The Ex(19)

“Damnit. What if I made Jack too identifiable in the missed-moment post? Madeline could be a catfish.”

“A catfish is like a fake ID?”

“It’s a lot more than that. It’s the creation of an entire personality. You should see the number of supposedly gorgeous women on Twitter and Facebook who have a thing for fat, ugly geezers. But the person behind the profile is some ex-con in Lithuania. You know how many people have actually fallen in love—like, total, head over heels, quit their jobs and sell their houses to move across the country, in love—with someone who doesn’t even exist? Sometimes it’s just to screw with a person. Usually it’s to take their money. But here maybe they’re catfishing for a fall guy.”

“I don’t think I’m following.”

“Okay, suppose someone wants to kill Neeley. They’re thinking they can make it look like one of the Penn Station family members did it. Then they see the missed-moment post, realize I’m talking about Jack, and make up a woman named Madeline to rope him in.”

“And they just happen to know Jack’s favorite book?”

“Easy,” she said. She walked over to a nook in the corner of the kitchen, and came back with an iPad. She used Siri’s microphone to search for “Jack Harris Eight Days to Die,” tapped the screen a couple of times, and pushed the tablet in my direction.

It was an author Q and A from the website goodreads, posted a month and a half earlier.

GR: Readers always like to know what their favorite writers have on their nightstands. Do you have any recent favorite reads?

JH: I always have a nightstand full of books, but I was blown away by last year’s Eight Days to Die by a debut writer named Monica Harding.

I browsed the rest of his answer—how the book captured New York City so well, how it managed to be uplifting even though it was about a woman scheduling her own death, how his teenage daughter also enjoyed it, and how they had spent an afternoon taking a walking tour of spots featured in the book.

With a quick Google search, “Madeline” could have known what book she could claim to have been reading once Jack asked the question.

But then I saw a hole in Charlotte’s theory. “When Madeline responded to the missed-moment post, she knew what shirt Jack had been wearing. She also mentioned the basket. Those details weren’t in the original post you published.”

“They weren’t?”

I shook my head.

She whispered, “Damn,” under her breath. But I wasn’t so ready to give up on her catfish theory. I was still thinking out loud. “What if the actual woman he saw at the pier was also part of the catfish?”

“That’s not how catfishing works. The whole point is, you don’t need a real person. You just make one up.”

“Well, set aside the word ‘catfish.’ Maybe the woman he saw at the pier was also part of the setup. She gets all dolled up, trying to get his attention, with the long-term plan being to frame him for Neeley’s murder. But then Jack pulls a Jack. He keeps on running. Doesn’t stop to talk to her. Plan foiled. Until your post.”

I saw Charlotte’s face fall.

“No, not like that,” I said. “This isn’t your fault. But are you following me? That makes sense, right?” Seduce Jack. Kill Neeley. Frame Jack. The seduction just took a different form than originally planned.

Charlotte nodded. “Jack’s a creature of habit. He runs that route every single morning. She’d know where to wait for him.”

Her comment raised another problem with my theory. “But pretty women are a dime a dozen. How could anyone know that this particular one would get Jack’s attention?”

Charlotte’s face suddenly brightened. “One of the pieces I wrote about Molly for the Room mentioned how she and Jack met. Jack saw Molly reading alone in a wine bar. Brainy, happy in her own head, confident enough to sit by herself, didn’t need a man to define her.” With each new attribute, it was becoming increasingly clear that Molly had won over Charlotte’s approval in a way I never had. I had followed enough of the media coverage about the shooting to know that Charlotte had played a role in shaping Jack’s public image after the shooting. And I specifically remembered the piece she was talking about now. I remembered it because I remembered feeling pathetic for being jealous of a dead woman.

I focused again on the matter at hand. “Did the woman in the grass”—that’s what we were calling her now—“look like Molly?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Jack didn’t really say much about her physical appearance, just that she was pretty, I think. He was more drawn to her energy or whatever. It was a setup, I’m telling you. They mined the Web for info on Jack and used it to plant the perfect woman on his running route.”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s so—elaborate.”

“That’s nothing compared to some of the catfish stories we’ve covered. It would help if we could find the girl. My guess is, she’s not involved. She’s just the eye candy. They could have hired an actress, or a call girl. Can you get video footage from the city?”

“Maybe. I mean, there’s no guarantee she’ll be on camera, but, yeah, I can request it.”

I called the district attorney’s office, asked for Scott Temple, and told him I was worried that he was cherry-picking the video evidence from the waterfront. “Make sure you preserve everything. And not just from today. I want the last month, the entire south waterfront.”