The Ex(68)

“Again, Mr. Neeley, are you done?”

“No, I’m definitely not done. You’ll be the first to know when I am.”

He slammed the door so hard on his way out that I thought the glass might break.

“Are you okay?” Einer asked.

I told him I was fine.

I HAD FINALLY REGAINED MY composure when Einer knocked on my office door again. “Sorry to bug you, but a process server was just here. I think you need to see this.”

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK v. JACKSON HARRIS, defendant.

PEOPLE’s motion for reconsideration of bail.

I knew Scott Temple was angry with me for embarrassing him in court, but I had not anticipated this.


I WAS READY TO CALL it quits for the day, but felt obligated to tell Jack about the bail motion in person. I had just gotten the all-clear from Nick the doorman when I saw a familiar face heading in my direction in Jack’s lobby. It was Ross Connor, Owen’s former partner on the NYPD.

“The last I heard, you made it pretty clear you wanted nothing to do with my client.”

He held up both palms. “Just here to see an old friend, Olivia.”

“That’s bullshit. He’s on house arrest. He doesn’t let anyone up without police approval. No friends allowed. Just ask Charlotte.”

“Damn. Charlotte, that’s right. Remember that time I tried haunching on her after way too many shots of whatever we were drinking? I thought she might clamp my balls in a vise, but instead she just started laughing. Talk about brutal.”

I wasn’t going to be distracted by humor. “Is this about the bail motion?”

The question appeared to confuse him. “That’s over and done with it. He’s home, so kudos to you.”

“You came here as law enforcement, Ross. Otherwise, you couldn’t have come at all.”

“Fine, you caught me. I thought I might have better luck with Jack than the stranger who questioned him when he was arrested.”

“While he has murder charges pending? I’ll go to the judge.”

“And if you do, I’ll say that ever since you came to see me, I’ve been thinking about him. How close we used to be, when his brother was around. Felt I owed it to him—or maybe just to Owen—to come. How will it look if you rat me out for that?”

“You’re unbelievable. You just admitted to a defense attorney that you’re willing to testi-lie.”

“Just calm down, okay? I gave it a shot, but your boy didn’t even say anything incriminating. No harm, no foul.”

“He didn’t incriminate himself because he’s innocent. Has the job tainted you so badly that you can’t even entertain the possibility that the department screwed up?”

“Do you want to keep yelling at me, or do you want to know why I bothered to come here?”

“We’ve established that you came here to question my client. As for your reasons, you’ve already decided whether to share them with me or not.”

He pretended to mull it over for a few seconds. When he spoke, he put his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground. “So after you stopped by my office, I kept thinking about when I came here to tell him about Molly. And those condoms fell out of his bag, and he started acting all spooked.”

“I think you said it was awkward. Now it’s spooked?”

“I kept going back to that moment where Jack freaked out. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I called the medical examiner. They autopsied all of the Penn Station victims. Standard procedure for homicides. Turns out Molly had a hysterectomy.”

“So maybe they used condoms for some other reason.”

“Married people don’t use condoms—period. But especially not when they’re done having babies.”

He was right, of course, as a general matter. Not to mention the fact that Jack was carrying the condoms around in his bag. So if Jack was cheating on Molly at the time she was killed, how did that affect the current case against him? It didn’t. I said as much to Ross.

“You’re missing the point. Trust me, on the job, I’ve seen plenty of men with side pieces. I thought if I told him what I knew, he might drop the facade and tell me the truth about what really happened with him and Neeley. I asked him point blank: did you do it? No luck, but it was worth a shot.”

“I think that’s called a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.” Even as I spoke the words, I remembered the various times I had also tried to get Jack to open up to me in the last month. About his hospitalization. His feelings about Malcolm. Us. Jack had specifically told me that Molly was the “only one” after me. Had there been others during his marriage?

“I’m telling you, Olivia. You don’t know that guy the way you think you do.” He was shaking his head as he walked away.

Jack didn’t bother with a hug or any other greeting when he opened his apartment door. His back was already to me as he walked down the front hall. “I didn’t know you were coming by.”

He was obviously still upset that I had leaked the information to a reporter about Tracy’s phone calls, but, in typical Jack fashion, was sulking instead of telling me he was angry.

“I figured we hadn’t talked for a couple of days, and I want to keep you up to date. How about you? Anything to report on your end?”