The Ex

by Alafair Burke

  As if on cue, a voice erupted from the galley. I turned to see Max Neeley on his feet, Amanda grabbing his hand, trying to return him to his seat. “Judge, I deserve to have a private lawyer intervene on my behalf. Jack Harris’s lawyer has continually slandered me in these proceedings.”

  “Okay, everyone.” Judge Amador was banging his gavel. “In chambers, lawyers only. Go on home, reporters. You, too, Mr. Neeley. There’s nothing to see here.”

  AMADOR UNZIPPED HIS ROBE AND took a seat at his desk. “Okay, kids. What exactly is going on? Does this have something to do with our last hearing miraculously ending up on Eyewitness News even though the courtroom was empty?”

  Temple was having a hard time not looking smug. “You’re a very smart man, Your Honor.”

  “All right, let’s cut to the chase. Ms. Randall, I think you probably leaked something to the press the last time you were here. Mr. Temple, I suspect you haven’t exactly been tight-lipped with Max Neeley, who must have a publicist working for him at the rate he’s giving interviews. Enough. I’m not letting this motion be used as a run around my gag order.”

  I thanked the judge, but he said, “Not so fast. I took a huge risk releasing your client given the severity of the charges. I think we all know Amy Chandler’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the DA’s kitchen, so if she didn’t give me the full picture the first go-round, I want to hear it now.”

  I had been expecting Temple to lay out the evidence of Jack’s affair with Tracy Frankel. What he actually had was far, far worse.

  JUDGE AMADOR LOOKED LIKE A high school student trying to understand advanced physics as Scott Temple brought him up to speed. The prosecution had established at arraignment that Jack had a motive to kill Neeley, was at the waterfront the morning of the shooting, and tested positive for GSR, but now Temple was explaining the rest of the story: the missed-moment post, the Madeline e-mails, and the homeless man who’d found the picnic basket containing the murder weapon.

  “I might officially be a loony tune,” Amador said, “because I think I followed all that. But I’m afraid I still don’t see your point, Mr. Temple.”

  “The point is that Jack Harris has been absolutely clear that the only reason he went to the football field that morning was because this woman Madeline told him to. So naturally we were interested in finding this Madeline person to confirm or disprove Mr. Harris’s story.”

  I had been waiting until we knew more to tell Scott about Madeline, but now it was obvious he’d known all along. I tried to breathe evenly as Temple explained that “Madeline” had used an account with an anonymous service called Paperfree.

  “The Paperfree address was used not only to respond to the missed-moment post and contact Jack Harris, but also to hire a prostitute to pose as Madeline in the first place.”

  Amador took off his glasses. “You finally lost me.”

  I had no way of stopping Temple as he detailed the e-mails between the anonymous Paperfree account and an online escort. “Though the escort used a pseudonym on the escorting website, we have now identified her as a woman named Sharon Lawson. She has invoked her Fifth Amendment right to counsel, but we know from the e-mail messages that the person using the Paperfree account told her precisely where to sit, to bring champagne and a picnic basket, and to read a book called Eight Days to Die. She was given a photograph of Jack Harris and instructed to try to catch his eye as he passed.”

  This was the evidence that I had planned to use to save Jack. Now Temple was the one presenting it. I had managed to intimidate Sharon into signing an affidavit, but she hadn’t bothered to update me with the fact that the prosecution had located her, too.

  “And from the People’s perspective,” Judge Amador asked, “what was the point of all that?”

  “So that Jack Harris could then tell his best friend Charlotte Caperton about his desire to see this woman again. She then wrote a missed-moment post that this fictitious person ‘Madeline’ responded to, which gave Harris an explanation for being at the waterfront the morning of the shooting. In the event no one believed him, he had the e-mails and even surveillance camera footage of Lawson to back up his story.”

  Temple handed the judge and me a thin stack of stapled pages.

  “This is an affidavit from Paperfree.com.” It would have been nice to have Einer here to translate, but I could tell from Scott’s confident demeanor that what I was looking at wasn’t good. “It includes a list of IP addresses used to log into the e-mail account in question. Almost all of them are public WiFi connections—Starbucks, a hotel lobby, NYU, and a fro-yo shop. Importantly, they’re all within walking distance of Harris’s apartment.”

  As I watched Judge Amador nod, I realized why Scott Temple had been so confident, when I thought the evidence was so equivocal. As a prosecutor, he could get information from sources that would never cooperate with a defense lawyer—sources like e-mail providers. The DA’s office would have gotten a subpoena for Jack’s e-mails, and then Madeline’s, within hours of his arrest.

  For weeks, we’d been convinced that someone had framed Jack. Would I have figured out the truth earlier if I’d known that all of the Madeline messages were sent from Jack’s neighborhood? I thought I saw a pang of sympathy as I caught Scott Temple’s eye. He had tried to warn me. Scott had been right. I was the scorpion.

  “Then take a look at paragraph seven,” he said. “See that IP address there? It’s a one-time log-in, for less than a minute. It’s the one and only time anyone ever logged in to the Paperfree account from a nonpublic Internet connection. That IP address belongs to Jack Harris’s Verizon FiOS account.”

  Amador peered over his reading glasses, first at Temple and then at me. He didn’t need to use words. A few numbers in an affidavit had just changed the entire case.

  “Your Honor, this is a lot of technical information all at once,” I said. “I’m going to need an opportunity to consult with an expert.”

  “Nice try, Ms. Randall, but we all know what we’re looking at.”

  “I don’t understand why the prosecution didn’t provide this information earlier. I’ve been pressing Mr. Temple for discovery.”

  Temple was ready with an explanation. “Initially, because we hadn’t yet identified Ms. Lawson. The escort service was less than cooperative. Even now, we’re continuing to work on an immunity agreement with Ms. Lawson so she will testify, but in light of recent . . . unusual circumstances with the press, we decided we needed to reassess Mr. Harris’s detention status.”

  Amador was fiddling with the edges of a motion on his desk. “I take it the People are arguing that this makes your case stronger, which gives the defendant a greater incentive to flee?”

  “Yes, but there’s more,” Temple said. “The day of the shooting, police seized a desktop computer from Jack Harris’s office. A forensic analysis of that computer reveals no online use at the time of this one log-in to the Paperfree account, nor any evidence that the computer was ever used to access Paperfree’s website.”

  “You’re starting to lose me again,” the judge said.

  “An IP address covers an entire WiFi network, not just one computer,” Temple explained. “Put simply, Your Honor, a different device was used to check the Paperfree account from Mr. Harris’s wireless connection. Mr. Harris has spoken at various writing workshops about his practice of writing on one computer—his desktop, the one police seized—and confining his Internet use to another, his laptop. However, we found no such laptop in his apartment when we executed a search warrant, and have been unable to locate it since.”

  Judge Amador’s brow furrowed as he turned in my direction. “I think we can all agree this is quite different from what I heard at the original bail hearing. A stronger case, plus indications of hiding or destroying material evidence.”

  “Your Honor, this is the first I’ve heard of any of this. Again, I need time to respond.”

  “That’s fine, Ms. Randall, but, at this point, I don’t think your client
will have the luxury of living at home while you prepare. Maybe you two should talk.”

  WHATEVER EMPATHY TEMPLE HAD FELT for me in chambers had dissipated by the time we hit the hallway. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Olivia. Harris is a sociopath. He hired you as his lawyer for a reason. You were so sure he was innocent, you may as well have been a rookie.”

  I told him he was overplaying his hand, and that he was the one who should have been paying closer attention. “Someone—probably Max Neeley—went to maniacal lengths to frame my client. Is it any surprise that they’d access this e-mail account from spots near Jack’s home, even logging on once to Jack’s home network?”

  “Are you even listening to yourself at this point? You’re saying he can’t be guilty because he looks too guilty? You’re too good for that, Olivia.”

  “And you were too good to slip phone records into a truck full of documents, but that happened. You buried Brady material.”

  “You know what? You’re right. I should have told you about Tracy Frankel’s number being in those LUDs. It’s just a weird fucking fluke; she was probably selling dope to one of Neeley’s employees. But I didn’t tell you, and I got nailed for it. So now I’m showing you everything. We’ve got Harris solid. You know he was in a psych ward? Only someone bat-shit crazy could come up with something this elaborate. But he fucked up one time—one log-in to his fake e-mail account.”

  “If he’s so maniacal—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, it’s too stupid a mistake so it must be a frame job. Save it. I ran the same theory past our IT expert. Here’s the thing. Paperfree? If you leave it open on your browser, it will automatically update every few minutes. So Harris is being all sly with his anonymous e-mail account, sneaking off to Starbucks and hotel lobbies to check it, but then forgets to close the browser. He comes home. The laptop automatically connects to his home network. And then the account refreshes. Voilà. He fucked up. And then he realizes that the laptop refreshed his account, so, lo and behold, the laptop goes missing. I won’t even ask whether you knew. I assume he threw it in the Hudson before the shooting.”

  I was trapped. The truth about the laptop would be a problem for both Charlotte and Buckley, and wouldn’t do anything to help Jack. That IP address wasn’t going away.

  “Let me talk to my client.” There was no way around it: Jack was going back into custody to be held pending trial, where he’d be convicted.

  WE FOUND AN EMPTY JURY deliberation room at the end of the hall and closed the door. Don had shown up while I was in chambers, so didn’t know any more about this morning’s developments than Jack.

  Jack’s eyes darted between us. “What’s going on? You guys were back there a long time.”

  “And I just spoke with the prosecutor one-on-one as well. It’s not good, Jack. The judge is not going to let you remain at home pending trial.”

  He winced. “Did they find out about me and Tracy?”

  I shook my head. “That, I would have been prepared for. This, not so much. It’s an affidavit from Paperfree.” I handed him the copy Temple had given me. I pulled off the bandage in one fell swoop. “I might have been able to explain the WiFi connections in your neighborhood, but you logged into that e-mail account from your own IP address. Only once, but it’s the nail in your coffin, Jack.”

  “My IP address?”

  “Yes. From your apartment. And your wireless connection has a password, so it’s hard to argue that this is one more part of the conspiracy. A jury won’t buy it.”

  His face went blank. It was the same unreadable expression he’d given Buckley when he heard Tracy Frankel’s name at arraignment, then again when he heard about the GSR evidence moments later. At the time, I thought he was worried about how his daughter was handling the hearing.

  Now I understood that the facial expression I had seen was panic. He’d looked at Buckley to see if she recognized Tracy’s name. And he was surprised by the GSR because he had probably washed his hands after the shooting, but didn’t realize that residues could remain on his shirt.

  This time, there was no recovering. He was caught.

  “So what do I do?”

  “You’ll be booked today.” Judge Amador hadn’t made a final ruling, but I was certain he’d already made up his mind. I had a plan, but it wasn’t going to change the facts. “We’ll withdraw as counsel. It will at least buy you some time before trial. I can say it was a conflict of interest to represent you in light of our previous relationship.”

  “But it wasn’t,” Don said. “You even checked with the state bar. You don’t owe anyone your reputation, Olivia.”

  “You’re the one who taught me it’s always about the client. Jack might get a better plea offer with another lawyer.” I didn’t think Temple would intentionally punish Jack because of decisions I had made, but sometimes prosecutors act unconsciously.

  “Stop talking about me like I’m not here!” Jack was gripping the edge of the table in front of him. “If I start all over again with another lawyer, that will just give the DA more time, too, right? And with more time, they might find out about Tracy.”

  He was right. As of now, Temple still thought Jack was a widower obsessed with the man he blamed for his beloved wife’s death. If he had only killed Malcolm Neeley, Jack would be a hero in some people’s eyes. But if the police found out about his affair with Tracy Frankel, any possible sympathy would be gone. “It’s definitely a risk,” I said.

  “And I’m going to be convicted anyway, aren’t I?”

  I looked at Don. We were both on the same page. “Yes. Your best shot is to go for manslaughter based on what the law calls extreme emotional disturbance. We’d present all the Penn Station evidence—”

  Jack was already shaking his head. “No, I don’t want that, not when I know the truth. If I hadn’t been involved with Tracy, Todd never would have followed Molly to the train station. Or if I hadn’t duped her—if she had actually believed Todd when he told her about my affair—all those people . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “It’s your only chance, Jack.”

  “Well, then I don’t have a chance. I want to change my plea. Go tell the prosecutor.”

  “I can ask for an offer, Jack, but you’re rushing things.” Yesterday, I had wanted to lock him in a cell myself. Now the desire to help him felt surprisingly natural. “Is this just about them finding out about Tracy? I think Buckley already knows—”

  “It’s not about that, okay? Don’t you get it? I did it. I did every single thing that prosecutor said. Why do you think I kept telling you to find the woman in the grass?” As if startled by the volume of his own voice, Jack stopped talking and took a seat in one of the chairs around the deliberation table. When he spoke again, it was with control—confident and clinical, like a doctor reporting a diagnosis. “I knew there’d be video footage of her. I knew, because I told her exactly where to sit. And I told Charlotte how seeing that woman had me opening my heart again, knowing it would send her off on some online search for romance. I even told everyone who would listen that I loved Eight Days to Die, all because—guess what?—it had a scene set at the football field.”

  As Jack continued to document his plan’s ingenuity, I felt like I was inside a bubble, hearing him through a filter. His voice was clear, but in my head, the world was silent, as if I could hear my own heartbeat.

  I was finally sure: Jack was guilty.

  WHEN WE RETURNED TO THE courtroom, I let Jack make his way to Charlotte and Buckley on his own. I didn’t think it was my place to be there when he broke the news.

  Scott Temple was waiting at counsel table. “You ready to go back on record?” He lowered his voice. “It’s good that he’s talking to his daughter first. I think it’s pretty clear which way the judge is going, and the officers will take him into custody immediately. Let me know if they need a couple extra minutes.”

  “You’re a good guy, Scott Temple, even when you’re trying to be a hard-ass.”

&n
bsp; “Just figuring that out?”

  “Look, I know I made some bad calls on this one, but we need to talk—”

  I heard a loud thud behind me and turned to find Buckley on her feet, pushing her way past Charlotte and her father into the aisle of the courtroom. Jack reached for her wrist, but she jerked away. He caught up to her, and pulled her into a tight hug. Her arms were locked at her side, but she rocked against his weight. “No, you can’t. No.” She just kept saying no, over and over again, then locked eyes with me. “You were supposed to help him. What did you do?”

  Charlotte stood next to them awkwardly, and then wrapped her arms around Buckley, too. The girl was barely visible as the two of them held her.

  Judge Amador stepped from his chambers. As he took in the scene from the bench, I thought it might be the first time I had seen a judge at a loss for words.

  He signaled to the court reporter that we were not yet on the record. “What are we doing here, Counselor?”

  Scott let me have the first—and as it turned out, last—word for the day. “We’re ready for you to rule on today’s motion, Your Honor. And we’ll be in discussions about a non-trial resolution of the case.”

  As expected, Judge Amador ordered that Jack be taken into custody. It took nearly forty minutes for officers to arrive at the courtroom to take him away, a delay I attributed to some maneuvering by Scott Temple.

  Two weeks later, even though I told him I thought I could get him a better deal if we waited, Jack pled guilty.

  THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK )

  v. )

  JACKSON HARRIS. )

  * * *

  Before the Hon. William Amador

  For People: Scott Temple

  For Defendant: Olivia Randall

  BY COURT:

  I understand we’re here on a change of plea.

  BY MS. RANDALL:

  That’s correct. The defendant will be entering a plea of guilty to three counts of second-degree murder.