The Big Exit

by David Carnoy

  “Did you say black?”

  “Yeah, this girl accused him of raping her,” she goes on without missing a beat. “Well, forcing himself on her anyway. It became this huge deal at school. There was no proof or anything, but he got suspended for a semester and when he came back he was kind of ostracized. Kids were like, ‘There’s the rapist.’”

  “I didn’t think that was fair,” she continues. “And I went up and started talking to him as a kind of dare. He was two years older. And then we became friends, we even fooled around a little. And I’ll never forget what he said. He said, ‘I’m smarter than that. Don’t they understand? I’d never do something like that because I’m smarter than that.’”

  “Sometimes smart people do dumb things.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s true, too. But it’s just something about how you think everything’s sort of an affront, that you can’t understand how people could actually believe something about you that’s so obviously not true. That’s the part that reminded me of him. And, you know, I wanted people to see him for who he was.”

  “Did they?”

  “No, not really. Not in high school. And then he was killed in a car accident two years later, when he was in college.”

  “Oh.” A beat, then: “Well, that’s an uplifting story.”

  “You asked.”

  He shakes his head. For a chipper kid, she sure can be dark.

  “Let me know what you find out. Email me later on.”

  “I’ll send you a picture.”

  “I like pictures,” he says.

  33/ JAILBREAK

  THE DAY STARTS BADLY FOR MADDEN AND THEN GETS PROGRESSIVELY worse. First, he’s awakened by a call from Carlyle, asking if he’s seen it yet. The “it” he’s referring to is Bender’s article, which doesn’t say much but nonetheless manages to taint the police department with a faint odor of incompetence.

  Soon after that, Pastorini picks up the scent and puts him on the spot at their morning all-hands briefing. So he’s already on edge when around ten he gets a call from the officer upstairs at the front desk announcing there’s a woman there to see him, something about the McGregor case. He tells her to hold on, he’ll be up in a minute, because he’s dealing with getting Edwin transferred and arraigned.

  He feels like he’s being pelted from all sides, and then bam, he takes one right in the kisser, for there, sitting in the lobby of the building, is Beth Hill’s friend and neighbor.

  “Hi, Ms. Yeagher, can I help you?” he asks.

  “Yes,” she says without getting up. “Yes, you can.”

  Then silence. She looks down at the floor and he watches her bite her lip, obviously nervous about something.

  “Ms. Yeagher?”

  “I’m sorry,” she says in a low voice. “I don’t know how to say this so I’m just going to say it. I think I’m partially responsible for Mark McGregor’s death.”

  He blinks. “Excuse me?”

  “I may have inadvertently done something that contributed to his death.”

  “Inadvertently?”

  “Well, I meant to do it. But I didn’t think it would have the consequences it did.”

  He raises an eyebrow, afraid to hear what comes next. He moves a step closer, leaning down toward her.

  “What did you do exactly?”

  “I texted Richie Forman from Beth’s phone. I was the one who sent the text, not her.”

  Madden is stunned. He isn’t even quite sure what she’s talking about but it doesn’t sound good. Not good at all.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Mark asked me to.”

  “He what?”

  “He asked me to send a message from her phone saying that he knew about her and Richie getting together and that he was coming home and wanted Richie to meet him there.”

  Madden puts his hand up to his temple, thinking about what she just said, trying to process it without having a stroke. And then it begins to make sense. She’s talking about the text they discovered that Beth had sent to Richie not long before McGregor was killed. Or, rather, it was texts, plural. The whole thread had been deleted a minute after the second message was sent.

  He sits down next to her on the long polished wood bench attached to the wall. There’s nobody in the lobby but them and Garcia, the female officer sitting at a computer behind the front desk. He clasps his hands between his legs, lets out a long sigh and says:

  “You spoke to Mark the day he was killed?”

  “Yes. He called to ask me whether Beth was at home. And I kind of hesitated a second and he knew she wasn’t there even when I said I thought she was. I’m not a good liar.”

  Madden rolls his eyes a little.

  “I then told him she’d taken my car,” she continues. “And he asked if she’d gone to meet Richie. And you know, I tried to lie again, but he knew. And he got angry. He said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Well, I didn’t think I had to tell him, I said. From what Beth had told me he had other people spying on her. That wasn’t my job.”

  Oh Jesus, Madden thinks.

  “Did you have a relationship with him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Were you having an affair with him?”

  “No. God no. I mean, we were friendly. We’d talk. We had them over for dinner a few times.”

  From the sudden flush of red on her face and the way she’s touching her earring, she doesn’t sound totally convincing. Looks a lot like she had a little crush on the guy. Maybe a big one.

  “Ms. Yeagher, you’re not doing this to protect your friend, are you? Ms. Hill didn’t put you up to this, did she?”

  “No.”

  “What precipitated you coming here this morning then?”

  “Precipitated?”

  “Why did you suddenly decide to tell me this today?”

  “I spoke to Beth last night. She mentioned the texts. She didn’t know about some of the evidence you had against Richie. Like the lighter. She said she was the one who dropped it, not him. Richie had given it back to her at lunch that day.”

  Now Madden really does feel light-headed.

  “She said that? That she dropped it?”

  “Yes. She was speaking to her lawyer about it. She wanted to come in and talk to you.”

  Madden looks at her, trying to gauge her sincerity.

  “She didn’t put you up to this?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Madden still doesn’t believe her.

  “How did she find out about these things?”

  “I think she read about it online. Or from her lawyer.”

  “Ms. Dupuy wouldn’t be privy to much of the evidence we’ve gathered as part of our investigation. Her client has not been charged yet. We’re still investigating.”

  Yeagher doesn’t seem to know quite how to respond. She stares up at him as if he’s speaking in a foreign language she can’t understand.

  “I’m just telling you what she told me. She seemed upset. We were discussing the lighter and all of sudden she asked me whether I texted anybody with her phone when I borrowed it before yoga class. She said, ‘You texted, Richie, didn’t you? You were the one.’ And I said no, no I wasn’t. But I could tell she didn’t believe me. And I woke up this morning and just felt absolutely horrible. I knew I had to go to the police before she did and try to make things right. I felt awful.”

  He puts his hand to his temple again, feeling a headache coming on.

  “Ms. Yeagher, I’m going to have to bring you downstairs to make a statement. I’m going to need to record our conversation. Are you okay with that?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m okay with that.”

  “Before we go down, I’ve got to ask you one thing. Why did you send the message?”

  “I told you, because Mark asked me to.”

  “Why did he ask you to?”

  “Well, obviously he wanted to try to get Richie to come to the house. He said t
hat if he could get him on his property it’d be helpful. I knew what he was trying to do, of course. He was trying to get him in trouble because, you know, if someone comes onto your property, you can claim self-defense and all that. I told him I wouldn’t do it.”

  “But what changed your mind?”

  She hesitates a moment, then says, “He said he’d destroy my husband. He’d destroy his career as a doctor. And that it would be incredibly embarrassing for me.”

  “How was he going to do that?”

  “He said he’d put spyware on his phone, too.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “It was hard not to. My husband would go to Mark sometimes and ask him about some computer problem. And Mark would fix it. And then he wanted to use his phone for Wi-Fi with his computer when he was traveling. Mark said he could hack his iPhone. I forget what it’s called when you do that.”

  “Jailbreak,” Madden says.

  “Yes, he said he could jailbreak it so he could do the tethering thing without paying extra. And Mark said that when he did that he put spyware on my husband’s phone. He said he did it just for fun, but guess what, it turned out my husband was a real pervert and that he had all his passwords and it wouldn’t be hard for him to hit the self-destruct button on him without ever being linked.”

  “And you believed him? You didn’t think he was bluffing?”

  “Let’s just say my husband isn’t an angel. And neither am I. He had some pictures on his computer. I’d like to leave it at that for now.”

  “We’re going to have to speak to him,” Madden says. “He’s going to have to come down here. Did you tell him about any of this? After Mark called, did you let him know that Mark had put spyware on his phone? Did you say anything to him?”

  “No,” she says, then hesitates a moment, thinking.

  “Ms. Yeagher, are you lying now?”

  “No, no. I didn’t say anything that day.”

  “Are you sure? This is important.”

  “Later on, a few days later, we were talking about how Beth maybe had spyware on her phone and I might have said something about how we all should check for it, because, you know, you never know.”

  He shakes his head, still not sure whether to believe her or not.

  “You realize how serious this is, don’t you? You realize what you’ve done here?”

  “I should have called the police,” she says, tearing up. “I know I should have. But I didn’t think someone would end up dead.”

  “What did you think would end up happening?”

  “I don’t know. Not this. Never something like this.”

  34/ THE TIMING OF EVERYTHING

  RICHIE’S PHONE RINGS ABOUT FORTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER ASHLEY leaves Bender’s office. The caller ID shows a 914 number, which he recognizes as Westchester County, New York.

  “Rick?”

  “Marty.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At Bender’s office, fulfilling the terms of the deal you put together.”

  “How’s it going?” he asks cheerfully.

  “Not a big fan of talking about myself on camera.”

  “Well, someday you may thank me for putting you two together. You got a piece of paper to write a number down?”

  He says he does even though he doesn’t. He figures he’ll just write it down in the Google search bar he’s looking at on the computer, then copy it down afterwards.

  “I want you to call Carolyn Dupuy,” Lowenstein says.

  Richie, concentrating on taking good dictation, starts to tap out her name, then stops after the a.

  “Did you say Carolyn Dupuy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I really don’t want to do that, Marty.”

  “I know you don’t, but I need you to compare notes on this guy Paul Anderson you dug up. I can’t reach Ashley and Carolyn has some info you might find interesting. Here’s her cell number.” He reads off the number. “Got it?”

  In the background, Richie hears what sounds like the roar of a plane’s jet engine.

  “Where are you Marty?”

  “At the airport.”

  “Which one?”

  “SFO. Took a flight out this morning. Picking up the rental car now.”

  “You come out for me or something else?”

  “All you, bud. It’s hole-poking time,” he says. “Time to fire the torpedoes.”

  “You serious?”

  “Rawlings or Wilson?”

  “What?”

  “What brand of mitt do you like?” he asks. “My youngest only does Mizuno. I tell him it’s a sign he’ll be another Jewish guy marrying Asian. Got a hundred bucks on it.”

  “Always been a Wilson guy myself. A3000.”

  “Well, don’t pick one up just yet. We’ve still got a little work to do. Call Dupuy. She’s waiting for your call. I’ll call you back in a little while.”

  Richie hangs up and stares at the number he’s typed on the computer screen. He wouldn’t ask you to do it if there wasn’t a damn good reason, he thinks, then punches the number into his phone, gets up from the desk, and heads out to the hall outside the office again.

  She answers on the fourth ring.

  “Dupuy.”

  “Forman.”

  Silence.

  “Hello?” he says.

  “Hello. I just wasn’t expecting …”

  Her voice trails off.

  “Marty said I should call you. He didn’t tell you I was going to call?”

  “No, he didn’t. He said his investigator, the young woman, was going to call. But that’s okay. How are you?”

  “I’m okay.” He’s about to ask her how she is, but then thinks that’s weird, making small talk with Carloyn Dupuy. So he cuts right to the chase. “What’s this about Paul Anderson?” he asks. “Marty told me you have some information.”

  “Beth told me that you mentioned his name last night when you saw her. You really shouldn’t do that, by the way.”

  “Do what?”

  “Meet with her like that. You could be charged with witness intimidation.”

  “Who the fuck cares at this point?”

  “You should.”

  “Thanks for the advice. Now what’s this about Anderson?”

  A brief pause, then: “My boyfriend … well, really my ex-boyfriend. He works over at Parkview Hospital.”

  “The doctor? The one who had a thing for San Quentin quail?”

  “Yeah, that and a lot of other tail,” she says, taking his jab in stride impressively.

  “I read about the two of you.”

  “Well, let’s just say he overheard some nurses in the courtyard gossiping about the McGregor murder. I don’t know if you know this but a couple of years ago, he spent the night in Parkview. McGregor, I mean. He thought he was having a heart attack.”

  “Shame it wasn’t real.”

  As he paces in the hallway, she goes into some detail about the episode, talking about an enzyme test and acid reflux before getting to the real nugget.

  “McGregor didn’t have a private room during his stay at the hospital,” she says. “He had a roommate the night he spent there. And one of the nurses remembered McGregor because of some of the things he was saying to the roommate.”

  She explains that the guy, the roommate, had attempted suicide and the nurse overheard McGregor saying something to the guy about at least his wife didn’t want him dead.

  “Interesting, but what does that have to do with Paul Anderson?”

  “The roommate was Paul Anderson.”

  A little chill runs up his spine.

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “Yes. One hundred percent.”

  “And when did you say this was?”

  “Two years ago.”

  He leans up against the wall, a little dazed. “Two years ago?”

  “I couldn’t find much on Anderson on the Internet. It also didn’t help that he doesn’t have a more unique name. But when B
eth mentioned—”

  “Gattner said they started looking at that company like a year ago,” he says, talking to himself more than to her. “He said someone had tipped off their investor that there was another company out there like them. That they’d been in stealth mode.”

  “Yes, that’s what I wanted to ask you about. The timing of everything. When I spoke to Marty, he said you had some information about that and that his investigator was trying to track down Anderson and his partner. An Asian guy.”

  When she says investigator, he remembers Ashley, and thinks, Oh shit.

  “Did you ever speak to Ashley?” he asks. “Does she know about this?”

  “No, I left a message for Marty early this morning but I guess he was on a plane coming here. He called me back just like ten minutes ago. Said he would have her call me.”

  “Shit,” he says.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve gotta call you back. She needs to know this. I’m going to try her now.”

  He hangs up and speed dials Ashley’s number. When she doesn’t pick up, he leaves a message telling her to call back, then texts her. Waiting for the reply, he taps his foot nervously on the carpeted floor. She doesn’t always pick up her phone but she almost always replies to texts within a minute or two. Nothing. He calls her back again, leaving another message. He looks at his watch. She’s been gone a little over an hour. It should have taken her only twenty minutes or so to get to San Carlos.

  He waits another minute, hoping for a reply. Then Darrin, Bender’s video and podcast producer, a tall gawky kid who’s all of twenty-three, comes out, a pair of headphones around his neck.

  “Hey, Tom’s looking for you,” he says. “He’s off his call. We’re going to shoot for another twenty minutes or so, then grab some lunch.”

  “Okay. Tell him I’ll be right in.”

  He looks at his phone, checks the signal. Still nothing. So he calls Carolyn Dupuy back.

  “Have you got a car?” he asks.

  “Of course,” she says. “Why?”