“Thank you for coming here, Mr. and Mrs. Gunther. I’ll admit that I didn’t know your daughter well. But she was a good person—to me and to her friends. And she was smart and sweet and, just, a really good person.” She was starting to stray from her prepared words. “And I just want you to know, and I swear I mean this from the bottom of my heart, that if I could rewind the clock—”
Her voice cracked, and Patricia Gunther choked back a sob.
“If I could rewind the clock and change places with Megan, I would. I really would.”
Ellie blinked back a tear forming in the corner of her own eye as Patricia leaped from her chair. Tanya initially flinched as Patricia grabbed her in a tight embrace, but then returned the hug.
“We don’t blame you, Tanya. We forgive you. Our daughter was a good person.”
Jonas was on his feet, holding on to his wife as she cried. “Megan would want us to forgive you,” he said.
As Ellie watched the Gunthers console the woman who set in motion the chain of events that eventually led to the death of their only daughter, she marveled at the ability of human beings to still surprise her. Just as love had kept Laura Bandon at her husband’s side, it had helped these two forgive not only Tanya, but each other. It had blinded Sam Sparks from seeing whatever part of Nick Dillon killed Robert Mancini and Katie Battle. It had caused Katie Battle to choose her mother’s care over her own security. It had brought a son to kill to protect his mother from public humiliation. And it had kept Tanya Abbott running to the person who abused her as a child, because it was the first feeling of love that she had ever known from a man.
Love was, in fact, powerful.
Powerful enough that for just one second, Ellie thought about the father she had lost, the mother who demanded more from her children than she could ever give as a parent, and the brother who was her best and sometimes only friend, and wondered if there were any limits to what she would do for them. And for just a moment, she held the gaze of the man on the opposite side of the conference table and could believe that the ties of a different kind of devotion might eventually find her.
Author’s Note
Like all of my earlier novels, 212 was inspired by real-world events. If the revelation of the hidden strings tying fiction to life ruins the magic for you, skip the next five paragraphs and jump forward to the shout-outs.
Many readers will have recognized at least one of the headline-capturing cases that made its way into 212. On March 12, 2008, then New York Governor Eliot Spitzer admitted during a live press conference that he was the mysterious “Client 9” listed in a federal criminal indictment involving an escort service called Emperors’ Club VIP. In the ensuing days, the political career of a man once mentioned as a potential presidential candidate had ended, the public learned more than it needed about seemingly privileged young women who nevertheless sold their bodies for money, and members of the media openly challenged the former first lady of New York’s decision to stand by her man.
Governor Spitzer was not the first state governor to be brought down by a sex scandal (nor of course, as the last year has taught us, would he be the last). In May 2004, under pressure from the Willamette Week, a free weekly paper in Portland, former Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt revealed that he had engaged in a three-year sexual relationship with his fourteen-year-old babysitter while he was Portland’s mayor in the 1970s. Once an honor student, the former babysitter grew into a troubled adulthood marked by drug dependency, further victimization, and a stint in federal prison. Several members of the governor’s political inner circle were alleged to have known about the so-called “affair” and abetted a thirty-year cover-up. A civil settlement paid to the woman in the mid-1990s came with a confidentiality agreement.
To a plot loosely inspired by threads of these two political sex scandals, I added the role of the Internet in the modern sex trade. Even the quickest scan of Craig’s List reveals that scalped concert tickets and used sporting goods are not the only easy scores on the Web. As I perused barely veiled offers of sex for money online, I thought of the danger these women put themselves in. On April 14, 2009, two weeks after I turned in the manuscript of 212, a New York City woman named Julissa Brisman was shot in a Boston hotel room after advertising her services as an erotic masseuse on the Web site. The media dubbed her alleged murderer “The Craig’s List Killer.”
Craig’s List is not the only Web site in 212 that is real. So is the Erotic Review, where “hobbyists” across the country post book review-like feedback on the “providers” who service them, down to details about appearance, professionalism, restrictions, and promptness. And the Campus Juice site that terrorizes poor Megan Gunther is based on Juicy Campus, which enticed users with the promise of anonymous campus gossip, going so far as to instruct especially cautious posters to use Internet provider cloaking devices to avoid detection. When Juicy Campus went out of business in 2009, its owner blamed the economic downturn, rather than the controversy that led to civil suits, investigations by attorneys general, and spam attacks against the site.
In the final pages of 212, Ellie marvels at the continual ability of human beings to surprise her. I feel the same way, and for that I’m grateful. The moment I’m no longer surprised by the kinds of events that inspired the plot of this book, it will be time for me to stop writing.
For ongoing assistance in the worlds of technology and law enforcement, I am thankful to Gary Moore, NYPD Detective Lucas Miller, retired NYPD Lieutenant Al Kaplan, retired NYPD Desk Sergeant Edward Devlin, Josh Lamborn, David Lesh, and Deputy District Attorneys John Bradley, Chris Mascal, Greg Moawad, Heidi Moawad, and Don Rees. I thank my students at Hofstra Law School for tethering me to a more realistic and vibrant world than I might otherwise know as a writer and law professor. I thank Lee Child for serving as 212’s first reader and Lisa Unger for her help with 212’s title.
I consider myself blessed by the most effective, professional, and supportive team in publishing: At the Spitzer Literary Agency, Philip Spitzer (no relation to Eliot) and his associates Lukas Ortiz and Lucas Hunt; Holden Richards at Kitchen Media; and, at HarperCollins, Christine Boyd, Jonathan Burnham, Heather Drucker, Kyle Hansen, Michael Morrison, Jason Sack, Kathy Schneider, and Debbie Stier. I especially thank Jennifer Barth for her tireless commitment to my work and irreplaceable editorial eye.
I appreciate the generosity of readers who donated to worthy charitable organizations to see their names lent to some of the characters in 212. Also making cameos as the 212 bartenders were Dennis, Jill, and Mark, the people who keep me fed and hydrated when I don’t feel like cooking (i.e., every day).
I send a special note of thanks to the online friends I’ve made through my Web site, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Writing is a solitary life, but you have become part of my workplace. Like the constant presence of colleagues, your notes provide community, encouragement, sanity, and—ah, yes—procrastination. OMG, I appreciate it. LOL. If you read my books and haven’t yet connected with me online, I hope you’ll do so.
Finally, I thank my husband, Sean. Not enough words. Ever.
About the Author
A former deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, ALAFAIR BURKE now teaches criminal law at Hofstra Law School and lives in New York City. A graduate of Stanford Law School, she is the author of the Samantha Kincaid series, which includes the novels Judgment Calls, Missing Justice, and Close Case. Her most recent book is Angel’s Tip, the second thriller featuring Ellie Hatcher.
www.AlafairBurke.com
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