?”
Thomas was looking at me like I was supposed to know what he meant.
“No, I don’t remember.”
“Oh, right, that was before your time,” he said. “I don’t want to call myself a hero or anything, but the partner who got fired? I was the whistleblower. He sent me to pick up something at the printers and, overachieving legal assistant that I am, I decided to take it out of the envelope so said partner wouldn’t cut his fat fingers. Let’s just say the envelope did not contain the contracts I’d expected.”
“What was it?”
“Compromising photos of a certain female legal assistant, obviously taken without her knowledge.”
“Ugh,” I said, disgusted. What was wrong with everyone.
“You know, I think the other partners would have let it go if it wasn’t for Paul. He’s a maniac, but at least he has a modicum of integrity.”
“Yes, a modicum,” I said dryly as I reached for the envelope.
I opened it and quickly skimmed the warrant until I spotted the bottom line—it was indeed for loitering.
“You all right?” Thomas’s voice had lost its snarky edge.
“Not really.”
“Can I help?” he asked, and quite genuinely.
“Thank you, but no,” I said, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t think anyone can.”
The Brooklyn DA’s office was in a newer, taller building than the Manhattan DA’s office, yet somehow the lobby smelled the same—cardboard with a dash of urine—and the longer I sat there, the more it was getting to me.