A: He headed toward the front door.
Q: What time was that?
A: 9:35.
Q: Are you sure?
A: Yes. I checked my watch when he said he had to goto bed. I thought maybe I’d lost track of time and itwas later than I thought. That’s the kind of party it is. It makes you lose track of everything.
Lizzie
JULY 7, TUESDAY
I’d just arrived back at my office when the phone rang. It was precisely 7:00 p.m., Zach’s appointed time. I looked down at my notes: “Warrant? Time line of night? Witnesses to Zach’s walk? Amanda’s friends, enemies? Flowers? Pregnant? Sex party?”
So many questions, but not all for right now. That last one, though, I had underlined. The sex party was an even worse fact than the pregnancy. Jurors would easily be able to imagine one spouse killing another after they’d agreed to something like that. Something that might seem like harmless good fun beforehand. Something that could not be undone after the fact. They might even want to punish Zach for breaking the rules of fidelity they were forced to live by. That was the way juries worked, judges sometimes, too. Because they were human beings. And human beings couldn’t help but take things personally.
“Hello?” I answered.
“You have a collect call from a New York State correctional facility—”
I hit the number1on my phone.
“Hi, Zach.”
“Hey, Lizzie. Thanks for taking the call.” His voice was low and a little distorted, like Sam’s when he’d been drinking.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You sound … strange.”
“I, um.” He took a breath. “Had another run-in with some bars of a cell. But I—really I’m fine. My lip is swollen. That’s what you’re hearing.”
“Jesus, Zach, again?” My stomach tightened. I really, really hated this. Thanks to Paul, everything that happened to Zach while he was stuck in Rikers now felt like my fault. “What happened this time?”
“I’d really rather not get into it,” he said. “The details don’t make it better. Trust me.”
“These assaults—should I put a call in to the warden or something? Try to get you some protection?”
“I’m pretty sure that tattling on people in Rikers is hazardous to your health. I just need out of here. Quickly.”
I regretted wasting so much time at Zach’s house. The break-in had slowed me significantly. A writ of habeas corpus had nothing to do with any fingerprints or Amanda’s old journals.
“Young & Crane has agreed to let me represent you,” I said, trying to lead with something Zach would be happy about.
“Wow. That’s great news.” Zach exhaled so hard it made a rumbling sound into the phone. “I can’t even tell you, Lizzie … Thank you.”
“We’ll eventually need to back up and have a longer, much more detailed background discussion where you walk me through everything you can remember about that night. But first we need to focus on getting you out of Rikers. I’m drafting the habeas writ right now. We’ll get it filed first thing in the morning,” I said, signing in to my computer. I felt on more solid ground than I had in days. I’d get Zach’s situation sorted out, and then I’d sort out my own life, too. A drunk husband and some financial problems—even when they came with a side helping of secret baggage—were nothing compared to a murdered wife and a potential life sentence. “I’ll also have someone from the managing clerk’s office get down to Philadelphia to clear your outstanding warrant.”
I waited a beat, hoping that Zach would jump in with an explanation for the warrant.
“Right, the warrant,” he said finally, but he sounded more irritated than apologetic.
“You need to tell me about things like that,” I said. “I can’t represent you properly if I don’t know everything. It puts me in a really bad position.”
Zach was silent.
“Hello?”
“Yeah, I get that,” Zach said finally, his tone icy. “But then, discovering your wife’s bloody, beaten body and then getting sent to Rikers, where you are getting beaten up repeatedly yourself, can make a person loose with details.”
