The Perfect Marriage(82)

“Who?” Asra asked.

“He was a boxer in the seventies,” Salvesen said. “The Bayonne Bleeder, they called him. Knocked down Ali. But my point is that the defense will say he could have had a bloody nose that morning when he visited his stepfather before school. Or even after school, before the FBI agent brought James Sommers back to his office. So the blood doesn’t really move the needle that much. It’s not like the murderer had to leave blood at all. In fact, it’s perfectly possible that the murderer didn’t leave his own blood at the scene.”

“The ME will say he did,” Asra argued. “And the scratch on Owen’s hand is exactly where Erica Thompson said it’d be if he’d punched James Sommers in the jaw.”

“The scratches could be from anything. And could have occurred days before or after the murder. On top of which, I spoke with the ME. The best she can say is that the killer might have cut his hand with the punch. That’s not did. In fact, to a jury true to the reasonable-doubt standard, it’s probably didn’t.”

Gabriel caught Asra’s eye. He had little doubt that she was thinking exactly what he was at this point—that Joe Salvesen’s picture should be next to the word coward in the dictionary.

“And let’s not forget that even if everything broke our way at trial, a conviction is going to be difficult because of the crazy ex-wife,” Salvesen continued. “The trial will be all about Haley Sommers. And she’s about as unsympathetic to a jury as a witness could possibly be. She’s a goddamn investment banker turned stalker. She had a restraining order out against her. She crashed their anniversary party. Just think about that for a second. The defense will call fifty witnesses to testify to the fact that this crazy lady snuck into James Sommers’s home—even though she was legally prohibited from doing so—for the sole purpose of calling him out in front of his friends. Who does that? Not only that, but they’ll also be able to place her at the crime scene. Or at least in the restaurant next door. She has no business being there. And she’s there a lot. And then there’s the voice mail. That’s the nail in the coffin. You heard what it sounded like when it was just read it in court. At trial, they’ll play the recording for the jury. Over and over again. They’ll have Haley go through what she was thinking when she left it, ask her to explain why she chose each and every word. You ever hear someone try to explain to a jury that they’re not crazy when they’ve left a paper trail that only a psycho could create? It’s not pretty, believe me. So, when all is said and done, with the evidence you have, our absolute best-case scenario is to give the jury a choice between convicting a kid with cancer or a woman who acts like Fatal Attraction’s batshit sister.”

It was all too clear to Gabriel by now that nothing he or Asra said, or even the pressure from their captain, would cause Salvesen to grow a pair. And certainly not following a long balls-free career that had served the ADA just fine.



That night, for the first time in nearly two weeks, Gabriel came home before dinner. He hadn’t called to alert Ella, wanting to see the surprise on her face when he walked through the door.

He wasn’t disappointed.

Ella literally ran to the front door to greet him. After a long embrace, she asked, “Did you go over the wall to escape?”

He laughed. “No, the case is over.”

“Congratulations,” she said, clearly assuming that it had ended with an arrest.

“No. Like you’d say, we came in second.”

“Salvesen too scared to take on Alex Miller?”

“That was the subtext. What he actually said was that we should wait for the boy to confess or for his parents to turn on him.”

“Yeah, those are some sound prosecutorial tactics,” she said with a laugh. Then: “You okay?”

“Hard to lose sleep over not putting a teenager with leukemia in jail for something that probably was more of an accident than a premeditated crime. Especially when there’s no family demanding justice.”

“So maybe you came in first, after all.”

Gabriel made his way to Annie’s crib. She was staring up at him, chewing on a rubber pretzel she held in her hand. When she caught sight of her father, Gabriel could have sworn his daughter smiled.

“Sure did,” he said.



Alex Miller told Wayne that no arrest would be forthcoming. “Of course, that could change,” the lawyer said. “New evidence could be found, or a new DA comes in and he or she decides to go for it. But usually that doesn’t happen. If they don’t think they have a strong enough case to take to trial now, time rarely improves the situation.”

“What if Haley tells them what she saw?” Wayne asked.

This had always been Wayne’s fear. There was an eyewitness, after all. She had seen Owen enter James’s building, then flee the crime scene with blood on his hands.

The cops still didn’t know about that. And for all Wayne knew, James’s death hadn’t soothed Haley’s desire to ruin Jessica’s life. If anything, it might have exacerbated it.

“I really don’t see that making much of a difference at this point,” Alex said. “Don’t get me wrong—it would not be a positive development, but the police would still be left in the same spot. At trial, it’ll be a choice between her or Owen. Most people are much more apt to believe that a woman who has threatened her ex-husband is a murderer ahead of a teenage stepson. Especially a sick one. Besides, Haley Sommers strikes me as pretty smart and having a heightened self-preservation instinct. The status quo suits her just fine. And I suspect now, with James gone, her thirst for revenge has probably lessened. I don’t see anything in it for her to reach out to the police.”