Think Twice

“I’m staying at the Rittenhouse Hotel, room 817. I just checked my traffic app. You can be down here in one hour and forty-eight minutes.”

“Start the timer,” Myron said.

Myron made the drive in about ninety minutes.

Terese had left a key for him at the front desk. He took the elevator up to the eighth floor. When she opened the door, Terese was drying her dirty-blonde hair with a towel. When she smiled at him, Myron felt it in his toes and forgot all about dead bodies and serial killers. For the moment anyway. She wore the hotel’s terry-cloth robe. Myron flashed back to the first time he’d seen Terese in a terry-cloth robe, when they’d met up at the Hôtel d’Aubusson on the rue Dauphine in Paris.

“Well, hello,” Myron said.

“I love how you always open with the smoothest lines.”

“It’s the ‘well’ before the ‘hello.’”

Forget your merry widows, your frilly lace, your G-strings, your baby dolls, your camisoles, your bodysuits, your whatevers. There is nothing sexier than the woman you love drying her hair in a hotel-room terry-cloth robe.

“Want to see something that will really turn you on?” she asked.

Myron managed a nod.

She moved to the side. There was an overstuffed binder on the bed.

“Are those photos of you in a terry-cloth robe?”

“Close,” Terese said. “It’s a copy of the murder file on Ronald Prine.”

“Take me now.”

“God, you’re easy. Shall we?”

They sat on the bed. Terese paged through the file and told the story. Myron listened intently and resisted the impulse to untie her terry-cloth belt. When they got to the emails Jackie Newton sent to Ronald Prine, Myron began to see a pattern. In the beginning, while the Prine Organization was stalling, Jackie Newton’s emails were professional but firm. They increased in frustration and anger in a completely organic way. For the most part, Jackie Newton was contacting a Prine vice president named Fran Shovlin and copying in Ronald Prine.

The Newtons had done the work. She offered up evidence in photographs and videos, in invoices and pay stubs. The Prines didn’t care.

“How do companies get away with stuff like this?” Myron asked.

“You’re cute when you’re naïve.”

“Am I?”

“Not really, no,” Terese said. “I wish the Newtons had come to me. I mean, as a journalist.”

“Now who’s being naïve?”

Terese considered that before nodding. “Fair.”

Still, the story arc of emails, evolving from desperation to anger to finally despair, felt natural. Then a week ago, after months of no contact, Ronald Prine received an email that police claim came from Jackie Newton’s home ISP. It simply read:

We haven’t forgotten what you did to us.

And then, two days before the murder, one final email:

You think you can just destroy our lives and not pay any price. Get ready.

“Overkill,” Myron said.

“Come again?”

He explained what Win had said. “Did Jackie Newton make any statement?”

“Just that she insists she’s innocent.”

“And her father?”

“He tried to take the fall, but he doesn’t have the physical capacity to have done it.”

“That can’t be good for her,” Myron said. “The dad thinking he has to take the fall. Makes her look guilty.”

“Right. Gallagher got him to retract.”

“That’s her attorney, right? Speaking of which, can I talk to Jackie Newton tomorrow?”

“Gallagher said if you’ll sign up as part of her legal team, yes, you can speak to Jackie. First thing in the morning.” Terese checked the time. “It’s getting late. Why don’t you take a shower and we can get into bed?”

“You’re good with the ideas.”

“There’s another terry-cloth robe in the bathroom. You can put it on if you want.”

“And if I don’t want?”

“You be you. Go.”

Myron didn’t have to be told twice.

An hour later, when they lay spent in the dark, Myron pulled Terese in close for that perfect drift-off-to-sleep spoon.

Terese whispered, “What are you thinking?”

“That you smell good.”

She smiled. “What else?”

He thought about it. “For tonight, can that be enough?”

“Hold me closer.”

His arm was loose around her waist. He pulled her in tight, closing his eyes, feeling the warmth of her skin.

“Closer,” she whispered.

“Any closer and I’ll be in front of you.”

“Now you’re catching on.”

Chapter Thirty-One

You need to sign these.”

Kelly Gallagher, the public defender assigned to Jackie Newton, clicked the pen and handed it to Myron. Gallagher was younger than Myron expected, probably no more than thirty, with a wet-pavement-gray suit that seemed to be fraying in live time. He wore a tie loose enough to double as a belt. His white shirt may have been some newfangled cream color, but it looked more like it had suffered a laundry accident.

“What am I signing?” Myron asked.

“It’s like I told Terese,” Gallagher said. “If you want to get in and talk to Jackie, you need to be part of her defense team. I know you passed the bar in New York, but Pennsylvania has bar reciprocity. So I need you to sign here. And here.”

Myron skimmed it over as he took hold of the pen.