I was stopped on my bike—one foot on the gravel, one on a paused pedal—next to my own car, watching my husband talk to a woman I’d never seen before. He was drinking beer from a pint glass, looking exactly like himself, but the woman was more easily readable. She was flirting. She flipped her long hair a lot, licked her glossy lips, maintained good eye contact. She could have given instructions in a magazine. When I saw her touch Jason’s knee, part of me wanted to storm into the crowd, announce my presence, and ask Jason to introduce me to his friend.
I didn’t. I pedaled back to our rented cottage and waited for him to come home. When he finally arrived almost three hours later, he immediately took a shower. I picked up his shirt, dropped so casually on the floor, and held it to my face. It smelled like the beach. That night, when he crawled into bed with me and held my hand, I fiddled with his ring. His tan line was faded.
Was it enough proof that I was willing to spend the rest of summer in school, or lose a limb? No, but all the signs were there. We hadn’t touched each other—not that way—for more than a year. More hours away from home, with vague explanations for his whereabouts. That girl at Cyril’s. He’d clearly taken off his ring. At that point, I “knew,” to the extent that word has meaning. And yet I didn’t say a thing. What Jason’s attorney had called an “unspoken understanding” had been set into motion.
At the time, that’s not how I thought of it. Even as I leaned on the borrowed bicycle in the gravel parking lot, watching him flirt with a stranger, I almost felt closer to him. It was part of the bargain that was now our life together. We were supposed to have a normal marriage, but one half of the couple—me—wasn’t normal, so neither were we.
But I had lived with far more dangerous secrets, and so we went on.
31
Corrine immediately spotted two news vans when she pulled up in front of the special victims unit. A group of people clustered on either side of the walkway leading into the building.
Her original plan had been to fingerprint Powell at the Sixth Precinct, less than a mile from his address, then transport him to Central Booking on Centre Street. King disrupted that plan by instructing her to go to SVU instead. It wasn’t the usual process, and it meant a round-trip drive to Harlem and back.
Now that she counted at least four cameras, she realized King had given SVU as the location for the perp walk. She actually felt bad for Powell as she marched him, still in handcuffs, through the gauntlet. He had no way to hide his face. She could feel him jerking away from each flash of a camera. Once they were inside and she unlocked the cuffs, the only thing he said was, “I have a thirteen-year-old son.”
He stared straight ahead as she took his prints, followed by his mug shot.
The press was gone by the time she walked him out a mere thirty minutes later, having gotten what they came for. As she transported him to Central Booking, he remained silent. He didn’t even ask to have the radio turned on, the way some people do, or ask where he was going next. His lawyer would have been pleased.
Once she was done with the paperwork at Central Booking, her plan was to head back to Powell’s place. The wife would be home, glued to her phone. The lawyer was probably busy trying to get a head start on cutting him loose. If Corrine was lucky, she’d catch the wife alone.
She was three blocks away when she realized she wanted to know more about Angela Powell before knocking on her door. She pulled over and brought up the number she had saved for Detective Steven Hendricks in East Hampton.
“I just booked Jason Powell for rape.”
Hendricks spoke like an old, experienced cop, his tone completely unfazed. “So how bad was it?”
These days, you weren’t supposed to distinguish. Rape was rape.
“The victim had him up to her hotel room after dinner, but there’s evidence of injury, and he denied all contact with her and we have DNA.” Corrine believed you had to share some amount of information with other cops if you expected their cooperation. She was giving Hendricks enough to know that there were shades of a date-rape dynamic to the case, but more than a complete he-said, she-said.
“He’s arguing consent?”
“Basically,” she confirmed.
“Is there any way to keep the wife out of it? Angela’s had a rough time of it, and this guy was supposed to be her happily-ever-after.”
“My impression is that she’s managed to keep her identity fairly private.” She didn’t tell Hendricks that she never would have known who Angela was had it not been for his phone number in her call records.
“Her parents made sure of it. I went with them to Niagara Falls when they got the phone call. I was the last person they wanted to deal with at the time, but they at least knew me. Angela was practically catatonic. They couldn’t get her to hand the baby to anyone until she saw her mother.”
“You didn’t have a good relationship with the family?”
“The short version is, I could have tried harder. I thought she was a runaway.”
“And that’s why you’ve been trying to help her now.”
“Pretty much. So how can I help her?”
“Convince her to jump off a sinking ship. The DA is determined to get a conviction. She could leave now, take half his money, and find a new happily-ever-after.”
“I’d be the last person able to convince her.”
“So who has her ear?”
“Her best friend is Susanna Coleman, but—”
“I’m not going through a journalist.”
“Of course not. Which is why I was going to say the person she’d really listen to is her mother, Ginny. Her dad, Danny, died a few years back, but Ginny was always the one who looked out for Angela. I thought she was going to clock the doctor who wanted to examine Angela and the baby after they were rescued. The way she saw it, Franklin and the other kidnapping victim were dead. If the police wanted to keep investigating, that was their business, but she took her daughter and grandson home and told the Pittsburgh police to pound sand.”
“Where’d the other girl come from?”
“Franklin picked her up in Cleveland. That sicko made the girls use fake names. I think Angela was called Michelle. She called the other girl Sarah. They didn’t find the body for two weeks and never identified her, last I heard.”
Corrine realized that part of her had been hoping Hendricks would be close enough to the family to persuade Angela to start looking out for herself instead of her husband. It was still worth a try. “The husband will be arraigned tomorrow. I’m about to approach the wife now to see what she knows. What if you gave her a call first?”
“I think she’d hang up and take it out on you for having any association with me.”
“Wow, she dislikes you that much?”
He paused on the other end of the line. “The only time that family let me do one thing for them was to help them get a birth certificate for Spencer—that’s the son. I found a doctor willing to look at the police reports and say it was a home birth in Albany, father unknown, so Franklin’s name wouldn’t be anywhere near the baby’s. They did thank me, but it wasn’t enough to earn their forgiveness.”
Corrine wondered which cases would continue to haunt her, years from now. She considered telling Hendricks not to kick himself, that every cop inevitably makes a wrong call. But she had no idea whether Hendricks was a good cop. Maybe he deserved to be blamed for what Angela went through.
She thanked him again for the information and started the car engine.
He offered her one more piece of advice. “If I had to guess, she’s in denial. She built an entirely new life for herself and probably wants to think it’s all going to be okay. If it starts looking dire, go to the mom. Ginny Mullen. Angela may think she’s part of some other world now, but when push comes to shove, she trusts her mother more than anyone.”
Eight minutes later, Corrine stood at Angela Powell’s door.
32
I checked my phone again for updates. Nothing.
Have you heard anything? I sent the text to Colin and watched the ellipses on the screen as he typed his response. How could a text message take so long?
They transported him to SVU in Harlem instead of the 6th Precinct. By the time Olivia got there, they were taking him back downtown for processing.
So what does that mean? I hit enter.