Fugitive Red

by Jason Starr

  He was staring at me, like he was trying to look through me.

  Then he took my information, inputted it into his phone, and said, “Oh, almost forgot.” He handed me a business card. “Maybe there’s something you forgot to tell me. Something she said, something you saw, or maybe you want to just call to say hi.” He smiled widely, in a fake way, and said, “I had a great time tonight, Jack, hope you did, too. Sorry, but you don’t get a kiss goodnight.”

  I watched him walk away.

  On my way out of the precinct, I looked at the business card.

  Prick’s name was Nick Barasco.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IN FRONT OF the precinct a few reporters fired questions to me about Sophie Ward.

  “Sorry,” I said without stopping. “Don’t know anything.”

  I saw one news camera. I didn’t know if it was recording, but I avoided it, looking away, just in case.

  I hailed a cab on 8th Avenue. About fifteen minutes later I was home.

  It seemed like I’d been gone for months. If everything worked out and the case was solved quickly, I vowed to do everything I could to work out my problems with Maria. If I couldn’t convince her to go into counseling, I’d go to therapy on my own. The problems in our marriage were probably mostly my fault anyway. I had a history of blaming others for my misery and maybe I’d been demonizing Maria, making her into the antagonist, when I’d been the one fucking up, not her. It takes two to mess up a marriage, so I had to take at least equal responsibility. Maybe it was true that she didn’t want to work on things, and had taunted me with threats of a nasty divorce, but she’d gotten that way for a reason. It was because of me—because of my behavior. She wasn’t the only one who’d checked out of our marriage—I’d checked out, too. I’d become distant, more absorbed with Jonah and my own dissatisfaction with my career decisions. I could’ve buckled down and tried to fix our marriage, but I hadn’t. The truth was, she was a great mother, and had been supportive of me for years. She deserved better than to live with an unhappy husband sneaking around behind her back, arranging to meet a woman on an extramarital dating website. I’d put her through a lot, and she’d always stuck with me, and I didn’t want to subject her to another round of misery.

  I went into Jonah’s room and kissed him on top of his head and whispered, “I love you so much, kiddo,” and then I got ready for bed.

  Maria was asleep when I entered the bedroom, but when I lay down next to her, she stirred. Then she rolled over onto her back and stared at me for a few seconds, probably just trying to orient herself, then said, “Where were you?”

  Seeing a flashing of myself trying to give Sophie mouth-to-mouth, remembering the feel of her stiff, cold lips against mine, I said, “A.A.”

  “So late?”

  “Bunch of us went out to a dinner and then watched some Netflix at Roger’s.”

  She seemed to buy the explanation. Or at least half-asleep she did.

  “G’night,” she muttered, then turned the other way.

  My head was spinning. I felt a sinking in my gut every time I thought of Sophie’s wide-open eyes and her sagging jaw, or being driven away in the squad car, or sitting in the interrogation room. I hoped the police had arrested her husband already, or at least brought him in for questioning. As long as my name was left out of it, I’d be happy.

  At three in the morning, I was still awake, obsessing.

  Eventually I conked out.

  * * *

  When my eyes opened, I heard Maria’s and Jonah’s voices coming from the living room. I managed to delude myself into believing that it was like any other Saturday morning. I’d cook Jonah breakfast—pancakes or French toast—and then take him out bike riding or to shoot some hoops in Carl Schurz Park.

  Then reality hit as I remembered the nightmarish events from last night. Although I’d only slept a few hours, I wasn’t tired—adrenaline maybe. I looked outside. It was bleak, cloudy, looked like rain. I hoped this wasn’t a bad omen.

  Jonah was sitting Indian-style in front of the TV, watching Pokémon.

  “Morning,” I said, and he said, “Hi, Daddy.”

  Like any other Saturday.

  Well, not exactly.

  “Good morning,” Maria said.

  She sounded irritated—not unusual. But there was another tone in her voice—suspicion? Maybe I was just imagining it.

  “Is there coffee?” I asked.

  “Just made some,” she said—I thought—flatly. “You want a cup?”

  “That would be great,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I sat on the couch next to Jonah, and then Maria brought me the coffee.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Fine.” Did I sound too defensive? “Why?”

  “I don’t know, you just seem very … distracted.”

  “Guess I’m just tired, that’s all.”

  “So what time do you want to get going?”

  “Going?” I was lost.

  “We’re going to the barbecue at Steve and Kathy’s today, remember?”

  Shit, I’d totally forgotten that we’d been invited to Steve and Kathy’s in Westchester.

  “That’s right, sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m still half asleep. My brain isn’t functioning yet.”

  “Well, I can be ready to leave in about an hour. Maybe we can take an eleven o’clock?”

  I wondered if I should just cancel. Wasn’t I supposed to stay in town? But I’d have to give Maria a good excuse or it might seem suspicious.

  “You know, I feel a little under it today,” I said. “I mean, just from staying up so late.”

  She absorbed this, then said, “So you don’t want to go?”

  “I’m not sure. Um, let me think about it, see how I feel in a few minutes.”

  Maria went down the hallway toward our bedroom. I could tell she was angry at me, and I couldn’t blame her—I’d been acting so aloof lately, lost in my own world.

  Then I thought, Wouldn’t it be better to be up front about everything right now? I could be honest, tell her how Rob McEvoy had told me about Discreet Hookups and I went online, just to see what it was like, because I was unhappy and frustrated with how distant we’ve been, and I talked to a woman and I got curious, so we exchanged a few notes, and I got a little carried away with my fantasies. But that’s all it had been—fantasies, harmless fantasies. In the end I’d decided that my marriage was too important to me to risk. That was what happened, wasn’t it? Maybe she’d see the whole thing as a positive, how my demons had reared up again, tempting me, but I’d resisted. She’d be proud of me, see it as a sign of my progress, my becoming a new, better man.

  Who was I kidding?

  But I had to open up to her, at least hint at the shit storm that was coming down the pike so it wasn’t a total surprise. What choice did I have?

  I joined her in the bedroom. She was undressing, in her panties, getting ready to take a shower. I noticed how beautiful she was. The curves of her hips used to be a big turn-on for me, but her back was more toned now from all the time she’d been spending at the gym the past several years. When was the last time I’d told her she was pretty? Maybe if I complimented her more often she wouldn’t lash out at me as much and we wouldn’t have had marriage problems. See? It was all my fault.

  “There’s something we need to talk about,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, picking up from my tone that it was something important.

  I hesitated, realizing I could regret this. Why confess if I didn’t have to? Sophie’s husband could be under arrest already, and I would be left out of it completely. Besides, could I really convince Maria that I hadn’t gone over to the townhouse last night with the intention of sleeping with Sophie when I wasn’t even sure I believed this myself?

  Maria was still waiting for me to answer.

  “I just wanted to tell you that I think I can go up to Steve and Kathy’s, after all,” I said.

  She seemed confused, as if she
didn’t quite believe that this was what I’d come into the bedroom to tell her.

  I went into the kitchen and started making French toast. Jonah was going on about how excited he was about the day trip. Steve had two sons and his youngest, Tyler, was a year older than Jonah. Steve had bought Tyler a trampoline for his latest birthday, and Jonah couldn’t wait to play on it.

  “How high can I jump?” he asked.

  “Maybe all the way to the moon,” I said.

  “No, I can’t,” he said. “I can only jump about three feet, see?”

  He demonstrated.

  “You never know,” I said. “If you put all your strength into it and reach up really high …”

  Having breakfast with my son was a nice distraction. I almost forgot about my problems, and then I thought that maybe this was the problem—that I’d been obsessing, driving myself crazy. Maybe if I stopped worrying so much, my problems would just go away.

  The strategy seemed to work. In the shower, I started feeling more confident that everything would be okay, and when I was toweling off, I convinced myself that the whole thing was over. Sophie’s husband had to have been arrested by now and my name would be left out of it. Part of me realized I was in some kind of weird denial state. I wasn’t even as upset about Sophie’s death as I should’ve been, and it was all going to hit me later.

  When I came out of the shower, Maria was busy getting Jonah ready, so, standing near the kitchen, I checked local news stories on my phone.

  My legs buckled a little when I saw:

  WOMAN SLAIN IN KIPS BAY

  So it hadn’t been a nightmare, as I’d been hoping. It had actually happened.

  I skimmed the first couple of paragraphs then slowed when I got to the best possible news: the police had been talking to Sophie’s husband, Lawrence Ward, who was considered a “person of interest” in the case. The only mention of me was: “An online friend, Manhattanite Jack Harper, discovered the body Friday evening at approximately six p.m. and contacted the police.”

  An online friend.

  That had to have come from Detective Barasco, that asshole. He had to put my name in the paper? What if Maria saw it, or somebody at work? I wasn’t prominently mentioned in the article, but my name was still there, for anyone to see.

  Rationalizing, I decided it wasn’t so bad, or at least could be worse. While the description was loaded, implying sleaziness, as least there was nothing about me as a possible suspect in the case. If everything went well, her husband would be arrested soon and the police wouldn’t bother looking into Sophie’s browsing history.

  I did a search for “Lawrence Ward White Plains.” I didn’t know what I was expecting him to look like, but I was surprised by his appearance. He had gray hair, a lanky build; he looked innocuous, not like a wife beater, but, then again, abusers didn’t have to look the part. He was a CFO of a pharmaceutical company, which explained how he was able to afford two residences. In our chats, Sophie hadn’t told me her last name, so I hadn’t Googled her at all yet. I found her Facebook page, saw her photos. The photo I had seen on Discreet Hookups was there, as well other photos of her, mostly at charity events and other socialite-type gatherings. She didn’t seem as, well, fun as she had in her chats, but this was Facebook, so it made sense that the photos represented who she was supposed to be, and not who she actually was. One thing about her resonated for me, though—her glassy blue eyes. They were so lively, so soulful. It seemed impossible that she was gone forever …

  After I got dressed, I went into the living room and picked up Jonah and put him on my shoulders and spun him around. He was laughing hysterically. Then I went over to Maria and kissed her on the lips and said, “I’m sorry things have been so rough with us lately. I love you.”

  The words sounded odd; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d told her that I loved her.

  She stared at me, confused, then without much emotion said, “Love you, too.”

  She still seemed lost, maybe a little suspicious, but I hoped I was just imagining all of this.

  * * *

  We caught the 11:01 train from Harlem to Katonah. Jonah was playing on his Switch, Maria was reading on her Kindle, and I was staring out the window.

  “Are you okay?” Maria asked.

  I was terrified and I guess I wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding my emotions.

  “Yeah,” I said, “my eyes are just irritated. Allergies, I guess.”

  I went into the train’s bathroom, barely aware of its urine stench, and sobbed for a few minutes. Then I splashed my face with cold water and returned to sit with Maria and Jonah.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Maria asked, not looking up from her Kindle.

  “Yeah,” I lied. “I’m fine.”

  * * *

  Steve was waiting for us at the Katonah train station, standing next to his double-parked SUV. He’d always been overweight, but he looked heavier than the last time I’d seen him—a year or so ago—and his hair looked thinner and grayer. This had happened before—not seeing him in a while and noticing how he’d let himself go. Some people move to the suburbs to escape the grind of the city and for a more relaxing lifestyle, but going by Steve’s declining appearance, the burbs had been as stressful as a presidency.

  “Hey, how are you guys?” he said. “Great to see you.”

  He kissed Maria on the cheek and gave her a big hug, then he shook my hand with his usual dead-fish grip.

  After he gave Jonah a high five, he said, “Tyler’s psyched to see you. We have a trampoline in the backyard now.”

  “Awesome,” Jonah said.

  We all got in the SUV—Maria sat shotgun next to Steve. They did most of the talking—catching up about the kids, and gossiping about friends from college. Meanwhile, Jonah was engrossed in the game on his Switch, and I was distracted by my nervous, paranoid thoughts.

  I’d never really understood why Steve and Maria’s relationship hadn’t worked out. Maria had once told me that it was because “we knew we were wrong for each other,” but they’d always seemed to have a great connection. I’d never had any reason to be jealous, but sometimes I wondered if Steve still pined for Maria and was jealous of me and my marriage. It wasn’t anything he’d ever said or done; it was just a vibe I got from him, or an occasional glance. He liked me, but he also seemed to be perpetually sizing me up, as if trying to figure out if I was worthy.

  When Maria and I met, Steve and Kathy were already together. For several years, they’d lived in the city, on the West Side, and we often went out to movies or had dinner at each other’s apartments while the kids played. Steve and I became friendly as well. We had coffee sometimes and occasionally he invited me over, sans Maria, to watch football and basketball. Neither Maria nor I had ever become very friendly with Kathy, though, who’d always seemed cold and standoffish.

  When Evan, their oldest son, reached elementary school age, Steve and Kathy moved to Westchester for “the schools.” This logic had never made much sense to me since there were excellent schools in Manhattan, but in their case, Kathy had grown up in Westchester and had never liked the city, so I’d figured that was part of the reason for the move.

  We didn’t get together as couples as frequently as we used to. This was partly due to distance and the logistics of coordinating the work schedules and the kids’ schedules.

  In South Salem, we turned off the main road onto a narrow, windy road called Savage Lane. They lived in a contemporary four-bedroom house, built in the 1980s, on about an acre, that would probably go for about $600,000. Whenever we visited, it was hard not to feel envious of their space. The living room alone was practically the size of our apartment in the city, and there was a big wraparound deck with a woodsy view. Yeah, I loved the city, and there were things I could never give up, but lack of space had been a problem for Maria and me, maybe our biggest problem. What would things have been like if we’d moved out of the city when Steve and Kathy had? Would we have fought less, stayed closer
, continued having sex? Would I have had an emotional affair with a woman on the Internet?

  If Steve and Kathy were any indication, moving to the suburbs might not have changed much for us. I knew that the move had stretched them financially, and lately they’d been digging into their savings and getting help from Kathy’s family. Kathy came from money—grew up in Greenwich—but it couldn’t have been easy for either of them to be in their early forties and getting support from her parents. All of this had to be putting a strain on their marriage, and maybe if they hadn’t left the city, Steve would’ve stayed in shape and his hair wouldn’t have turned gray quite as fast.

  Choosing another path in life doesn’t necessarily solve your problems—sometimes it just leads to a new set of them.

  Jonah rushed off with Evan and Tyler, eager to play on the trampoline, and Steve and Kathy invited Maria and me onto the deck for coffee. I got into a conversation with Steve about his accounting job—his company was in the middle of a merger. A few times, I checked my phone for news, but I stayed as focused as possible.

  Meanwhile, Kathy and Maria were chatting about their kids. I noticed that the awkwardness between them was worse than usual. There were long silences, and when Kathy asked Maria questions, she’d give one-word replies followed by more silence. On the train up here, Maria had seemed quiet and distant, barely talking to me or Jonah. She’d livened up with Steve, but what did that mean? She always liked talking to Steve.

  I couldn’t help feeling paranoid. Did Maria suspect that I’d met someone else, but she just hadn’t confronted me about it yet? It was very much like Maria to internalize her feelings, especially her anger.

  Later, Steve invited me down to the basement to look at the new renovation. He’d put down new carpeting, bought a ping-pong table.

  We were playing ping-pong, just volleying, when he asked, “So is everything okay with you and Maria?”

  Shit, was it that obvious?

  Trying to stay cool, I said, “Yeah, everything’s fine.” I paused, catching my breath, then asked, “Why?”