Page 10 of The Best Lawyer
Joe’s face went white.
“You mean to tell me Detective DePaul didn’t tell you any of this?”
“No,” he said.
“Why? Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because I knew what you’d do. What you’d say. Exactly this.”
I looked skyward and shook my head. “Has everyone around me lost their minds? The police want to question you in connection with a homicide. A homicide involving your ex-wife who you were sleeping with not very long ago. It doesn’t occur to you that maybe, just maybe, that’s not a meeting you should take without me, you know, tagging along? I mean, it would be so convenient if you knew a good defense attorney. Oh, wait …”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Joe said. “I have nothing to do with any of this. I wasn’t even in town this morning.”
“Where were you?”
He hesitated, giving me that look he always did when he wanted me to mind my own business. “You’re as bad as the cops. I was in Northville.”
“Doing what?”
“Look,” he said. “I already told all of this to Sharon. I’ve got nothing to hide. I was hoping she’d let me in to see Katy. Cass, how is she?”
I shook my head. “Not great, Joe. She’s not great.”
“You’ve got to get her out of there. She can’t spend the night in jail. She’s got to be scared to death.”
“She’s going to have to spend at least the weekend there. There won’t be a bail hearing until Monday morning.”
Joe’s face fell. “Three nights? She has to sit in jail for three nights?”
“Tom’s dead, Joe. He didn’t just slip and fall. He was stabbed. No, stabbed isn’t even the word for it. He was carved up. I’ve seen a picture. It’s brutal.”
Joe gripped his steering wheel. “This wasn’t Katy. You have to know that, right? Whatever that housekeeper saw, she’s mistaken. Have you tried talking to her?”
“No.”
“But you told Katy,” he said. “You tried to reassure her, right? She’s not alone. You’ll be there.”
I took a breath. “Joe, let’s just take a few giant steps backward, all right? Start by telling me exactly what you told Detective DePaul.”
“I already did. She asked me where I’ve been for the last twenty-four hours. I told her. I had an overnight stay in Northville. I got a big residential contract out there. I worked late last evening and got an early start this morning. By the time I got home, I saw I had a bunch of missed calls and one of them was from Detective DePaul. She wanted to see me so I came straight over. The rest, you know. Told her I can scare up a hotel receipt if she needs one.”
“Did you not notice that several of your missed calls were from me?”
“Look, I tossed my phone in my glove box this morning. I didn’t check it. How in the hell was I supposed to predict what happened?”
“You shouldn’t have come here without me. And you one hundred percent know that. So what’s going on? Why did you blow me off?”
Joe sighed. “I’m not a kid, Cass. I handled my own business. This isn’t something you have to fix for me.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. I haven’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t in town. I haven’t even talked to Katy in over two months. Close to three. I thought this whole thing was a joke, if I’m being honest. It’s incredible. Katy could not be guilty of this. She’d never hurt anybody. And she and Tom were trying to work things out.”
“You know that how?”
“She told me. It’s one of the reasons we ended things.”
“You’ll be called as a witness if this goes to trial,” I said. “You do realize that. Katy’s been cheating on her husband. It’s not going to matter that you claim you ended it. The prosecution is going to want to show how messed up their marriage was.”
