The Wife: A Novel of Psychological Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  I liked that question when it came from Dr. Boyle, but from Jason, it was annoying. “Afraid. Terrified. It’s only a matter of time before it gets out.”

  Jason’s expression was blank.

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m rambling about myself when—I’ll be fine. I’ll figure something out.”

  I did my best to sound optimistic as Jason outlined Olivia’s strategy to blame Tom Fisher for Kerry’s murder. Already, she had confirmed that Oasis’s marketing department—under Kerry’s control—had spent millions more in Africa leading up to the finalization of their deal there than in other international markets. In combination with Kerry’s pay records, Olivia planned to argue that Kerry was complicit in a kickback scheme at Oasis, had framed Jason to silence his concerns about the financial irregularities, and had finally been murdered when she tried to blackmail Fisher for more money.

  But with each tactical point he raised, I reminded myself that Olivia’s job was to get her client off, even if he was guilty. The police hadn’t arrested Tom Fisher. They had arrested Jason, which meant they had evidence, and I had been racking my brain for five days, wondering what it could be.

  “Olivia says a trial will take until at least November,” Jason said. “Spencer will be in school by then. It’ll be a media frenzy. You guys should go.”

  “Where? My mom’s? No thank you. And we can’t keep sending Spencer to camp.”

  “No, like actually go. You have enough money. Find some place where you can get some peace and quiet.”

  “We need to stay here with you.”

  “Why? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in jail.” He looked down at his orange jumpsuit. “I don’t want you afraid of picking up your phone because some reporter is asking questions about you. And it’s only going to get worse as the trial date gets closer. Seriously—I insist on this. I’m going to call Colin and literally make him find you guys somewhere to stay until the trial.”

  I was shaking my head.

  “Just promise me you’ll think about it.”

  “Fine, I’ll think about it and then not do it. I need to go now.”

  It was an abrupt end to the visit, but we both knew I had somewhere else to be. I was testifying in front of the grand jury.

  60

  I did a quick scan of the room. Eighteen grand jurors from my quick head count, seated in two rows. No judge, as Olivia Randall had warned me to expect. The only other person in the room, besides the court reporter, was the prosecutor, a woman named Heather Rocco.

  The background information moved quickly—dates of the marriage, separation, divorce, and Kerry Lynch’s rape allegation. From an outsider’s perspective, my entire life had boiled down to those four dates.

  Once introductions were done, ADA Rocco asked me if I understood the conditions under which I was testifying. She explained what Olivia Randall had already told me: any witness, like me, subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury was automatically granted immunity in exchange for his or her testimony. That explanation sufficed for the ADA’s purposes, but I knew far more than the grand jurors about what that meant. Unlike most states, in New York, the state’s decision to force me to be here entitled me to something called “transactional immunity.” Olivia had called it the “golden ticket” of deals with the government. In short, the police could find a videotape of me helping Jason move Kerry’s body to Ocean Beach and they still wouldn’t be able to prosecute me. I had blanket immunity from anything involving Kerry Lynch—full stop.

  On the other hand, I could not claim the Fifth. Because I had immunity, nothing could actually “incriminate” me. The only basis I had to refuse a question was spousal privilege. Olivia had wanted me to hire a lawyer to stand in the hallway in case I needed to ask someone what I could or could not do, but I wasn’t about to start cutting checks to yet another attorney.

  After ADA Rocco had assured the grand jurors that I understood the ground rules, she dove immediately into the subject of Jason’s relationship with Kerry. “Isn’t it true that Jason claimed he’d had a consensual affair and that Ms. Lynch fabricated the criminal allegation as an act of revenge?”

  “I apologize if I’m mistaken, but I was told that anything Jason actually said to me while we were married was privileged.”

  “Very well, then.” Rocco paused to remind the grand jurors that they’d already heard testimony from a previous witness regarding Jason’s defense. My guess was that either Detective Duncan or Brian King, or both, had already testified regarding the facts of the original case against Jason. “In addition to the criminal case, Ms. Lynch was also pursuing a civil suit, demanding five million dollars in damages. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s my understanding.”

  “And both the criminal and civil cases were dismissed after Kerry Lynch went missing?”

  “That is what I was told after the fact.”

  “What were the grounds for your divorce, Ms. Powell?”

  “I believe the exact terminology is that our marriage had ‘broken down irretrievably.’”

  “Was your husband unfaithful?”

  “Yes.”

  “Allegedly with Kerry Lynch?”

  “Yes, among others.” I saw two different grand jurors—both women—shift in their seats. I sensed that they didn’t like the idea of my being here, forced to discuss my husband’s infidelities.

  “But you were still married to Mr. Powell when Detective Corrine Duncan came to your home on June 7 and informed you that Kerry Lynch was missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she ask you where your husband, Jason, was the previous night?”

  “Yes.” Olivia had instructed me only to answer the question presented. If Rocco asked me if I knew the time, the correct answer was yes. It wasn’t my responsibility to make her job easier.

  “And what did you tell her?”

  “That Jason was at home with me.” It was a truthful response to the question she had posed.

  “What specifically did you tell her about your activities that night?”

  “Well, there was dinner. And a phone call from our son. And watching La La Land before going to sleep.”

  “And was that true?”

  I paused, focusing on her precise wording. “Yes.”

  “I’m going to remind you, Ms. Powell, that you’re under oath, under penalty of perjury.”

  “I understand that.”

  “I can ask your son under oath about that phone call if you’d prefer.”

  “I answered the question you asked, Ms. Rocco.”

  A heavyset woman toward the end of the second row—one of the women who had seemed uncomfortable at the mention of Jason’s affairs—held up her hand sheepishly. “It’s the way you worded it,” she said. “You asked about her activities, then asked if that was true.”

  The prosecutor looked confused, and then embarrassed.

  “I didn’t realize we were playing semantics, Ms. Powell.”

  “I’m answering your questions.”

  “Was your ex-husband, Jason Powell, with you the entire night during those activities?”

  “No.”

  I said it in such an offhand manner that Rocco marched forward with the first few words of her next question before registering my response. The entire room fell silent until one of the jurors coughed. Rocco stared at me, as if expecting me to retract my answer. I returned her gaze but said nothing.

  “So, you weren’t telling the truth to Detective Duncan when you said Mr. Powell was with you at home?”

  “No, I was not.” I had made Colin call two other defense attorneys to make certain that I had immunity. The law was absolutely clear: because I was subpoenaed as a grand jury witness, I could not be charged, not even for my dishonesty to Detective Duncan about Jason’s alibi. I could, however, be prosecuted if I lied to the grand jury, so I was determined to be truthful.

  “Do you know where M
r. Powell was that night?”

  Technically, the correct answer was no, but I still wanted to protect Jason. “He was with Colin Harris.”

  Once again, I had caught Rocco off guard. “If you knew where your husband was that night, why did you lie to Detective Duncan and say that he was with you?”

  I did my best to make eye contact with each juror as I told them about the stress we’d been under since Jason’s mistress had framed him for a sexual assault as punishment for not leaving his family to be with her and to curry favor with her corrupt employer. Rocco tried to cut me off, but I reminded her that I was only answering her question. The same grand juror who had pointed out Rocco’s earlier imprecision said she wanted to hear my explanation.

  “We’d spent weeks feeling like everything we did got twisted around, to where no one believed anything we said. On that particular day, Jason and I had gotten into a fight because I finally realized the extent of his infidelities. He wasn’t a criminal, but I wasn’t exactly happy with him either. I didn’t want to explain all of that to Detective Duncan—this is hard for me today, in fact, but I don’t have a choice—so I said he was home with me instead.”

  “But you don’t know for certain that he was with Colin Harris all night, do you?”

  “I know that Colin told me he was, and Colin Harris is the most honest person I know. And I’m sure the police have our phone records. You’ll find a call from Colin’s house to my cell phone that afternoon. That was from Jason right after he left the house.”

  “Please answer the question: You don’t know firsthand where he was for the rest of the night, do you?”

  “No, not firsthand.”

  I had no idea what evidence the police had used to obtain their arrest warrant for Jason, but this sudden change in his supposed alibi, courtesy of his own wife, was not going to help matters.

  I knew that, as I spoke, Olivia Randall was taking Colin to ADA King, so Colin could provide a sworn statement regarding Jason’s whereabouts, but we had no real way to prove where Jason was that night. Olivia had sent an investigator to Colin’s building: they no longer had camera footage to establish that he and Jason had stayed in the apartment that night; on the other hand, there was no footage to prove that they had not.

  “Please don’t punish Jason for this,” I said. “I just got nervous under pressure and blurted out that he was with me. But he was with Colin. The point is, he was nowhere near Long Island.”

  I looked again to the grand jurors for signs of support, but found nothing but eyes avoiding my gaze. Not only did I not have an alibi for Jason, but the fact that I had initially lied for him made him look even guiltier.

  “That’s enough,” Rocco said. “I think your testimony speaks for itself.”

  If they arrested him, they must have evidence. These people had heard the evidence, and they had concluded that Jason was a murderer, and I was the idiot trying to protect him.

  I thought she was about to excuse me from the room when she asked another question. “Does your ex-husband smoke, Ms. Powell?”

  “No, he quit at New Year’s.”

  “Does he use anything to help control the cravings?”

  “He chews Nicorette.”

  “Very good. Thank you.”

  I could still feel my heart pounding in my chest as I stepped onto the elevator.

  I had planned to take the Long Island Railroad back to the city after testifying, but decided to board an eastbound train instead. I’d be in East Hampton within ninety minutes, give or take.

  61

  Mom walked in about half an hour after I arrived at her house.

  She flinched when she saw me sitting on the sofa. “Jesus H., you scared me. Did you call?” She was fumbling in her purse for her phone.

  “No, I had grand jury in Mineola. Figured I was already halfway out.”

  “Well, there’s a silver lining, I suppose. Where’s Spencer?”

  “Spending the night with a friend.”

  “Someone I’d approve of?”

  “He has two nannies and a driver,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes, and I gestured to the bottle of white wine I had already opened on her coffee table.

  She went to the kitchen for a glass and filled it halfway. “You going to tell me why you’re really here?”

  “What did you do, Mom?”

  She set the glass back down on the coffee table and stood up, ready for a fight. I shook my head, too tired to argue. “You didn’t need to do that,” I said.

  “Of course I did. Someone had to protect you. You were obviously out of your mind.”

  “You already did protect me, Mom, but Jason doesn’t deserve this.”

  “That’s not how this works, baby girl. They don’t just leave murders unsolved. And if someone was going to be blamed, of course it should be him.”

  “Where’d you get the gum?” The ADA’s question about Jason’s Nicorette habit had been the giveaway. There was only one reason she’d ask. I now knew at least one big piece of evidence in the case against my husband.

  “Your rental.”

  I was searching my memory. Jason had been the one to drop off the Audi to the dealer after I took Spencer to camp. He drove the loaner back to the garage at the carriage house. He must have left gum in the ashtray. I never even noticed.

  “He has one of the best defense attorneys in the city,” she said. “And your husband spits that nasty gum out everywhere he goes. The lawyer can argue that anyone could have planted it there, including Tom Fisher. All she needs to do is create reasonable doubt. Jason will be fine. He deserves to be put through the wringer for a while. Maybe he didn’t tell that woman every bit of your business, but this is still on him.”

  “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Well, too late now. You told him about that magazine reporter?”

  I nodded, realizing that my mother was right. I could no longer help Jason. “Yeah, he insisted that I take Spencer away until it’s over.” It was exactly the response I had anticipated. After all, when he said he would love us forever, he had meant it.

  62

  One Month Later

  The timing for the move couldn’t have been better. In August, there was hardly anyone around to notice that a young widow had moved to the island with her mother and thirteen-year-old son.

  I heard the wheels of the gate out front start to move, followed by the sound of the Jeep engine cutting in the driveway. It was just like my mother and son to drive the five blocks to the ocean.

  Spence still had patches of sand stuck to his bare skin when he burst through the door.

  “Outdoor shower, please!” I met him out back and turned on the grill while he rinsed off. When I returned to the kitchen, my mother was inspecting the fish that I had left marinating in the refrigerator.

  “I don’t know why you have to be so fancy about things. Spencer and I would be just as happy with some hot dogs and potato chips.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t. And it’s Spence, Mom.”

  “Because that’s really going to fool anyone.”

  Susanna’s story last summer about the underground market for government documents had come in handy. My name, according to my UK passport, was Susan Martin. Mom was known as Rosemary Parker. And Spencer now went by Spence, last name Martin, same as mine.

  My hair was now cropped short and bleached nearly white. Sometimes I barely recognized myself in the mirror. Spence says I look “punk rock.”

  Susanna understood my decision to leave, but thought my refusal to tell her where we were going was overkill. She eventually relented when I broke down in tears, telling her how paranoid I was that the New York magazine writer was going to find out about my past.

  “Think about Spencer,” I had pleaded. “I don’t want the whole world to look at him and see Charles Franklin. I can’t risk that. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  That magazine writer didn’t exist. Well, she did exist, but she had never cal
led me, and to my knowledge, no other journalist was looking to write a profile about the former Mrs. Jason Powell, not yet anyway.

  I had promised Susanna that once we were set up somewhere new, I would let her know so she could visit. I still hadn’t contacted her, and doubted that I ever would. I had learned my lesson. She had been a good friend to me, but friendship had its limits. From now on, I would only trust my family: me, Mom, Spence. Spence had been remarkably cooperative so far, because he was still convinced that Jason was guilty and that we were better off distancing ourselves. But eventually I was going to face a decision on how much to tell my son about the real reason we had come here.

  Letting him have his way on his first name seemed only fair, given what I was putting him through. With a different last name, I didn’t see the harm.

  “You may not like my food,” I said, “but someone else does.”

  “It went well?” she asked.

  I had asked the broker who found us our house to let me know if she heard about anyone who might need catering. As it turned out, she knew the owner of a modest little oceanfront restaurant with twelve four-tops whose chef had left for Anguilla to open his own place. Customer ratings on TripAdvisor were already starting to decline, even off-season.

  “You’re looking at the new head chef at Margo’s.”

  My mother hugged me and told me how proud she was of me.

  When I went to bed that night, I reached for the notebook on the nightstand. Dr. Boyle was the one who suggested that I start keeping a journal when I told him that Spencer and I were leaving New York for a while. It was no substitute for regular sessions, he warned, but might prove therapeutic.

  I hadn’t decided yet whether it was helping me, or even if I needed the help. But I tried to write once or twice a week anyway, burning the pages afterward when I used the grill, just to be safe.

  What if . . . ?

  What if I hadn’t gone to the bonfire that night? What if I hadn’t accepted Charles Franklin’s offer of a ride? What if I had run out the front door instead of checking his garage to see if it was safe to leave? And what if I had never gone to Kerry Lynch’s house that night?