Chapter 5 - The Alibi I Gave Him
Claire was already in a booth when I arrived.
The diner smelled like burnt coffee and bacon grease. A waitress in a red apron was arguing with a delivery driver near the counter. Two retired men sat three booths away discussing the Mets as if the season depended on their analysis.
Ordinary life.
I had spent years building rooms where people lowered their voices when I entered.
Nobody in that diner cared who I was.
It felt almost clean.
Claire had Isabelle's hair but not her softness. She wore it cut to her jaw now, threaded with gray. A small navy suitcase sat against the wall beside her.
She did not stand when I approached.
"You came alone?"
"Yes."
She looked through the window toward the parking lot anyway.
"Sit."
I did.
For a while she stirred coffee she was not drinking.
Then she pushed the suitcase toward me with her foot.
"Don't turn this into evidence before you remember it was her life."
"I'm trying."
"Try harder."
I opened it.
Inside were three sets of children's clothes, pajamas, two stuffed animals, toiletries, photocopies in a folder, and a paperback novel with a grocery receipt marking the page.
No secret ledger.
No hidden account.
No dramatic confession.
Just the things a mother packed when she expected to sleep somewhere else with her children.
A purple sweater of Olivia's lay folded on top.
I recognized it because I had once complained that Isabelle bought the same sweater in three sizes.
"She grows," Isabelle had said.
"That's what clothes stores are for."
"Planning ahead."
The old joke made my throat close.
Claire watched me.
"She wasn't taking them away forever."
I looked up.
"What?"
"She wanted space. She wanted you to come to Connecticut on weekends. She wanted you to decide whether you could be their father without being everyone else's boss first."
I looked back into the suitcase.
"She thought I'd let her go?"
"No."
The answer came immediately.
"That's why she was leaving while you were in Boston."
I had been scheduled to fly to Boston Thursday morning for a meeting. Sebastian knew that. He had arranged the car.
A waitress arrived and asked if I wanted coffee.
I said yes.
My voice sounded normal.
When she walked away, Claire said, "There was one other thing."
I almost laughed.
"There's always one other thing."
"Not a conspiracy, Dominic. A conversation."
She reached into her purse and pulled out her phone.
"Isabelle left me a voicemail Tuesday night. I saved it because it was the last one."
She did not hand me the phone.
She played it on the table between us.
Isabelle's voice filled the little booth.
Tired. Low. Alive.
"Hey. It's me. Don't call back tonight. Seb's still here and I don't want another argument. He knows about Thursday. He keeps saying I'm humiliating Dom, like leaving a marriage is a press conference. I told him this isn't his decision. He said I don't understand what happens when people think Dominic can't control his own house. I swear, Claire, sometimes I think they all love the idea of him more than they love him. Anyway. I'll call you after drop-off tomorrow. Love you."
The message ended.
A coffee cup touched the table in front of me.
I stared at it until the surface stopped shaking.
"Reyes has that?"
"Yes."
"And she still couldn't arrest him?"
"For arguing with his sister-in-law? No."
"He lied about knowing she was leaving."
"Did he?"
I thought back.
Had I ever asked him directly?
No.
I had asked who hated me enough to kill my wife.
Sebastian had given me names.
I had asked which rival had people near Garden City.
Sebastian had given me locations.
I had asked who might have known Isabelle's route.
He had reminded me that anyone could follow a predictable school schedule.
I had never asked, Did you know my wife was leaving me tomorrow?
Because I had never known she was leaving.
"The police suspected him?"
"They looked at him."
"How hard?"
Claire's mouth twisted.
"Ask Reyes."
I did.
She met me two hours later in an interview room at Nassau County headquarters.
No entourage. No lawyer.
That alone made her look at me differently.
She put a thick case folder on the table but kept her hand on it.
"You don't get to take this."
"I know."
"You don't photograph pages."
"I know."
"And if you decide to visit anybody mentioned in here with six friends and a trunk full of tools, I will personally make sure your grandchildren hear about the stupidest decision of your life."
"I get it."
She sat.
"Do you?"
I looked at her.
"No. But I'm trying."
That seemed to satisfy her enough to open the file.
The original investigation had been wider than I knew.
Isabelle was shot at 8:17 a.m. on the far edge of the preschool parking lot after walking Olivia and Sophie toward the entrance. Nora was still strapped into the rear seat because Isabelle intended to take her to a pediatric appointment afterward.
A parent heard Isabelle arguing with a man near the driver's side of her SUV.
The witness remembered a dark baseball cap and a dark blue vehicle parked two rows over.
No clear face.
No readable plate.
The lot camera covered the front doors, not the south row.
"We checked Sebastian," Reyes said. "His phone showed activity near Maspeth before eight and again after nine. He said he was at your freight yard. Employees backed him up."
"Phone activity isn't location."
"Now you're interested in procedure?"
I let that pass.
She turned a page.
"His car had no E-ZPass record that morning because he said he took a company vehicle. We asked which one. Your operations office gave us a black Escalade assigned to the Queens yard."
"Blue car."
"Dark colors are unreliable in witness memory. Especially under trees and morning shadow."
"Who gave you the vehicle assignment?"
Reyes looked at me.
"You did."
I stared at the page.
Then I remembered.
Not the question.
The room.
My attorney beside me. Sebastian across from me. A detective asking whether my brother had access to another vehicle that morning.
And me saying, Seb was in Queens. I spoke to him.
I had spoken to him at 7:12.
By phone.
He told me he was in Queens.
I had turned his statement into my memory.
"I gave him the alibi," I said.
May you like
Reyes did not answer.
She did not need to.
