Page 46 of The Wife

“Gave her a chance to clear it and get a new arraignment ticket if she had a chat with me.” She’d fail to appear for that one, too, but that wasn’t Corrine’s problem. “She confirmed that Powell was her john that night.”

“You know how many dicks she’s seen since then? She was telling you what you wanted to hear.”

Corrine was shaking her head. “She’d never been arrested at that point. A cop made her show ID. She was scared, so the incident was clear in her mind. She said Powell spent more time making excuses for employing her services than actually using them. He was talking about how the wife didn’t let him touch her anymore, but he loved her too much to leave.”

King looked unimpressed. “His entire defense is that he’s a married man who sleeps around on his wife. Proving that he went to a hooker three years ago doesn’t really change anything.”

“No, but it might make a difference to the wife. Right now, she probably believes him. If she starts to see another side of him—”

“The side that bitches about her to random hookers—”

“Maybe she’s got something to say to us.” New York’s version of the spousal privilege was narrow compared to other states. The government could force a spouse to take the stand, and only private communications between spouses were protected, not other forms of evidence, such as observations through sight or smell. In short, there was a lot of wiggle room as long as they could convince Angela Powell to cooperate.

“All right, you’re not pissing me off after all,” King said. “That was good work.”

Corrine wondered if she should tell King what she knew about the wife’s background, but wasn’t sure she could trust him. He was under pressure to win. She could imagine him threatening to use the information at trial to get her to testify against her husband. For Corrine, using her husband’s infidelity as a chip was fair game; using Angela’s own victimization was crossing the line.

“You still look miserable,” Corrine said. “Do you ever not look miserable?”

He faked a large, cheesy smile. “I’m ecstatic. Honestly: What’s your read on Kerry?”

Corrine shrugged. “You want the real answer?”

“No. I asked you a question so you’d make up a bunch of bullshit.”

“You know how it is. The stories never line up. No one’s version is ever a hundred percent accurate. The hard part is figuring out which parts are wrong, and more importantly,whythey’re wrong. Bad guys out-and-out lie because they’re trying to protect their asses. But victims? That’s trickier. Some of them almost apologize for the bad guys as they’re reporting the facts, because they’re full of guilt, blaming themselves. Or they mitigate the awfulness of what happened to them, because the full weight of it would kill them if they stopped to absorb it. Or they say they didn’t drink, or didn’t flirt, or didn’t unhook their own bra, because they’re afraid that to admit the truth would be giving him permission for everything that happened after.”

“You should give lessons on this stuff, Duncan. That was heavy. So what about Kerry? Which camp is she in?”

“I assume you have a reason for asking. What’s scaring you about her?”

King paused to throw the takeout container in the garbage can beneath his desk. “I think Olivia Randall got under my skin. This trial’s going to be a cluster. Randall says Kerry’s lying because Powell was about to expose her company for falsifying some kind of financial records to cover up kickbacks to bad guys in where-the-fuck-a-stan-istan. The whole thing made my head hurt. Did Kerry mention any of this to you?”

Corrine shook her head. “No, but there’s something else. It could be related, I guess. An affair with the CEO.”

“You knew that?”

“I didn’t think it was either material or exculpatory.” Those were the magic buzzwords for Brady material, the evidence that King would have been required to turn over to Powell’s defense team.

“Well, his attorney says it gives Kerry a motive under the circumstances to help the company malign Jason Powell. She was on the outs at work because of the affair. According to Powell, Kerry told him that the only reason she wasn’t fired was because she threatened to sue them for discrimination. She was super paranoid about the company monitoring her e-mails and company cell phone, so that’s supposedly why there are no texts or messages to back up his claim of a relationship with her.”

Corrine reminded him that the absence of an affair would also explain the absence of romantic correspondence between them.

“I know, but I’ve got to admit, it makes me more than a little nervous that Powell knew she was cheating with the boss. If they were purely business, how would he know the details of an affair she had three years ago?”

“He had other contacts at the company. Kerry told me everyone at work knew. Grist for the rumor mill.”

“Except Powell knew the wife’s name—Mary Beth, by the way. He knows they have three kids, and that Mary Beth was so pissed off when she found the texts that she told their oldest daughter what Dad had been up to. And he claims to know that the daughter showed up at Kerry’s house, calling her a slut from the front yard. You think those are the kinds of details an outside consultant overhears at a meeting? Sounds to me like bedtime chatter, swapping tales about the exes.”

“So let me talk to Kerry,” Corrine said. “See what her version is.”

“I already tried, and that’s an even bigger problem. She got defensive, accusing me of blaming the victim. And she refused to talk to me at all about her company. She claimed it was proprietary business information, and that sharing it could get her fired.”

“By the very company Powell claims she’s colluding with.” Corrine could already picture Powell’s defense in the courtroom.

“Exactly.” King wasn’t done listing his concerns about Kerry’s motivations. “Oh, and don’t let me forget this part: Did you know Kerry hired a lawyer?”

“She may need one if she thinks the company’s looking to fire her.”

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