Page 71 of The Wife

“‘Could be’ are the key words. I need to talk to bar counsel for advice. I really am not sure what to do under the circumstances, and that’s not something you’re going to hear me say too often.”

“It sounds to me as if you’re confirming that something happened Wednesday that might be relevant.”

“I’m not. Because I can’t. Let me figure out what the options are, and I’ll get back to you. I promise.”

Corrine hung up and called the Port Washington sergeant again. His name was Mike Netter. She wondered if he got as many cracks about his name as she did.

She started the conversation by letting him know that Janice Martinez had finally gotten back to her. This, after all, was his case, not hers. “She hasn’t talked to Kerry since fifteen fifteen on Wednesday. Any new information on your end?”

“Talked to a friend of hers at work—girl named Samantha Hicks. She said Kerry was in on Wednesday, out yesterday and today. She didn’t know much more. She said she couldn’t think of any reason she’d be gone except the stress of everything that was happening—first the work trouble, plus the rape, then the media attention, not to mention a breakup. Believe me, I got an earful.”

Corrine’s mind was swirling with questions. She scribbled key words on her notepad so she wouldn’t forget them.

“She told this friend Samantha about the rape after it happened?” Kerry said she never spoke to anyone about it until she reported it to Corrine.

“No, sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest that. Samantha only heard about it when everyone else did, at that big press conference the lawyer held.”

“Did she say what the problems were at work?”

“Nah. Pretty vague. Something about Kerry being in the doghouse—quote, unquote—for the last few years.”

That timing lined up with what Kerry had told Corrine about her affair with the company’s CEO, Tom Fisher.

“And what about the breakup? Was that also a few years ago?”

“She said Kerry started talking about the dude maybe five months ago. She referred to him as Jay, but never gave a last name and kept blowing her off about getting to meet him. Samantha even asked her once, point-blank, if the guy might be married. I heard all about how Kerry was smart in every way, except she falls head over heels for the wrong guys and lives her whole life around them. I’ve got a sister like that—anyway, Kerry stopped talking about the guy around the time the news of her complaint against Powell came out. So now I got to figure out who Jay is. Didn’t find anyone by that name in her cell phone, and that seems weird. I’ll have my tech guy look at it to see if maybe it all got deleted. And, oh shit—I still need to find that delivery guy from the restaurant.”

Corrine hung up, trying to quell the worry building in the back of her mind. Kerry was a beautiful, successful single woman. Of course she probably had a boyfriend. There’s no reason that would have come up in conversation with Corrine. And maybe Kerry was secretive about him at work because she’d already been churned through the gossip mill over her affair with Tom Fisher.

But she couldn’t ignore the warning signs. If Jason Powell was telling the truth about an affair with Kerry, she might have referred to him as “Jay” around the office to keep the relationship on the down-low.

She had told Brian King that it really didn’t matter to her whether Kerry had had an affair with Jason, but now that the evidence was sitting there, she wanted to know the truth. But the missing-person case belonged to Port Washington Police, and her case against Powell was on hold. Corrine didn’t have an angle to work.

Corrine walked the twenty feet to her lieutenant’s office and tapped on the open door. After she filled him in on what she knew about Kerry’s disappearance, he said what she expected: Let Port Washington handle the investigation, and in the meantime hope they find her, alive and well.

She couldn’t argue with his logic, but she was still standing in his doorway.

“Damn it, Duncan. I got detectives I have to yell at to do more work, and now I’m yelling at you to give it a rest. Go home.”

“It’s only two o’clock.”

“Not literally. I mean—Jesus, get out of here. If she doesn’t turn up in the next day or two, we can talk again. Until then, she’s Long Island’s problem.”

Corrine was at her desk an hour later when the number for the main switchboard at the district attorney’s office appeared on her cell phone screen. “Duncan.”

“It’s King.” He was back to being King now, not Brian. She preferred it that way.

She started to fill him in on her conversation with Sergeant Netter, but he interrupted.

“The pictures of Kerry’s wrists—how do we have those files?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how did we physically get them? She took the photos herself, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So how’d she send them to you? E-mail? Text? Did you plug in her phone? Like, technically, how did we get them? You gave them to me as jpeg files.”

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