The Ex(9)

“Jack, if I had to guess, the police are probably searching your apartment right now. And trust me, they’ll scour every byte of your computer.”

“Well, good. They’ll see that I’m telling the truth.”

I’d seen this before—someone so certain that the truth would set him free. I still had no idea what evidence the police had against Jack, but I could read the tea leaves. He wasn’t going home tonight. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that. We both had learned the hard way that I was incapable of breaking bad news, at least when it came to Jack.

I started rattling off the names of some excellent lawyers, but he was shaking his head. “No, I don’t want that. I want you.”

“Jack, I came here because I assumed it was some mix-up I could get straightened out right away. But this is serious.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Let me find you someone, okay? Without our . . . baggage.” I had always wondered what it would be like if I ever ran into Jack again. Once, I went so far as to schedule a coffee appointment at a café next door to one of his signings, hoping he might spot me through the window as he passed. Would he come inside to say hello, or pretend he hadn’t recognized me? I didn’t stop monitoring the sidewalk until long after his event would have ended. Now we were finally in the same room, and he was in handcuffs. All those conversations I had imagined would have to wait. “I’ll make sure they see you through this.”

“It’s too late for that. You’re here, and you said yourself they’re going to be back any second to transport me. God knows how long it will be before they let me see a different lawyer.”

“I’ll tell the new lawyer everything you’ve told me, okay?”

“No!” He slammed the tabletop with his fists, the sound amplified by the clank of his handcuffs against the faux wood grain. Even when I had been horrible to Jack, he had never once yelled at me. I jumped from my chair on instinct, and he immediately apologized for the outburst. “I’m begging you, Olivia. I know you’re used to representing people who can take this in stride. They get booked and processed and detained. They get strip-searched and deloused and use the toilet in front of their cell mates. They wait it out for trial and trust you’ll do your thing along the way. But I can’t wait, okay? I have Buckley. She’s only sixteen years old, and she’s already lost one parent. You know I didn’t do this, but some other lawyer won’t. They’ll just put me through the system. I need to go home. Olivia, please, you’ve got to get me out of here.”

The last bit of light fell from his face. Even after hours in custody, the thought of his daughter having to live without a parent aged him another decade.

I rose from my chair, turned my back to him, and banged loudly on the conference room door to indicate I was ready. Behind me, I heard Jack choke back a sob.

Detective Boyle cracked the door open. “Just in time for transport, Counselor.”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Detective? Your next move had better be a phone call to someone with the power to unlock those handcuffs and escort Mr. Harris back to his apartment, apology in hand, or you’ll be on the front page of the Post as the nitwit thug who locked up the Penn Station widower. If you’re lucky, you’ll spend the rest of your career investigating subway cell-phone grabs.”

Boyle reached out and patted me on the head. “Your tough-talking defense attorney bullshit’s adorable.”

I hadn’t expected that. But I did know what he was anticipating in return: offense and outrage. Instead, I took a seat and calmly crossed my legs. “Then call my bluff. Or play it safe and call ADA Scott Temple. Tell him exactly what I said to you, and then see what happens. Things will be interesting either way, Detective, I promise.”


JACK WAS TAPPING THE TABLE so loudly that my head was starting to throb, my hangover resurfacing. I knew that every minute that passed without him getting moved to MDC was a good sign, but Jack was growing more anxious by the second.

I pulled a notepad from my briefcase and slid it across the table with a pen. “Your computer information. All your e-mail accounts and passwords. Your Web provider. Any social media pages. Everything.” It would keep him busy, or at least his hands from that incessant tapping.

When he nudged the pad back in my direction, I blinked at the sight of a tidy list in neat, round, perfect, familiar print. Even with the cuffs, he was like a human Cambria font.

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Facebook.com/jackharrisauthor

@Jackharrisbooks

Wow, Jack on Twitter. Somehow I had missed that in my late-night drunken cyberstalking over the years.

“Passwords, too,” I said.

“It’s the same for everything, down at the bottom of the page.”

Volunteered to go to the station. Didn’t lawyer up. Consented to a GSR swab. And one password for every account. He was still the same, naive Jack.

At least the password wasn’t “password.”

He had written:

jack<3smollybuckley

It took a second to register. Less than, like the math symbol, followed by the number 3. The two shapes together formed a heart. Jack loves Molly and Buckley.

“It was an easy way for all of us to remember our passwords when we first set up the accounts. Molly’s was Molly loves Jack and Buckley. And so on.”