A Good Marriage
Page 22
“And now you’re representing him?” Sam sat up. “This guy who wanted to date you?”
“Yes. I went to see him at Rikers.” Another jab.
“Rikers?” he asked. “You hate Rikers. You told me you’d never go back there. Anyway, you’re supposed to be doing corporate law.”
“Yes, thanks to you I am doing corporate law.” I yanked the blanket back and swung my feet to the floor, trying to stay calm.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sam asked.
Oh, no, Sam didn’t get to play dumb about that. Not after everything he’d put me through. Suddenly, all the anger I’d been pushing down for so long was about to blow.
“That means just what I said: that it’s your fault I’m working at Young & Crane. That the career I worked so hard for is ruined, thanks to your accident. Isn’t that what you’re always apologizing for?”
Sam’s eyes widened. “So because of the accident I’m not allowed to have an opinion about anything you do ever again?” He was shouting, but he sounded more hurt, which only made me more enraged. “How is that going to work, Lizzie?”
I jumped out of bed and turned to glare at him in the shadowy halo of my booklight.
“You can have an opinion. Right after you tell me whose fucking earring I found in your bag.”
Sam recoiled, then froze. Only silence followed. Too much of it. Fuck.
Finally, Sam sucked in some air like he was about to launch into an explanation. Instead, he flopped back down on the bed. Eyes up on the ceiling, he exhaled loudly. Then he lay so flat and motionless. In the cold, endless silence, my stomach tucked into a fist.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“I don’t know whose earring it is,” Sam said at last, his voice small and scared. “That’s the truth.”
Denial or defensiveness, clumsy lying, maybe even anger, I was prepared for all those things. But not fear.
“You don’t know?” Take it back, I wanted to say. Take it back.
“I wish to God that I did know. I’ve searched and searched and searched my memory. I’ve tried to picture the earring. Tried to imagine who it might belong to or how it might have gotten into my pocket. That’s where I found it, in the pocket of my sweatshirt. But there’s nothing, Lizzie. Nothing.”
In another marriage, this would have been a ridiculous excuse. But in ours, lost time was a shameful fact of life.
“When?” I whispered. “When did you find it?”
“The night I hit my head. I found it in my pocket before we left for the hospital.”
I swallowed. “Where did you go drinking that night?” I’d specifically avoided asking this the day after. I’d avoided asking it in all the days that followed.
In my defense, there’d been an emergency to attend to. I’d found Sam bleeding, called the ambulance, then dealt with the EMTs in our apartment. Once they’d realized that all that blood had been from just the one cut—apparently heads bleed a lot—they’d recommended we go on our own by taxi to Methodist Hospital, a much cheaper option than the unnecessary ambulance. After that there was the waiting in the ER, and then the stitches and the ride home and cleaning up. When all that was done, I needed to head in to the office before we left for the weekend.
Besides, when you were married to an alcoholic, you got tired of excavating details. Don’t ask, don’t tell. It was easier that way to pretend you had absolutely zero role in anything that happened to you. Or not you. Me. That was what I had always done—wipe away the inconvenient facts to keep my eyes on the prize: forward momentum.
“We went to Freddy’s for a drink.”
“Freddy’s?” I shot back. Sam had said “the old dads” went to the dive bar Freddy’s every week after basketball, but that he never joined them. A bonus, ongoing lie tacked onto a single betrayal. Perfect. “I suppose you’ve been going every week?”
“I figured you knew,” he said.
“You figured I knew you were lying to me?” I shouted. “Why the hell wouldn’t I say something?”
“It does sound stupid now,” he said. “But that is what I thought. That we were just agreeing to disagree.”
“For the record, I have never thought you were being anything other than completely honest with me.” I swallowed hard. What a lie that was. “I guess I’m the asshole then.”
“You’re not an asshole, Lizzie. I am, obviously,” Sam said quietly. “But I don’t know whose earring it is. That’s the honest truth.”
“Did you ask the other guys you were with about that night?”
“I only have an email for the guy from the Journal who got me into the league, and he’s away for work. He hasn’t gotten back to me. And that was the last game for the summer,” he said. “I know I was at the bar when my friend left. I remember wishing him luck on his story. After that, I was with one of the other guys. But he’s got a wife and kids and a big career so I don’t know how late he would have been out. Then again, he was also always trying to get us to go to a strip club, so who knows.”
“A strip club?” My voice was shaking. “I thought these were old dads.”
“Who do you think goes to strip clubs? Anyway, I wouldn’t have gone. I hate those places. You know that.”
“Awesome. What a relief.”
“I don’t think I did anything with anyone, Lizzie. I honestly don’t. I wouldn’t do that. I love you.”
“Oh please, Sam!” I snapped back. “In a blackout you’re a completely different person. You’ve said that to me so many times. You can’t turn around now and claim you weren’t with someone while blacked out because you’re not that person. I’ve been here the whole time, remember! I know how this works. You don’t know what happened. So anything could have.”
Sam took a deep breath. “I don’t think there was any other woman. I don’t want that to be true,” he said evenly. “But you’re right. If I’m one hundred percent honest, I can’t be sure.”
And there it was: Sam had admitted there was a possibility he’d been with another woman. And to think I’d almost let the whole thing go. I pushed myself off the wall and turned for the door.
“Lizzie, where are you going?” Sam called after me, his voice desperate.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no fucking idea.”
In daylight first thing the next morning, Rikers looked even more like a refugee encampment, my view of it probably not improved by the three fitful hours of sleep I’d gotten on our lumpy couch. There were more visiting families this time, including children, lined up along the wall as I stood in the attorney security line to request that Zach be brought up. A guard in uniform walked a drug- or bomb-sniffing dog back and forth in front of them as though they were nothing more than terrified suitcases. One little girl started to cry. What kind of justice was this, and for whom? Zach was rich and white and had the resources of a huge Manhattan law firm at his disposal, and even his best-case scenario at the moment was to live long enough to make it to trial.
When Zach finally appeared in the attorney room, his eye looked a bit better, but there was a new long purple bruise across his left cheekbone and a fresh cut at the corner of his mouth.
He moved slowly as he lowered into the chair across from me. “It looks worse than it is.”
But this time he sounded less sure.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s not your fault.”
“We might be able to get you moved,” I offered, though I wasn’t even sure that was true.
“Moved where? To protective custody?” Zach’s leg started to bounce, but weakly. “The box?”
“I guess, maybe.”
“That’s solitary. Literally there is no difference. They protect you by giving you the same thing they punish other people with. Ironic, huh?” He sounded so wizened, like he’d been in Rikers years and not days. He wouldn’t look at me. “The box might kill me faster than the guys in here. I need out, that’s all.”
Time was up. Zach deserved the truth.
Zach was silent for a long time. Finally he shook his head as his leg began to bounce with more vigor. “There was a part of me that was really hoping for a miracle: that the actual truth would matter.”
“The truth will matter,” I said. “Facts will matter. But at trial. Not so much at bail hearings.” I pulled out a pad. “Which means I am going to have to ask some tough questions, and you’re going to need to be completely honest with me, okay?”
“Okay,” Zach said, but he seemed so utterly dejected.
I wondered if I should come back, give him a chance to process. It wasn’t as if there was some big rush to get all the details now. His trial wouldn’t be for months. But then, I was there already. It was probably best to get to work.
“Why were you looking into plane tickets to Brazil?” It was the one fact that Wendy Wallace had raised that did trouble me. Prosecutors loved consciousness of guilt. Wendy would probably try to use this “proof of flight” at trial to show premeditation.
“Oh, jaguars,” Zach said, like this should have been obvious.
“The car?”
Zach’s eyes snapped up to mine in that sudden, too forceful way of his. “No, no, the animal. There’s this place in Brazil, the Pantanal, where you’re supposed to be able to see them really easily,” he said. “Case is obsessed with jaguars. I was thinking about taking him to see them in Brazil when he got back from camp. You know, a father-and-son adventure.” He was quiet for a moment. “Let’s face it, I probably never would have actually taken the time off from work. But I do think about things like that. It’s the following through I’m not so good at.”
It was a decent explanation, one that I was hoping would hold up once I cross-referenced it with the dates of the actual tickets and his assistant’s recollection.
“Do you know why an accountant for the foundation would have been trying to meet with Amanda?”
Zach shook his head, but seemed unconcerned. “Not to sound like a jerk, but when you get to a certain point financially, money becomes more of an administrative detail. I hire accountants so I don’t have to deal with that sort of thing. But if it had been something serious, Amanda would have come to me. And she didn’t.”
“I’ll follow up myself. If that’s okay with you,” I said. “I’m going to need to access some funds anyway to pay our experts. Lab tests aren’t cheap. I’m assuming the accountant can help me with that, too?”
“Definitely,” Zach said. “You’ll need an authorization, though.”
“I assumed. I brought a form that should work. Before I go, I’ll get the guard to have you sign it. I’ll need the firm name and the name of the actual accountant, too.”
“I know it’s PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the guy’s name is Teddy. I don’t know his last name. I only remember his first name because it’s ridiculous. There can’t be more than one adult man named Teddy working there, right? And let me know what he says,” Zach said. “It would be good to know if I’m about to be sandbagged by something else.”
“Speaking of being sandbagged …,” I began. “I know we touched on this. But just to revisit that warrant from the loitering for a second, are you sure—”
“Jesus, let it go, Lizzie!” Zach’s outburst was so loud and sudden I flinched. Immediately, he held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. I know the warrant looks bad. Believe me, I do. But it was, what, thirteen years ago? Anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Zach looked beaten and defenseless on the other side of the plexiglass.
“It’s okay, it’s fine,” I said, though it wasn’t really. “I do have one potential piece of good news. I mean, good news might be a poor characterization. But it looks like Amanda’s father is a legitimate alternate suspect.”
“Her father?” Zach looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“He was harassing her. Calling and hanging up. Following her, too. And he … I think he was abusive, sexually, when she was younger. Amanda recounts a series of rapes in her older journals when she was twelve, maybe thirteen.”
“What?” Zach looked disgusted, then enraged. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
“I don’t know,” I said, though Zach had said himself that he and Amanda had a distant marriage. Why was he so surprised? “I think we should at least try to track him down. What was Amanda’s maiden name?”
“Lynch,” he said without hesitation. “But I don’t know her dad’s first name or where he lives now or anything like that. I never met the guy, and the few times Amanda mentioned him, it was only in passing: ‘my dad.’ Actually, I think she called him ‘daddy,’ which now seems even creepier.” He grimaced. “Twelve? Case is ten. That’s disgusting.”
I nodded. “It is.”
I wrote down “Lynch” and underlined it. Now I had a last name, and the town—St. Colomb Falls—even the name of her old church from her journals. Enough to build on.
“It shouldn’t be our job to provide alternate suspects. But a jury will want somebody else to blame,” I said. “It will be good to find him.”
But was I seriously going to be the person defending Zach by the time a jury was empaneled? It had been one thing to handle Zach’s bail appeal, but a full-blown murder trial? Because Paul had a thing for Wendy Wallace? Because I felt guilty I’d let Zach down easy a million years ago? Because I was angry at Sam? Or was it actually something else, someone else, I was compensating for? The thought had occurred to me. But none of those were good reasons for staying on as Zach’s lawyer. Not when what I really needed to do was deal with the mess my life had become.
“I’d also like to talk to Amanda’s friend Carolyn. Seems like she’d probably have some insight. Do you have her number?”
“I don’t know who that is, I’m sorry.”
“Amanda’s best friend from growing up?” I pressed, sounding almost as judgmental as Sarah had with me. “She lives in the city. Apparently Amanda spent a fair amount of time with her.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever even heard that name,” Zach said. Again his response seemed authentic.
“Amanda wrote about Carolyn in her journal. Sarah and Maude knew about her, too.” I was hoping something would click for him. “But they hadn’t met her.”
“Maybe she’s the one who killed Amanda, then,” Zach said, his face brightening. “I mean, if there’s somebody here from her life back then, I guarantee it wasn’t for a good reason.” He took a sharp breath, shook his head. “I was Amanda’s knight in shining armor, you know. And I did rescue her in some ways, which felt good. I worked my ass off so she—well, we—could have all the comforts money could buy. Maybe that’s not all that mattered, though.” Zach looked down. “I should have taken better care of her. Isn’t that what a good spouse does? Look at you.”
“Me?” I asked.
Zach’s eyes flicked up, then back down. “Taking care of your husband, by changing jobs and all that.”
“I guess,” I said, feeling the fog of shame descend. Was my story with Sam that obvious?
“You guess?” he asked. “You’ve made huge sacrifices. I mean, your job of all things. But you did that because your husband needed you. You accepted his problems as your problems. You’re a much better person than me.”
Except I hate him for it.
“I also spoke to Maude,” I said, anything to move the conversation off Sam.
“The one who had the party?” he asked. “What about her?”
“She told me that you and she were together at the time of Amanda’s death.” I hesitated, but only for a second. “Together together.” I paused again. “Upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Zach asked, curious but not remotely defensive. “I feel like you’re trying to telegraph something, but I don’t know what you mean. I’m sorry.”
“Upstairs at the party where the partner-swapping was goi
ng on.”
“What?” Zach laughed hard. “Maude said we had sex that night?”
“Yes,” I said. “She said you were with her until two a.m., providing you with an alibi, assuming the time line ends up corresponding with Amanda’s official time of death and your call to the police. It’s complicated under the circumstances, but it could be potentially useful.”
“Um, maybe. If it was true. First of all, I called the police, well, I don’t remember exactly what time, but it was well before midnight.” Zach looked exasperated. “And not only did Maude and I not have sex that night, we never even met. I saw her at the party because somebody pointed her out, but we didn’t talk.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I have no idea why she’d say that. Maybe she’s had sex with so many people, she’s lost track.”
I approached one of the three guards near the exit after Zach and I were done. He was young and wiry, with a cynical but not unkind look in his eyes.
“Could you have Zach Grayson sign this?” I handed him the power-of-attorney letter. “I need to take it with me.”
He regarded it skeptically for a moment. “Sure thing.”
I leaned back against the chilled cinder block to wait. Before I left Zach, I’d had him go over the rest of the time line from the night Amanda died.
They arrived at Maude’s party shortly before 9:00 p.m., at which point he and Amanda had gone their separate ways. He’d chatted with a few people at the party, but mostly he just “observed” from the edge of the living room. The most substantial conversation Zach had was with Sarah, who’d wanted to know all about how he’d become such a wildly successful self-made man, which sounded to me like she’d been mocking him. After that, Zach left. To take that walk on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. It was around 9:30 p.m. by then, and he’d texted Amanda after he’d gone. It wasn’t clear if he’d looked for her before leaving, but I got the sense that he did not. Zach was only at the party for thirty minutes. When he returned home, approximately two hours later, Amanda was dead.