He glanced back downstairs. He didn’t want to tell me too much.
“Look,” he said, lowering his voice. Colin’s close-cropped dark hair was beginning to gray, but he still had the same clean-cut, heart-shaped face that had led me to nickname him Boy Scout when we first met. “Olivia made some calls before she came over. She basically found out that there’s no evidence except this girl’s say-so, and what she told the police sounds worse than what she supposedly said to Zack right after the incident.”
“Well, that’s good, right?”
“It’s very good, but apparently the girl said something about being able to describe Jason’s underwear. Candy canes or something.”
I held up a hand to my mouth. “He said he was tucking in his shirt.”
“Wait,” he said, trying to calm me. “That picture you found of her sucking on that kid’s neck might be a better explanation. Jason said there are urinals in the men’s rooms at the econ department.”
I was able to connect the other dots myself. The interns get drunk. Rachel and Wilson hook up. Wilson says something about spotting their hero’s unexpected boxer shorts in the men’s room. Rachel uses that fact to strengthen a flimsy accusation she made for god knows what reason.
“So is that what happened? Did Olivia call Wilson already?”
“We don’t need him to say anything. Jason doesn’t have to prove his innocence. They have to prove his guilt. This gives us an alternative explanation for what she claims to have seen in his office. It gives us a legitimate reason to make an issue of that picture you found.”
A legitimate reason. But we all knew the real reason that photograph had been a good find. It made Rachel look like “that kind of girl.”
I heard the staccato clicks of high heels on the hardwood of the first floor, and then spotted Olivia Randall looking up at us.
“We’re almost done, Angela. Sorry, again. Colin, you want to come down for a quick talk before I go?”
I returned to our bedroom and opened the top left drawer of our dresser. A pair of crisp cotton boxer shorts adorned with bright red candy canes were folded neatly at the back, behind a uniform row of Jason’s go-to black boxer briefs. The candy canes were a gag gift, something to fill space in his Christmas stocking. I remembered the first time I saw him in them as he was climbing into bed. He said I was shaking both the mattress and his manliness with my laughter.
I lifted them from the back of the drawer and placed them in the bottom of my gym bag. I would find a garbage can on the street tomorrow.
11
Corrine Duncan was making her fifth call to ADA Brian King since she’d seen the first story about Jason Powell that morning. Once again, no answer.
King had declined the case almost immediately after Corrine submitted her reports. Corrine had hoped that he would deliver the news to Rachel himself, but apparently he hadn’t. When Rachel called her yesterday, looking for an update, Corrine had delivered the message: it was one person’s word against another in a system where the government had to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It was a speech she had recited hundreds of times.
Rachel’s response still burned in her mind. “So is there no way to prove such a thing?” she asked, her voice jumping an octave. “Instead of pulling back, I should have waited until he raped me so I’d have scientific evidence?”
Corrine had to admit, the woman had a point. In a world where DNA evidence could make or break a case, sex offenders could grab and grope and grind and gratify, as long as they didn’t leave behind physical evidence.
In theory, handfuls of people could have leaked the complaint against Jason Powell. Records clerks. Her lieutenant. Friends of Rachel. Rachel, of course. But Rachel had already called Corrine twice this morning, wondering how the Post found out about her complaint.
Corrine had another theory.
It was the way she and Brian King had left their last conversation. After King concluded they didn’t have anything close to enough evidence to take to trial, Corrine had suggestions for investigating further. King had rejected every one of them. “You’d be wasting your time,” he insisted. “We know how this plays out. It’s her word against his, with no way of meeting our burden. Not with her word alone.”
Not with her word alone.
That was the phrase she remembered when she saw Jason Powell’s name pop up on her phone’s New York Post alert this morning.
She tried King’s number again, and this time he picked up.
“King,” like he didn’t know who was calling.
“You could have given me a heads-up,” she said.
There was silence on the other end of the line. She was used to this—ADAs who liked to play boss over the police. There was something about Corrine—black, female, grown-up, straightforward—that threw them off their game.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“Two days ago, you sounded perfectly willing to let the case go.”
“I called a law school friend of mine who works in the career services office of NYU law school. She asked around. No official complaints, but there are rumors.”
“Of?”
“Something off. Maybe he’s just the hot professor who students dream about, but some people get a bad vibe off him. A little too cute, a little too flirty. A guy on the prowl.”
Corrine thought about King’s initial comment about his ex-girlfriend’s celebrity crush on Powell.
“You heard from anyone yet?” she asked.
“It’s only been a few hours,” he said.
She’d seen this before when weak charges were filed against someone with the profile of a potential serial offender. King had let the police report leak in case any other women might want to come forward about incidents they had written off as “misunderstandings.”
“Any calls on your end?” King asked.
Thanks to an offshoot series of Law & Order, an increasing number of sex offense victims contacted the special victims unit directly.
“Nothing yet,” she confirmed. “I guess I better call Rachel back—and, no, I won’t tell her it was you. I’ll make sure she knows to stay in touch. It’s possible that Powell will try to silence her.”
King didn’t respond, and for a second, Corrine wondered if she’d lost the connection. “You there?”
“Yeah, sorry. I got an e-mail from Olivia Randall.” Corrine recognized the name of one of the biggest pain-in-the-ass defense lawyers in the city. “She says she represents Jason Powell and has information I might be interested in. That sounds fun.”
“You’re the one who wanted to stir up some trouble. Looks like you may have found the wrong kind.”
“Whatever. Let me know if you hear from other women.”
12
I was doing my monthly shuffle of the dry cleaning—from wire hangers to real ones—when Jason found me in the bedroom.
“The lawyer’s gone?” I asked.
He nodded. “I didn’t want to explain who she was to Spencer.” He’d be home any minute.
I had hung Jason’s final shirt when I said, “Did you know that when you google Jason Powell, the fifth suggested search is ‘Jason Powell wife’?”
“That’s normal. People get curious about author bios. They want to know if I’m married or not.”
I shook my head and closed the closet door harder than I needed to.
“I’m so sorry, Angela. I promise, I’m not going to let you get dragged into this.”
If only he had listened to me four years ago when he decided that he couldn’t simply be a professor with a bestselling book. He had to extend the ride, and I had no choice but to go along.