The receptionist desk was empty as I swiped my key card and headed fast for my office. There were several doors open, lights on, at my end of the hall. I could hear voices and spotted a couple of weekend secretaries scattered at the outer desks.
In the far corner, Paul’s door was also open. He’d sent me an email late the night before, asking for three different things on three matters having nothing to do with Zach. Apparently he’d moved on. I turned toward my office, hoping not to see him.
“Oh!” a woman exclaimed. I’d slammed right into Gloria as I turned the corner, sending everything in her hands raining down to the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, bending to help her retrieve the papers.
“Darn it,” she grumbled sourly. “Now everything is out of order.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said, hating that we were crouched there making a commotion in clear view of Paul’s door. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Well, that’s obvious.”
I clenched my jaw to keep myself from taking her head off. I gathered the papers as best I could and handed them back to her in what was, admittedly, a messy stack.
“Do you want me to help you?”
“No, I’m fine,” she snapped.
I heard Paul’s voice. I needed to get out of the hallway and behind my closed office door.
“Sorry, again,” I said as I began to edge past Gloria.
“Hey, how do you know Maude anyway?” she asked. It sounded like something of an accusation. “I couldn’t believe when she called up from the lobby—once she realized you worked here, too. She told me she wasn’t a client. But I didn’t want to pry.”
“Oh, do you know her? She’s involved in a case I’m handling. But she’s not a client, no.” And that was all I was saying.
“Hmm.” Gloria narrowed her eyes. She could tell I was being evasive. “Maude’s so beautiful and so nice, isn’t she? I only met her once, at a party—I knew all of one person there, and she was kind enough to spend half the night talking to me.”
A party? Presumably not the ones Maude threw. “That’s nice,” I said. “Okay, well, sorry again. I really have to be—”
“It was my old boss’s holiday party,” she went on. “He was a very senior partner. I don’t know if you know that. I was his secretary, for years. What a party that was, too. They threw one every year in Park Slope, but I was only able to go the one time, two years ago. Very glamorous. But no more, thanks to him.” She ticked her head toward Paul’s office. “Your hypocritical friend over there had my boss fired. You know, those legal assistants who cried wolf were just looking to make money. Hashtag MeToo my ass. Everyone is looking for a handout these days.”
I didn’t know you worked here, too. Maude had said that to me, hadn’t she? I felt light-headed, my hands ice cold as I stepped toward Gloria.
“Who was your old boss?”
“Kerry Tanner,” Gloria said with a nostalgic smile, shellacked with pride. Then her face darkened. “He was railroaded, pure and simple. I worked for him for eighteen years, and he never once did anything inappropriate. Ask Maude. She was absolutely flabbergasted when I told her he’d been fired. I thought she was going to pass out. And I didn’t even get the chance to tell her why he was let go.”
In my office, it only took a second to pull up an image of Kerry Tanner: a lawyer headshot, the kind of photo that had probably been on Young & Crane’s own website before Kerry was fired.
Sure enough, I’d seen him before, at the bottom of Sarah’s steps, pizza box in hand, six-pack tucked under his arm. Kerry Tanner was married to Sarah Novak and friends with Maude. Surely he’d also known Amanda. And Kerry Tanner had somehow known exactly who I was—probably because he stood to gain the most from Zach staying in jail.
I headed back toward Paul’s office, the image of Kerry Tanner on my phone. When I looked in the open door, Paul was muttering angrily as he squinted through his reading glasses at his computer screen. I inhaled sharply.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I began, “but I need to ask you something.”
“If you can sort out why the hell I can’t get back to the other case I was just reading in this damn Westlaw program, then I might answer you,” Paul said without taking his eyes off his computer. “It was here a second ago, and now I’m in this other case I have no goddamn interest in.”
Paul didn’t even like communicating via email. If he was surfing cases online, it was because some associate had screwed something up. I came up behind him, and within a few, very obvious keystrokes had him back on the original case he’d been reading.
“Be careful not to click on any of the cited cases,” I said. “Or it will bring you to them.”
“I did not click on anything,” Paul said, quietly defensive as he glared at his computer. “If this asshole’s summary judgment brief wasn’t all fucked up, I wouldn’t even have to be on this damn system in the first place.”
“Can you tell me if you recognize this man?” I asked as neutrally as possible—I didn’t want to prime the pump. I held out my phone to him.
Paul furrowed his brow and leaned over to look. “Of course,” he said, disgusted. “That’s Kerry Tanner. The partner I told you about. Defiant narcissistic asshole.” He looked up at me with an annoyed expression. “Is this the best use of your time? If I recall, you owe me several—”
“He knew Zach Grayson’s wife,” I said. “They were friends in Park Slope.”
Paul looked up at me. He pulled his chin back. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“He did live in Brooklyn,” Paul said, considering. Then he was quiet for a moment. “You think he …”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But Amanda was being stalked by someone, and Kerry Tanner had stalked people in the past, right? Seems like one hell of a coincidence. There’s a couple things I still need to check out, to be sure.”
Paul nodded. “Well, with that guy … nothing would surprise me. I’ve got a whole investigatory file on him. He did follow those women around, showed up places. Sent harassing texts. ‘All you had to do was listen.’ Sick shit. Not to mention all the pictures he took, and the porn we found on his work computer.” He grimaced. “From what we could tell he’d been doing it for years. Five, maybe ten, who knows? I bet some of the other partners would still have let it go if it hadn’t been for the pictures. There was no ignoring those.”
I took another deep breath. There was more I needed to say, too. No more running. No more pretending. Millie was right. None of it was working for me.
“There is something else I need to tell you,” I said. “My financial disclosure form. There were some inaccuracies in it. Intentional ones.” Paul’s jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed a tiny bit, almost imperceptibly. But otherwise, his face was completely still. “My husband is an alcoholic. He got into a car accident, and we were sued. We settled the case and are in full compliance with our obligation. We will pay off the debt, but it’s a big one. I should have included it on the form.”
Paul frowned more deeply, his brow scrunched. Then he took off his reading glasses and stared at me in silence for what felt like an eternity. I stared right back. It was all I could do. Maude was right: there was no way through but with the truth.
“You should have included it,” Paul said finally. Then he put his reading glasses back on and turned to face his computer once more. “Call Human Resources and get it amended first thing Monday.”
The woman at Blooms on the Slope was locking up for the night when I knocked on the door. Her hair was piled high as before, and she had on a bright yellow blouse and the same sunny expression. She shook her head, smiled sympathetically, and pointed to the store hours written on the door. It didn’t seem like she recognized me.
I held up my phone with Kerry Tanner’s picture on it. “For Matthew,” I said, hoping she’d take pity on me. “I think he’s the circle.”
She peered through the glass at the photo, and then I saw it click.
She reached forward to unlock the door. “Come in, come in,” she said, waving me inside and locking the door behind me. “Let me see if I can grab Matthew. I think he’s in back.”
A moment later Matthew emerged, a skateboard under his arm, headphones already on.
“Is this the man you made the card out for?” I asked, holding out my phone.
Matthew smiled. “Nailed it.” He held up a hand until I gave him a high five. “See, this guy’s a perfect circle. And lilacs. I remember now. That’s what he bought. He said all the ones his wife planted in her backyard had died.”
I walked away from the florist up St. Johns, then turned right on Plaza Street, headed past the gracious doorman buildings and, finally, onto Prospect Park West. I walked to the top of Montgomery Place and stopped at a bench along the stone wall surrounding the park. Maybe even the bench that Sam had passed out on. The early evening summer sun was thin and gold as I sat down.
I was not looking forward to the last call I had to make. I found Sarah’s number in my phone log and dialed her back. She answered after a few rings.
“Hi, Sarah,” I began, my voice sounding strangled and foreign. “This is Lizzie Kitsakis, Zach Grayson’s lawyer.”
“Yes?” she asked. “What can I do for you?”
Was there a tone to her voice now? Trepidation? Maude might have already asked Sarah about what Gloria had told her: that Kerry had been fired months ago. But Maude didn’t know why he’d been fired. Honestly, I didn’t think Sarah did either. She didn’t strike me as the kind of woman to keep on sleeping with her husband knowing all that. And I did not believe for one second that she had connected Kerry to Amanda’s death. If she had, I couldn’t imagine she would have been able to pick up the phone.
“I think maybe you were right,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Right about what?”
“About us being connected from the neighborhood,” I said. “I think our husbands might play basketball together. In that rec league. Thursday nights?”
I’d remembered Sam had said he’d been at Freddy’s with a guy with a big job and a wife and kids. Maybe a lawyer who decided not to mention he’d been fired. And Sarah had said her husband had regular plans on Thursday nights, “trying to break a hip.” Just like Sam.
“Oh,” she said, with the quietest little gasp of relief. Only this I was calling about? Who cared about this? “Sure, he plays basketball. Hard to believe he’s found the time, given what I recently discovered is his voracious appetite for pornography,” she spat out. She was pissed, no doubt. Not shattered, though, not in the way she would be if she knew the rest. “But yes, he does also play basketball. I even went to watch once. Maybe I saw your husband. Let me guess: he’s one of the young, hot ones, right?”
She was angry, but there was a grim humor underneath—like she might forgive her husband even a porn addiction. Like she loved him still. I felt gutted, thinking of how destroyed Sarah would feel once she learned the whole ugly truth about the man she’d built a life with. After all, the mere possibility had all but consumed what was left of my shredded heart.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess maybe my husband—”
“You should go watch sometime yourself. It’s fun.” Sarah’s voice was brittle now, broken. “If you do, be sure to be on the lookout for my husband. He’s the asshole in the dumb red shoes.”
Lizzie
JULY 15, WEDNESDAY
When Zach came into the small attorney interview room, he looked so goddamn pleased with himself. I clenched my fists and tried to stay calm.
“I told you. I didn’t do it,” he singsonged. No twitchy eye contact. No bouncing leg. He was only the new and improved Zach from those staged photos now.
“You already heard?”
“A guy here was at a court date, and there was talk about somebody else being arrested for Amanda’s murder. A ‘fancy corporate lawyer,’” he went on, with a smile. “I may not have paid attention after that first year of law school, but even I know they can’t charge two people with the same murder. So I’m out, right?”
Maude had gone to the prosecutor’s office herself soon after I left her house, which I agreed would be much better than me delivering the news. Being associated with me would not curry her any favor with Wendy Wallace. I did ask Maude to emphasize that she was sure the figure she’d seen hadn’t been Zach.
I waited until the next day to call Wendy Wallace myself. She’d been far from happy to hear about Kerry Tanner when we finally spoke, but to her credit—and likely at Paul’s cajoling—she did hear me out, and she did seem to be listening. After all, at least she now had a new suspect in hand, and a case still high-profile enough to land her in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
As of that morning, as I headed to Rikers, Kerry was in custody.
“They’re processing your release as we speak,” I said to Zach. “You should be out soon.”
Zach closed his eyes and exhaled sharply. He’d been more worried than his cocky grin let on.
“That’s great news. Great news,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, why not?”
“You were the one who compromised Brooklyn Country Day’s email list, right?” This was the part of this conversation that mattered to me. The real reason I was there. “Clever, the way you used it to hack into the parents’ computers.”
There was nothing to stop Zach from lying to me now. Nothing but his own arrogance. And Zach’s arrogance was one thing you could always count on. That, and the fact that he would want to be sure I knew: he’d beaten everyone.
“What do you mean?” he asked. But I could see him trying not to smile; a trace of it was there in his eyes.
“The phishing emails,” I said. “You compromised the computers of the Brooklyn Country Day parents, exposed all their dirty laundry. Impressive stuff. But what I don’t get is how that’s going to save your failing company.”
Zach rolled his eyes. “First of all, failing is a huge overstatement. The world of start-ups is always high risk, high reward.” He was quiet then, and with a determined look on his face, like he was trying to stay quiet. But I already knew, if I waited, he wouldn’t be able to contain himself. “Anyway, this new enterprise is going to take off like a shot. People have absolutely no idea how exposed they are, or why. You want to know how I learned? Working in logistics. An industry the average person has probably never even heard of. If they have, they think it’s just about shipping. But we knew everything about hundreds of thousands of people—we knew when they had a baby because they started ordering diapers, when they were going on a long trip because they ordered power converters, when not to buy their home because they’d bought a whole bunch of mold removal products. And here people think they’re just ordering stuff. It’s not just stuff, it’s who they are. As soon as people realize how dangerous this could be, they’ll be falling all over themselves to pay the hundred-dollar yearly subscription for my family cybersecurity app.”
I nodded, to look interested. But not too interested. Anything to keep Zach talking.
He leaned in a little closer to the plexiglass. “I was specifically attracted to Brooklyn Country Day because they are actually somewhat on top of things. You learn from hard targets, not easy ones. Also, I did figure the whole hacking thing might get some press because of the school’s stellar reputation, and maybe that would flow over to my app if I stepped in to help at the right time. But in the end, the Brooklyn Country Day parents helped us solve more of a technical problem. We needed to reverse-engineer some of the software by seeing how actual victims might respond to that kind of intrusion.”
“So you hired people to do the hacking for you?”
“You want to find out how to protect people from hackers, you hire some hackers to show you what they really do.”
“One of those hackers of yours blackmailed a fifteen-year-old girl for live video of her performing sex acts,” I
said. “He’s continuing to contact her. Did you know that?”
“It’s hard to find good people.” Zach shrugged. “But I am impressed that you put as much together as you did. I always knew you were special, Lizzie, which is why when I saw you near the farmer’s market, I was curious about what you’d been up to. Obviously, I had no idea I’d soon need a lawyer I didn’t have to pay. Amanda was alive and well then, and I hadn’t thought about you in years—a decade at least. But then there you were, and I could see it right away.” He paused, smiled a little. “Can you see it now?”
“See what?”
“That you made the wrong choice.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sam instead of me,” he said. “Oh, I know you hadn’t even met him yet, not when you ended things with me. The ‘other guy’ story was a lie. I knew that the whole time. I’ll admit I was angry for a while. More disappointed, though. We were the same you and I—eyes always focused on the prize. Maybe not quite as similar as some of my stories about my ‘blue-collar’ family might have suggested.” Zach’s fingers hooked the word in the air. “But I thought that would resonate more with you than two Poughkeepsie crack addicts. But then, you left things out, too. Like the Elmira Correctional Facility.” He smirked. “I did actually think we might make a real go of it, though. That was true. Instead, you chose a husband with zero drive. Everything for you could have ended up differently.”
“Yeah,” I said, glaring at him. “I could have ended up dead at the bottom of your stairs. You know, Amanda might be alive right now if you’d paid more attention to her.”
“Please, Amanda had plenty of problems long before I met her.” Zach sniffed, but his face quickly brightened. “I was surprised when you clicked on that Netflix membership renewal link without even a second’s hesitation, though. I mean, you should be smarter than that. One click, and boom, I was in.” He smiled slightly. “I did that myself, of course. I wasn’t going to outsource you. Within minutes I knew everything about you and Sam. As a friend, I have to say: researching dozens of alcohol rehab facilities on a daily basis for weeks on end isn’t nearly as effective as Sam actually going to a single one. Also, you should buy some shades if you’re going to walk around undressed.” He shook his head. Then he smiled, and raised his eyebrows. “At least I can say exactly where you were the night Amanda died. And now you know why I wasn’t anxious to tell you where I was.”
A Good Marriage Page 36