The Guilty Husband

by Stephanie DeCarolis

  I appreciate that he came out to celebrate with me tonight. Whenever we close a major case, the team goes out to celebrate at the local beer garden, and since this was my first case as lead detective, the whole crew came out for me. Even Chief McFadden stopped by. He didn’t say more than ‘Well done, Barnes,’ before walking back out of the bar, but it meant a lot that he came. I invited Josh but I wasn’t sure he would come, not after the way I’d treated him, basically accusing him of hiding evidence from me.

  ‘Thanks for coming tonight,’ I say, leaning my head against his chest. ‘It means a lot to me.’

  ‘Of course I’m here. I love you.’

  I need to learn to trust that his love is real, unshakable. Josh was right, I need to start taking down the walls I’ve built around myself. I want to let him in, and I know it’s going to take some time, but I’m trying. One step at a time.

  ‘Did you hear the latest?’ Lanner asks, oblivious to the tender moment he’s just dashed. ‘I heard Taylor is refusing bail. Maybe the guilt is getting to him.’

  ‘He refused bail? Are you kidding? The guy is richer than God. He could probably pay that bail with his pocket money.’

  ‘I don’t know. Just telling you what I heard from my buddy in the District Attorney’s office.’ Lanner shrugs. ‘Want another one?’ He points to his empty pint glass.

  ‘No, thanks. I think I’m ready to call it a night.’

  Lanner looks surprised that I’m ducking out of my own party, but he doesn’t question me. Instead he just shrugs again and makes his way towards the bar.

  Early the next morning, after a fitful night’s sleep, I decide to visit Vince. I need to see him one more time to clear my head. I need to look into his eyes to see if I still believe he killed that girl.

  Vince is brought to the visitation room a changed man. His shoulders slump, his eyes are rimmed with red, and his hair has lost its sheen.

  ‘What is it, Detective?’ he says by way of greeting.

  ‘I heard you haven’t posted bail.’

  ‘I haven’t. And what concern is that of yours?’

  ‘I just found it surprising. I can’t fathom why you’d want to stay here instead of going back to that beautiful home of yours.’

  ‘Might as well get used to the place,’ he says, his voice flat and defeated. He doesn’t make eye contact with me. He stares over my shoulder as though he’s a million miles away. ‘My attorney will either work out a plea arrangement or he won’t. Either way, I’ve decided that I’ll be pleading guilty to whatever they charge me with. There won’t be a trial. It’s over.’ He shrugs, his shoulders sagging even further.

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. This man who loudly professed his innocence and finally made me begin to believe him, has decided to give up the fight. It doesn’t make sense. Even with the evidence we have against him, surely his attorney must have explained there’s a chance of acquittal if he goes to trial. That chance is gone if he pleads guilty. Why not take the risk? What does he have to lose?

  ‘Do you want to know what I think, Vince?’

  ‘Not really,’ he says distractedly.

  ‘Well, I’m going to tell you anyway. I think you’re protecting someone. I just don’t know why. That’s the only reason you wouldn’t take your chances at trial. For one reason or another, you don’t want the truth to come out.’

  ‘I don’t know what you want from me, Detective. You worked damn hard to put me here, and now you got your wish. Just let it go.’

  Vince pushes away from the table and rises to a stand. ‘Guard, I’d like to go back to my cell,’ he announces. A burly guard strides over to the table and takes Vince abruptly by the arm.

  Just before the guard yanks him away from the table, Vince turns to look at me one last time.

  ‘I just have one question, Detective. Please. I need to know the answer.’ His eyes are pleading.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Was Layla pregnant?’

  ‘No,’ I respond, bewildered by his question. There was no way that Layla Bosch was pregnant. It would have been in the coroner’s report.

  Vince nods slowly, and I watch as he allows himself to be pushed and pulled, shuffling his feet along the faded floor where so many prisoners have walked before him.

  I walk out of the visitation room, still confused as to why Vince would choose to stay in a place like this. I’m so distracted with my thoughts as I walked down the long corridor leading to the exit, that I don’t notice Nicole Taylor until I walk right into her.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Taylor,’ I say, suddenly coming back to reality.

  Her hands fly instinctively, protectively, to her belly as she regains her balance. ‘It’s alright, Detective,’ she replies as she glides past me.

  As I watch her walk away, I finally understand.

  The long awaited baby, her subtle tip about the Heatherly Hotel, Vince’s sudden change of heart … Nicole.

  Josh is out with his friends tonight, and while I know I should go home and get some much needed rest, I’m feeling far too anxious. And so instead, I’m aimlessly walking the streets of New York City deep in thought. There has to be something I missed on the Bosch case, some stone left unturned that will prove my hunch about Vince Taylor’s innocence.

  Without realizing where I’d been heading, I find myself standing outside of the Heatherly Hotel. The last place Vince was seen before Layla died. I look through the tall front windows, into the stately lobby inside. The bar area seems to be bustling now, unlike the last time I was here. Patrons are sidled up to the cherry-wood bar, long stemmed martini glasses in their hands, and I can see them laughing and smiling through the glass.

  A doorman pushes open the entry door, allowing a dapperly dressed gentleman to step out onto the sidewalk. As the door swings opens, the sounds of tinny laughter and lighthearted conversation from the bar floats out into the evening air. I feel drawn to the glittering warmth inside.

  I find an empty seat at the end of the bar. The bartender, dressed in a crisply pressed white shirt, topped with a black vest, wipes down the bar in front of me with a worn rag.

  ‘What can I get for you?’

  ‘Gin and tonic, please.’

  He pours the drink into a frosty, chilled glass.

  I sit and sip my drink, unable to focus on anything other than Vince Taylor and the haunted look on his face as he was led out of the visitation room earlier today.

  ‘Everything alright?’ the bartender asks, pulling me from my thoughts.

  ‘Tough day,’ I reply.

  ‘Sorry to hear.’

  And then a thought occurs to me. We know Vince checked in at the Heatherly the night Layla was killed, but we never interviewed the staff to see if anyone may be able to account for his whereabouts after he checked in. I was so wrapped up in proving that Vince had lied to us that I never considered that his stay at the Heatherly might also be his alibi.

  I pull up a photo of Vince on my phone and show it to the bartender.

  ‘Have you ever seen this man in here by any chance?’

  ‘That’s Vince Taylor, right? Yeah, he was in here a few weeks ago.’

  I feel my stomach drop. ‘Do you know what the date was?’

  He looks at me quizzically.

  I discreetly flash him my gold badge. ‘It’s really important.’

  ‘Um, I don’t know off the top of my head. But I can check for you.’ The bartender pulls out his phone while he continues talking. ‘He’s a real nice guy. I’ve seen him around here few times, always friendly to the staff. That night he came down at the bar by himself. Normally I’d go chat for a while if I saw someone sitting alone. I’m just like that, ya know? I like to talk to people. Makes my shifts go by faster. But Vince looked like he was waiting to meet someone, so I left him alone. I remember that he kept checking his watch. It was a Rolex so of course I noticed it. Real nice piece. Anyway, I guess he got stood up, because he was down here for a while and no one ever showed. Oh, he
re’s what I was looking for.’ He turns his phone so that the screen is facing me. ‘I snuck this photo of him. I know it probably wasn’t the most professional thing to do, and the manager here would be real pissed if he knew I was taking photos of a guest, but my girlfriend thinks it’s real cool when we get celebrities in here and so I took this to show her. I didn’t think Vince would mind anyway. Seems like a real cool guy.’

  I take in the photo. Vince Taylor sitting alone on a bar stool, a whiskey glass lifted halfway to his lips. My breath catches in my throat as I see the time stamp. August 24, 2019, 9.47 p.m.. Vince Taylor was here, in this bar, at the time of Layla’s death.

  ‘Has anyone else come in here asking about Vince?’

  ‘Nah, not to me anyway. But I was out on vacation last week. Went surfing in Costa Rica. Just got back this morning. Why?’

  ‘I … it’s just …’ I stammer.

  ‘You alright, ma’am?’ The bartender asks, a look of concern spreading across his face. ‘You look a bit pale.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m okay. I just need to make a call.’

  I rush outside sucking in the warm night air in large, gulping breaths. I was wrong about Vince. I was so sure that he was our guy that I saw what I wanted to see. I bent all the evidence to fit my preconceived notion of his guilt, and I failed to see anything that didn’t fit with the narrative I created. An innocent man is sitting in jail because of me.

  I quickly dial Lanner’s number.

  ‘Yo, Barnes! You still in the city? I just left a bar with my buddies, but I could easily be talked into more drinks …’

  ‘No, no, listen. I think we made a mistake.’

  I tell him where I am, and about the conversation I just had with the bartender, the photo he showed me. Lanner falls silent.

  ‘This is my fault,’ I say, panic rising in my voice. ‘I rushed the arrest.’

  ‘There was plenty of evidence that pointed to Taylor. It really looked like he was our guy.’

  ‘I have to call the ADA handling Taylor’s case. I need to get the charges against him dropped.’

  ‘You understand that’s out of our hands now, right? Our job is to make the arrest and recommend the charges. Which we did. It’s up to the District Attorney’s office to decide whether they want to prosecute after that.’

  ‘I know, but I have to at least try.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you this much, Chief McFadden isn’t going to be happy that you’re running around doing the defense’s job now.’

  I hang up with Lanner and dial the number for the Assistant District Attorney assigned to try Taylor’s case. After she’s finished grumbling about the unreasonable hour of my call, I tell her about the new witness I’ve found. About Vince Taylor’s alibi.

  ‘‘This is a disaster,’ she says. ‘‘This bartender’s testimony would kill us at trial. It’s only a matter of time before Taylor’s legal team tracks him down too. His attorney is good. I’ve been up against him before. I’m certain that he will be looking to talk to everyone who was working at the Heatherly that night. No one ever thought to interview the hotel staff before Taylor was arrested?’

  ‘No,’ I confess. ‘I … I dropped the ball.’

  ‘Great. So all we have is circumstantial evidence against Taylor. He might have lied to us about his whereabouts the night of the murder, and even about the extent of his involvement with the victim, but we have no murder weapon, and nothing putting him in Central Park the night she died. I was willing to go to trial with this since the vic’s diary claims that Taylor was supposed to meet her the night she was killed, but now that there’s a witness that will give Taylor an alibi, that changes everything. This trial would be a joke. The DA isn’t going to want to prosecute a high profile case that is going to end in an acquittal and an embarrassment to this office. It’s an election year and he has a conviction rate to maintain. You guys really rushed this arrest.’

  ‘I’m sorry, we were under a lot of pressure too, but I should have figured it out sooner.”

  ‘Well, if you don’t think Taylor killed this girl, then who did?’

  I feel my stomach turning over. I haven’t told anyone yet about my suspicions about Nicole, and I know how crazy it’s going to sound. ‘I think it was the wife. But it’s just a hunch. I think he’s protecting her.’

  ‘A hunch, huh?’ the ADA says, sounding unamused, ‘Well, we have even less evidence on the wife than we do on Taylor. If we drop these charges against Vince Taylor, it’s very likely they’ll both walk, unless you can find something solid, something that definitively puts the wife in the park with the victim that night …’

  Chapter 53

  Vince

  Ten Months Later

  I rock my daughter in my arms, her long lashes sweeping her cheek as she sleeps with her tiny fingers curled around mine. I love every inch of her, my daughter, Emily Grace Taylor. She is perfection swaddled in a soft pink blanket. I breathe in the scent of her. I wish I could bottle it up and save it forever, so that I’ll never forget the sweet strawberry scent of her hair, the newness of her skin.

  I feel a tear slowly slide down my cheek. A combination of immeasurable joy and desperate sadness that I’m not sharing these precious moments with Nicole, the way we once imagined we would.

  Although we’re still married, in the technical sense of the word, we’ve been living separate lives since the charges against me were dropped. She’s staying at the house in Loch Harbor and I’ve been living in the apartment overlooking Central Park: the place where Layla, and our marriage, took their last breaths.

  Sometimes I still can’t believe that the charges against me were really dropped. Jeff said it was because the bartender at the Heatherly remembered seeing me the night Layla died. Apparently he’d even taken a picture of me sitting at the bar around the time she was killed. I’ve never been so happy to have my photo snapped in public. But I know that was a lucky break. If that Detective hadn’t kept digging, I might have spent the rest of my life in prison.

  I suspect there are a lot of people who still think that’s where I belong. Even though I was never tried for Layla’s murder, and Shannon eventually issued a press statement explaining what happened, or I should say didn’t happen, between us nearly twenty years ago, it took months for the hate mail to die down. Nearly every day my mailbox would be stuffed with angry letters calling me a rapist and a murderer. At first I shut myself in, refused to face the public, but after a while, I slowly began accepting offers to make talk show appearances, to give interviews to the press. I put my face, my name, back out there into the world and set the record straight. I’m humbled by how accepting people have generally been, the support far outweighing the hate these days. And yet it still frightens me how close my life came to being destroyed, thanks in part to Nicole.

  I could have forgiven her if she’d been honest with me up front, if she’d told me what happened to Layla. But I can’t forgive that she, even for one second, believed those things Layla had written about me. I can’t get past the fact she went to the press and effectively condemned me in the court of public opinion. She might as well have put the cuffs on me herself.

  I’m not sure that Nicole and I will ever be able to undo the damage we’ve caused each other. But I’m trying. We have a long road ahead of us, but I’m doing my best to forgive her. How can I resent her for lying to me, for betraying me, when I’d done the same to her? Besides, she is, after all, the mother of my child. And she’s paid a heavy price for her hand in what happened to Layla.

  Since she was a little girl, Nicole dreamed of someday being a mother, and after years of heartbreak, that dream was finally going to become a reality. But Nicole didn’t get to stand in her nursery, soaking in the golden glow of her pregnancy. She didn’t get to smile with unbridled happiness that she was bringing a new life into the world. No, she spent the entirety of her pregnancy, and every day since, worried that she would be taken away in handcuffs. Not knowing if she’d be able to hold her daug
hter once she finally arrived.

  As far as I know the police never found any evidence that Nicole was in Central Park the night Layla died. She was interviewed shortly after my release, and was asked, for the first time, where she was that night. ‘At home,’ she’d said. ‘Alone.’ I’m not sure Detective Barnes believed her, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. She couldn’t prove otherwise, even after a thorough search of our house. There was nothing linking Nicole to Layla, and they couldn’t show that Nicole was anywhere near Central Park the night Layla was killed. Evidently Nicole paid cash for the tolls into Manhattan when she went to meet Layla. She later told me that she’d intended to cover her tracks from me should I happen to check our credit card bill, but I suppose it had the added bonus of concealing her whereabouts from the police as well. Barnes may not have caught up with Nicole yet, but we can’t be sure that she’s finished digging. That’s a burden Nicole will have to carry with her; she’ll always be looking back over her shoulder, the past never too far behind.

  As for me, I’ve decided to remain a silent investor at KitzTech. Now that the charges have been dropped, I could fight to regain my role as CEO, but I don’t want to. Not yet at least. It’s time that I finally put my priorities in order. I want to spend this precious time with my little girl. Work can wait, because babies don’t keep. Before I know it, she’ll be too big to hold in my arms any longer.

  I may have gotten things wrong with every other woman in my life, but I’m going to get it right this time; I’m going to give my daughter the world.

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  Acknowledgements

  There are so many people I want to thank for making The Guilty Husband a reality. First, thank you to my family, my husband, Giancarlo, and our two daughters, Christina and Juliana, for giving me the time and space to write this book. (Free time is a precious commodity when there are young children involved and my husband went above and beyond to make sure I had it!) Writing sometimes requires that you lose yourself in a different world for a little while, and I appreciate you letting me go on that journey.