Creep - Jennifer Hillier [110]
“Ethan Wolfe.”
She exhaled slowly. “You think he had something to do with her leaving?”
“So he is the one she cheated on him with. I can tell by the look on your face.”
His wife didn’t respond.
“You’re seriously going to play this game?” Jerry said, exasperated.
Annie’s frown deepened. “This is my job we’re talking about. What I do is confidential. Just like what you do is confidential.”
“Yeah, and how’s that working out for us?” Jerry didn’t bother to rein in his sarcasm. “Sheila Tao is missing, her fiancé’s going crazy wondering if she’s okay, I’m discovering all kinds of skeletons in her closet like sex addiction, online cheating, an affair with her teaching assistant, and you, my wife, might have been able to provide answers to this whole thing days ago if we were the kind of couple who actually talked to each other about our goddamned jobs. She’s your patient. You care what happens to her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” Annie’s eyes misted. “I also consider her a friend.”
“And she was my teacher.”
“What are you . . .” Annie’s face showed confusion, then she blinked. “Oh, right. You took that night class at PSSU way back, when she was teaching under her married name. I can’t believe I never put that together. Mind you, in the past couple of years, we talked a lot more about her personal life than we did mine.”
His wife was quiet for a long moment. Then her mouth twitched. He had her.
“You used the word missing,” she finally said. “Is she missing missing or did she leave?”
Jerry told her about the tape he’d gotten from the Briar Woods security guard. “She looked fine, like she was sleeping, but the driver wasn’t Wolfe. Her phone message to Morris when she canceled the wedding—”
“You heard it? How did she sound?”
“Like a woman breaking up with her fiancé. Upset, crying. Said she was leaving town to go to rehab. Didn’t want Morris to follow her. Apologized a bunch of times.”
“Shit,” Annie said again, thinking hard. Finally she looked at Jerry. “All right, I don’t care. I need to know Sheila’s okay, and right now I don’t know that she is. So screw confidentiality. Ask me whatever you want and I’ll tell you what I can.”
Jerry kissed her hand. “I would never let this jeopardize your career, you know that.”
Her smile was anxious. “I know.”
It was his turn to think for a moment. “Okay, so I’ve met Ethan Wolfe. I didn’t like him—something about him seemed off. He was twitchy. He maintained eye contact but he was trying too hard to convince me they weren’t having an affair. Were they getting it on?”
Annie’s nod was firm. “The affair lasted about three months, but he pursued her long before that. It ended when Sheila got engaged to Morris. Ethan flipped out when she suggested he work with a new adviser. Threatened to release a sex video they’d made. It would have ruined her career.”
Jerry felt a flutter in his stomach, something that always happened when his instincts were right on the money. “Release it how?”
“Internet.”
“So he is an asshole.” Jerry grinned, triumphant. “I knew it. What’d she do then?”
In contrast, Annie’s face was grim. “At first she played along, gave him what he wanted. Didn’t transfer him.” Annie looked as if she were about to add something more, but then stopped. “He dangled that video over her head. After a while, she became convinced he didn’t really have it, because they did quarrel a couple of times. If he had it, he’d have used it.”
“But what about her job?”
“She was prepared to risk it. If Ethan didn’t have the tape, he wouldn’t have proof, and she thought the university would back her if it came down to he said, she said. She was waiting it out. Though she did come clean with Morris about her sex addiction and the affair.”
But not about the tape, Jerry thought. Not that he blamed Sheila. The big guy wouldn’t have been able to handle it. “Was she scared of Wolfe? Did he threaten her physically?”
“She didn’t mention anything like that to me. If I’d thought she was in any physical danger, I’d have told her to call the cops. But there was psychological