The Ex(74)

It’s a funny thing. When you’re tired, general cognitive ability drops. There’s scientific evidence to back that up, no question. Because you’re slacking off, some other part of your brain—the base, the lizard, the id, whatever you want to call it—tries to compensate. Eighty-five percent brain-dead, fifteen-percent instinctive genius.

Maybe if I had slept more than three hours, I would have missed it. But I was exhausted, so my inner lizard kicked in. What my eyes might normally have skimmed past became a magnet drawing my full attention.

The phone number listed for Molly Buckley Harris’s next of kin. I’d seen that phone number before.





Chapter 21


THREE HOURS LATER, I appeared at Jack’s apartment door in one of my best suits—a slate Armani—a black coffee in hand for me, cream and sugar for him.

“This is a nice surprise.”

I never had returned his phone calls yesterday. “It’s officially been a month since you’ve worn that state-provided jewelry on your ankle. I figured I should be here when the police come by for your home inspection.” In theory, the visit was a routine monthly appointment to monitor the equipment and sweep for any obvious violations of release conditions, but with the prosecution trying to pull Jack’s release, I assumed they might be looking for problems. “I brought caffeine.”

I held out a cup, but his hands were occupied by the two ties that he held up at either ear. “What do you think? A or B?” One was blue with white and red stripes, the other red with blue and white stripes.

“Either indistinguishable white-boy tie is fine.”

“Got it. We’ll go red.”

As he looped the silk around his collar, I led the way into the living room and set his coffee on an end table. “Have you ever noticed how things that seem like big decisions turn out not to be? Do you pick red or blue? And then you just get used to something and never think about it again.”

“I’m one hundred percent positive that I never cared about the contrast between those two ties. I think I bought them at the same time because they were on sale.”

“Right. But for all you know, red or blue could look totally different to the police officers who come here to check you out. Blue is honest, red is cynical, or vice versa.”

“Seriously? You can’t possibly think this is going to make me feel better.”

“Sorry, I’m just rambling. The check today is no big deal. But, just in case, wear the blue one. It’s perceived as calming. There’s research, actually, by overpaid jury consultants. My point is that sometimes we make decisions without really making them. Like, there’s a ton of articles out there about the number of people who have decided to give up landlines. It’s a huge cultural shift. Political polling even gets thrown off because some of the pollsters only call landlines and miss out on all the younger people who are cell only.”

“That’s a far cry from red versus blue ties.”

“I know. But what I mean is that sometimes you decide things accidentally. Like Einer mentioned a few weeks ago that I was the rare forty-something-year-old who was cell only. But I never consciously made the decision. In the old days, I had a shitty apartment with a home phone because everyone automatically set up a phone account when you got an apartment. And then when I finally had some money in my pocket, I moved into a not-shitty place a few blocks away, and I just never hooked up a phone. Before I realized it, anyone who needed to find me called my office or cell. I ended up being one of those people who didn’t have a home phone number, just a mobile.”

Jack was adjusting the blue tie. Double Windsor. It looked good. He was one of those men who looked better at forty-four than twenty-four.

“So, you don’t have a landline, either,” I said.

“Uh-uh.” His tie was straightened. He was now fiddling with his hair in the mirror above the fireplace.

“But you’ve lived here since—what—2001?”

“Yeah, right after Buckley was born.”

“So that’s what I don’t understand. No one was cell phone only in 2001. But now you don’t have a landline. It’s one thing to never get around to hooking it up. But at some point, you actually took the time to call Verizon and tell them to disconnect your phone. Why? To save thirty bucks a month?”

He had moved on to taming a stray eyebrow. “We never used it, I guess. I really don’t remember.”

It was the same breezy tone he’d used when he lied to me about Ross Connor’s attempt to interrogate him: Oh, yeah, I guess I did have one break from routine. When I’d asked him about making a threatening comment about Neeley: Did I?

“Now that I can tell when you’re lying to me, I can’t help but wonder how many times I missed the signs.”

He turned away from the mirror and faced me. “Go ahead and ask the question, Olivia.”

“It’s not a question, it’s a fact. Tracy Frankel’s phone records—Einer thought she dialed the wrong number to a Soho shoe shop three times in a row. But he was wrong. Tracy was trying to call you.”

He punched the side of a fist against the edge of the mantelpiece. “This is just like you to dance around the issue for ten minutes, setting up some kind of test that’s impossible for me to pass. Can’t you just talk to me like a normal human being? It’s not what you think. I didn’t do this.”