Page 49 of The Wife

Her original plan had been to fingerprint Powell at the Sixth Precinct, less than a mile from his address, then transport him to Central Booking on Centre Street. King disrupted that plan by instructing her to go to SVU instead. It wasn’t the usual process, and it meant a round-trip drive to Harlem and back.

Now that she counted at least four cameras, she realized King had given SVU as the location for the perp walk. She actually felt bad for Powell as she marched him, still in handcuffs, through the gauntlet. He had no way to hide his face. She could feel him jerking away from each flash of a camera. Once they were inside and she unlocked the cuffs, the only thing he said was, “I have a thirteen-year-old son.”

He stared straight ahead as she took his prints, followed by his mug shot.

The press was gone by the time she walked him out a mere thirty minutes later, having gotten what they came for. As she transported him to Central Booking, he remained silent. He didn’t even ask to have the radio turned on, the way some people do, or ask where he was going next. His lawyer would have been pleased.

Once she was done with the paperwork at Central Booking, her plan was to head back to Powell’s place. The wife would be home, glued to her phone. The lawyer was probably busy trying to get a head start on cutting him loose. If Corrine was lucky, she’d catch the wife alone.

She was three blocks away when she realized she wanted to know more about Angela Powell before knocking on her door. She pulled over and brought up the number she had saved for Detective Steven Hendricks in East Hampton.

“I just booked Jason Powell for rape.”

Hendricks spoke like an old, experienced cop, his tone completely unfazed. “So how bad was it?”

These days, you weren’t supposed to distinguish. Rape was rape.

“The victim had him up to her hotel room after dinner, but there’s evidence of injury, and he denied all contact with her and we have DNA.” Corrine believed you had to share some amount of information with other cops if you expected their cooperation. She was giving Hendricks enough to know that there were shades of a date-rape dynamic to the case, but more than a complete he-said, she-said.

“He’s arguing consent?”

“Basically,” she confirmed.

“Is there any way to keep the wife out of it? Angela’s had a rough time of it, and this guy was supposed to be her happily-ever-after.”

“My impression is that she’s managed to keep her identity fairly private.” She didn’t tell Hendricks that she never would have known who Angela was had it not been for his phone number in her call records.

“Her parents made sure of it. I went with them to Niagara Falls when they got the phone call. I was the last person they wanted to deal with at the time, but they at least knew me. Angela was practically catatonic. They couldn’t get her to hand the baby to anyone until she saw her mother.”

“You didn’t have a good relationship with the family?”

“The short version is, I could have tried harder. I thought she was a runaway.”

“And that’s why you’ve been trying to help her now.”

“Pretty much. So how can I help her?”

“Convince her to jump off a sinking ship. The DA is determined to get a conviction. She could leave now, take half his money, and find a new happily-ever-after.”

“I’d be the last person able to convince her.”

“So who has her ear?”

“Her best friend is Susanna Coleman, but—”

“I’m not going through a journalist.”

“Of course not. Which is why I was going to say the person she’d really listen to is her mother, Ginny. Her dad, Danny, died a few years back, but Ginny was always the one who looked out for Angela. I thought she was going to clock the doctor who wanted to examine Angela and the baby after they were rescued. The way she saw it, Franklin and the other kidnapping victim were dead. If the police wanted to keep investigating, that was their business, but she took her daughter and grandson home and told the Pittsburgh police to pound sand.”

“Where’d the other girl come from?”

“Franklin picked her up in Cleveland. That sicko made the girls use fake names. I think Angela was called Michelle. She called the other girl Sarah. They didn’t find the body for two weeks and never identified her, last I heard.”

Corrine realized that part of her had been hoping Hendricks would be close enough to the family to persuade Angela to start looking out for herself instead of her husband. It was still worth a try. “The husband will be arraigned tomorrow. I’m about to approach the wife now to see what she knows. What if you gave her a call first?”

“I think she’d hang up and take it out on you for having any association with me.”

“Wow, she dislikes you that much?”

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