The Ex(73)

“No, Jack came with me. We rented a car. He’s in the waiting room.”

“Still got him fooled, do you?” She winced from the pain of a chuckle.

“Marla told me Dad got arrested.”

“Got out last night.” My father had always managed to confine the proof of his violence to our home. Naively, I had thought that his getting arrested meant that he would actually stay in jail for more than a day.

“The nurse told me they sent in a social worker to talk to you about options. Support groups. A part-time job. Pretty soon, I’ll be in a position to help. You can do this.”

“You’ve got to stop being so judgmental, Olivia. I don’t know where you got that from.”

“Mom, I’m not judging you. I’m trying to help.”

“No, you’re telling me once again how to live my life. I’ve never heard of a child so convinced she’s better than her family.”

It escalated quickly, the way these things always did with my parents. Within minutes, she was screaming that I should mind my own damn business and telling me to “go back to that school of yours.” She got so loud that her roommate pressed the call button, and I was asked to leave so “the patient could get her rest.”

When Jack woke up alone in the motel that night, he asked the clerk where to find the nearest bar. He found me playing quarters with two guys in blue jeans and work boots. I was to the point of grabbing the glass before waiting to see where the coin landed.

Jack had thrown some bills on the counter and turned the empty glass upside down. “Let’s go home.”

My drinking buddies rose from their stools, begging to differ, but something about the look in Jack’s eyes made them back down. Had they seen his dark side?

At the motel, Jack held my hair in the bathroom until I had nothing but dry heaves. He washed my face and helped me into bed. As he wrapped his arms around me, he whispered, “I’m so sorry, Olivia. I understand you now. I know you. And I love you, forever.”

In the morning, we flew back to New York. I pretended not to remember anything after leaving the bar, and we never talked about that trip again. Five months later, he proposed.


I SPENT THE NEXT HOUR flipping from one side of the bed to the other. The second the clock clicked to five o’clock, I took off the necklace, jumped up, and pulled on a pair of jeans.

The office was pitch black. I was careful to lock the door behind me immediately.

I hit the lights and headed straight to the conference room, where an entire wall of brown boxes stood, threatening to tumble. I scanned the Sharpie notes I had scrawled on the ends of each box. “Penn Station.” I pulled that box from beneath the one resting on top of it. It contained everything Einer had been able to compile about the Penn Station shooting.

I had skimmed the contents a couple of weeks earlier, and then quickly packed them up again because it was so upsetting. The video surveillance showing the entire shooting had never been released, but the media had published several still photographs from the scene. Thirteen dead bodies. Others splattered with blood. Some victims still alive, crawling, appearing to beg for help.

Inside these boxes was a way for Jack to not spend the rest of his life in a cell, even if he was guilty.

I hadn’t gotten Jack’s psychiatric records yet, but an insanity defense was out of the question. In New York, we’d have to prove that Jack lacked “substantial capacity” to appreciate either the nature of his conduct or the fact that his conduct was wrong. The problem was, Jack obviously went to great lengths to hide what he did, proving that he knew what he was doing and that it was wrong.

But if I could show that Jack acted under an “extreme emotional disturbance,” he would be convicted of manslaughter instead of murder. Plus, the jury would weigh the reasonableness of an extreme emotional disturbance claim from the perspective of a person in the defendant’s situation “under the circumstances as he believed them to be.” Last year, a woman had gotten an EED verdict when she claimed that she killed her child to save him from being tortured by his father. Even though she offered no proof that the father had ever hurt the child, what mattered under the law was that she believed the child would be tortured and that a painless death was the better alternative.

The facts as Jack believed them to be. Jack believed that Malcolm Neeley had neglected his son Todd, and nurtured his antisocial tendencies to the point where the father was to blame for the deaths that occurred at the son’s hands.

I was already picturing our arguments in court. Scott Temple would claim that the photographs from Penn Station were inflammatory, but the jury would need to see them to understand Jack’s psychological reaction when the civil suit against Malcolm Neeley was dismissed, stifling the one hope he retained for justice.

He could serve as little as five years. The judge would probably sentence him to more given the other victims involved, but it was still better than a life sentence for murder.

I had represented far worse people for doing even more horrible things. Jack might be guilty, but I could still help him.

I SET THE PHOTOGRAPHS ASIDE and began flipping through the police reports. The first four pages were devoted entirely to a list of the victims—some dead, some wounded; some female, some male; birth dates and races listed; last known addresses and phone numbers. Their next of kin.

Molly Buckley Harris. W/F. DOB 8-5-73. NOK: Jackson Harris, 212-929-4145, 177 W. 13th St.