Page 35 of The Better Sister

She immediately homed in on me. “We okay here?” she asked, taking in the activity unfolding around us.

I handed her the document that Guidry had served me. She gave it a cursory glance before focusing on Guidry. “I’m Olivia Randall, and I represent Ms. Taylor and her son, Ethan.”

Guidry told her to feel free to review the warrant.

“I just did, and even from the face of it, I can tell that it’s overbroad. Do you have any reason to believe that Ms. Taylor is holding evidence of a crime?”

“The warrant speaks for itself.”

“It does, and it’s obvious that you have treated Ms. Taylor and her son as if they were equal co-occupants of a particularly large residence for New York City, without making any attempt to discern between separate living spaces.”

The tit for tat that followed was quick and technical, but I could make out the arguments. Guidry believed the whole apartment was fair game. My stranger of a lawyer was claiming that they were obligated to carve out areas of the apartment that were under the control of individual people.

“My office,” I blurted out. “I’m the only person who uses it, exclusively for business. I can prove it. I took a home deduction on it and survived an audit. That’s got to mean something.” I had rolled Nicky’s suitcases into the closet as soon as I was alone in the room. Sometimes excessive neatness comes in handy.

Olivia Randall jumped on the information and then started building the case against searching my bedroom.

“It was the victim’s bedroom, too,” Guidry said. “No dice.”

She left us momentarily and disappeared, first into our bedroom and then into Ethan’s. As she stepped back into the hallway, she paused at my open office door.

“I take it this is your workspace?” she asked.

I nodded, and Guidry pulled the door shut. “Great. Now Ms. Randall can justify the thousand dollars an hour she’s going to charge you for being here.”

“You don’t need to have them standing here, either,” Olivia said.

“No one’s leaving,” Guidry said.

“At least let them sit in the office until you’re done.”

Guidry shrugged, and we shuffled single file down the hall. Once we were alone, Olivia introduced herself.

“I didn’t understand any of that,” Ethan said. “Why did they need a warrant? And why is this room off-limits but the rest of the apartment isn’t?”

I started to tell Ethan that they had a right to look around our apartment, as they had at the house, because Adam was a crime victim, but Olivia shot me a sharp glare. “I’m sorry, Chloe, but you’re not helping right now.”

When I opened my mouth to speak, Nicky shook her head.

“Ethan,” Olivia continued in a firm voice, “you already know that your friend Kevin told the police you were by yourself for an hour Friday, not far from your house, after you had told them you were with Kevin all night long. Clearly they have used that information—and perhaps more—to get a search warrant. Unlike the crime scene processing they did in East Hampton, this is a search for criminal evidence based on probable cause against a specific suspect.”

I doubted if anyone had ever spoken so directly to Ethan before, let alone about a subject so serious. He wouldn’t stop blinking. “A suspect? But then how come they’re not in here?” His question provided its own answer. He looked at me and collapsed in on himself, hunching over and crossing his arms.

Nicky and I were patting him on the back, telling him it was going to be okay, but Olivia Randall kept on lawyering. “No matter what happens here tonight, Ethan—all of you—it’s only the beginning of a process, okay? It’s possible that nothing will happen at all, but even if they find something that’s a problem, there’s an investigative process, charging, a grand jury—nothing that gets decided today is permanent.”

This time, I knew exactly what she was talking about. I had been married to a prosecutor. She expected Ethan to be arrested.

“None of us is going to talk to them without Olivia present,” I said. “Does everyone understand that?”

Ethan was nodding, but I could tell he was scared and going along with anything we said. Olivia was more firm. “Ethan, I need you to practice this with me. ‘I’m not talking without my lawyer.’”

She made him say it ten times. By the end, he gave a small smile at the absurdity of it.

“And you remember my name?”

“Olivia Randall,” he repeated. She was pretty. My son remembered the names of pretty girls.

“Great. Now, this is less than ideal, but I’m going to talk to each of you individually, if that’s all right.” She used the Murphy bed as a makeshift interview station, speaking to us one at a time while the two outcasts waited across the room on the built-in window bench. She spoke to Ethan first and longest, which only confirmed my suspicions about the scenario she was predicting.

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