The Accomplice(66)

“I understand.”

“How long are you staying here?”

“A week, maybe,” Griff said. “I’d like to see you before I leave.”

“Yeah,” Luna said. “Me too.”

Luna ended the call, paced around the small boxy room, and took long, deep breaths that sounded like a person sighing over and over again. It was something she did occasionally, which annoyed the shit out of Sam. Luna had a bad feeling the first time he’d jokingly commented on it. The second time, she began to worry about the state of their marriage. You want me to stop breathing? was her standard response. Luna couldn’t bear the sound of Sam’s eating. But she never told him not to eat.

Luna was about to text Owen again. She remembered the tracking app, and checked it instead. Owen was in Red Hook. Luna zoomed in on the map and read the street name. Willowbrook Lane. That had to be Amy’s place, she thought.

Luna’s phone rang. Sam. Luna debated whether to answer, then decided she should get everything over with as soon as possible.

“Done with the cops already?” Luna said.

She knew that was an aggressive way to answer a call. Too aggressive, probably.

“Where are you?” Sam asked.

“Out,” Luna said.

“I got that. Are you coming home tonight?”

“No.”

Silence. Then: “You can’t really think I killed her.”

She didn’t. Not really. But she had a sense that she was missing something. Luna remembered having the same feeling when Scarlet died.

“I don’t know what I think,” Luna said. “But I’m not coming back. Call your lawyers. Have them draw up the paperwork. I’ll sign whatever.”

Sam knew he should be relieved that she was so easy. Another woman might have torched his world. As grateful as he was for a hassle-free divorce, it still infuriated him how little she demanded of him. He’d thought about it before, why she was that way. He always came back to the same thing. Guilt. He’d always interpreted it as guilt by association. But there were days, here and there, when he considered the possibility that he’d gotten her all wrong, that maybe her guilt was rooted in something far less forgivable.



* * *



—

After Amy and Owen had sex, Owen felt his depression return in deeper form. It was like being buried alive, he thought. He lay in Amy’s bed, wanting to leave, but the idea of putting on his pants, locating his socks, and tying his shoes, felt like climbing Everest without oxygen.

Amy polished off her wine. Owen wanted to be alert later, for whatever was coming next, because he knew something was. It would be like that for a while. But the cheap wine seemed to excavate some of the dirt he was buried under. He drained his glass, then poured another. He nodded off. Then he woke up. Amy’s naked body was draped over him. She whispered in his ear, “If you did it, you can tell me.”

Owen bolted up and recoiled. “What the fuck, Amy?”

He crawled out of bed and searched the room for his clothes. He put on his boxers and jeans and prowled the room, hunting down his T-shirt, which he found under a chair.

“Don’t leave,” Amy said.

Owen threw on his shirt inside out. He grabbed his jacket and reached for the door.

“Owen. Look at me,” Amy said.

Owen opened the door.

“Piece of advice,” he said, keeping his back to Amy. “Don’t get into bed with men you suspect of murder.”



* * *



—

It was dark when Owen left Amy’s place. He saw the unmarked car down the block. He was worried that if he gave her time to dress, Amy would chase after him, so he jogged a few blocks away, to a strip mall with a bar that he’d been to once and vowed never to go to again. Players, it was called. He ordered a bourbon and then patted down his pockets in a panic, thinking he’d lost his wallet. It was in his inside jacket pocket. He never put his wallet there. Had Amy been going through his stuff? He couldn’t say for sure what had happened, why he suddenly felt panicked in Amy’s company. But he had a sick feeling that Amy was trying to seduce a confession out of him.

Some of the men in the bar gave him the side-eye. They were all white men of a certain age, rough around the edges. Owen knew he didn’t belong. Owen had always planned to live in Manhattan, but his career never took off the way he imagined, and he came to prefer the big-fish/small-pond scenario to the other way around. Owen drained the bourbon, tipped well, and strode out of the bar without looking back.

Owen knew he was being watched, followed, but there was an unspoken etiquette he’d always assumed was in play. Not that he’d been tailed by cops before. But he’d seen movies. The subject either goes about his day in oblivion or he aggressively acknowledges the tail by bringing the cops doughnuts and coffee. Owen strolled over to the unmarked car and waved. The cop rolled down the window.

“Hi. I’m, uh—”

“I know,” said Trooper Hank Good. “Can I help you, sir?”

“You’re following me, right?”

“Just making sure you’re safe, sir.”

“If you have to go where I go, can you just give me a ride?” Owen said.

Officer Good didn’t particularly like the idea of playing chauffeur to a suspected murderer, but there was a certain logic to the request. He shrugged and told Owen to get in. Owen climbed into the back seat, like he was taking an Uber. Although he felt decidedly more like a perp, seeing the cage divider.