Corrine felt empty when she had finished reading. Death wasn’t a good enough punishment for a savage like Charles Franklin.
Corrine started to carry the file to the shredder, but stopped herself. She found space at the back of her bottom desk drawer. She’d keep it there for a while, just in case she needed it.
52
Two Days Later
“The Long Island Press has the story.” It was Brian King on the phone. Corrine didn’t need to ask which story he meant. “They called me to see if I consider Powell a suspect in Kerry’s disappearance.”
“And what did you say?”
“That any questions concerning Ms. Lynch should be directed to the police department where she lives.”
“Very diplomatic.”
“Except the reporter’s no idiot. Her follow-up was whether we were still prosecuting Powell.”
“And?”
“I said the case was on hold, pursuant to a court order.”
“So why are you calling me?”
“Who else am I supposed to vent to? Don’t you want to know what I found out?”
Of course she did.
“That guy you met out there is still the lead: Netter. He said Tom Fisher refused to answer any questions—about the affair, about where he was last Wednesday night, about Kerry’s work for the company, about Oasis’s international operations. Blanket invocation of the Fifth. And the realtor who was going to list Kerry’s house said Kerry wasn’t interested in looking for a new place. She said she wanted to—quote—‘take her money and get out of Dodge.’”
“But why would she leave without her stuff, or even her dog? And what’s Fisher hiding?” Kerry had been missing for a week.
“Exactly. So I called Janice Martinez, who said she was about to contact me, because the same reporter had reached out to her. She wouldn’t give me exact conversations with Kerry, but she said Kerry had been missing long enough that she was willing to share information she believed I needed. Apparently, Martinez notified Olivia Randall on Wednesday that Kerry was amenable to settling the civil case—with an eye toward dismissing the criminal case—if the price was right.”
“She was going to take a payoff, just like we suspected.”
“Exactly. But Martinez was also working out a settlement with Oasis, negotiating directly with Tom Fisher, not his counsel. In theory, it was to settle potential discrimination claims arising from Kerry’s affair with Fisher, but the settlement would include a blanket nondisclosure agreement as to all matters involving her work at Oasis. Martinez said she got a feeling from both Kerry and Fisher that there was some subtext she was missing.”
Corrine filled in the blanks. “Kerry would keep her mouth shut about the company’s kickbacks. She was basically shaking down two different men—one for sexual assault, one for whatever’s been going on at that company.”
“Except now it’s starting to look like one of the men is innocent. Jason Powell has been trying to convince us the whole time—telling us about Fisher, even sending us his movie rental receipts. Meanwhile, Fisher’s the one invoking. So if one of them is responsible for whatever happened to Kerry, I know where I’d put my money. Maybe Fisher decided her price was too high, or thought Kerry would keep coming back for more.”
“When are they running their story?”
“Any second. They’ll go online first. Front page tomorrow. The other news outlets will follow. I sat down and took a fresh look at it all. The fact of the matter is this: If I had known at the outset everything I know now, I never would have charged Powell.”
“So what should you do about that?”
“I know what I should do—dismiss this case immediately, at least until they find Kerry. What I’m allowed to do by my boss is another question.”
Corrine finished the next paragraph of the supplemental report she’d been writing, but couldn’t stop thinking about what she had learned about Tom Fisher. Nick Lowe, the restaurant delivery guy, said he’d seen Jason and Kerry together at her home months ago, in which case Powell was telling the truth about their affair, and yet there were no text messages or e-mails to suggest a romantic connection. According to him, Kerry was paranoid about her phone and computer usage because she thought her company was looking for an excuse to fire her. But what if she had other reasons for concern?
She opened her browser and searched for “Oasis Water Africa.” She learned from press releases on the company’s website that Oasis had been granted contracts in Tanzania and Mozambique a little more than three years ago—which would have been around the time Kerry was dating her boss.
Corrine picked up her phone and called Netter. “I was wondering if that might be you when I saw the number,” he said once she identified herself. “I spoke to your ADA not an hour ago.”
“Sounds like you’re making progress with Fisher.”
“That’s overly generous. He’s not talking.”
“I assume you’ve got Kerry’s financial records by now?”
“Yep. No recent large withdrawals. It’s looking less and less like she left voluntarily.”
“What about deposits?”
“Just direct deposits from work. Are you talking about the settlements her lawyer was trying to work out with Powell and Fisher? She said they hadn’t talked final numbers yet.”
“But Nick Lowe says Fisher was at Kerry’s house that night. Given their history, maybe they were trying to work something out directly—without their lawyers.”
“We’re working on the same theory here. Only thing is: he’s a rich man. Buying off an ex-mistress wouldn’t have cost much.”
“Unless she was in a position to make him a much less rich man—or get him in trouble with the feds.”
“You’re talking about all that foreign-country stuff with the company?”
“Powell claims that Kerry kept promising to help him prove his suspicions. But maybe she wasn’t merely going to snoop around on his behalf. She was sleeping with her boss when the company got those contracts in Africa.”
“You think she actually knew about kickbacks?”
“Or was even involved. That’s why I was asking about her bank records. You mentioned her paychecks were on direct deposit. Can you go back a few years and look for anything unusual?”
“Yeah—I’ve got the bank info right here. It shouldn’t take long.”
She managed to type another section of her report, phone tucked between shoulder and ear, while Netter did the research.
“It looks like you might’ve been onto something. She got a huge raise about three and a half years ago.” As he recited the numbers, Corrine figured out that it was about a 20 percent raise, issued only a month before Oasis announced new projects in Africa. Corrine pulled up Kerry’s profile on LinkedIn.
“I don’t see a corresponding promotion listed on her résumé,” Corrine said. “She’s been the VP in charge of global marketing for five years.”
“Plus her year-end bonus was an even hundred grand, when it was twenty the previous two years.”
“And since then?”
“Fifty.”
The financial information wasn’t a smoking gun, but it was consistent with Corrine’s current theory. If there was corruption involved in Oasis’s international projects, Kerry Lynch could have been complicit. She had told a realtor that she wanted to sell her house and leave town. Corrine had a feeling that the money Kerry’s attorney was seeking to settle a sexual discrimination claim was nothing compared to what Kerry might have tried to extract from Tom Fisher directly when he came to her house.
The images Corrine had been seeing for days flashed in her mind again, but this time she saw the face of the man holding the crystal egg over Kerry’s head. It belonged to Tom Fisher, not Jason Powell.
She told Netter she thought he was on the right track and ended the call. She immediately dialed Brian King. It only took a few minutes to lay out what she had learned.
“I feel better about my decision now,” he said.
“Which is?”
“I need to dismiss our case against Powell. Maybe he did it, maybe he didn’t. But I have too many doubts to continue the prosecution any longer.”
As Corrine hung up the phone, she said a little prayer for both Angela Powell and Kerry Lynch.