The Wife: A Novel of Psychological Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  Now that she counted at least four cameras, she realized King had given SVU as the location for the perp walk. She actually felt bad for Powell as she marched him, still in handcuffs, through the gauntlet. He had no way to hide his face. She could feel him jerking away from each flash of a camera. Once they were inside and she unlocked the cuffs, the only thing he said was, “I have a thirteen-year-old son.”

  He stared straight ahead as she took his prints, followed by his mug shot.

  The press was gone by the time she walked him out a mere thirty minutes later, having gotten what they came for. As she transported him to Central Booking, he remained silent. He didn’t even ask to have the radio turned on, the way some people do, or ask where he was going next. His lawyer would have been pleased.

  Once she was done with the paperwork at Central Booking, her plan was to head back to Powell’s place. The wife would be home, glued to her phone. The lawyer was probably busy trying to get a head start on cutting him loose. If Corrine was lucky, she’d catch the wife alone.

  She was three blocks away when she realized she wanted to know more about Angela Powell before knocking on her door. She pulled over and brought up the number she had saved for Detective Steven Hendricks in East Hampton.

  “I just booked Jason Powell for rape.”

  Hendricks spoke like an old, experienced cop, his tone completely unfazed. “So how bad was it?”

  These days, you weren’t supposed to distinguish. Rape was rape.

  “The victim had him up to her hotel room after dinner, but there’s evidence of injury, and he denied all contact with her and we have DNA.” Corrine believed you had to share some amount of information with other cops if you expected their cooperation. She was giving Hendricks enough to know that there were shades of a date-rape dynamic to the case, but more than a complete he-said, she-said.

  “He’s arguing consent?”

  “Basically,” she confirmed.

  “Is there any way to keep the wife out of it? Angela’s had a rough time of it, and this guy was supposed to be her happily-ever-after.”

  “My impression is that she’s managed to keep her identity fairly private.” She didn’t tell Hendricks that she never would have known who Angela was had it not been for his phone number in her call records.

  “Her parents made sure of it. I went with them to Niagara Falls when they got the phone call. I was the last person they wanted to deal with at the time, but they at least knew me. Angela was practically catatonic. They couldn’t get her to hand the baby to anyone until she saw her mother.”

  “You didn’t have a good relationship with the family?”

  “The short version is, I could have tried harder. I thought she was a runaway.”

  “And that’s why you’ve been trying to help her now.”

  “Pretty much. So how can I help her?”

  “Convince her to jump off a sinking ship. The DA is determined to get a conviction. She could leave now, take half his money, and find a new happily-ever-after.”

  “I’d be the last person able to convince her.”

  “So who has her ear?”

  “Her best friend is Susanna Coleman, but—”

  “I’m not going through a journalist.”

  “Of course not. Which is why I was going to say the person she’d really listen to is her mother, Ginny. Her dad, Danny, died a few years back, but Ginny was always the one who looked out for Angela. I thought she was going to clock the doctor who wanted to examine Angela and the baby after they were rescued. The way she saw it, Franklin and the other kidnapping victim were dead. If the police wanted to keep investigating, that was their business, but she took her daughter and grandson home and told the Pittsburgh police to pound sand.”

  “Where’d the other girl come from?”

  “Franklin picked her up in Cleveland. That sicko made the girls use fake names. I think Angela was called Michelle. She called the other girl Sarah. They didn’t find the body for two weeks and never identified her, last I heard.”

  Corrine realized that part of her had been hoping Hendricks would be close enough to the family to persuade Angela to start looking out for herself instead of her husband. It was still worth a try. “The husband will be arraigned tomorrow. I’m about to approach the wife now to see what she knows. What if you gave her a call first?”

  “I think she’d hang up and take it out on you for having any association with me.”

  “Wow, she dislikes you that much?”

  He paused on the other end of the line. “The only time that family let me do one thing for them was to help them get a birth certificate for Spencer—that’s the son. I found a doctor willing to look at the police reports and say it was a home birth in Albany, father unknown, so Franklin’s name wouldn’t be anywhere near the baby’s. They did thank me, but it wasn’t enough to earn their forgiveness.”

  Corrine wondered which cases would continue to haunt her, years from now. She considered telling Hendricks not to kick himself, that every cop inevitably makes a wrong call. But she had no idea whether Hendricks was a good cop. Maybe he deserved to be blamed for what Angela went through.

  She thanked him again for the information and started the car engine.

  He offered her one more piece of advice. “If I had to guess, she’s in denial. She built an entirely new life for herself and probably wants to think it’s all going to be okay. If it starts looking dire, go to the mom. Ginny Mullen. Angela may think she’s part of some other world now, but when push comes to shove, she trusts her mother more than anyone.”

  Eight minutes later, Corrine stood at Angela Powell’s door.

  32

  I checked my phone again for updates. Nothing.

  Have you heard anything? I sent the text to Colin and watched the ellipses on the screen as he typed his response. How could a text message take so long?

  They transported him to SVU in Harlem instead of the 6th Precinct. By the time Olivia got there, they were taking him back downtown for processing.

  So what does that mean? I hit enter.

  Dots, followed by That he won’t get in front of a court until tomorrow. Sorry—at a client dinner and can’t leave. Will call you ASAP. So sorry, A! Hang in there.

  Two hours later, I was still alone. The house was so quiet, I was starting to regret turning down my mother’s offer to come into the city for the night. I didn’t want her to hear about Jason’s arrest on the news, the way she’d heard everything else so far, but I should have known it wouldn’t be a quick phone call. Of course she immediately asked about Spencer, so I had to tell her that I had sent him to camp, which led to an argument about why I hadn’t sent him to her instead, or at least told her that her grandchild was going to be gone for weeks. Now, I would have happily continued that conversation, simply to have another person in the room with me.

  I jerked when I heard a dull thump at the door. That hideous knocker was gone, so whoever was on our porch was intent on letting me know they were here.

  I walked gingerly to the front door so I could check the peephole in silence.

  I recognized the woman standing there as the detective who had read Jason his rights while a uniformed officer had placed him in handcuffs.

  “Call our lawyer,” I yelled through the door.

  “You really want to talk about this through your door? There’s people walking by on the street.”

  I unlocked the bolts and opened the door. If I had met this woman in a different context, my immediate reaction to her might have been a positive one. She had a heart-shaped face that seemed to rest in a natural smile. She had dark brown freckles and her only makeup was a little blush and some pink lip gloss. She stood with her feet a comfortable distance apart, making no effort to hide the extra pounds straining against the buttons of the crisp blue shirt beneath her blazer.

  But tonight, she was the woman who had arrested my husband and then made sure to drag him around the city long enough that he couldn’t m
ake it home for the night. In her left hand was some kind of document.

  “I don’t have anything to say to you,” I said, “and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t yell implied threats for my neighbors to hear. If you’re here with papers, you should go through Olivia Randall.”

  She held up her free hand. “I know you’ve got no reason to trust me, but I’m actually here to help you, Angela. I’m Corrine. Corrine Duncan.” She extended the same hand for a shake, but I didn’t accept it.

  “I never told you to call me by my first name.”

  “Mrs. Powell. It’s Powell now, right? Not Mullen?”

  I felt my knees give way beneath me.

  The detective moved backward until she was one step down on our stoop. “The last thing I want is for you to be collateral damage because of something your husband’s done.”

  “He didn’t do anything.” In the nearly twelve years since I came home, not a day had passed that I hadn’t feared exposure, but I realized now that my worries had faded over time. Now they were raging in a way I hadn’t felt since I first ventured outside my parents’ house after going back to Springs.

  “Obviously there’s another side to that story,” the detective said. “The district attorney’s office agreed to charges. The judge signed an arrest warrant. Your husband looked me straight in the eye and told me he never touched the complainant in this case, and yet we have DNA evidence proving otherwise. I’m assuming he lied to you, too.”

  “I have spousal privilege,” I said. “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “So you have a lawyer?”

  “I told you before: Olivia Randall. I’m going to call her right now,” I said, turning to retrieve my phone from the coffee table in the living room.

  “She’s your husband’s lawyer, Mrs. Powell, not yours. And she’ll do anything to win a case, including use you and anyone else in a position to help or hurt her client. I don’t know what Randall told you, but the DA can subpoena you. A few of your private conversations might be protected, but other matters are fair game. What time did he come home? Did you notice anything unusual about his appearance or clothing? Things like that.”

  “I’m not going to help you railroad my husband. You should be investigating that woman and her company.”

  “The woman has a name—Kerry Lynch—and she’s afraid right now. She’s afraid of her name being printed. She’s afraid of being blamed for what happened. She’s afraid that her life’s never going back to normal again. Does that sound familiar? It’s natural to want to protect your husband, but open your mind for one second and just imagine that she’s telling the truth. If that’s the case, do you really want to help Olivia Randall victimize her a second time? This case isn’t going away. No plea bargains. No probation deal. This is actually happening, Mrs. Powell. Will your husband still have a job pending trial? If he gets convicted, are you and your son going to visit him in prison? These aren’t things Olivia Randall will help you with. She’s looking out for Jason, not you.”

  “You’re trying to scare me.”

  “I want you to ask yourself why you’re so damn sure Jason’s innocent. If it’s based on evidence, then fine, stick with him, and we’ll see which side wins at trial. But if it’s only because you think you know him—”

  The detective handed me the papers she was holding. It was marked as an incident report, dated that morning, documenting an interview with a woman named Lana Sullivan. She was a prostitute who claimed that Jason had picked her up three years earlier when she was walking the streets in Murray Hill. I flipped the page to find an explicit description of the sex acts she performed upon him inside our car when it was pulled to the side of the road near the playground by the UN. Whoever drafted the report should have been a professional writer. I could visualize every moment.

  I handed the report back to the detective. I didn’t want a copy in my home.

  “I left out the part where your husband basically blamed you for the fact that he was hiring a prostitute.”

  I couldn’t look away from her gaze.

  “He told her that his wife had ‘problems,’ and that’s why he needed to go elsewhere. I know about what happened when you were younger. I can’t imagine what you went through.”

  No, you can’t, I thought. “That was a long time ago. It has nothing to do with Jason.”

  “Unless it does. There’s a pattern forming here, Angela. Your husband likes to have power over women.”

  What was she insinuating? That Jason had chosen me because of my past? That Jason was now targeting other women because I was no longer available to him? That I was only defending Jason because I had been trained to be subservient? All of the above? I knew I should throw her off my property, but the look in her eyes stopped me. There was something about the way she spoke to me, as if she was genuinely trying to protect me. Could empathy be faked this well?

  I forced myself to break from her eye contact. “We’re done here, Detective. I need to find my husband.”

  She nodded, but reached into her blazer pocket and handed me a business card. “I promise I’ll keep asking myself every day, What if Jason’s innocent? But please, like I said, just imagine for one second that he’s not. Call me if you ever want to talk.”

  As I picked up the phone to call Olivia Randall, I tucked Detective Corrine Duncan’s card inside my purse. I didn’t want Jason to find it if he ever managed to get home.

  33

  I went to the arraignment the next morning. I wore the closest thing I had to a suit—a gray dress I had purchased for Jason’s book launch, topped by a black blazer—thinking it would be like a trial. But the whole thing took less than ten minutes once Jason’s name was finally called.

  Jason was charged with one count of rape, and one count of attempted offensive physical touching for whatever happened in his office with Rachel Sutton. The one surprise was the date of the alleged incident with Kerry Lynch. It wasn’t the week before, when he drove to her house in Long Island. It was supposedly on April 10, nearly two months earlier. I found myself wondering how she had chosen which of the many times she had fucked my husband to use for her false allegation.

  His bail was set at $100,000. I watched helplessly as deputies placed him back in handcuffs and escorted him out of the courtroom. I had panicked, but Olivia explained that his bail only required $10,000 cash. Once I covered it, we were down to a four-digit balance, more than I ever had in savings before I met Jason, but still, I was worried.

  By the time Jason got back to our place, it was after midnight. I was sitting on the sofa, flipping channels aimlessly, when I heard a key in the door.

  I rushed to the door and gave him a hug. “I had no idea where you were.” He smelled dank, and his eyes were bloodshot.

  “I was wondering where you were,” he said.

  “What? I’ve been sitting here, waiting.”

  “My battery was dead, and I couldn’t find a cab. I finally gave some guy forty bucks cash to order an Uber from the detention center.”

  We spent a few minutes blaming the police, corrections officials, and Olivia for the mix-up before he asked if Spencer had called.

  I felt a tug in my chest. I had forced Colin to tell me what Jason would have been subjected to over the last twenty-four hours. He tried to gloss over the specifics, but I now knew that my husband, among other things, had to “squat and spread” for a full-body search to prepare for a jail cell. It was one glaring degradation among the smaller ones of handcuffs, transport, fingerprinting, photographing, churning him through the system like a widget in a factory. But despite all of that, Jason had remembered that tonight was supposed to be Spencer’s first phone call.

  The rule of thumb for Spencer’s camp was that the kids could call home every two days to check in. “He called. He sounded great. Happy.”

  “Did you tell him anything?”

  I shook my head. “That was the whole point of sending him there, right? And I spoke specifically to the camp coun
selor to make sure she hadn’t heard a single whisper about it among the kids. It sounds like they run a really tight ship. No gadgets, no computers. I told him that you had something on campus tonight.”

  I didn’t mention that Spencer hadn’t asked about him.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you about the camp. You made the right call. The thought of him seeing me . . .”

  He looked exhausted.

  “Are you okay, Jason?”

  Without saying anything, he pulled me into his arms. I felt him shaking but by the time he released his grip, there was no sign of tears. “I’m so tired. I need a shower—”

  “Of course.”

  As I heard the water run, I put on a black cotton tank top and a pair of black bikini panties. I brushed my teeth, climbed into bed, and dimmed my nightstand light to its lowest setting.

  I could feel the steam from our bathroom when he walked out ten minutes later, a bath towel wrapped around his waist as he roughly dried his hair with a hand towel. “Damn, that felt good. Um, do you want me to go to Spencer’s room or something?”

  “No, I want you here.” I folded the covers down on his side of the bed.

  He dropped both towels to the floor and climbed in, rolling away from me, so I was facing his back. “Thank you for being there. Olivia thinks it helped with the bail.”

  I moved closer to him, draping my top arm across his waist. “We should talk about this, Jason. I’m still here for you.”

  He didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. I placed one hand on his stomach. When he didn’t respond, I moved my palm down two inches. He sat up. “What are you doing, Angela?”

  “I’m—I’m trying to be your wife.”

  “You are my wife.”

  “I’m trying to be close to you.”

  “Now? After I spent a day in jail? When I was sure I’d come home and find you gone?”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Jason.”

  He jumped out of bed, picked up the bath towel from the floor, and wrapped it around his waist. He still looked so tired. “No. No, this is not how this is happening, Angela. Three years ago, you made it pretty damn clear you were through with this part of our marriage. And it took me getting accused of—” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. “No, I’m not doing this.”