Page 27 of The Vanishing Wife

Pale beige cinderblock seemed to close in around them as Elyse’s husband shoved the paper back across the table. Leigh had considered Wesley Portman a mess the first time they’d spoken. There’d been wrinkles creased into his shirt, as if he’d slept in it. Hints of body odor, old and bitter, had teased her senses. Where Leigh had never noted a hair out of place in family photos throughout the vacation house, strands had clumped together. Unshaven, perhaps unshowered. The epitome of grief. Only now the man sitting across from her was exactly as Elyse had described. There were no wrinkles, aftershave had replaced the sour smell on his skin, and he seemed to have found a shower sometime in the past twenty-four hours. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The scratch behind your ear.” Detective Moore left the results in the middle of the table, interlacing her hands on the surface. At ease as only a police officer could be in the face of conflict. “You told Agent Brody and I you’d earned it by unloading the dishwasher. You came up too fast and clipped the corner of the cabinet. Except our forensic techs didn’t find any of your DNA on the cabinets in your kitchen, and we checked them all. Just to be sure.”

A half-hearted laugh of disbelief interrupted the stoic granite etched into Wesley Portman’s expression. “All right. So I wiped it down with a Clorox wipe. I didn’t need blood dripping all over the counter.”

“That would’ve left traces of cleaning agents behind, Mr. Portman, and we didn’t find any of those either.” Leigh tapped the results page with one finger, bringing his attention back to the evidence. Men like Wesley Portman were used to getting their way with a smile and a few gifts thrown in their target’s directions, but he couldn’t charm his way out of this. He couldn’t argue. And while this wasn’t her investigation, she was invested. More than she wanted to admit. “I’m guessing you lied because someone gave you that scratch. Was it Elyse?”

“No.” The word was far more forceful than the ones before it. Like he was trying to convince himself as much as a Gulf Shores detective and an FBI criminologist questioning him now. Wesley Portman closed his eyes, recentering himself. Scrambling to come up with another lie? “Yes, I lied about where I got the scratch, but Elyse had nothing to do with it. She’d never hurt me, and I would never hurt her.”

“But that’s not entirely true, is it?” Leigh earned a look from the detective sitting beside her. “You had an affair four years ago. During her chemotherapy treatments, if I remember right. After she’d lost the baby she was carrying to cancer. While you might not have physically hurt your wife at that time, you are capable of emotionally harming her.”

“How did you know about that?” Wesley Portman’s face paled. He leaned forward and planted both palms flat on the table. “Did Elyse tell you that?”

Leigh let him panic. To chip away at that guarded exterior and take advantage of the cracks within. The fun-loving charismatic had taken a back seat. All that remained was a cowardly man afraid of being judged for his poor choices.

“Is that true, Mr. Portman?” Detective Moore asked. “Did you have an affair?”

“That’s none of your business.” If glares could kill, Leigh’s heart would’ve stopped mid-beat. Wesley Portman’s defenses were unraveling. So much work undone so easily. “Elyse and I are happy. We’ve moved on.”

“Would you classify your financial situation as a happy one then?” Detective Moore pulled a stapled packet of statements from the folder in front of her. “Because from what I can see, you and Elyse are broke. Barely living paycheck to paycheck. You’ve sold your house, your car. Your savings went from six figures down to a mere thousand dollars in the last two weeks alone. Every mutual fund you’d invested in was emptied. You have no stocks, almost no savings, and two hundred dollars in checking. The only income I see in that time is Elyse’s. Where did all that money go, Mr. Portman?”

Wesley Portman stared at the paperwork. Not even bothering to confirm the detective’s assumptions. Because they were right.

“You had another affair.” Leigh had never believed four simple words more than she did right then. It was obvious in his reaction to her knowing about the affair four years ago. In the way he refused to stand up for himself now. Anger mixed with desperation. A loss of control that had gotten too big for him to get back. “Did Elyse know?”

The small fissure in his composure broke open. Tears glistened in those near black eyes, and Wesley Portman relaxed back in his chair. “I told her four days ago. She told me she wanted a divorce and kicked me out of the house.”

Detective Moore disengaged, pulling back in her seat to let Leigh take the lead.

“Did she know about the blackmail?” It was the only possibility that made sense. Why Wesley Portman had sold his entire life, a life he’d meticulously curated for years, and now had nothing to show for it.

“No.” Defeat carved through the man’s features. “It was manageable at first. A couple thousand dollars here, another thousand there. Every time I paid, I was assured it was the last time, but a few weeks ago I started getting photos. Of me and her. Of us together at the hotel. At first, I thought some photographer or bystander had just taken advantage of the situation, that they’d gotten lucky with the angle through the window and figured they could try to get something out of me.”

“But then you realized she was in on it,” Detective Moore said. “Who is she? The woman you were caught cheating with?”

Wesley Portman shook his head, a ghost of the man he’d been when he’d entered this room. “I don’t know her real name. We met at an AI conference a few years ago here in Gulf Shores. She told me she worked for one of the tech giants and that she was interested in bringing me on as a data analyst. She introduced herself as Helen. It was stupid to think I’d been singled out from an entire crowd of more qualified people, but I’d had a couple drinks and Elyse and I… Things changed after we lost the baby.”

Leigh didn’t have the patience for his justification, for his excuses. Everyone was accountable for their decisions in this life. Everyone. “Helen what?”

“I don’t know. After the first set of photos came, I tried to reach out. But the number she gave me had been disconnected. I wanted to tell her I wasn’t going to let this blow back on us. A couple days went by. I tried looking her up through the company directory, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, but it was like she didn’t exist.” Shame took over then. Heavy and suffocating for everyone in the room. “Then she called me. Told me she’d send my wife the photos if I didn’t pay, and I realized she’d set me up.”

He took a breath. “I was going to lose my job, lose Elyse. After everything we’d been through, I couldn’t let her find out what I’d done. So I sent the money. It was to an off-shores account. I’ve gone back to the hotel. I talked with security and the manager. There was never a Helen registered at the conference. It was all just a mind game, and I was stupid enough to fall for it.”

“All right. Let’s say we believe you.” Detective Moore collected her notebook from the breast pocket of her uniform shirt and clicked the end of her pen. “How much money have you given the blackmailer?”

Wesley Portman’s attention wandered to the overhead fluorescent light. “Over two million dollars.”

The detective made a note. “Okay. Do you at least have the account number where you sent the money to verify everything you’ve told us?”

Another shake of his head. “My firm employs a private investigator on retainer. He’s already tried tracing it. Each time I’ve gotten a threat, the account number changes. The ones used previously are always closed by the time he gets the chance to trace it.”

But that wasn’t why they were here.

“What was the plan, Wesley?” Leigh forced his attention back to her by shoving the bank statements into his personal space. “How were you going to keep this from Elyse? You’ve maxed out your credit cards, and the only asset from what we can see is the vacation house in Gulf Shores. At what point were you going to bring your wife into this and let her know you were on the verge of losing everything?”

Wesley Portman didn’t seem to have an answer for that.

“Or maybe she did know. Maybe she found out, and you two argued.” Detective Moore stepped in, taking her turn, and for the first time, Leigh felt as though they were on the same page.

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