The Ex(52)

Three explanations.

1. Coincidence.

The “coincidence” theory had never sat right with me, and the police clearly never bought it. And Jack was right: if it were pure coincidence that Madeline happened to send Jack to the site of the shooting, with some innocent explanation for not showing up, she would have made the connection between the shooter’s picnic basket and her missed moment. She would have come forward. But instead, she closed her e-mail account. I was not liking this theory.

My cell phone was buzzing across the table. I turned it off and picked up my pen again.

2. E-mail hack/fall guy.

This had been Buckley’s theory when she overheard Charlotte and me after her father was arrested: Someone who wanted Neeley dead went looking for a fall guy, identified Jack and perhaps others, and began spying on their e-mails in search of an opportunity. Jack’s e-mail to Charlotte about the woman in the grass, followed by Charlotte’s missed-moment post, provided that opportunity. The bad guy then responded to the ad as “Madeline.”

The problem with the e-mail hack theory was that, according to Gmail, the only log-ins to Jack’s account in the days before his arrest had come from Jack’s own IP address. The hacker would have had to enter Jack’s building to be able to piggyback off his wireless signal, a completely unnecessary risk.

I didn’t like this theory, either.

3. Jack did it.

Jack hated Neeley, even more so when the civil suit got dismissed. He knew where to find Neeley because of his deposition testimony. He had been hanging around a shooting range recently, a fact he neglected to mention until I pressed him for an explanation about the gunshot residue on his shirt. He wrote the Madeline e-mails himself to provide an excuse for being near the football field in case someone saw him.

No muss, no fuss. I circled the period at the end of the sentence until it was a solid black circle.

I started to put my pen down. This was the only theory that worked.

Except it didn’t. Not exactly. Not the way it seemed to yesterday.

The problem: I had e-mailed Madeline the night of Jack’s arrest, and did not receive a “closed account” message in response. So sometime between then and last night, “Madeline” had closed her account. And Jack no longer had access to the Internet.

Maybe he called someone else to do it—Charlotte, perhaps, or a hired stranger. But why take that kind of risk when he could have left the account dormant?

Was there any other possibility? My pen began to move again.

4. Catfish

This was Charlotte’s theory from the very beginning. It was like Buckley’s theory, but more complicated. Bad guy identifies Jack as the perfect fall guy, then mines the Web for information to plant the perfect woman on his running route.

Maybe they expected Jack to make the moves in person, and then planned to use the woman to frame him. Jack (being Jack) didn’t take the bait, but then Charlotte’s missed-moment ad gave them another chance. Along came “Madeline.”

It was possible.

I started at the top of my notes and reconsidered every option. As screwed up as this catfish theory sounded, it had better be right.

Because, otherwise, Jack was guilty. I turned my phone back on and called him.

“I believe you: Madeline’s the key to everything. I’ll find her. I promise.”

I had no idea how.


IT TOOK ME TWENTY MINUTES to get through the other messages I had missed this morning.

A bunch of voice and e-mails that could wait. Only two texts. The first was from Ryan, sent at two in the morning. Are we good? Not sure what I did.

One from Melissa. It was her day off, and she wanted to know if I could meet for lunch. How was it time for lunch already?

I was trying to think of somewhere to meet when my phone rang again. I recognized the digits on the screen as the district attorney’s general number. “Olivia Randall.”

“It’s Temple.”

“Let me guess: you want to remind me that my client’s guilty.”

“I said my piece yesterday.”

“You’re calling to confess that you’re the one who put Max Neeley up to that interview with the Post yesterday?” A grieving son, the last surviving member of the Neeley family, might actually be able to put a sympathetic face on his father. If he kept this up, I might have to leak his little episode at Princeton to some dogged young journalist.

“Not that, either. And I swear I didn’t know he was going on the Today show this morning.” Another thing I had slept through. “You got a pen?”

Temple gave me a name—Carl Wilson—and phone number, which I scribbled on my notepad. “He can get you whatever video you need from the parkway. He’s expecting your call and knows he should give you as much time and access as you need.”

“If only your office always rolled out the red carpet this way.”

“It’s a lot easier to give defense attorneys what they want when we know it’s a dead end. Have fun wasting your time.”

I never actually thought Temple would produce as much video as I requested. Now that I had access to it, I wasn’t sure I wanted it. What if I found footage of Jack on his morning run, past an empty Christopher Street Pier—no woman in the grass, no picnic basket, no champagne? What if the missed moment had never happened? This video could confirm my worst suspicions.