The Ex(6)

“So you agreed to come in?”

“Basically. But I said at least half an hour ago that I needed to get home, and he just keeps saying they need a little more time.”

I pressed my eyes closed. Jack really was still the same: kind but gullible. The police had played him. “Your daughter was worried for a reason, Jack. You’re not a witness. You’re a suspect. And that detective seems pretty confident that they have a case against you. What have you told them?”

“This morning—Oh God, Olivia, talking to you, of all people, about this. It’s embarrassing.”

“Well, right now, I’m all you’ve got, and Boyle will be back here to process you soon.” Booking. Transport. A holding cell. This was no time for him to be shy. “I can’t help you if you don’t start talking. So let me ask the question again: what would make the police think you did this?”

When he was finally done answering my carefully phrased question, he slumped back in his chair and looked up at the acoustic-tiled ceiling. “Jesus, they’re never going to believe me.”

I managed to keep my response to myself. Damn straight they won’t.


I PRESSED JACK TO TELL me exactly how much of this information he had given to the police.

“All of it,” he said.

“Seriously? The party dress and the basket and the book?”

“The detective said he was curious. He said he was single, too. Every time I asked him why he needed all these details, he seemed to have an explanation.”

Boyle had pressed for details because they now knew Jack was locked in—on tape—to a complex explanation for being near the site of the shooting. And complicated stories don’t sound as true as simple ones.

Jack was saying he never should have mentioned the woman to Charlotte. “She runs that website, the Room. And she loves romance posts. Jesus, I even said the woman reminded me of Molly—that, for the first time, I was open to the idea of another shot at happiness.”

Not a second shot at happiness, but another one. Molly was already the second, because I was the first. Twenty years later, and still so much guilt.

“I should have realized,” Jack was saying, “that Charlotte would take me literally and try to find the woman. And when Charlotte sets her mind to something . . . the next thing I knew, she’s got this post on the Room’s home page. I was mortified. She didn’t use my name, but she may as well have with all the biographical details. I actually forgot about it, but then Charlotte got a response a few days later. We started e-mailing, and I was supposed to meet her today. I swear, that’s all I know.”

And he had fed every detail to the police, who would twist and turn the information to suit their needs.

“This woman Madeline’s the one who picked the football field as the meeting spot? The e-mails will back that up?”

“Absolutely. Well, with a few connections of dots. Once she responded to the post, I asked her what book had her so engrossed. It was Eight Days to Die. It’s one of my favorites.” I had never heard of it, but, then again, I wasn’t a big reader these days. “So last night, when she suggested that we meet in person, she said meet at chapter twelve. Flip to that chapter of Eight Days to Die, and there’s a scene at the football field.”

His bizarre, complicated story about Missed-Moment Madeline had taken on one more absurd layer, but as long as the woman backed him up, we could show that it had not been Jack’s idea to place himself at the sports field that morning.

I asked him exactly what happened when he got there.

“Nothing. No big dramatic moment. I saw a few people on the far end of the field, but no woman who seemed to be waiting for me. I wondered for a second if I was on some kind of Candid Camera show. I mean, was the entire setup someone’s idea of a cruel joke? I felt pretty stupid. Then when it started pouring rain out of the blue, I took it as a sign. Enough of this, back to real life.”

I pointed out that he hadn’t completely given up. He had left the basket and the note.

“I guess part of me wanted to believe she’d come through. But I don’t know what any of that has to do with the shooting. Or why Malcolm Neeley was there. I swear, when the detective said his name, it was like, thwack. An anvil descending from the sky in a cartoon, right onto my head. It still doesn’t feel real.”

Yet he didn’t ask for a lawyer.

Everyone thinks he’s somehow going to convince the police he’s innocent as long as he doesn’t lawyer up. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I asked Jack where his shirt was, even though I suspected I knew the answer.

“When we first got to the station, he said they were running tests on everyone who’d been near the waterfront. He said it would be quick. They swabbed my hands.”

“You didn’t think it was weird when they asked for your clothing?”

“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m an idiot, Olivia.”

One of our first fights had begun with the identical sentiment: I didn’t have to treat him like an idiot. “I’m not treating you like an idiot,” I had said. “You’re actually being an idiot.” And then instead of defending himself, he told me I was emasculating him. I said something even meaner.

Now, I simply said, “Jack: your shirt.”

“The shirt came later. After I told him that I needed to get home, he said we could clear some things up if he could run another test on my shirt. Whatever I need to do to prove I’m innocent, I will do. How long do those tests take?”