Dan asked the questions himself. The county prosecutor wasn’t a tall man, but he had an undeniable presence. Cindy, who didn’t like him at all, called it charisma. He was blond and slick and knew how to connect with juries the way an actor would. He oozed success, confidence, and money, although the money wasn’t his own. He was married to one of the city’s most successful real estate developers, who’d bankrolled his career and his thousand-dollar suits. Dan and Lauren had an estate on the lake. A Lexus. Their eyes were on the prize. He was going places in state politics.
‘We need to stick to the facts,’ Dan told Wiley. He paced back and forth between the narrow walls of the hallway. He had the kind of hyperactive personality that couldn’t sit still. ‘Archie is going to paint you as a sleazy peeping Tom when you’re on the stand. The jury won’t like you. You better be prepared for that.’
‘It’s a hazard of the profession,’ Wiley said. ‘Nobody pays me to be liked.’
‘Tell me about the video you took in the bedroom. What exactly does it show?’
‘Like I told the doc, it shows her having sex with Nathan Skinner,’ Wiley replied. He drank more Perrier and added: ‘Me and Ferris watched it together. It doesn’t leave anything to the imagination.’
‘What was his reaction?’
‘Cold,’ Wiley said, shaking his head. ‘Ice cold. I see a lot of husbands when they face the ugly truth, you know? Most go to pieces. Big strong guys blubbering, how could she do this to me, blah blah blah. Not Ferris. He just got this frozen rage.’
‘When was this?’
‘Thanksgiving week. Late November.’
Stride thought about the timing of Wiley’s revelation. Thanksgiving week. Janine and Nathan both said that the affair ended shortly afterward. Jay also contacted a divorce lawyer named Tamara Fellowes around the same time. It wasn’t hard to connect the dots. Wiley’s video landed like a bomb in Jay’s life. It was bad enough to learn that your wife was having an affair, but even worse to know she was sleeping with someone you loathed.
Janine said he was itching to confront Nathan Skinner, but Nathan said it never happened.
Nathan said Jay would have done anything to keep Janine under his thumb, but Janine said they were headed for an amicable separation.
Who was lying?
Stride left the two men and wandered inside the apartment. It was small and furnished sparsely. Janine hadn’t spent much time decorating her secret space. His team was searching the rooms and screening surfaces for evidence of blood, in case Janine had tracked something from her house on the night of the murder. Maggie was at the apartment window, staring across Michigan Street toward Canal Park.
‘So you’ve got a big mansion up on the hill,’ she said, when Stride joined her. ‘Why do you buy a one-bedroom condo like this?’
‘Sounds like the bedroom got a lot of use,’ Stride said.
‘Well, yeah, it’s a nice love nest. She’s got a Tempur-Pedic mattress in there. Pretty good for rocking and rolling.’
‘Why didn’t we find out about this place before now?’ Stride asked.
‘Janine set up a corporate entity for lab referrals. Medicare reimbursement crap. The ownership is under the business name. There’s nothing to tie it to her. She hasn’t had the place long. Just since late July. You think she stashed the gun and jewels here that night?’
‘It would have been easy and fast,’ Stride said, ‘and it would have bought her time to get rid of them.’
‘Well, we haven’t found anything so far. No gun. No blood. Maybe this is just what Nathan said it was. Somewhere to unwind after surgery. No work, no papers, no husband. Nice bed when you want to bang an ex-cop.’
Stride shook his head. ‘No, we’re missing something. There’s something else here.’
‘You sound pretty sure.’
He looked around the apartment, but the walls gave up no secrets. ‘I know Janine, and I know Archie. If there wasn’t anything to find here, they would have told us about it weeks ago. Janine kept it hidden. This place is more than a love nest.’
He realized that the private detective, as nauseating as he was, might have more answers. He returned to the hallway and interrupted the conversation between Wiley and Dan Erickson.
‘Hey, Wiley, when you met Dr. Snow in the parking lot across the street, did she say why she was here?’ Stride asked the detective.
Wiley shrugged. ‘No.’
‘How did you find her? Did you follow her?’
‘I didn’t need to. She comes here a lot. Few times a week, for sure. All I had to do was wait.’
Stride remembered what Nathan Skinner had told him. Janine was a busy woman. They only met for sex a couple times a month. And yet she was here in her secret condominium regularly.
‘When did you remove your camera from the bedroom?’ Stride asked.
‘Thanksgiving Day. After I reported what I found to Jay, he shut down the investigation. He had what he wanted, and I needed my equipment back. Holidays are good for that sort of thing. Nobody’s around to see what you’re doing.’
‘You must have captured video of Dr. Snow when she was here alone,’ Stride said. ‘Not just with Nathan Skinner.’
‘Sure. All the time.’
‘Was there anything unusual about the rest of the videos?’
‘Nothing out of the ordinary. She wasn’t in the bedroom much when Skinner wasn’t around. Jay asked me the same thing, though.’
Stride looked up. ‘What?’
‘Jay wanted to see videos of his wife when she was alone,’ Wiley said.
‘Did he say why? Or what he was looking for?’
‘Nope.’
‘Did you show him?’ Stride asked.
‘Yeah, we watched videos for another hour or so. It was just her alone.’
‘What did you see?’
‘Nothing much,’ the detective said. ‘She came into the bedroom, had a big glass of wine with her. Undressed down to her birthday suit. She left the room and probably showered, because her hair was wet when she came back. She put on music, danced a little, took a pill, read a book on the bed for a while. That’s it.’
‘That was what Jay saw?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did he do next?’
‘He thanked me and gave me a fat bonus. End of contract. For a guy who’d just figured out he was being cuckolded, he seemed in better spirits by the time we were done. I think I even mentioned it to him. I said, hey, aren’t you mad?’
‘What did Jay say?’
‘He laughed. He said, “I don’t get mad, Melvin, I get even.”’
Stride returned to the apartment, which seemed to be the epicenter of all the problems between Jay and Janine. He ran his hands through his black hair and left his fingers laced on the back of his head. He wanted a cigarette.
‘July,’ he said to Maggie. ‘Janine bought this place in late July, right? What was going on between her and Jay that month?’
Maggie grabbed the answer from her perfect memory. ‘She turned off the spigot on Jay’s credit cards right before the Fourth.’
‘And then turned it back on a couple weeks later,’ Stride said.
‘Yeah, so? What does that have to do with the condo?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
Stride dug in his pocket and snapped on gloves. He crossed the room and went into Janine’s bedroom, where Guppo was leading the search. He saw that his team had removed the face plate of the vent on the wall, exposing the area where Melvin Wiley had placed his spy camera. The location gave a perfect vantage on the bed.
He thought about Janine spending time here alone several times a week. He saw the contents of Janine’s nightstand spread on plastic sheeting across the bed, and he examined the items, seeing nothing unusual. Tissues. Condoms. Makeup. A few jewelry items that didn’t match what had been taken from the house. Compact discs of Celtic music by Clannad. A Texas romance by Lorraine Heath. Nothing medical at all.