I nodded, knowing that Spencer was never going to have a legal father. When Jason got home that night, I told him everything I had learned about the adoption procedure. That was the last time we talked about it.
The paperwork isn’t important. Spencer knows who his parents are. We have Jason’s name. As far as anyone is concerned, Jason is Spencer’s father, and that’s all that matters, right?
4
The day after Rachel Sutton walked into the Midtown South Precinct, Detective Corrine Duncan received a copy of a brief report filed by the desk officer. She found herself shaking her head as she read.
She skipped down to the signature line at the bottom of the page. “L. Kendall.”
Corrine had no direct knowledge of Officer Kendall, but immediately formed a mental image of him. Him, almost certainly, not only because of raw statistical odds but from the details of the report itself. The judgmental quotation marks around “encouraged” and “suggested.” The way he noted that she “presented calmly and did not appear distraught,” as if everyone knew that good victims cry.
Corrine could already imagine the conversation that might have ensued had Rachel Sutton not left the precinct. What were you wearing? Why were you alone with him?
Old-school. L. Kendall may as well have written don’t believe what she might say across the top in all caps. This was how police took a report when they meant to signal to the prosecution not to bother. If nothing else, it would give a defense attorney ammunition if the defendant were ever charged.
Corrine wanted to think she had never written a report like that.
She didn’t start out on the job with NYPD. Her first two years were as a patrol officer in Hempstead, on Long Island in Nassau County. Policing was different there. With fewer than 120 officers, the department expected officers to investigate their own cases, with the exception of major crimes. So she learned things like why a child abuse victim might accuse an innocent person (to protect a guilty parent), why domestic violence complainants often didn’t want to prosecute (out of fear or even love), and why sexual abuse complaints had more layers than any onion. “Embarrassment” didn’t begin to describe the dynamics.
But in the NYPD, a patrol officer like L. Kendall didn’t need to know all that. He took the report and pushed the paper to a specialty unit for follow-up.
She had already googled Jason Powell. The name hadn’t rung a bell in the context of a police report, but the search results immediately jogged her memory. According to his bio on New York University’s website, he had a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Stanford, a PhD from Harvard, and was the somebody-something endowed chair in human rights investments and professor of economics. Despite the impressiveness of that résumé, it barely made the first page of Google hits. Powell was better known as an author and speaker. The first sentence of his Wikipedia listing: “Jason Powell is the New York Times bestselling author of Equalonomics, the chair of FSS Consulting, and a frequent media commentator.”
Corrine preferred fiction, personally, but even she had heard of Equalonomics. About four years ago it had been one of those books that everyone read—or pretended to read, in Corrine’s opinion—to seem well informed.
Now, according to Powell’s website, he hosted a podcast bearing the same name as his bestselling book. His Twitter account—a combination of business news, liberal politics, and snark—had 226,000 followers. Cosmo had named him one of the ten sexiest “gingers.”
She recalled seeing the author on Morning Joe a couple of years ago. The panelists fawned over Powell, asking whether he might be interested in running for office someday. It probably didn’t hurt that he was nice looking—trim, clean-cut, but with a little edge. A bit too pretty for Corrine’s taste, but to each her own.
Next, she googled “FSS Consulting.” Fair Share Strategies. She clicked the “About” page. The company provided “human rights and social justice due diligence” to investors and investment groups.
She wiggled her mouse, clicked on “Our Team,” and scrolled down. The list was short, only two names in addition to Powell’s: Zachary Hawkins, Executive Director, and Elizabeth Marks, Researcher.
There was nothing more she was going to learn from her computer. She picked up her phone.
The voice that answered sounded apprehensive, even slightly annoyed. “Hello?”
Corrine asked if she was speaking with Rachel Sutton—she was—and then identified herself as a detective following up on the complaint that was filed yesterday.
“Oh, of course,” Rachel said apologetically. “I’m so glad you called. It seems like no one is listening to me. I was positive the officer at the precinct was going to file it at the bottom of a dumpster.”
“It’s all on computers, so . . .”
“Right. So now what happens?”
“Now, if you don’t mind, you get to repeat everything you already told Officer Kendall to me. We’ll go from there.”
Rachel laughed softly. “Are you going to roll your eyes and interrupt me every few seconds, trying to make it sound like I’m lying?”
“Was that your experience at the precinct?”
“The guy was a jerk. I mean, I sort of expected that when I reported it at FSS because Jason’s the boss. So I wound up at the police station, but that managed to be worse—”
“Okay, we’ll talk all about it, but in person.” Most detectives arranged interviews at the precinct, which for the special victims unit meant a station house on 123rd Street in an area of East Harlem that many victims were afraid to enter. Corrine, however, believed she learned a lot about people by seeing where they lived. And sitting down in a victim’s living room was a way to begin earning her trust. “Are you home now?”
“Yeah. Give me an hour to get cleaned up.”
And already Corrine had learned something about Rachel Sutton. She was the kind of person who tidied up before talking to a detective about a sex abuse claim. That fact meant nothing on its own, but Corrine made a mental note of it, because Corrine liked to think she noticed everything.
Rachel’s apartment in Chelsea was one of those generic new buildings popping up across Manhattan, all floor-to-ceiling glass. Ticky-tacky fishbowls, Corrine called them. Corrine, on the other hand, had a house—an actual hand-to-God house, with a yard and a driveway—because she’d bought in Harlem before hipsters decided Harlem was cool. A five-minute walk to work was only one reason Corrine had asked to come back to SVU after working homicides for four years.
She told the doorman she was there to see Rachel Sutton, gesturing toward the badge hanging from the chain around her neck. Years ago, after only two weeks as a plainclothes detective, Corrine had opted for that placement. No one had confused her with a nanny or a housekeeper when she wore a blue uniform.
Rachel answered her apartment door in cropped boyfriend jeans and a black tank top. Her long dark-brown hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, and she had applied her makeup in that way that made it look like she wasn’t wearing makeup. As Rachel gestured for her to take a seat in the living room, Corrine noticed a smear of ink on the back of Rachel’s hand, like a temporary tattoo, a couple of inches from a Tiffany-cut solitaire that Corrine guessed was a full two carats.