But in the NYPD, a patrol officer like L. Kendall didn’t need to know all that. He took the report and pushed the paper to a specialty unit for follow-up.
She had already googled Jason Powell. The name hadn’t rung a bell in the context of a police report, but the search results immediately jogged her memory. According to his bio on New York University’s website, he had a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Stanford, a PhD from Harvard, and was the somebody-something endowed chair in human rights investments and professor of economics. Despite the impressiveness of that résumé, it barely made the first page of Google hits. Powell was better known as an author and speaker. The first sentence of his Wikipedia listing: “Jason Powell is the New York Times bestselling author of Equalonomics, the chair of FSS Consulting, and a frequent media commentator.”
Corrine preferred fiction, personally, but even she had heard of Equalonomics. About four years ago it had been one of those books that everyone read—or pretended to read, in Corrine’s opinion—to seem well informed.
Now, according to Powell’s website, he hosted a podcast bearing the same name as his bestselling book. His Twitter account—a combination of business news, liberal politics, and snark—had 226,000 followers. Cosmo had named him one of the ten sexiest “gingers.”
She recalled seeing the author on Morning Joe a couple of years ago. The panelists fawned over Powell, asking whether he might be interested in running for office someday. It probably didn’t hurt that he was nice looking—trim, clean-cut, but with a little edge. A bit too pretty for Corrine’s taste, but to each her own.
Next, she googled “FSS Consulting.” Fair Share Strategies. She clicked the “About” page. The company provided “human rights and social justice due diligence” to investors and investment groups.
She wiggled her mouse, clicked on “Our Team,” and scrolled down. The list was short, only two names in addition to Powell’s: Zachary Hawkins, Executive Director, and Elizabeth Marks, Researcher.
There was nothing more she was going to learn from her computer. She picked up her phone.
The voice that answered sounded apprehensive, even slightly annoyed. “Hello?”
Corrine asked if she was speaking with Rachel Sutton—she was—and then identified herself as a detective following up on the complaint that was filed yesterday.
“Oh, of course,” Rachel said apologetically. “I’m so glad you called. It seems like no one is listening to me. I was positive the officer at the precinct was going to file it at the bottom of a dumpster.”
“It’s all on computers, so . . .”
“Right. So now what happens?”
“Now, if you don’t mind, you get to repeat everything you already told Officer Kendall to me. We’ll go from there.”
Rachel laughed softly. “Are you going to roll your eyes and interrupt me every few seconds, trying to make it sound like I’m lying?”
“Was that your experience at the precinct?”
“The guy was a jerk. I mean, I sort of expected that when I reported it at FSS because Jason’s the boss. So I wound up at the police station, but that managed to be worse—”
“Okay, we’ll talk all about it, but in person.” Most detectives arranged interviews at the precinct, which for the special victims unit meant a station house on 123rd Street in an area of East Harlem that many victims were afraid to enter. Corrine, however, believed she learned a lot about people by seeing where they lived. And sitting down in a victim’s living room was a way to begin earning her trust. “Are you home now?”
“Yeah. Give me an hour to get cleaned up.”
And already Corrine had learned something about Rachel Sutton. She was the kind of person who tidied up before talking to a detective about a sex abuse claim. That fact meant nothing on its own, but Corrine made a mental note of it, because Corrine liked to think she noticed everything.
Rachel’s apartment in Chelsea was one of those generic new buildings popping up across Manhattan, all floor-to-ceiling glass. Ticky-tacky fishbowls, Corrine called them. Corrine, on the other hand, had a house—an actual hand-to-God house, with a yard and a driveway—because she’d bought in Harlem before hipsters decided Harlem was cool. A five-minute walk to work was only one reason Corrine had asked to come back to SVU after working homicides for four years.
She told the doorman she was there to see Rachel Sutton, gesturing toward the badge hanging from the chain around her neck. Years ago, after only two weeks as a plainclothes detective, Corrine had opted for that placement. No one had confused her with a nanny or a housekeeper when she wore a blue uniform.
Rachel answered her apartment door in cropped boyfriend jeans and a black tank top. Her long dark-brown hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, and she had applied her makeup in that way that made it look like she wasn’t wearing makeup. As Rachel gestured for her to take a seat in the living room, Corrine noticed a smear of ink on the back of Rachel’s hand, like a temporary tattoo, a couple of inches from a Tiffany-cut solitaire that Corrine guessed was a full two carats.
“Nice place,” Corrine observed, even though to her it seemed like a photograph from any modern furniture catalog.
“Thanks. My mom did everything.” Her shrug seemed to acknowledge her good fortune. “I haven’t told her about Jason yet. She’s going to freak. And no way will she let me keep working there—”
“At FSS?”
“Yeah. It’s an amazing opportunity for me. Jason’s basically the leading voice at the cross section of finance and international human rights, and now this. I don’t want to blow up my whole professional life before it’s started.”
Corrine suggested that they talk first about what happened before they discussed what actions might follow.
Rachel explained that she was getting her master’s degree in economics at NYU and had an internship for credit at Jason’s consulting firm. She’d entered Jason’s office to deliver a memo she had drafted. “I didn’t see him at his desk, but he must have heard me walk in, because he called me into his spa room.”
“His what?” Corrine asked.
“That’s what the interns call it. He’s got this huge private bathroom with a shower and a little daybed to the side. Sometimes he closes the door, and we think he takes naps in there. A couple of the interns joke that he might actually live at the office. Anyway, I walked in there, and his pants were undone. I started to turn away, and he said it was nothing I hadn’t seen before. Then he kept talking to me, like it’s normal. But he was like touching himself the entire time.”
“His genitals were exposed?”
Rachel shook her head. “No, or at least I didn’t see. His hands were in his pants. I can’t describe it. And it was so fast, and I was sort of freaked out. So then he looked at the memo in my hand and saw my ring. He said something about whether it was a conflict diamond.”
Rachel must have seen the confusion on Corrine’s face, because she paused for an explanation. “They’re diamonds that come illegally from war-torn areas. Same thing as ‘blood diamonds.’” Corrine nodded to indicate she was following along.
“I told him I really didn’t know. I held my hand up like an idiot, telling him how I got engaged last weekend.”
“Congratulations,” Corrine said.
“Well, as if he’d care. I was nervous, trying to find something to talk about. He took the memo from me, and I started to turn around to leave, but he kind of grabbed my other arm. Not hard, but just sort of held it, like he was keeping me from walking off. I thought maybe he was going to skim my memo and ask some follow-up questions while I was there. But then he kind of pulled me back toward him, and his belt buckle was still undone. He told me I was too young to get married. I hadn’t had enough fun yet. It was clear to me that he was about to put my hand against his—you know. I jumped back immediately.”