The Ex(69)

“Ha-ha. I can see it now, my next book, A Diary from Home Confinement. Riveting stuff.”

Apparently I was going to have to ask him about Ross Connor’s visit. I made myself comfortable on his sofa. “This is a crazy question,” I said offhandedly, “but I could have sworn I saw Owen’s old partner leaving your building.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess I did have one break from routine. Man, I can’t believe you recognized him. Ross Connor, after all these years.”

“I’ve always been good with faces. So what did he want?”

Jack shrugged. “Just to see how I was holding up. He went through corrections and got approval to come by and everything. Pretty nice of him, don’t you think?”

All those times I had lied to Jack, it had never dawned on me that he might be the better liar. This was masterful.

“I guess so, but he’s also a cop. He didn’t ask you about the case?”

“Nah. Just shooting the breeze. A little awkward, I guess, but still—it’s the thought that counts, right? So, you said you have an update?” It was a nice pivot. Just like that, no more Ross Connor talk.

As I told him the information I’d gotten from Tracy’s mom and sister, I was struggling to keep my thoughts straight. If Jack had cheated on Molly, did it change anything about his case? Maybe he was only lying about the reason for Ross’s visit to avoid the awkward topic of an old infidelity. But once again, I was wondering whether I’d been too quick to assume Jack was innocent.

I forced myself to focus on what mattered: Tracy’s connection to the Sentry Group. “My best guess is that she was looking at Max—or maybe Malcolm—as a potential sugar daddy. If it was Malcolm, she might have been at the waterfront to meet up with him when Max killed his father. Or if she was seeing Max, he may have sent her there to get rid of them at the same time. Two for one. Either way, it plays into our theory that Max Neeley’s the one behind this.”

“I know we’ve been throwing Max’s name around, but do you really think he did this?”

I thought about the contempt Max had revealed in my office. At the time, I thought I was looking into the face of a killer. But maybe his anger was a perfectly natural response to our not-so-subtle suggestions that he had killed his father. “More likely him than you, right?”

If Jack sensed my suspicions in the question, he didn’t show it. “Jesus, what a family. Neeley trained his mentally ill son to use guns as if it were any other hobby, like it was golf or scuba or coin collecting. He made the other one hate him so much that he was driven to murder. Malcolm Neeley blamed those boys for their mother’s death. His own stories about the ways he tried to parent them are like a handbook on how to screw up your kids. Ticking time bombs, the both of them.” He shook his head. “So is that it?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” I slipped a copy of the People’s motion to reconsider bail from my briefcase and handed it to him. The title of the motion was self-explanatory.

When Jack looked up, he tried to hand the papers back to me as if that would make them go away. “But I haven’t done anything wrong. Honestly, I find myself staying feet away from the door when I open it, even for you, just in case I accidentally set it off.”

“They’re not saying you violated your release conditions. They’re alleging that you shouldn’t have had them from the beginning. Basically, the state’s saying the court got it wrong from the get-go.” The hearing was in three days.

“You sound awfully calm.”

“It’s just Scott Temple wanting a second bite at the apple. Without new evidence, I’m sure the judge will keep the status quo. So unless you know something I don’t know . . .”

“So okay, then. I’m sure it will be fine.”

I said good-bye like it was any other visit, promising to contact him with new developments. I placed one foot in front of the other, through his apartment, down the hallway, into the elevator. The second the doors closed, I felt myself tremble.

Golf. Scuba. Coin collecting. Those “stories” Malcolm Neeley had told about his parenting had come straight from Malcolm’s deposition—the one that Jack swore to me he had never read.


THAT NIGHT, IN BED WITH Ryan, I was starting to doze off but couldn’t stop thinking about Ross Connor and Jack. “Do you know any married men who use condoms?”

“With their wives?” He laughed.

“I’m serious. And this isn’t about you and Anne. It’s for one of my cases. A married man had condoms in his briefcase: what does that mean to you?”

“I’d say, sure, it’s just birth control. Not every woman wants to be pumped full of hormones. But in his briefcase? Wouldn’t they go from shopping bag to nightstand?”

“Plus the wife had a hysterectomy.”

“Then that dude was stepping out.”

I of all people knew that having an affair didn’t make you a murderer. But it did make you a liar.

Jack had lied about his fidelity to Molly. He had lied about Ross Connor’s visit to the apartment. And he had lied about having read Malcolm’s deposition, which meant that he knew long before the shooting that Malcolm could be found at that football field every Wednesday morning. What else was he lying about?

Ryan kissed me on the shoulder, crawled out of bed, and began getting dressed. “You realize next month, we’ll have known each other two years?” I asked. Ryan had called me after not making partner. Preston & Cartwright always breaks the bad news at the end of August.