212 eh-3

by Alafair Burke

  “My phone’s private.”

  Ellie needed Stacy to be the one to spell it out. If Ellie’s instincts were wrong and she voiced them aloud, she’d lose all leverage.

  “See, that’s what’s bugging me, Stacy. You let us check out your apartment—your bathroom, your closet—no problem. But one little glance at your cell phone, and now you’re all about your privacy. We can straighten this out just by looking at your screen there. We see the digits of Katie Battle’s phone number, and we’ll know she wasn’t listed in your directory. But I have a feeling we’re not going to see just her number. We’re going to see her name, and then we’ll know you’re lying to us about not knowing her. And that’ll be that.”

  Ellie saw Stacy’s fingers twitch against her phone.

  “And don’t even think about trying to delete anything right now, Stacy, or we’ll pry it out of your hands if we have to, and things will get extremely unpleasant for everyone.”

  The girl froze, and Ellie spotted a look of panic cross her face before the warm smile returned.

  “I really don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “That’s correct, and you don’t have any right to. We came here thinking you could help us out, and you assured us you would. But I’ve got to tell you that, right now, Stacy? You’re about ten seconds away from being taken into custody as part of a homicide investigation.”

  “A homicide?” Her eyes widened beneath the makeup.

  “Turns out your phone number is the single link between two women who were murdered today.”

  “Murdered?”

  “The call to your phone yesterday? The woman who dialed your number was killed tonight.”

  “Miranda? Miranda’s dead?” And with that, Stacy Schecter’s black eyeliner began to stream like the cascades of paint on her canvases.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  10:30 P.M.

  Stacy Schecter was a different woman without the makeup. The rock-and-roll eyeliner and pale face powder were gone, rubbed away by tears and half a box of tissues. The dry, droll attitude had dissolved as well. She looked at Ellie across the table with the puffy, red-rimmed eyes of a scared and lonely child.

  “I don’t know why I can’t keep it together,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “I hardly knew the girl.”

  “You knew her at some level. You had her number in your cell phone.”

  Because her apartment had scarcely enough room for one person to sit, Stacy had agreed to come in to the precinct to be interviewed. It had been half an hour already, and only now had she calmed down sufficiently to get her words out.

  “I didn’t even know her real name. To me, she was Miranda. No last name, but that would have been fake also.”

  “How did you know her?” Ellie asked.

  “We met last year at a friend’s party. We didn’t stay in touch or anything. We just hit it off, and so I put her number in my phone.”

  J. J. stood with his arms crossed behind Stacy in the back corner of the interrogation room. He rolled his eyes when Ellie glanced at him.

  “So why was she calling you yesterday?”

  “I told you. It was a hang-up. I figured if she wanted to talk to me she’d call back. People pull up the wrong number on their cells all the time.”

  “We’re getting the records from the cell phone company, Stacy. They’re going to show any other calls between you and Katie, or Miranda. And I have a feeling we’re going to find a lot more calls than we’d expect to find between two women who met at a party a year ago but didn’t stay in touch.”

  Stacy pressed her eyes closed. She was thinking. Hard. She was smart enough to recognize the problem. She needed one more press.

  “What are you hiding, Stacy? You obviously cared about this woman.”

  She shook her head in frustration. “I wish I didn’t. Jesus, how did I get myself into this?”

  “Into what? Were you and Katie involved in drugs?” It was a classic interrogation technique. Offer the suspect one explanation—a wrong one—so the human need to correct an error takes over. “We can work something out. Finding the person who did this to her is a lot more important than whatever you’re holding back.”

  “We don’t do drugs.”

  “So what was it?”

  She closed her eyes again. Still thinking.

  “I’m not testifying.”

  “Whoa, where did that come from, Stacy? We’re just trying to figure out why your telephone number was the common link between two women who were murdered today.”

  “I told you, I don’t know anything about that other number. Only Miranda’s.”

  “Fine. We’ll talk about the other one later. But right now you need to tell us what you know about Katie Battle.”

  “You ask me to sign anything, or try to use my name, and I’ll deny it all. I’ll be out of here, and then I’ll bail.”

  Ellie looked at Rogan, who gave her a look that said the decision was hers. She nodded her agreement.

  “I met Miranda last year through a date. Set up by an escort service. We were on, you know, the same date. For the same client. We worked together another couple of times. Since then, we’ve swapped a few dates. We sort of have the same look.” She looked down at her tattered, paint-smeared sweatshirt. “Or at least we have the same look when we’re working.”

  Ellie could see a superficial resemblance. Dark hair. Pale skin. Intense eyes.

  “And by working, you mean sex for money.”

  “You got it,” she said. The attitude was on its way back. “You’re a cop. I assume you know what working at an escort service means. I was with the service for about six months last year, but now I’m strictly independent. I can find dates on my own, and I get to keep the money for myself.”

  “It’s dangerous working on your own.” Before getting her detective shield, Ellie had worked more than her fair share of prostitution decoy operations.

  “I’m alive. Miranda isn’t. I guess I keep myself safe.”

  For now, Ellie wanted to say. But arguing with Stacy about her idiotic decisions was not the priority.

  “Even after I left the service, Miranda and I would occasionally swap dates with each other. It was a no-no for her because of her agreement with the service. I’ve got an arrangement going with another couple of girls there, too, so that’s why I don’t want my name getting back to them.”

  “Who’s the them?”

  “The service.”

  “And where do we get in touch with them?”

  She paused, but didn’t bother arguing. “They call themselves Prestige Parties.”

  “And how often did you and Miranda swap dates?”

  She shook her head. “Not a lot. Maybe three or four times since I went out on my own a year ago. When I saw her number on my cell yesterday, I assumed that’s why she was calling. But then she hung up, and I guess I wasn’t excited enough about working to call her back.” Her bottom lip began to quiver. “That could be why she was calling, you know. About her date tonight. She could have been calling to see if I could…I could have been the one tonight.”

  “But you weren’t. So stop feeling guilty, and stop feeling sorry for yourself. You and Katie knew what you were doing—”

  “So she deserved it? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Of course not. No one deserves what she went through. But you were both in this. And to some extent, you were in it together. She wouldn’t wish this upon you, just like you aren’t happy it happened to her instead of you. Deal with it. You can help us here.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Do you have any idea who her client might have been tonight?”

  “No. She didn’t have a lot of regulars. She relied on the service to set things up.”

  “And given how Prestige works, if they tell us they don’t know the name of a client, should we be willing to believe that?”

  “Actually, yeah, that’s believable. They were pretty shitty, you know? They talk
ed a big game about all they were doing for us, but they were no better than any street pimp selling you to whoever happened to call in. Supposedly they took credit cards so you’d have some leverage over these guys, but it seemed like half the jobs I went on, they told me it was a cash deal.”

  “All right, we’ll press them to try to find out who Katie was with tonight. Let’s talk about the other telephone number. According to the phone records, an NYU student named Megan Gunther called you in May.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Megan.”

  “You didn’t think you knew anyone named Katie Battle either.” J. J. stepped forward and placed a photograph of Megan Gunther on the table in front of Stacy. She winced at the sight of the dead woman on the metal gurney.

  “Take a good look,” Ellie urged. “People’s appearance can change after they…pass.”

  They both watched carefully as Stacy took in the image for a full five seconds before finally shaking her head. “No, I’m sure. I’ve never seen that girl before.”

  Ellie eyed her skeptically, evoking a frustrated chuckle from her witness. “Look, I just got done confessing to whoring myself out. Why would I lie to you about knowing this girl? Maybe it really was a wrong number. Go ahead. Pull up all the phone records you want. You’ll find a few calls between me and Miranda, or Katie, or whatever. But this girl? I swear, you’re not going to find anything.”

  Ellie was startled by the buzz of her cell phone at her waist. She checked the screen. It was a text message from Jess. “Just saw U on TV outside Royalton. Thought Capt. America splurged till they said dead realtor. Sorry you’re working. But can I have the bed 2nite?”

  “Damn it. J. J., they’ve got Katie on the news already. It’s out there. We have to tell the family.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  11:15 P.M.

  Ellie hated nursing homes. They looked like 1972 and smelled like Pine-Sol, bad milk, and lima beans.

  Her father’s mother had lived in a nursing home in Wichita, but not for long. She’d made it on her own, even after burying her only son, until she was ninety-three years old. Finally, when she couldn’t manage getting in and out of the tub by herself, she’d known better than to ask her daughter-in-law for help. Ellie’s mother was more a care-receiving type than a caregiver. So Gram had checked herself in to Shady Pines. Six months later, she was gone.

  Ellie would have preferred to stick Rogan with notifying the next of kin, but her partner knew Megan Gunther’s phone records backward and forward. While she’d been interviewing Courtney Chang and grilling DJ Anorexotica, he’d been studying the details. He knew the dates, the patterns, the numbers. He needed to be the one to work with Stacy. She might not realize she knew Megan Gunther, but she did. Under some other name. Using some other phone number. And that call in May from Gunther’s apartment phone to Stacy’s cell was the key. She just had to remember.

  Taking in her surroundings at Glen Forrest Communities, Ellie could see the attempts that had been made. Individual units with closed doors lined the hallways, a step up from the limited privacy her grandmother had found behind cotton curtains. And bowls of potpourri in the lobby masked the usual smell. But the place still gave her the heebie-jeebies.

  Ellie didn’t like to think about what would happen to her when she was old. No way would she ever be in a place like this. But no way would she ever do what her father did. There had to be other choices.

  Behind a gray metal desk in the lobby sat a heavyset woman, her eyeglasses dangling from a rainbow striped nylon cord. A copy of People rested on her ample bosom. Ellie watched the woman’s eyes shut and then snap open as she approached sleep only to have it snatched from her. After three separate cycles, Ellie held up her shield and announced her presence.

  “I need to see a resident named Phyllis Battle.”

  “Sorry about that,” the woman said, suppressing a yawn. “Graveyard shift gets rough.”

  “Been there.”

  “Room 127, Officer, but it’s very late. I’m sure Mrs. Battle would prefer that you return in the morning.”

  “I need to speak with her now.”

  “Is there a problem? Because, well, at least around here, Mrs. Battle has earned that last name of hers, if you know what I mean. You’re better off not waking her.”

  “I’m afraid I have some hard news for Mrs. Battle. It’s about her daughter.”

  “Katie? She’s not in trouble, is she?”

  “You know the daughter?”

  “I wouldn’t call it knowing her. She’s good about seeing her mother. Not all of them are. She appreciates that I get on better with Mrs. Battle than some of the other workers here, so she makes a point of making sure I can reach her. She’s always messing with her gadgets, you know, checking her messages and such.”

  “And Katie pays for her mother’s care here?”

  “I wouldn’t be knowing that for sure. You’d have to check billing, but yes, my guess is Katie takes care of the bulk of it. She’s Mrs. Battle’s only visitor. And very regular lately. Her mother had a stroke a few months ago. She and I were watching the television together, and they announced that Sydney Pollack had died. Mrs. Battle was saying that The Way We Were was her favorite movie, and then all of a sudden she couldn’t talk anymore. It’s funny how those kinds of things get filed away in the brain together.”

  Ellie’s mind worked the same way, but her random connections tended to be linked to her cases. She remembered that same rainy day. She and Rogan overheard the news when they ran into a corner deli for some hot coffee. It was the same day they’d found Robert Mancini dead inside Sam Sparks’s apartment. Sydney Pollack and Sam Sparks were now forever coupled in her mental library. She hated the fact that she was thinking about the Mancini case. Now. Here. When she had Katie Battle and Megan Gunther to worry about.

  “So how did Katie handle the stroke?”

  “I think it was the first real scare Katie had about her mother. She dropped everything and came here right away. Even managed to beat the ambulance and rode to the hospital. Since then, she’s been real regular with her visits.”

  “And what are your thoughts about how Katie pays for that care?”

  “She’s a very successful real estate agent. Busy, busy, busy. Mrs. Battle is so proud. She drives the other ladies crazy, going on and on about Katie.”

  “And that’s her only source of income?”

  “What are you getting at, Officer? Has Katie done something wrong?”

  “No,” Ellie said, shaking her head. “But like I said, I have some bad news.”

  “Not about Katie.”

  “It’s bad news, ma’am. I need to speak with her.”

  “Everything’s okay though, right?”

  “If you could point me to her room.”

  “I’d better go with you. This will—well, this could kill her, quite frankly.”

  As the woman rose from her seat, Ellie caught her wiping a tear away from her cheek. Maybe Ellie was missing the point of places like Shady Pines and Glenn Forrest. Katie Battle had not been the only person to care about her mother.

  Stacy Schecter stared at the pages and pages of phone records that the good-looking black detective had spread in a layer across the laminate tabletop. She’d initially been skeptical of this enterprise. She did not want to think she was the common link.

  But a lot had happened since the blond detective suddenly ran off. Now her partner had more than just Miranda’s cell phone and the records of whatever phone number they were so curious about. Now they had her phone records, too. Going way back.

  And as she focused on the section of the itemized list of phone calls from May 27 of last spring, the detectives’ theory was hard to deny. And by the look on this detective’s face, he wanted her to make the connections faster than her thoughts were moving right now.

  Stacy could feel a chain forming in her brain, but it was as if she didn’t really want the sections to come together. She didn’t want to believe that the
choices she’d made were going to put her in the middle of whatever this was turning out to be.

  Her choices. As if she’d had many.

  Whether out of decisions of her own making, or simply random fate, she was actually here, now, in a police interrogation room, staring at these records and putting together the pieces.

  It was all about May 27.

  That was the day that someone had called Stacy’s cell phone from a landline at an apartment on Fourteenth Street. It was the phone number that Stacy hadn’t recognized.

  But now that she was reviewing the records of her own cell phone for that day, she saw the significance of the date. On May 27, two hours before she had received a call from that mysterious number, she had also received a call from the woman she’d known as Miranda. Now both of the women who had called her were dead.

  Obviously there was a connection, but she just couldn’t remember. Four months was a long time.

  “Look at the other numbers on the list,” the detective urged. “Who else were you in touch with that day? It might help jog your memory.”

  “This is just a bunch of numbers to me. I don’t know my friends’ numbers. I just pull up their names in my cell phone.” She hated the sound of stress in her voice. She hated stress.

  “That’s fine, then. That’s good, in fact. If you’ve got all those numbers stored away in your phone, we just have to find them. We’ll work through your entire directory until we match these numbers up. You start from the top of your directory, read off the number, and I’ll check these logs for a match.”

  And with that they started a methodic pattern of cooperation—her reading off the numbers stored in her phone, the detective repeatedly responding with a series of nopes, occasionally encouraging her with a “Keep going” or a “We’ll find it.” Twice they’d matched numbers in her phone to entries on her phone log, but one was to the deli down the block and the other was to her sister in Seattle—nothing to help her remember the specifics of that day, let alone how Miranda fit into them.