The Perfect Marriage(80)
Reid knew he’d eventually have to take a plea. The strategy now was to delay that for as long as possible. In the meantime, he’d work his own lawyer so that Weitzen would work the prosecutors.
Negotiating jail time was just like any business deal. When Reid finally believed he was getting their rock-bottom offer, he’d accept it and plead guilty. He had no other choice.
Three days later, the DNA results from Owen Fiske came in. Gabriel found out via a call from Erica Thompson.
“Fuck,” he said when she told him.
28
In Greek mythology, Chimera was a fire-breathing monster. She combined the head of a lion and midsection of a goat with a dragon’s tail and hind legs. Sometimes the dragon tail was depicted with a snake’s head on it. The legend was that Chimera destroyed the cities of Caria and Lycia before being slain by Bellerophon.
Owen was a chimera. Literally. Well, not literally. He did not breathe fire or have the head of a lion, the midsection of a goat, or the tail of a serpent. Nor had he ever destroyed a city. But in AML circles, his condition was actually called a chimera.
He was frankly surprised that no one else knew that. Apparently, neither his parents nor the NYPD were as devoted to googling “AML allogeneic hematopoietic cells transplantation” as he was. If they had been, they would have learned that in these types of transplants, the donor cells mix with the host’s cells to create two separate sets of DNA.
Which was why, although the blood that Owen spilled when he punched James in the mouth was 100 percent his, it did not match the DNA in the blood sample the NYPD had taken from him following the stem cell transplant.
After his mother confronted him about what James’s crazy stalker of an ex-wife told her at the funeral—that she’d seen Owen entering and leaving James’s office at the time of the murder—he’d lied straight to his mother’s face. Given all the lies his parents had told him over the past few years, Owen didn’t feel too guilty about returning the favor. Besides, what choice did he have? He wasn’t about to confess to what had actually happened. He couldn’t. Sometimes not even to himself.
“Haley’s lying,” he’d said. “You know that’s what she does, Mom. She tries to get you all worked up by telling you whatever she thinks is what you’re most afraid about.”
He told his father the same thing a few days later. “I was hanging with friends after school, Dad, and then I came straight to your house.”
His father had believed him. He could be counted on to accept whatever Owen said, without fail. If Owen had tried to peddle his old man a story that Martians had come to earth and shape-shifted into his body, and that’s whom Haley had seen enter James’s office, his father would have accepted it, no questions asked.
His mother, however, was not so gullible. She said she believed him, but Owen knew otherwise. She could always see through him.
His lie held up for a while. In fact, he thought it might carry the day. He hadn’t considered that the police would be able to trace the DNA to him.
The day after his father was arrested—before his father had even provided his own DNA sample to the police—his mother had come to the hospital and told Owen that she had something important to discuss. He knew before she said a word that the jig was up.
Nevertheless, when she explained that DNA found at the crime scene matched his father’s family, Owen initially held tight to his lie.
“What does that mean?” he had said.
His mother looked at him with disappointment.
“Your father didn’t kill James,” she said. “But someone who shares DNA with him did. I think you know what that means.”
Jessica would never forget the second time she confronted Owen about his role in James’s murder. The first time was after the funeral, when he flat-out denied Haley’s claim that he had been inside James’s office on the day he was killed. She wasn’t sure what to believe then, but even the remote possibility that Haley was telling the truth and Owen was lying was enough for her to change her tack with the police and convince Wayne to do likewise.
She was content to let Owen’s denial stand unchallenged until the police obtained her son’s DNA. But once they had, she needed for Owen to tell her the truth before the science left no doubt that her son had been lying to her.
Yet when she confronted him, Owen didn’t initially react. She had just accused him of murdering his stepfather, and he remained silent.
His refusal to admit what he’d done overwhelmed her, and she began to cry. But now was not the time for her to break down. She needed to get the truth. To understand what had happened to lead her son to kill her husband.
Jessica steadied herself and told Owen that nothing he said would stop her and Wayne from loving him, and from doing everything they could to keep him out of jail. But she thought that the least he could do was tell her what happened. She hoped that by her tone, he realized that she expected to hear the truth.
This time, Owen got the message. After taking a moment to collect himself, he began to explain.
“I heard James talking to that Allison lady on his phone that morning,” he said, speaking softly but deliberately, as if he’d fully thought through the sequence of events he was describing. “He said he was meeting her at four that day, and it sounded like they weren’t just friends or whatever. He said he loved her. So, after school, I went to his office. I was just going to tell him to stop it. I swear to God. That’s all I was going to do. Just make him stop cheating on you. But when I got there, the lady was leaving. I passed her at the door, and I was sure it was her because, you know, she was short-haired and skinny, the way that guy who called you said. When I went inside, James was in the shower. I could tell that he’d just finished having sex with her. The sheets were all smelly . . .”