‘That’s Layla Bosch. My murder victim. Her picture has been all over the papers!’
‘No shit? She was a Lift member?’
‘I wouldn’t know, but there’s a photo of her inside your gym. And oddly you never mentioned that you knew her.’
‘That’s because I don’t.’ I can hear Josh’s voice growing defensive. ‘And I don’t appreciate being interrogated by my own girlfriend in the middle of the night.’
‘So you don’t know her then? Even though she’s in your gym.’
‘No, Allison. I don’t know her. Do you have any idea how many members we have? I couldn’t possibly know all of them. I can tell you that she’s not one of my regulars, but if she came in a few times here and there, well, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.’
‘Look at her, Josh. Of course you would have noticed her.’
‘It’s starting to feel like I can’t win this argument. I didn’t know her, okay? That’s all I can tell you.’
Josh snatches his pillow off of the bed and stalks off towards the living room.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To sleep on the couch.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, Allison, you’re treating me like some sort of suspect. I thought you knew me better than this. I thought you’d know that I’d never hide things from you. I’ve never given you any reason not to trust me, but still you didn’t even give me the benefit of the doubt,’ he says exasperatedly as he walks out of the bedroom. ‘I know you’ve had it rough in the past, but if you can’t find a way to let me in soon, I don’t know how we’re going to make it.’ Josh slams the door behind him.
I sit up alone in bed, pondering whether I should go to Josh, apologize, or whether I should give him space to cool off. He was right, he’s never given me any reason not to trust him, and yet I was so quick to rush to judgment. I have a tendency to write people off too quickly, to push them away before they have a chance to hurt me. Over the years I’ve built up a wall around myself and I think I’ve forgotten how to let it down. All I know for sure is that I don’t want to lose Josh. I don’t want to be alone in this bed permanently.
I must have fallen asleep at some point in the small hours of the morning because I wake to the sound of my alarm blasting on my nightstand. I get out of bed and poke my head out of my bedroom. Josh is already gone, his pillow long deserted on the couch. I cringe when I think about the way I behaved last night, the way I accused him of keeping things from me before I even took the time to ask him what was going on. I feel like an idiot. And I owe him an apology. I won’t make the same mistake when questioning Kinnon.
‘Hey, guys, what’s going on?’ Kinnon asks as he walks into the conference room. Lanner and I asked him to meet with us about the case. I showed Lanner the photo of Kinnon and Layla as soon as we got to the station this morning, and he agreed that we needed to question Kinnon about it. ‘Just don’t be too hard on the kid,’ he’d warned.
‘We wanted to talk to you about something, dude,’ Lanner begins.
‘Sure, what’s up?’
‘I found this photo on Lift’s Friend Connect page.’ I hand Kinnon a printed version of the photo in question.
Kinnon laughs. ‘Are you guys messing with me? I know taking selfies in the gym is a little ridiculous, but check out those biceps! I had to share that with the world.’
‘This isn’t about your biceps.’ I resist the temptation to add ‘you idiot’.
‘My shoulders then? Because they’re looking pretty jacked too.’ Kinnon mocks a body builder pose, his arms curled, his muscles flexed.
‘This isn’t a joke!’ I’m losing my patience now.
‘So much for not going hard on the kid,’ Lanner mutters to me before turning towards Kinnon. He takes the photo from Kinnon’s hand and lays it on the table. ‘We’re talking about her.’ He points at Layla, her eyes dark and haunted in the grainy photo.
‘Is that … is that Layla Bosch?’ Kinnon stammers.
‘Sure is,’ I reply. ‘And she’s standing right behind you at the gym.’
‘What are you trying to say?’ Kinnon’s voice quickly grows angry, defensive.
Lanner steps in to calm the situation. ‘We’re not trying to say anything. We just wanted to give you the opportunity to tell us anything you may not have told us before. Like, whether you ever met her at the gym, or anything like that.’
‘I would have told you if I knew the murder victim on one of our active investigations,’ Kinnon snaps. ‘A lot of people work out at Lift, you know. Just because she happened to be standing near me doesn’t mean I knew her.’
‘She’s a little hard to miss …’ I prod.
Kinnon glares at me. ‘And yet, somehow I did. This is some bullshit!’ He slams his hands down on the table in front of him.
‘Okay, okay, calm down. We believe you,’ Lanner says, putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘But we had to ask. I hope you understand.’
‘Well if this interrogation is over, I have work to do.’ Kinnon pushes his chair away from the conference room table and walks out without a second look at me or Lanner.
‘What do you think?’ I ask Lanner once Kinnon is out of sight.
‘I want to believe him, I really do, I like the kid, but he was acting really defensive just now. Almost cagey. I don’t think he’s telling us the whole story.’
‘I agree. If he’d just said he didn’t know Layla, hadn’t noticed her in the photo, that would have been one thing, but to explode the way he did … it’s suspicious.’
‘We’ll keep an eye on him. It’s all we can do for now.’
Chapter 37
Vince
DAY 10
Today is going to be a better day. I tell myself that, but I don’t believe it. It’s one of Nicole’s things. ‘Positive thinking for a positive outcome.’ But I know that more likely than not, today will just be another day in the string of miserable days that now makes up my life. I’ve lost the love of my life and the company I worked so hard to build. The fact that I no longer have KitzTech to turn to finally hit home last night. That company was my refuge for so many years. It was my constant, a predictable world that was entirely within my control. But now the empire is under new rule and I’ve been exiled.
My office was my safe haven from the hardships in the rest of my life, and now that I need it most, as my life is completely spinning out of control, it’s been torn away from me. It feels so unfair. I steered KitzTech though the roughest of waters, and now that I’m no longer needed at the helm, I’ve been tossed into the sea to fend for myself. Maybe that’s how Nicole has felt all this time, while I gave more of myself to that damn company than I did to our marriage, to her.
My phone rings on the nightstand next to my bed. I roll over and ignore it. I’m in a dark place and I don’t want to speak to anyone right now. Except for maybe Nicole, but, of course, she hasn’t tried to call. She wants nothing to do with me. I swat at the phone blindly without turning around and I hear it clatter to the floor. At least it’s stopped ringing. I close my eyes and hope to fall back asleep.
I know that at some point I’ll have to get up and figure out what to do about Layla. I need to find out what kind of trouble she’d gotten herself involved in, what, or who, she may have been running from. But I don’t know where to start. Everything she told me about herself was a lie. I didn’t even know her, this woman I ruined my life to be with.
My phone rings again. I can hear the vibrations against the hardwood floor, and the screen glows blue in the darkened room. The call ends and immediately starts again. I groan and lean over the side of the bed to check who’s been calling. It rings furiously in my hand, Jeff’s name on the caller ID.
‘Jesus, Vince, where the hell have you been?’
‘Sleeping.’
‘It’s almost noon! What the hell is going on with you?’
‘Are you really asking me that? Literally everything in my life is in ruins right now.’
‘Okay, well, not to add to the list, but you need to see the World View this morning.’
‘Fuck,’ I mutter as I roll out of bed to fetch my laptop.
‘This one is bad, Vince. We can’t just ride this one out,’ Jeff continues as I wait for the World View website to load.
My stomach roils with anxiety, last night’s wine sloshing about uneasily. When was the last time I’d eaten a real meal? I can’t remember.
When the site appears on my screen, I’m immediately horrified. ‘I’ll call you back,’ I mumble.
‘Vince, we need to talk about—’
But I don’t let him finish. I’ve already ended the call and let the phone fall onto the bed beside me. My eyes scan the computer screen but I can barely focus on the words. My head is spinning, my vision going blurry.
Rape Allegations Made Against Vince Taylor
By Kate Owens for World View
As first reported by World View, Vince Taylor (age 39), CEO of the popular technology development company, KitzTech, was allegedly involved in an illicit affair with his young intern, Layla Bosch (age 23), in the months leading up to her death on August 24, 2019.
World View has now been informed by a source close to the investigation, that this is not the first time Taylor has been under investigation for harming a young woman. In fact, a young girl, whose name World View has decided not to print in an effort to protect her privacy, filed a police report against the then 21-year-old Vincent Taylor, accusing him of rape. Taylor was investigated but ultimately was not arrested for the alleged sexual assault of the underaged girl, who at the time was only 16. Interestingly, Taylor’s wife, Nicole Taylor, is also significantly younger than the media mogul. It seems Taylor certainly has a type.
This can’t be happening. Shannon. I haven’t thought about her in years. Would she really have gone to the press with the details of our past? I doubt it. And so I have to wonder how World View had access to that information. So few people know about what happened between Shannon and I, and I went to a lot of trouble and expense to bury the ancient police reports. The only people I ever told about Shannon were my father, and … Jeff. I never even told Nicole. Fuck. She’s certainly going to find out now.
My phone rings again. I answer it quickly without checking the caller ID assuming it’s Nicole calling about the latest article.
‘Hello? Nic?’
‘Vince? It’s … it’s Shannon Hartley, er, Combs.’
‘Shannon.’
‘I hope it’s okay that I’m calling. I got your number from your office after I saw the article in World View this morning. I had to pretend I was your groundskeeper needing to get in touch with you about an emergency plumbing repair.’
‘That was very clever. It’s usually pretty tough to get around my assistant, Eric.’
We both fall silent for a moment. The weight of the past hanging heavily between us.
‘I just wanted you to know that it didn’t come from me, the things in that article. I never told a soul about what happened between us all those years ago. My husband, my kids, they have no idea. And I never wanted them to. I’m so sorry I’ve put you through all of this.’
‘It’s not your fault, Shannon. You were just a kid.’
‘No, Vince. I wasn’t, not really. I knew what I was doing was wrong. That article, it made it sound like you’re some kind of predator. It was never like that.’
‘I know.’
‘This is my fault, Vince. You met me in a bar, I lied to you about my age, you had no way of knowing I was … sixteen.’ She says this last word at nearly a whisper. ‘I shouldn’t have lied to you. But even worse, when my parents insisted on pressing charges for statutory rape, I should have stopped them. But I didn’t. I was so afraid of getting into trouble, that I never told them the truth. I didn’t tell them where we met, and that I had lied to you about my age. I let them think you were the bad guy, that you’d pressured me, but you didn’t, Vince. You were never anything but a gentleman to me.’
‘Shannon, I don’t blame you for any of this. Sure, I was upset with you at the time, but we’re both adults now, and I understand that you were just a kid then. You aren’t to blame.’
‘I am, though. I never told you the whole story. And I’m so sorry that I didn’t. But I want to tell you now. My parents found out that I had started taking birth control without their knowledge. They assumed I must have been sexually active, and they were right. I’d just broken up with my first boyfriend, Greg, when I happened to meet you at the bar that night. I was devastated over Greg leaving me after I’d lost my virginity to him. I thought you were cute, and that maybe an older, more mature man, wouldn’t break my heart like my high school boyfriend had. But I knew you wouldn’t be interested if you knew how young I really was, so I told you I was 19. Anyway, when my parents confronted me about the birth control, I didn’t want to tell them I’d slept with Greg. They knew his parents and I was afraid they would humiliate me and call them. And so when they put me on the spot, I blurted out that I’d slept with you. I wasn’t thinking, and as you know that wasn’t even true. We did nothing more than kiss and hold hands during a scary movie. I thought that since my parents didn’t know who you were they would just ground me and that would be the end of it. But they kept badgering me about who you were and where we met, and when I finally told them you were twenty-one, they immediately dragged me to the police station. I didn’t realize at the time how much trouble the age difference would get you into. I let everyone think that I was an innocent victim when I knew that I wasn’t. But I’m going to make this right.’
‘You already did all you could. You recanted your statement back then. You told the police that we were never … together … sexually, and the charges were dropped. That must have taken a lot for you to stand up to your parents like that, and it cleared my name. I was never charged.’
‘And yet, you’re still dealing with the repercussion of my actions. I’m going to make a statement explaining what really happened back then. I’ll go to the press and tell them the real story, and my role in it. I’ll tell them about how I lied to you, and to the police. I’ll say you never touched me in a sexual way, which is why I recanted my story, and you shouldn’t be held accountable for the consequences of my actions.’
‘I appreciate that, Shannon, I really do, but I can’t ask you to do that. The tabloids will print your name and then all of this will all be out in the open. For you. For your family.’
‘I don’t care anymore. I want to do this. I need to.’
‘Thank you, Shannon. Really.’
I end the call and fall back into the bed, draping one arm over my eyes. Shannon’s statement might sway a few minds, but, like Jeff said, you can’t unring the bell. Once the information is out in the world, there is no way to reign it back in. The world will have already made up its mind that I’m a monster preying on young women.
I have to talk to Nicole. I have to explain that what was printed in the World View article isn’t the real story; it’s not what it seems. I want to tell her what happened with Shannon in my own words, the way I should have from the beginning.
I quickly shower and dress. I need to get to Nicole.
I race down to the parking garage and start the Tesla. For once, luck is on my side and the traffic out of the city and into Connecticut isn’t too bad today. My fingers drum impatiently on the steering wheel as I cross over the state lines and rehearse exactly what I’m going to say to Nicole to make her see that this was all a big misunderstanding.
I’m well into the imaginary conversation with my wife when my phone rings. The car’s Bluetooth system picks up the call and asks, in its calm robotic voice, if I ‘would like to accept a call from Nicole Taylor’. Yes. Yes I would. I know she may be angry with me, especially if she’s seen the latest news, but I can’t help but feel relieved that she’s finally calling. At least it’s an indication that she’s willing to talk to me about it.
I can hea
r Nicole sobbing the instant the call connects. ‘Vince, I … you need to … I’m …’ Nicole sobs the instant the call connects. The panic in her voice echoes through the car.
‘Nic, I can’t understand you. You need to calm down and tell me what’s going on. Is this about the article?’
‘It’s … I can’t … you need to come home. NOW.’
‘I’m already on my way. I’m about five minutes out from Loch Harbor. I’ll be there as soon as I can, Nic. Just hold on.’
I don’t know what exactly has her so upset, but she’s said all she needs to. Nicole needs me and I’m coming as fast as this car will take me. I thought she’d never need me again.
I jam on the accelerator jerking back in my seat as my tires screech against the warm asphalt. I whip around the familiar curves of the roadway leading into Loch Harbor, the wooded landscape blending into a blur of green outside my windshield. I round a tight turn kicking up a spray of gravel into the woods along the road, the car swerving to steady itself. I will myself to slow down, telling myself that I’ll be no good to Nicole if I careen off of the road before I reach the house.
I finally reach my front gates after what feels like a lifetime, but was likely just a matter of minutes. I pound on the steering wheel as the gates slowly slide open before me. As soon as they open wide enough to fit the car, I push through, scraping my side mirror along the metal gate.
I race up the driveway and throw the car into park outside the front door. I clamor out of the car and I’m about to run up the front steps, when movement in the woods adjacent the house catches the corner of my eye. I whip around to find out who, or what, is on my property, when I see a familiar figure: a man wearing a black hoodie, the hood pulled tight over his head. I can’t see his face, but I’m fairly certain this is the same man I chased off of the property a few days earlier, the man who was spying on Nicole in her studio. Is this what has her so upset? So frightened? Did she see a dark and shadowy figure outside of the house and call to me for help? I will not let her down this time. I will protect her, protect our home. I won’t let him get away again.
The Guilty Husband Page 19