Next, I do as Mulroney suggested and search through my emails for any reference to Forty-Second Street. There’s nothing. But when I sit down to flesh out and update my timeline, I realize that with Mulroney’s help, I’m definitely making progress.
MONDAY
evening: dinner, TV, argument
TUESDAY
7:00: still in bed
9:00-ish: took call from Dr. Erling
9:00–9:17: sent emails
9:30: hung out at café
11:00-ish: left for 42nd Street
Before 3:00: possibly witnessed someone get injured???; lost phone
3:00 to 3:30-ish: called WorkSpace
WEDNESDAY
Noon-ish: bought food at Eastside Eats, East 7th St.
Afternoon: walked near Tompkins Square Park
THURSDAY
8:05: arrived at Greenbacks
Now I turn to my laptop and google rigor mortis again, doing a deeper dive than I’d been able to in the car with Roger. It turns out there are other variables besides air temperature that can stall its onset or hasten the process. Muscle mass or recent exercise, for instance. But the bottom line is that the stiffening of muscles begins a few hours after death, reaches its peak approximately twelve hours after death, remains that way for twelve more hours, and then subsides, completely dissipating by the thirty-six-hour mark.
Which makes one thing pretty clear: Since Jaycee’s body already seemed frozen when I accidentally kicked it on Wednesday at three thirty, she must have been killed much earlier, possibly Tuesday. By Friday, her body would have passed out of rigor.
I keep reading. Rigor isn’t the only factor a coroner relies on in determining time of death. There’s also body temperature, stomach contents, and something called lividity, the settling of blood in the lowest surface of the body postmortem, causing purplish-red discoloration of the skin. All those years ago, the Millerstown area coroner obviously took those factors into consideration when making his or her determination. But still, if I’d been completely forthright, it would have certainly been of help.
I take a long, deep breath and type “Jaycee Long” into the search bar. I probably should have done that six or seven weeks ago when I first started discussing my past with Dr. Erling, but I wasn’t able to summon the nerve.
To my surprise, there’s next to nothing online. It seems like the area newspaper that serves my hometown didn’t begin digitally archiving stories until about two years after the murder. I’m going to have to trek to the library out there and comb through microfilm to read news coverage of the crime.
Though maybe I won’t have to. If I’m lucky, Chief Nowak will be amenable to sharing details with Roger about the original investigation, including how seriously the mother and her boyfriend were viewed as suspects.
Mercifully, the intercom jars me from my thoughts, signaling that dinner has arrived. I pay at the door, set the food out on the counter, and pour myself a glass of wine. My whole body is vibrating with tension.
By the time Hugh arrives home, it’s after eight—8:25, actually. He gives me a quick hug and yanks off his tie.
“So sorry. The case is such a mess.”
He returns from the bedroom a few minutes later wearing jeans but still in his blue-collared shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. The sight of him dressed like that fills me with tenderness. He’d worn his shirt that way on our second date—our third encounter—and the night when I began to feel the first spark of desire.
Desire. I realize that the last time we had sex was the Sunday before I fell apart.
While I microwave the chicken piccata, Hugh grabs a barstool at the island and I end up serving the dinner there. “Do you want wine?” I ask, before sliding onto a stool next to him.
“No, I still have work and I’ll need to focus.” He drops his gaze to my half-full wineglass. “You think it’s okay for you?”
“I’ve been having wine here and there, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem. . . . Hugh, I know this isn’t the ideal moment, but I have to talk to you. I put it off before because of all the pressure you’re under at work, and I realize I shouldn’t have.”
“Is it about the neurologist?” He levels his gaze at me, his face tensing with concern.
“No, there’s nothing beyond what I told you, unless the MRI turns up something on Friday. But there are a few things I need you to know.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“I wouldn’t use that word. But there’s stuff you should be aware of. First, the investigator I hired called with a couple of updates.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Those tissues that were in my coat pocket? It turns out the blood on them isn’t mine. Mulroney—that’s his name—had an analysis done, and it’s type A positive. I’m O negative.”
“Wow. So whose blood is it?”
“I don’t have a clue, but I keep coming back to something Gabby said—that maybe when I was missing, I tried to help a person who’d been injured.” A stray thought crosses my mind as I’m talking. “Wait, what’s your blood type? You aren’t A positive, are you?”
“Gosh, I’m sure I knew at one point, but I can’t recall at the moment.” He smiles ruefully. “But if you’re thinking you might have taken a swing at me and bloodied my nose, that didn’t happen.”
“Of course not, I’m just trying to put all the pieces together. . . . Mulroney also says that video footage he’s secured shows me hanging around the East Village on Wednesday. That’s where that food place actually was. And I apparently looked pretty disheveled.”
He frowns. “Like you’d been injured?”
“No, I guess the same as on Thursday, as if I hadn’t showered.”
“But why the East Village?”
“I don’t know—I can’t remember the last time I was there. Can you?”
“Not really. I mean, we had dinner downtown a month or so ago, but that was the West Village.” He spears a piece of chicken with a fork and chews it absentmindedly. “That all the guy has so far?”
“For now, yes, but more will come in time.”
“Okay, I guess it’s a start.”
“There’s still something else I need to tell you. Not about Mulroney.”
I let it all spill out: my deception years ago, the way it came back to me the other night while sitting alone in our den, and my interview with the police today. Before my eyes, his expression morphs from perplexed to baffled to shocked. Not at all what I was banking on.
“Please, say something, Hugh,” I insist after I’ve finished and he’s sitting there, mouth agape. “You look horrified.”
“Ally, that’s ridiculous. I’m not horrified at all. But it’s a lot to digest.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. But I’ve been nervous about sharing all this with you. And like I said, I wanted to tell you earlier—but you’ve had so much on your plate.”
“You can’t hold things back from me, no matter how much pressure I’m under. I need to know this stuff.”
“You’re right,” I say, feeling a fresh twinge of guilt. “I’ll do better going forward.”
“It didn’t cross your mind that it might be smart to have a lawyer with you today?”