‘No, no, no, that’s not true at all—’ Vince exclaims, panic rising in his voice.
‘Vince!’ Jeff Mankin interjects, glaring at his client, a clear warning to shut his mouth.
‘Right,’ I continue, ‘so either Layla lied to her own hidden diary or you’re lying to me. Which seems more likely?’ I cross my arms over my chest and lean back in my chair. This man is so used to everyone tiptoeing around him, worshiping at his feet. Not this time, Vince Taylor.
‘Look, Detective,’ Mankin says, ‘my client came here voluntarily today. He’s been forthcoming with you about his relationship with Ms Bosch—’
‘Well, that’s not entirely true. When we spoke yesterday he told me that he barely knew her.’
‘You mean when you questioned him in his place of employment in front of his employees? He didn’t feel comfortable raising the issue of his relationship with Ms Bosch then, but he came here voluntarily first thing this morning to tell you about it,’ Mankin retorts.
‘Sure, after the World View article already exposed his secret.’
‘That’s another thing,’ Mankin says, his voice rising. ‘It’s interesting that some trashy tabloid informed my client that he was a person of interest in this investigation before you did. Seems to me like you need to regulate the information coming out of this office a little better. And, for your information, we were already on our way here when we saw that ridiculous article.’
‘That tip-off certainly didn’t come from this office if that’s what you’re implying. You might want to speak to your client about who else knew about his love affair with the victim!’ I’m losing my temper. I need to reign it in. I can’t let this attorney get under my skin. If I lose my cool I lose control of this interview.
‘It wasn’t a love affair!’ Vince interjects, running his hands through his hair. ‘I don’t know why she would say that, but it wasn’t. We both knew what it was. It was just a meaningless fling, a bit a fun. A mistake, really …’
‘That’s enough, Vince,’ Mankin says sternly, cutting his client off. ‘Detective,’ he continues, turning to me, ‘my client came here to inform you of his involvement with Ms Bosch and he’s done that. But it had absolutely nothing to do with her death. And so, unless you’re charging him with anything, this interview is over.’
‘I just have one more question, Mr Taylor,’ I say as Vince and his lawyer begin to preparing to leave. ‘I’m going to need to know where you were the night of August twenty-fourth, the night Ms Bosch was murdered.’
Chapter 9
Vince
DAY 2
She wants to know where I was the night Layla was killed. I knew this question was coming of course, and Jeff and I rehearsed my answer about a hundred times on the drive over here after we saw that damn article, but now that Detective Barnes has actually asked it out loud, it all feels too real. Layla is dead and Barnes thinks I killed her. She seems so smug about it too, leaning back in her chair, arms folded over her chest, with that obnoxious grin on her face. She thinks she knows me. She thinks she has me all figured out. But she’s wrong.
I know how Barnes sees me. The entitled rich guy, the cheating husband, the lecherous boss praying on young interns, but she doesn’t know the first thing about me. She doesn’t know that I grew up poor, my parents scraping by on food stamps, she doesn’t know that everything I own was hard earned, and she doesn’t know about the fertility treatments, the doctor’s appointments, the injections, the scans, the invasive questions about my sperm count and our sex lives. Barnes doesn’t know how our failure to produce children gradually took over my marriage. Every conversation revolving around Nicole’s empty womb and the pain that it brought her. She couldn’t know about how it tore at my heart to watch the woman I love struggling like that and how much I had to bite back my own pain about our inability to start a family, because Nicole’s sadness was so all-consuming. There was simply no room for mine. She doesn’t know how lonely I felt carrying that grief alone. Barnes couldn’t possibly understand what drove me to Layla, but I am keenly aware of how dangerous her misconception of me can be.
I have to hold back my rising anger. I need to answer her question. ‘I had to work late and then I spent the night at my apartment.’
‘Your apartment?’
‘Yes. We keep an apartment in the city. We live over in Loch Harbor, Connecticut, which is almost an hour’s drive out of the city most days, so it’s convenient for when I need to work late that I can stay in Manhattan.’
‘Sure does sound convenient.’ Barnes’ voice is dripping with sarcasm. ‘And you’re sure you worked late that particular evening?’
‘Yes. We’re preparing to launch a new branch at KitzTech very soon, and I needed to get everything in order to present it to the board yesterday. It’s a huge undertaking and I find that I often do my best work at night when the office is quiet.’
‘Uh huh. I see,’ Barnes says eying me suspiciously. ‘I don’t suppose anyone can verify this information?’
‘No, but my security system can.’ I feel like I’ve finally won a point in this match. ‘I scanned my ID and my fingerprints to get in and out of the office. It will show you that I was there until about eleven o’clock at night.’
‘You have a record of that?’ It sounds like her confidence is beginning to waiver. Good.
‘He does,’ Jeff interjects. ‘And he’d be happy to provide it to you … if you think you can keep it out of the tabloids that is,’ he adds with a smirk. ‘That’ll be all for today, Detective.’ Jeff taps me on the shoulder letting me know that it’s time to shut up and leave.
We stand up under Barnes’ watchful gaze. She’s had to accept my statement for now, but I know that she doesn’t believe me. She’s still convinced that I killed Layla.
Once we’re safely back in Jeff’s car I let out a sigh of relief. ‘You think that went okay?’ I ask him.
‘You’re kidding, right? No, that did not go okay!’ Jeff slams his hand on the steering wheel. ‘We were blindsided by that fucking diary. And don’t even bother lying to me again, telling me you’ve never seen it before, because I saw your face when she pulled it out. I’ve known you your whole life, man. I can tell when you’re lying. Or at least I thought I could.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ I’m suddenly feeling defensive. ‘I haven’t lied to you about a single thing.’
‘Oh really? “It was just sex”, “she knew it was just supposed to be a bit of fun”. Sure doesn’t sound that way to me, Vince.’
‘I don’t know why Layla wrote those things, Jeff, but I swear to you I never told that girl that I loved her and I was certainly never going to leave Nicole for her.’
‘Well whether you said it or not, your girlfriend was clearly under a different impression.’ Jeff stares out at the road ahead of him, his face screwed up in anger. I see a familiar deep ‘V’ forming in the creases between his brows and I think it might be best to let him cool down for the time being.
The drive back to my house is quiet. Jeff and I have known each other for almost thirty years, and yet we have nothing to say right now. We pull up to my house with only the sound of Jeff’s tires crunching on gravel to break the silence. I swing open the passenger door and step out in front of my house.
‘Good luck with Nicole,’ Jeff says, extending the proverbial olive branch. ‘I have a feeling you’re going to need it.’
I take a moment alone in front of the house before I have to go in and face Nicole. Sometimes I still can’t believe that I live here, in this house. The tiny house I grew up in could easily fit into the four-car garage alone. This is our dream house, mine and Nicole’s. We had it built about five years ago, right after I took KitzTech public. It’s far larger than what we really need for the two of us, but when we first stood on this vacant lot and designed the home we would build here, we thought we would be filling it with children of our own. What we created is a beautiful, sprawling villa nestled into the serenity of
the wooded landscape. The house contains all the latest technological advances: smart spaces that automatically dim the lights and control the temperature based on the individual preferences of whoever is in the room; waterfall showers that recall your preferred water temperature and pressure; and a refrigerator that can text me to let me know when I need to pick up milk on my way home. But this house was also built for Nicole, with its bright and airy rooms, tranquil water features throughout the property, and, of course, her one-of-a-kind yoga studio. The house is the perfect combination of the two of us, a seamless blending of nature and technology. We built our own perfect world here, and I’m about to destroy it. There is no way around it. I have to tell her about my involvement with Layla now. But I know it’s going to hurt her, and I never wanted to be the cause of any more pain in her life.
I push open the double doors to the front of the house and step into the spacious open foyer. I spot Nicole already walking down the stairs and she stops the moment she sees me. Her eyes are red-rimmed and she’s clutching a tissue in one hand, a sheet of paper in the other.
‘Nic,’ I say walking towards her.
She steps towards me and hands me the paper. It’s a print out of this morning’s World View article.
‘A client sent it to me.’ Her voice is soft, as if it pains her to even form the words. I can tell she’s fighting back tears, more tears. She looks up at me, her impossibly blue eyes swimming, waiting for me to tell her it’s not true. But I can’t.
‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t want you to find out this way, I was going to tell you—’
‘So it’s true then?’ Her chin begins to wobble. ‘You were really sleeping with your intern?’
‘Nic, please let me explain—’ I start, but she turns away from me her face crumbling in disgust. My wife can barely stand to look at me. ‘It’s true. I was … involved with her. But it didn’t mean anything, it was nothing—’
Nicole turns back to face me, her voice rising in anger. ‘Nothing? You threw away our marriage for nothing then?’
‘No, I …,’ I stumble. ‘I just … with all the fertility treatments, and IVF, it got to be too much, I started to feel—’
‘Just one more thing my inability to give us children has caused.’ Nicole begins to sob. I try to reach out to her, I want to hold her close to me, to promise her that everything is going to be okay, to take away the hurt I’ve caused her, but she pushes away from me.
‘I need to be alone right now, Vince. I need some time to think.’
Nicole walks upstairs to our bedroom, leaving me alone with only the gentle sound of our bedroom door clicking closed behind her.
But maybe it’s for the best that Nicole is distracted for the moment because there is something important I need to take care of right now. I walk into my home office, flip open my laptop, and log in to the KitzTech server. I tap into our security system, the one I designed myself, and with just a few lines of code it now looks like I used my employee ID to leave the building at 6.03 p.m., returning at 6.26 p.m., (picking up a quick dinner, should Barnes ask), scanning my fingerprints to get into my personal office at 6.31 p.m., and I swiped out at 10.43 p.m.. I even throw in a trip to the men’s room at 9.14 p.m., for good measure. I download the security records and transfer them onto a flash drive to give to Jeff.
I feel like a criminal altering the security code. And maybe I am. But work was the best alibi I could come up with. I can’t have anyone knowing where I really was the night Layla died.
It’s late in the evening by the time Nicole walks out into our yard to find me sitting on a lounge chair with my laptop on my lap, trying to distract myself with work as usual. The sun and its heat have long dipped below the horizon and she’s wearing an oversized sweater, the sleeves dangling loose over her hands. She looks so small as she sits down gently on the edge of my chair. I close my laptop and toss it onto the empty chair next to me, but before I can open my mouth to speak, Nicole begins.
‘I need to ask you something, Vince. I’m only going to ask you once, and I need you to tell me the truth, okay?’ Her fingers nervously toy with the hem of her sweater.
‘Yes, anything.’ I’m relieved that she’s at least looking in my direction again.
‘Where were you the night that girl died?’ Her eyes are wide and imploring, her cheeks streaked with tears that look silver in the moonlight.
‘I had to work late and then I spent the night at the apartment.’ It frightens me how easily the lie comes. ‘We’re launching that new video game branch soon and I needed to get the quarterly projections together to present to the board the next morning—’
‘I know that’s where you told me you were that night, but is it the truth, Vince?’ Her voice is quiet, unsure. She thinks I’m capable of murder.
‘Yes. It is,’ I lie to my wife.
‘Okay,’ she says, her eyes falling to her lap. ‘I believe you. But it’s going to take me some time to trust you again. I don’t know how I’m going to get past this.’ She shakes her head slowly, and I can feel her disappointment in me radiating off her in waves. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as low as I do in this moment.
I look at my wife now, really look at her. When was the last time I did that? When was the last time I truly saw her? She seems to have grown smaller than she was only yesterday, she’s folded in on herself, her head bowed shielding her face behind a veil of long, blonde hair.
I reach for her hand. Words alone can’t express how truly awful I feel, how much I hate myself, for having put her through this. But she recoils at my touch, deftly sliding her hand out from beneath mine.
I think back to the early days, to when we were so in love that we couldn’t keep our hands off one another. My mind flashes with images of my lips on hers, her head on my chest, her fingers interlaced with mine. Those golden days of lazy Sunday mornings spent naked in bed and stolen kisses that never seemed to end. And now my wife, the love of my life, is repulsed by the feel of my skin on hers. And it’s my own fault. I’ve done this to her. To us.
‘I understand,’ I say, my heart breaking as I do. ‘And I’m so sorry. But I promise you that I’m going to earn your trust back. I love you more than you’ll ever know.’
Nicole looks up at me then, her eyes round and baleful. They’re rimmed with red and tears, more tears, gently slide down her cheeks. She nods slowly, silently as she wraps her sweater tightly around her shoulders before making her way back into the house alone.
Chapter 10
Vince
DAY 3
I wake up in a guest room, alone, to the sound of the house phone ringing and the front gate intercom buzzing non-stop. It takes me a moment to place where I am. The spare rooms in our house, of which there are several, remind me of a hotel. They’re tastefully decorated, designed to accommodate even the fussiest of houseguests with an array of toiletries, fresh flowers, and Egyptian cotton sheets, but utterly devoid of any of the sentiment which makes our house feel like our home.
I hoist myself out of bed and accidentally catch sight of myself in the full-length mirror that Nicole put in each of the guest rooms. My face is darkened with stubble and my hair is jutting out in all directions. I look, and feel, as though I’ve aged ten years overnight. I make my way to the master bedroom and push open the door to find Nicole sitting up in bed, holding her knees to her chest.
‘This has been going on all morning,’ she says sadly. ‘The intercom has been buzzing for hours. I checked the front gate camera. It’s a bunch of reporters. Please make them leave, Vince.’ She looks up at me, her eyes pleading.
‘I’ll take care of it.’
I’m no stranger to the spotlight, but Nicole didn’t sign up for this. She was with me before the money, before the fame … before the affair. She didn’t ask for any of this and I feel like I need to protect her. I walk downstairs to the front door and look at the security camera pointed at the wrought iron gate at the end of our long, winding driveway. I press the intercom butto
n and I’m immediately bombarded with at least five voices yelling into the intercom, shouting their questions at me as quickly as they can: ‘Were you questioned by the police? Were you in love with Layla Bosch? Were you leaving your wife for Layla? What happened to Layla, Vince?’ I assume other news outlets have picked up on the story printed in the World View yesterday and now each of these vultures wants to tear into my marriage, my private life.
‘My wife and I have no comment at this time and we would appreciate if you would respect our privacy and back away from our property immediately,’ I reply over the intercom before shutting it off entirely. I also unplug the house phone line to end the calls which seem to be coming more and more frequently now.
I pull out my cell and call Jeff. ‘There are a pack of reporters outside my gate, barking like rabid dogs. Is there anything we can do about it?’
‘Good morning to you too,’ Jeff grumbles. I must have woken him up. I can still hear the sleep in his voice. ‘As long as they aren’t actually on your property, unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it. Did you speak to them?’
‘Only to tell them that I have no comment.’
‘Good. Don’t interact with them again. They’ll get bored and move on to the next story soon enough.’
‘Okay, thanks, Jeff,’ I reply gratefully.
Jeff grumbles something about how calling him in the early hours of a Saturday morning should cost extra, and ends the call.
I trek back upstairs to find Nicole exactly as I left her. ‘Are they gone?’ she asks.
‘No, unfortunately not, but I’ve unplugged the intercom. They won’t be bothering us again. Let’s just lay low for today and I’m sure they’ll be on to the next story by tomorrow. And if they aren’t, I’ll hire someone to handle security.’ I try to make my voice sound confident, reassuring, but in reality I’m not so sure that this story will blow over as quickly as I’m hoping it will. ‘Do you have any clients coming for a session today?’
The Guilty Husband Page 5