The Wife: A Novel of Psychological Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  When I feel my thoughts move in that direction, I shut them down, because asking what if can lead to regrets, and regrets are dangerous. You make the best decisions you can make in the time you have to make them, and you move on. It’s instinct. It’s survival.

  I got in that car with Charles Franklin because it seemed safer than walking alone on a dark road at night.

  After a year of learning how to survive in that house—earning tiny privileges like time away from my room, use of a toilet, fresh-squeezed juice when I was really good—he told me he was bored. He needed another girl. He had tried offering rides, the way he had gotten me, but it wasn’t working. He made my choice clear: either I had to help him get another girl, or he would kill me. What else was I supposed to do?

  We tried a few times—once at a mall in Cleveland, once in Philly, one time we drove all the way to Buffalo. As it turned out, not everyone was as trusting as I had been as I walked away from a bonfire party, even when there was a sweet girl in the passenger seat.

  Sometimes I thought about those girls, wondering how their lives turned out. They had no way of knowing that their entire futures had rested on a decision to turn down the offer of a ride from a nice-looking young couple in a white SUV. The girl from Cleveland had been the basis for “Sarah” when the police asked what I knew about her. I remembered passing signs on the highway for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, so I added that detail, too.

  Charlie didn’t like the idea of taking two girls from one location, but his desire to have someone new had bloomed into an obsession, and he was blaming our failures on me. I begged him to give me one more shot, but on my terms.

  We went back home—to my home, in East Hampton. I told him I knew a girl who would trust me.

  I didn’t actually expect to find her, not really. I crossed my fingers beneath my legs, hoping she was off on one of her excursions. It felt so surreal to be back again. The new chain drugstore whose construction my parents complained about was open on Main Street. We passed the bus stop where I’d been headed the night he took me. At the windmill, I looked longingly at the turn that led to my house. I felt my hopes drop as we reached the post office. We had gone all the way through East Hampton—the town where I was born and raised—and no one had recognized me. My plan had failed.

  It felt as if we were picking up speed with every block until his SUV was barreling east on 27. Pretty soon we’d reach Montauk, right around sunset. We had been cruising the area for three hours, not to mention the drive from Pittsburgh. He said if we reached the lighthouse without another girl, he’d drown me in Napeague Bay. I thought about honking the horn or grabbing the wheel and running us into a tree.

  And then I saw Trisha. She had her thumb out, walking backward along 27. My best guess was that she’d been drinking on Fort Pond. I had to make a split-second decision. I justified it by telling myself that together, we would be stronger. With Trisha’s help, I would find a way out.

  What shakes me to the core to this very day is how happy she was to see me.

  I told Charlie to pull over, and then I hopped out of the passenger seat. Trisha ran at me so hard, she literally knocked me over. We were like two puppies wrestling in the sand at the side of the road.

  “What are you doing here, girl? Where have you been?”

  “Get in,” I said, pointing to the white SUV. “Let’s go party.”

  Charlie put the cloth over her face, the same way he had when he had taken me a year earlier. It was the second worst thing I have ever done.

  You might think that killing Kerry is the worst thing I’ve done, but it’s not. Even so, I force myself to tamp down the what-ifs about that night, too.

  What if I had never read my husband’s e-mail? I wouldn’t have seen those photographs just minutes before he came home to report the “good news” that Kerry’s lawyer was open to settling.

  Or what if I had recognized Tom Fisher as he left Kerry’s house? If I had realized who he was, I might have known that something was off with Kerry’s story. I would have come to my senses and gone home.

  Instead, I watched him drive away, and then I knocked on her door. I wanted to hear the truth about my husband, once and for all, straight from the source. She almost didn’t let me in, but I told her that I had seen the pictures of her wrists. During the entire ordeal—the police visits, the arrest, the arraignment, the lawsuit—no one had ever told me the details of the alleged assault. It wasn’t until I read that e-mail from Olivia that I knew, or thought I knew, the truth.

  “He did the same thing to me,” I said. “I believe you.”

  When she let me inside, I asked her to tell me exactly what had happened.

  She was holding a glass of red wine. It was so bizarre standing there in her living room—two women on either side of her coffee table, with nothing in common except what Jason had done to us.

  And then she laughed at me.

  “You’re even crazier than Jason said you were.”

  “I came here to be on your side, Kerry. I read the police reports.” I thought I was being noble.

  “You really don’t get it, do you? He tied me up because I asked him to, and more than once, and I loved every second of it. We don’t all have your hang-ups.”

  I felt my mouth moving, but no words came out.

  “Oh my god. Catch up, honey.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “I know your whole story. And I know it’s why he’ll never leave you. Jason loved me. No—he loves me. But he loves his persona more. And he can’t be the good guy—Mr. Save-the-Planet, next mayor of New York—if he leaves his Little Miss Perfect with the tragic backstory.”

  “You’re—a monster. Why would you tell me all this?” For all she knew, I could have been recording her. I could testify to every word. “You admitted that you’re lying. I’m calling the DA.”

  She grabbed my arm. “No, you’re not. You do that, and I’ll tell everyone what I know. You’re that girl from the house in Pittsburgh. Who’s the monster, Angela? Me, or the woman who makes a man stay with her out of sympathy? You wouldn’t even let him adopt Spencer, so he has no choice. He’s stuck with you. If he leaves, he loses his kid. I know all about you—”

  The glass egg was heavy, at least fifteen pounds. I heard her skull crack the first time I hit her. She fell to the floor and was struggling to push herself upright. I hit her one more time and then another, until she stopped moving.

  What if I had waited for her to finish the sentence? Maybe if I had heard her out, I would have realized that Jason only told Kerry about me, not that Spencer wasn’t mine. But the sound of my son’s name in her mouth made me certain she knew the whole story.

  Or what if I had told my mother less about what really happened that night? I could have simply called her from that gas-station pay phone, told her I was in trouble, and given her the address. She had proven over and over again—first when I went missing, and then when I was found and ever since—that she would run through fire to protect me. And that is probably why I had trusted her, as always, with the entire truth.

  She was at the house in a little more than an hour. Just like my instincts had kicked in the next day when Detective Duncan was on our stoop, I saw every piece of a plan. Cleaning the floor. Wiping down everything I touched. Getting rid of the glass egg.

  The only thing I panicked about was the dog. I used a dish towel as a makeshift glove to fill his bowls, assuming that Kerry’s absence would be noticed when she didn’t show up to work the next day. I decided that if two days passed, I would make an anonymous call from a city pay phone to check on her. The funny thing is, I don’t think I even saw her as a real person until I looked at that dog and wondered how he was going to feel when he realized his best friend wasn’t coming back.

  Mom would drive Kerry’s body all the way to the East End. If anyone ever suspected me, I’d have an alibi of sorts: Spencer’s phone call, plus the movie streamed as soon as I got home three and a half hours later. When that detective showed u
p at my door asking about Jason, I said he was home with me so both of us were accounted for.

  It was a good plan, but apparently not good enough for Mom, who added her own touch by retrieving Jason’s gum from the car and dropping it in the sand only three feet from Kerry’s body on Ocean Beach.

  It was already clear that Olivia Randall was planning to argue that Tom Fisher had framed Jason for the murder. It wouldn’t be hard to find witnesses to testify that Jason was constantly chewing that stupid gum, leaving it like bread crumbs to mark his whereabouts. Kerry’s own lawyer would testify that her client had been demanding huge amounts of money from both Jason and Fisher. Combined with the documents FSS had managed to get from Oasis about their Africa dealings, it would be easy to prove that Fisher had at least as much to lose as Jason.

  Colin was sticking to his alibi testimony, and he’d be a good witness. Literally, all the state had was motive and a piece of gum. Olivia Randall would soak the courtroom with “reasonable doubt.” As my son had said when he first heard Rachel Sutton’s name: Jason wouldn’t end up in prison; we were rich.

  Do you hate me yet?

  Maybe not. Technically, I was an accomplice to Trisha’s kidnapping, which makes me—as a legal matter—just as guilty as Charlie Franklin. But I was also his victim. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t find him another girl. I had gotten boring.

  There was a reason I chose her. From what she had told me, I figured her home life wasn’t much better than what we could manage at Charlie’s house together.

  Even so, the first month was awful. He left me alone while she suffered the brunt of his attention. After that, it sort of evened out. When Charlie was at work, Trisha and I had each other. It was actually tolerable.

  But then it became clear Trisha was going to have a baby.

  Charlie punched her in the stomach three days in a row, trying to make it go away. Trisha and I made a vow to him and to each other that we would take care of the child growing inside of her. We would do anything and everything that Charlie wanted so that he would let us keep him. We made Charlie feel like we loved him, all for a little boy or girl we didn’t know yet.

  And the strangest thing happened: Spencer was born, and this horrible man who took so much pleasure in hurting us loved his baby. He would rush home to hold his son. He was nice to us, if that’s imaginable. Trisha and I took turns going to his room every couple of days. He started letting us go outside, as long as we went one at a time, so each of us had to worry about the other as we walked around in freedom. We told the neighbors we were his nieces.

  Considering what I’d been through the last three years, it wasn’t that bad. Then a police officer knocked on the front door, and all four of us were in the SUV while an Amber Alert blast out on repeat across the airwaves. It was that Amber Alert that led to the very worst thing I’ve ever done.

  I repeated the official story to law enforcement so many times that the horrific facts became rote. Charlie killed “Sarah” because he didn’t want us to fit the description of two teenage girls and a baby. He pulled over at a boat slip two hours north of Pittsburgh. He ordered me to stay with the baby and Sarah to get out. He had a gun. I heard two shots. He came back to the car alone and told me to “look older.”

  It was so close to the truth.

  I remember the sting of the splinter that worked its way beneath my skin when I dropped to my knees on the dock. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I still feel the cold metal of the gun barrel against the base of my neck and the warmth of my own urine on my thighs. The story unfolded just the way I told it, but I was the one Charlie had rejected. I was the one he had ordered from the car and marched to the end of that pier.

  And once again, I chose to survive. The words seemed to come from nowhere as I stared out over the dark water. “I look older,” I blurted. “I could pass for your wife.”

  It was true. I had always been the one who could buy us beer or talk us into a club. Trisha was a year older, but I looked at least three years older than her. And I doted on the baby at least as much as she did. And I had been the one who helped him get Trisha to come home with us. I was the one who didn’t run away. I was smarter, and more cunning, and better behaved.

  I was the one he could trust.

  I try not to think about the momentary expression of relief that crossed her face when I returned to the car with Charlie. When I heard the two gunshots, I was holding Spencer in my lap, telling him that we were going to be okay.

  So do I have any regrets? No. The choices I made brought us here, to this beautiful island, where I have my family, a new job, and enough money to keep us safe. But sometimes I do look out over the Atlantic Ocean and think about Trisha.

  63

  The woman who answered the front door at Virginia Mullen’s house was probably around fifty years old. Her perfectly highlighted pixie cut was at odds with her outfit—an oversize Jets T-shirt, long denim shorts, and Crocs.

  “I’m looking for the home’s owner?” Corrine asked, holding up her badge to allow a closer inspection.

  “She’s not here right now.”

  “When do you expect her back? Her phone numbers have been disconnected.”

  The woman’s brow furrowed. Like most people, she was uncomfortable with an unannounced police visit. “I’m not real sure. Her daughter was going through a rough time, so they left town for a little while.”

  Through the open door, Corrine saw that the television was on, but muted. Baby toys were scattered on the floor, and one of those portable playpens was popped open in the corner of the living room. A half-eaten sandwich waited on a plate on the coffee table.

  “You’re living here?” Corrine asked.

  The woman wiped her hand against her shorts and offered it to Corrine for a shake. “Sorry, my name’s Lucy. Lucy Carter. Ginny and I have worked together for years. Please, come in. Careful of the mess. Grammy’s the babysitter when Mommy’s at the hair salon. My grandson’s only nine months, but he can take over a house within minutes.”

  The hairstyle made more sense now.

  “So are you living here?” Corrine asked again. She tried to sound officious, as if the two women had broken some kind of city code or tax rule by not reporting a change in residency.

  “Just staying here, really. She gave me keys and told me to treat the house as my own until she came back. She said it was better than leaving it empty.”

  “What about property taxes, insurance, that kind of thing?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Hasn’t come up yet. I assume she’ll be back by then. Are you here about her son-in-law? Angela divorced him, you know. She’s got nothing to do with him anymore. That’s why they left town. Angela wanted to get her kid out of the city until the trial is over.”

  “Oh, I know.” It was the same story Angela had given her super when she suddenly moved out last month. Corrine had now been searching for Angela for a week. No forwarding address. Bank accounts closed. No airline, train, or bus tickets purchased. She was a ghost.

  And now her mother was gone, too, precisely as she had expected.

  Corrine had a cover story ready. “It turns out Angela’s entitled to some money from when she initially posted bail for him, seeing as how he’s being held now. Do you mind if I take a look around to see if Ginny left behind any hints about where they might have gone?”

  “That’d be fine.”

  Corrine was rifling through a drawer in the kitchen that most people would call a junk drawer. Two notepads, but no relevant notes. Owner’s manuals, pens, a screwdriver and a hammer, a spare Honda key. “Did Ginny leave you her car, too?” The Powells had sold their Audi, but according to the DMV, Angela’s mother still had a current-year-model Honda Pilot registered in her name. Corrine hadn’t seen it in the driveway.

  Lucy was finishing her sandwich on the sofa. “I assume she took it.”

  Or, Corrine thought, she paid someone to scrap it so it couldn’t be searched for Kerry Lynch’s blood.
>
  It all came back to that one nagging question: How had Jason Powell gotten to Long Island and back the night of Kerry’s murder?

  Every time Corrine pictured it, she saw him in a car. She made a list of all the possibilities and started checking them in her spare time. When the taxis, rental car companies, car services, and every other way of scoring a ride from the city were exhausted, she circled back to the Audi.

  She called the Manhattan dealer and asked the service department to pull up the Powells’ account, hoping a mechanic might have noticed a device used to protect the license plate from the view of automatic cameras.

  The garage manager told her that Marty was the last person to work on the car. “Doubt he remembers much from a job that came in on June 6. Not exactly an Einstein.”

  Corrine sat up straighter at the mention of the date. It was the last day Kerry was seen. “Do you happen to know if you gave them a loaner?”

  She heard tapping on a keyboard. “Yep, the new S6. Out for three days, a hundred and sixteen miles.”

  It hadn’t taken Corrine long to find the loaner in the plate-reader data from the night of the murder: outbound on the Williamsburg Bridge at 7:41 p.m., then inbound at 10:53. The time and the mileage would cover the round-trip between the Powells’ house and Kerry’s, but it didn’t get Jason all the way out to where Kerry’s body was found.

  She called the Nassau County prosecutor with the evidence, but ADA Rocco was unpersuaded. She planned to argue that Jason hid Kerry’s body somewhere near her house before going back out to Long Island and moving her again. Corrine was convinced Rocco was refusing to see the truth because she had screwed up by subpoenaing Angela to the grand jury, automatically giving her immunity.

  Corrine remembered what the East Hampton detective said about Angela: When push comes to shove, she trusts her mother more than anyone. Angela would have left the house shortly after the phone call from her son, and started streaming the movie as soon as she got back, while her mother was driving Kerry’s corpse to Ocean Beach. It was the only explanation.