The cell was cold and grimy. It reminded Griff of that godawful house on Faculty Row. That place was a pigsty and depressing as hell, with old steam radiators that rattled and spit, and drafty windows that leaked frigid air on cold nights. For a while Griff had tried to maintain the place, but it was a losing battle. Every time he did something, Kate undid it. She didn’t understand the basics of taking care of a house, or taking care of herself for that matter. He couldn’t blame her. She’d had help all her life. First in New York with her family, and then with him. Kate’s favorite thing of all was living in hotels, which they did for months on end. She liked her sheets ironed, and changed every day, her crumpled towels whisked away, fresh flowers, a chocolate on the pillow. In the best places, the staff tiptoed in when you were down at the pool, and you never saw them. She didn’t want to have to tell someone what to do; she just wanted it done. Room service at odd hours, breakfast on the terrace in her bathrobe with dark glasses on to block the tropical sun, aspirin from the gift shop for her hangover—that’s the life Kate was used to. Griff could hardly blame her if, when all that disappeared, Kate had difficulty learning to cook or clean or do laundry. Kate was a New Yorker. She didn’t like to drive, so if there was no deli on the corner, if nobody delivered, how could she be expected to buy groceries?
Griff did all the shopping, and when he did, he noticed things. He knew Kate was pregnant, because he knew when she got her period. He knew whether there were tampons in the drawer, because he made the drugstore runs. He noticed the puffiness in her face, and her breasts, and the flush that came to her cheeks. He knew she wanted this baby, because she changed what she ate, and cut back how much she drank. He knew what those special vitamins were for. She didn’t have to say. He also knew that the child wasn’t his, because she’d never agreed to get pregnant even though he’d begged her, and because they hadn’t had sex in a year. He knew that Kate didn’t want his baby, but that she wanted this one. And Griff knew whose it was, because he’d been watching that little romance from the beginning.
Ethan Saxman was Aubrey’s husband, so Griff and Kate had met him on several occasions before moving back to town. But mostly, they’d kept their distance from the Belle River crowd. Kate hated the place. It reminded her too much of that unfortunate business at the bridge, and as much as Belle River itself reminded her, her freshman-year roommates reminded her even more. Kate had only seen her ex-roommates for the occasional weekend or birthday or holiday here and there over the years, and even that was at their instigation. If Aubrey and Jenny hadn’t pursued Kate, the connection would have been lost. Griff himself was in close communication with old chums from his frat, as well as a number of other Carlisle men from his graduating class. He liked having a history with people. Kate didn’t. It made her feel too exposed. He understood that. He accepted her idiosyncrasies.
When they moved back to Belle River—under a cloud of suspicion, in dire straits financially, in need of friends—Ethan Saxman was the shiny new toy that distracted Kate from her troubles. They saw him again for the first time in several years in some mediocre restaurant when the three couples met for dinner early in the summer. The tables were too close together; it was hot and noisy and unpleasant. Ethan stood up and moved his chair to make room for Kate at the table. Griff watched the whole thing happen. She looked at him, he smiled at her—done. The look in Kate’s eyes, the timbre of her voice as they talked to each other. Ethan was tall and dark, with those thick, girlish lips, like Lucas Arsenault had. Kate went for that sort of thing—tall, dark, and obvious, with an ostentatious sex appeal. Griff was not as tall, he was blond, his looks were more refined. Women still followed him with their eyes when he walked into a room. Women did; not Kate. You’d think physical appearance wouldn’t matter after a lifetime of devotion, but people were shallow. Kate was the shallowest of all.
Griff followed the details of the affair like he was hate-watching some awful, addictive TV show. Kate refused to learn about technology or be bothered paying bills, so their various accounts were set up and handled by Griff. They shared an Apple account, which meant that he could set her texts to show up on his iPhone and she didn’t even realize it. They shared an Uber account, so he could see where the cars took her. And they shared their one remaining credit card, so he saw every charge she made. No need to pay for a private detective when he could follow her with the swipe of a fingertip. He knew which hotel Kate frequented with her lover. A motel really, a seedy place called the Pinetree Inn, out on Route 17 in Mill Junction where they hoped to escape prying eyes from Belle River. Kate was kind enough to leave Griff the car on these occasions. This was because the first time she stayed out all night with her new beau, Griff had been hesitant to confront her directly, so he threw a fit about being stranded with no ride. Kate took that to heart, and never made that mistake again, which meant Griff had the BMW to drive out to Mill Junction and spy on them. Half the time they didn’t bother closing the blinds. Griff saw them together. He saw what they did.
Griff recently realized, from reading Kate’s texts, that she was pressuring Ethan to leave his wife. He couldn’t tell if she’d told Ethan yet that she was pregnant. (Indeed, Griff had no official confirmation that Kate actually was pregnant, beyond his own observations. She certainly hadn’t talked to him about it.) The fact that Ethan had three children with another woman meant nothing to Kate, for whom other people’s needs didn’t register. The interesting thing was that Ethan was not on board with Kate’s plan. In his texts, Ethan seemed to be hesitating, backing off, even hinting at ending things. And it might have gone that way, had Griff not intervened and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Sitting in the cold jail cell, Griff had plenty of time to relive the confrontation in all its awfulness. It was last Thursday night around nine o’clock, cold and windy with a chance of rain. Griff sat drinking in the gloomy kitchen, wondering if Kate was coming home. The clock on the wall ticked loudly, and the bottle of vodka was almost empty. Griff was just about to get up and raid the pantry for another bottle when his phone buzzed with the duplicate of Kate’s text to Ethan Saxman.
“I decided to file,” Kate wrote. “I know you said not to but I have to. I want to explain so meet me at Pinetree ASAP.”
Then nothing.
Five minutes later, Kate texted her lover again. “Babe r u coming? Please answer. So important.”
Poor Kate was feeling insecure. Had Saxman ditched her already? Aww, how sad. Griff took a swig straight from the bottle and waited, but his stomach felt funny. One word in her text had leaped out, and it troubled him. File. What did she mean, file?
“Can’t get away tonight. Don’t do anything until we talk,” Ethan replied, several minutes later.
“No, too important,” Kate texted back almost instantly. “Have to tell you something big. You’ll understand once you know.”
“I can meet tomorrow but don’t do anything yet,” Saxman texted back.
Don’t do what? What the hell were they talking about?
“Lawyer says I need to file in the morning bc $. At Pinetree now pls come!!” Kate wrote.
Understanding broke over Griff like a tidal wave. “File” meant file for divorce. Kate was about to reveal to her lover that she was pregnant with his child, and planned to file for divorce from Griff the next morning. Kate wasn’t simply having another in a long string of affairs. She was leaving Griff—correction, divorcing him, on a timeline designed to deprive him of his fair share of her trust fund money. Griff and Kate had been talking for months about what to do with that money when it came in, which would be on the day of her fortieth birthday. He had a plan for a fresh start for them, both of them, together, far away from the pernicious influence of Ethan Saxman. In the Keys, or maybe the Virgin Islands, captaining a little boat, booking fishing charters. He could earn their keep, he was confident of that. Griff was excited about the plan but Kate refused to commit to it. Maybe, let’s wait and see, she’d say. That had obviously been a lie, a stall, a scam. She never had any intention of going away with him. She was stringing him along while she made other plans. Griff lavished years of his life and millions of his father’s fortune on Kate, and this was how she repaid him.
Griff hoisted the vodka bottle and discovered that it was empty. The car keys sat in the middle of the table where Kate had left them. His next step unfolded with perfect logic. There was no thought process involved. He simply picked up the keys and walked out the front door. He didn’t even stop to get his wallet.
He didn’t remember driving to the motel, but sometime later, Griff was there, parked in his usual spot. He liked to hide at the far side of the lot, next to the Dumpster, beyond where the streetlights reached, and watch without being seen. The Pinetree Inn was the sort of single-story, low-rise dump where the rooms opened directly onto the parking lot. Each room had a different-colored door. About half of the spaces were taken tonight, but nobody had gone in or out recently. Saxman’s car was parked in front of the cheerful yellow door to room 21. The blinds were closed, so Griff used his imagination to visualize what they were doing in there.
Time moved very slowly, as drunk as he was. Half an hour passed as Griff pondered whether to get out of the car. Why was he here, if not to barge in and win his wife back? He ought to stop stalling. But if Griff went over there, would Kate agree to come home with him, or would she hold to Saxman tighter, out of some rebellious sense of pride? He might be sending her further into Saxman’s arms.
Eventually nature called. The cold air woke Griff up as soon as he opened the car door. He stepped behind the Dumpster to take a piss, and while he was back there, he made a decision. He zipped up and hurried back around the Dumpster, then marched across the blacktop, heading for room 21, to take his wife back from that asshole Saxman.
At the yellow door, Griff paused. Ethan was speaking—rapidly, urgently, roughly. Griff couldn’t make out the words, but the tone alone was enough to piss him off. How dare that creep Saxman speak to Kate that way? Griff raised his fist and pounded on the door.
“Who is it?” Ethan said, in an annoyed tone.
“Manager,” Griff said, putting on some vague foreign accent. “We had noise complaint. Open door, or I call the police.”
Saxman opened the door. As he caught sight of Griff, his expression morphed from irritation to shock. He moved to slam the door a second too late. Griff threw his weight against it, and they went tumbling into the room in a tangle of limbs. Kate screamed. Griff leapt to his feet, kicking away Saxman’s grasping hands, and started toward her.
“Did he hurt you?” Griff cried.
“Did you follow me, Griff?” Kate demanded. She sat on the bed fully clothed, her face red from crying, which only incensed Griff further.
“Did I hurt her? You’re the lunatic causing a scene,” Ethan said, as he got to his feet, his face flushed with anger.
“Stay out of this! Kate is my wife, and she’s coming home with me right now,” Griff said.
“No, I’m not,” Kate said.
“Yes, you are.”
Griff grabbed Kate’s arms and yanked her to her feet, dragging her toward the door. She dug her heels into the ugly carpet.
“Let … go … you crazy stalker!” she cried, twisting from his grasp, flailing at him.
Griff felt the sting as Kate’s fingernails gouged his arms and his hands. Saxman grabbed Griff by the back of his shirt, and pulled him off Kate, shoving him across the room. Griff’s head cracked against the wall. He fell sideways and crashed into a lamp, which toppled over beside him, its lightbulb exploding in a blue flash. Griff staggered to his feet, breathing heavily, just in time to see Saxman rushing him. They grappled, in a clinch, neither of them able to land a punch. Saxman was taller and had a longer reach, but Griff was heavier and stronger. Griff mustered the strength to push the guy off him. Ethan staggered backward, recovered instantly, and came back at Griff. Griff threw a poorly aimed punch that glanced off the side of Saxman’s face. Saxman swung at Griff hard and connected with his jaw. Momentarily stunned, Griff took a step back and put a hand to his lip. It came away bright red.
“Get out now,” Kate said, her voice thick with rage. “If you don’t leave right this minute, I swear to God, I’ll get a restraining order.”
She looked at him with such disgust that it took his breath away. The manager stood in the open doorway. He was a Sikh man in a turban, tall and dignified, and informed them gravely that the police were on the way.
Griff stared at the blood on his fingers. He knew he was blind drunk and reeked of alcohol. He was the one who forced his way into the room. With Griff’s luck, when the cops showed up, he’d probably be the one they arrested, no matter how unfair that was.
“You’ll regret this,” he said bitterly, though he didn’t know if he was speaking to Kate or her lover. All he knew was, he’d made it more likely Kate would leave him for Saxman, not less.
Griff forgot that he had the car. Next thing he remembered, he was running down the road, blind with rage and pain. He wound up in a bar, where they refused to serve him, and called a taxi for him instead. He went home and stripped, stuffing his shirt into the laundry hamper. He noticed the blood on it, but he didn’t think twice about it. Ethan was the one who slugged him, so why would he worry? Griff fell into bed and passed out. He never imagined that shirt would be seized by the police and become the centerpiece of a murder case against him. But then, he never thought any of this would come to pass—Kate dead, him sitting in a jail cell charged with her murder.
Griff heard the clanging of metal doors.
“Rothenberg,” the guard said, unlocking Griff’s cell. “Lawyer here to see you. Let’s go.”
Griff was escorted to a small, windowless interview room. He recognized the man who waited for him, because he was famous. Leonard Walters, an aggressive New York criminal lawyer with a national profile, a shock of white hair that set off his perpetual tan, and a fondness for trying cases in the press.
“Mr. Rothenberg, good to meet you,” Walters said. “I’m here to represent you at your father-in-law’s behest. No need to go through the formalities about retainer and such. He took care of all that.”
“I’m very grateful,” Griff said. “Keniston knows I would never hurt his daughter. I loved Kate—”
Walters held up a hand. “Let’s skip that and cut to the chase. It doesn’t matter how you felt or even what you did. What matters is what the police can prove, and how effectively we can undermine their case against you.”
“I want you to know, I’m innocent.”
“Glad to hear it. If you’re guilty that’s fine, too. Everybody deserves a defense. Only I’d advise you not to confess to me, because that makes my job harder, avoiding perjury and so forth.” Walters glanced at the gold Rolex on his wrist. “No time to waste. Here’s my plan.”
As Walters explained it, he intended to demolish the case against Griff by painting Chief Rizzo in the media as a trigger-happy rube who’d missed important pieces of evidence and manipulated others. Griff would come off as the martyr—a falsely accused, grief-stricken husband, dragged from the graveside of his beloved wife by an overzealous cop. It was a think-outside-the-box approach, and Griff liked it. They spent the rest of the visit going over the details of Kate’s affair, and the confrontation at the motel, so Walters’s investigator could start collecting evidence to back up Griff’s version of events.
“The blood on the shirt that this cop made such a stink about, you’re saying that’s your own blood? From when your wife’s boyfriend slugged you?” Walters asked, scribbling notes.
“Yes.”
“Oh, that’s good, that’s very good. And you left your wife alive, in the love nest with the other man?”
“At the motel, yes.”
“I love it. She’s pressuring him to leave his wife and kids. He doesn’t want to do it. And he’s the last one who saw her alive, not you.”
“And that’s not all. I don’t know if this helps or hurts us, but you should know. It’s my belief that Kate was pregnant with Saxman’s baby.”
Walters raised his eyebrows. “Really.”
“Yes. Now I have no proof of that. She never told me directly. But I lived in the same house as her, and I’m fairly certain.”
“A rich doctor with a wife and three kids at home. A pregnant mistress who’s starting to make demands. It’s classic. One thing, though. This was Thursday night, you say?”
“Uh-huh.”
Walters paused, a thoughtful look on his face. “But she filed for divorce Friday morning.”
“Yes.”
“So presumably she got out of the motel in one piece and made it to the courthouse. That’s a wrinkle, but we can finesse it.”
“A wrinkle in what? Where are you going with this?”
“The fastest way to convince the world you’re innocent is to make somebody else look guilty,” Walters said. “This doctor is gonna be our alternative suspect. We hold a press conference, and divert attention onto him.”
Griff frowned. “But what if he’s innocent?”
“What do you care? He screwed your wife, punched you in the face so you bled all over your shirt, made you look guilty when you’re not, and now you’re rotting in a jail cell and he’s walking around free. This is your chance to fight back, my friend.”
“It would serve him right,” Griff said.
“There you go, that’s the attitude.”
“Is my father-in-law on board with this plan? He says he wants to end the media circus, and this strategy will only make the story bigger.”
“Keniston hired me to clear your name, and I have to do that the best way I know how. The press’ll fall all over themselves crucifying this other guy. Trust me, it’s the way to go.”
Griff nodded. “All right, I’m in.”
“This will take a few days to pull together. I’m going to agree to postpone your bail hearing so you don’t have to go to court. It’s more important to negotiate with the prosecutor and persuade her not to file charges. But you’ll have to spend a few nights in jail.”
“It’s worth it if it means I don’t get charged with murdering my wife.”
Walters smiled reassuringly. “That’s the plan, my friend, and I think we can pull it off.”
They shook hands, and Griff was escorted back to his cell. He felt euphoric for a good five minutes or so after the meeting ended at the thought of getting out of jail, and of taking that smug asshole Owen Rizzo down a notch. He was elated, as well, that his father-in-law believed in him enough to pay the freight for someone like Leonard Walters. But then Griff remembered that Kate was dead, and the good feeling began to fade. He thought about the fact that Kate’s body had been lowered into the cold, hard ground without him there to say a last good-bye. She was under there now, as she would always be, with six feet of dirt between them. Griff lay down on his bunk and stared at the ceiling, too miserable to move.