“The dog walker didn’t notice.”
“It’s not the dog walker’s job to notice.” Corrine could already picture it. The dining room table cleared, the dirty takeout containers on the kitchen counter. The glass egg smashing against Kerry’s head. Blood in her dark hair. Moving the body, no neighbors in sight. Someone cleaning blood from either the hardwood floors in the living room or the terra-cotta tile in the kitchen. Maybe even leaving all that food and water for Snowball.
“I’ll call the crime scene now,” Netter said again. “Why didn’t you say something at the house?”
“I wasn’t sure what to make of it until we talked to the delivery guy.”
“Or you wanted to make sure you still got to tag along while I was still assuming she’d turn up.”
“You should make that call, Netter.”
It took Corrine nearly two hours to tell Netter everything she knew about Kerry Lynch, including Jason Powell’s suspicions that Kerry might have known more than she was admitting about Oasis’s international dealings. She spent another hour giving him advice on the various steps he might take to work the case, now that it was becoming clear that this investigation belonged in Long Island.
She had just pulled onto the LIE when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, but the area code was Manhattan.
“This is Duncan.”
“Hey, it’s Brian.”
He was Brian again. “From your cell phone on a Saturday. No, I won’t go out with you.”
“You should be so lucky. Any updates on Kerry?”
She hadn’t spoken to King since Thursday, when she first found out Kerry was missing. She told him she was driving back from Port Washington and gave him a quick summary of what she’d learned there.
“So you think Jason Powell is this boyfriend she called Jay? The surfer guy saw them together?”
“Unclear. There’s a Jay of some sort, who might or might not be Powell. I wouldn’t bet my life on surfer guy as an eyewitness.”
“And yet you trust him about seeing Tom Fisher there Wednesday night.”
She recognized the inconsistency. “He seemed certain about Fisher. Powell, not so much.”
“So are you interviewing Fisher?”
“How can I? I was already stretching to say if Powell left the city to target her, we had a basis for jurisdiction. But Fisher? Their entire relationship was on the island. If my suspicions about that missing glass egg are right, that crime also happened in Long Island. Not to mention, I’m not even on duty.”
“Like that would stop you. I can spot a fellow sucker for truth and justice.”
She did, in fact, want to question Fisher herself, but she knew that she had outworn her welcome with Netter. The second she told him about that missing egg, he had kicked into a higher gear.
King was silent on the other end of the line, thinking. “Don’t tell anyone I said this, because it’s cold as hell—”
“Hell’s not cold.”
“Don’t bust my balls, okay? I hope Kerry’s fine, but shit, I’m actually glad this case is on hold. Gives me an easy out on this phone call I need to return.”
“Which is . . .”
“I checked my office voice mail—which I should never do on a weekend, note to self. I had a message from Eric Jordan. He said he’d heard that Kerry Lynch was missing and was wondering if we had opened a grand jury to investigate.”
Corrine let the information sink in. Eric Jordan was with New Day. His cohost, Susanna Coleman, was best friends with Angela Powell. It couldn’t be a coincidence. If the news of Kerry’s disappearance were going to leak from someone on Long Island, she’d expect it to be to one of the local media outlets, not to a national network morning show.
“It’s coming from the wife.” Corrine explained the common link between Angela Powell and Eric Jordan. “He specifically asked about a grand jury? That seems weird. I should have known something was off when she came to the door in her pajamas.”
“I feel like you started having an entirely different conversation at some point.”
“Sorry, I’m thinking out loud. The first time I went to the Powells’ house, Angela was cool as a cucumber, even as I told her about her husband hiring a prostitute. There was something almost Stepford-y about her. The house was impeccable, despite a teenage son under the roof and her husband in the middle of an investigation. But when I showed up Thursday, she came to the door in her pajamas in the middle of the afternoon.”
The more Corrine thought about it, the more convinced she was that Angela Powell had been “off” that day. She’d explained her appearance by saying she had a migraine, but Angela didn’t seem like the type to reveal any kind of personal detail—let alone a weakness—to a stranger, let alone a police detective investigating her husband.
“A second ago, it sounded like you thought Kerry and Tom Fisher might actually have been framing Powell all along, just like he claimed. Now you think Powell’s wife is lying about his alibi.”
“I’m not sure what’s going on at this point, except that Eric Jordan’s phone call to you was no coincidence. He mentioned a grand jury? That almost seems like a suggestion. Maybe Angela has something to say, and her friend Susanna knows it will take a grand jury subpoena to get her to say it.” Corrine had been telling herself that Angela’s background had nothing to do with Jason’s case, but now she was wondering whether Angela might be more submissive than she let on.
She passed two exits before King spoke again. “As far as I’m concerned, my case is on hold. Hopefully, by the time it’s not, we’ll have some answers, one way or the other.”
“And what if Powell’s been telling the truth the whole time?”
“Are you fucking with me? You were just telling me to open a grand jury to question his wife.”
“Because I know we’re missing something. I just don’t know what it is yet.”
“Work your other cases, Duncan. You really drove out to Long Island on your day off?”
“Port Washington. It’s barely past Queens.”
“You’re still making me feel bad. I’m going to go drink a bottle of wine and tell myself that Kerry Lynch is on an island somewhere, reading a book.”
48
By Sunday, the realtor had decided to list the carriage house for $7.5 million, half a million more than we paid for it. We would end up losing more than that to her commission, legal fees, and taxes, but if it all worked out as planned, we’d have about $1.7 million in equity to show for it—all of Jason’s book money and then some—half of which would be mine, at least legally.
Jason had handled the news exactly as I expected: objectively and rationally. We were divorcing on paper only. From the moment he told me that his DNA would match whatever evidence Kerry Lynch had provided to the police, I had said I would stand by him, and we’d figure out where he and I stood later. This, objectively and rationally, was consistent with that plan.
On my behalf, Colin had served Jason with divorce papers at his apartment on Saturday. I had printed the documents off the Internet myself, trying to restrict Colin’s involvement to the role of messenger. As it turned out, New York had only recently adopted a form of no-fault divorce, and even that wasn’t exactly straightforward. It required at least one party to allege that the marriage had “broken down irretrievably” for a period of at least six months. I was certain we didn’t meet the requirement, until I read further. The lack of any physical intimacy counted as “broken down irretrievably.” We had been broken, as far as the law was concerned, for three years, and I hadn’t even realized it.