The Perfect Marriage(58)

“If that’s how you want to play it, Ms. Sommers. But I have to tell you that you’re making a mistake.”

“Won’t be the first one of my life,” she said.

From the small opening she’d left in the doorway, she saw Lieutenant Velasquez extend his hand. The gesture struck Haley as odd. She couldn’t recall having shaken hands with him before.

Fearing if she opened the door any wider, they’d force their way in, she said, “Goodbye” without shaking his hand.

The police officers didn’t move.

“Before we go, can we see your hands, Ms. Sommers?” Detective Jamali asked.

“My hands?”

“Yes. Just put your hands out.”

The detective demonstrated the pose. Like she was a doctor who had washed her hands before surgery, waiting for someone to put gloves on her.

Haley looked down at her knuckles. Nothing seemed odd about them. She stuck them through the door so the police could confirm that assessment.

Detective Jamali leaned in for a closer look. “You don’t have any cuts, Ms. Sommers. Why do you think that you might have left your blood at the scene of your ex-husband’s murder?”

Haley didn’t understand the accusation. “Blood?”

“That’s what we’re trying to match with your DNA,” she said. “Exclude is more accurate. If you’re not a match, we know you didn’t leave any blood there. That’ll exclude you as a suspect. And that’s something you really want to happen because we know you were next door to Mr. Sommers’s office on the day of the murder. The waiters at Sant Ambroeus told us you’re a regular there. Like to sit at the bar and look out the window. Quite the coincidence that the window provided a clear view of your ex-husband arriving and leaving work every day. And, according to the folks at Sant Ambroeus, the timing of your arrival at your friend’s place can’t be right.”

All that time she spent having sex with Malik had apparently been for naught. Not completely for naught, of course, but it hadn’t achieved Haley’s intended purpose of providing her with an alibi.

“How long do you think your friend is going to keep covering for you after we explain the jail time he’s looking at for being an accessory after the fact in a murder?” Lieutenant Velasquez chimed in. “But the good news is that being a stalker is one thing, but it doesn’t make you a murderer, right? You were at that restaurant lots of times, and James Sommers never died after any of those visits. But if we can’t exclude you because your blood isn’t a match for the blood at the scene, what choice do we have but to assume it’s yours?”

Haley would have loved to prove that she hadn’t left any blood in James’s office. But her DNA would go beyond that. It would prove that she was in the office, something that they had no evidence of now.

Or at least, none that they were admitting to. They claimed they could only place her next door.

And even though they were telling her that she’d be excluded if she hadn’t left blood at the scene, she didn’t believe that for a second. It was one thing for her to be stalking James from the safety of a nearby restaurant. Quite another for her to be in violation of a restraining order and breaking and entering into a murdered man’s office.

“So what’ll it be, Ms. Sommers?” Detective Jamali asked.

Haley’s heart was going a mile a minute. She willed herself to remain calm, at least on the outside.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Actually, I’m not even sorry. If you want anything, you need to call my lawyer.”

She closed the door on them. It occurred to her when the catch clicked shut that she hadn’t even given them a lawyer’s name to call.



Since James’s death, Jessica hated being in the loft. Truth be told, even when her husband was alive, she’d never felt entirely comfortable at home without him. Now, with no hope of James coming through the door ever again, the emptiness of her home frightened her all the more.

There wasn’t a single spot within its three thousand square feet where she could breathe. Certainly not her bedroom with its reminders of James, or the living room with art all over the walls. Owen’s room made her even more depressed. He should be home now, filling their loft with the sound of his violin, or at the very least, holed up in his room on his computer, not lying in a hospital bed at Sloan Kettering.

As a sign of how on edge she was, the knock on her front door made her jump so high she thought she might have hit the ceiling. She checked the peephole before opening the door. She was glad she had. It wasn’t a condolence call, which had been her first thought. On the other side of the door were Lieutenant Velasquez and Detective Jamali.

“Sorry to bother you, Ms. Sommers,” Lieutenant Velasquez said. “May we come in?”

They all assembled in the living room. Jessica could tell that Detective Jamali was looking hard at her hands. She quickly placed them under her legs, out of view.

“We’re here because we’re asking everyone for a DNA sample so we can officially exclude them as suspects. That will allow us to focus our efforts on other people, like Reid Warwick and Haley Sommers, both of whom refused to provide us a sample of their DNA.”

“Why do you need anyone’s DNA?”

“We’re trying to see who was in your husband’s office at or around the time of the murder,” Detective Jamali said.