Dots, followed by That he won’t get in front of a court until tomorrow. Sorry—at a client dinner and can’t leave. Will call you ASAP. So sorry, A! Hang in there.
Two hours later, I was still alone. The house was so quiet, I was starting to regret turning down my mother’s offer to come into the city for the night. I didn’t want her to hear about Jason’s arrest on the news, the way she’d heard everything else so far, but I should have known it wouldn’t be a quick phone call. Of course she immediately asked about Spencer, so I had to tell her that I had sent him to camp, which led to an argument about why I hadn’t sent him to her instead, or at least told her that her grandchild was going to be gone for weeks. Now, I would have happily continued that conversation, simply to have another person in the room with me.
I jerked when I heard a dull thump at the door. That hideous knocker was gone, so whoever was on our porch was intent on letting me know they were here.
I walked gingerly to the front door so I could check the peephole in silence.
I recognized the woman standing there as the detective who had read Jason his rights while a uniformed officer had placed him in handcuffs.
“Call our lawyer,” I yelled through the door.
“You really want to talk about this through your door? There’s people walking by on the street.”
I unlocked the bolts and opened the door. If I had met this woman in a different context, my immediate reaction to her might have been a positive one. She had a heart-shaped face that seemed to rest in a natural smile. She had dark brown freckles and her only makeup was a little blush and some pink lip gloss. She stood with her feet a comfortable distance apart, making no effort to hide the extra pounds straining against the buttons of the crisp blue shirt beneath her blazer.
But tonight, she was the woman who had arrested my husband and then made sure to drag him around the city long enough that he couldn’t make it home for the night. In her left hand was some kind of document.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” I said, “and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t yell implied threats for my neighbors to hear. If you’re here with papers, you should go through Olivia Randall.”
She held up her free hand. “I know you’ve got no reason to trust me, but I’m actually here to help you, Angela. I’m Corrine. Corrine Duncan.” She extended the same hand for a shake, but I didn’t accept it.
“I never told you to call me by my first name.”
“Mrs. Powell. It’s Powell now, right? Not Mullen?”
I felt my knees give way beneath me.
The detective moved backward until she was one step down on our stoop. “The last thing I want is for you to be collateral damage because of something your husband’s done.”
“He didn’t do anything.” In the nearly twelve years since I came home, not a day had passed that I hadn’t feared exposure, but I realized now that my worries had faded over time. Now they were raging in a way I hadn’t felt since I first ventured outside my parents’ house after going back to Springs.
“Obviously there’s another side to that story,” the detective said. “The district attorney’s office agreed to charges. The judge signed an arrest warrant. Your husband looked me straight in the eye and told me he never touched the complainant in this case, and yet we have DNA evidence proving otherwise. I’m assuming he lied to you, too.”
“I have spousal privilege,” I said. “I don’t have to talk to you.”
“So you have a lawyer?”
“I told you before: Olivia Randall. I’m going to call her right now,” I said, turning to retrieve my phone from the coffee table in the living room.
“She’s your husband’s lawyer, Mrs. Powell, not yours. And she’ll do anything to win a case, including use you and anyone else in a position to help or hurt her client. I don’t know what Randall told you, but the DA can subpoena you. A few of your private conversations might be protected, but other matters are fair game. What time did he come home? Did you notice anything unusual about his appearance or clothing? Things like that.”
“I’m not going to help you railroad my husband. You should be investigating that woman and her company.”
“The woman has a name—Kerry Lynch—and she’s afraid right now. She’s afraid of her name being printed. She’s afraid of being blamed for what happened. She’s afraid that her life’s never going back to normal again. Does that sound familiar? It’s natural to want to protect your husband, but open your mind for one second and just imagine that she’s telling the truth. If that’s the case, do you really want to help Olivia Randall victimize her a second time? This case isn’t going away. No plea bargains. No probation deal. This is actually happening, Mrs. Powell. Will your husband still have a job pending trial? If he gets convicted, are you and your son going to visit him in prison? These aren’t things Olivia Randall will help you with. She’s looking out for Jason, not you.”
“You’re trying to scare me.”
“I want you to ask yourself why you’re so damn sure Jason’s innocent. If it’s based on evidence, then fine, stick with him, and we’ll see which side wins at trial. But if it’s only because you think you know him—”
The detective handed me the papers she was holding. It was marked as an incident report, dated that morning, documenting an interview with a woman named Lana Sullivan. She was a prostitute who claimed that Jason had picked her up three years earlier when she was walking the streets in Murray Hill. I flipped the page to find an explicit description of the sex acts she performed upon him inside our car when it was pulled to the side of the road near the playground by the UN. Whoever drafted the report should have been a professional writer. I could visualize every moment.
I handed the report back to the detective. I didn’t want a copy in my home.
“I left out the part where your husband basically blamed you for the fact that he was hiring a prostitute.”
I couldn’t look away from her gaze.
“He told her that his wife had ‘problems,’ and that’s why he needed to go elsewhere. I know about what happened when you were younger. I can’t imagine what you went through.”
No, you can’t, I thought. “That was a long time ago. It has nothing to do with Jason.”
“Unless it does. There’s a pattern forming here, Angela. Your husband likes to have power over women.”
What was she insinuating? That Jason had chosen me because of my past? That Jason was now targeting other women because I was no longer available to him? That I was only defending Jason because I had been trained to be subservient? All of the above? I knew I should throw her off my property, but the look in her eyes stopped me. There was something about the way she spoke to me, as if she was genuinely trying to protect me. Could empathy be faked this well?
I forced myself to break from her eye contact. “We’re done here, Detective. I need to find my husband.”
She nodded, but reached into her blazer pocket and handed me a business card. “I promise I’ll keep asking myself every day, What if Jason’s innocent? But please, like I said, just imagine for one second that he’s not. Call me if you ever want to talk.”
As I picked up the phone to call Olivia Randall, I tucked Detective Corrine Duncan’s card inside my purse. I didn’t want Jason to find it if he ever managed to get home.
33
I went to the arraignment the next morning. I wore the closest thing I had to a suit—a gray dress I had purchased for Jason’s book launch, topped by a black blazer—thinking it would be like a trial. But the whole thing took less than ten minutes once Jason’s name was finally called.