They followed the hostess to a small table in the back dining room.
‘So hopefully today was slightly better than the rest of your week?’ Peter asked once they were alone.
Ellie used a chip to scoop up an enormous blob of green salsa, and popped it into her mouth. She nodded happily while she swallowed. ‘No new bodies. No new arrests. Just tying up the loose ends against Myers.’
‘Well, as much as I’ve appreciated your willingness to allow the late-night pop-ins –’
‘I believe the young people refer to them as booty calls.’
‘Yes, right. Lovely. Despite my appreciation for the time together, it’s nice to see you while the hour is still in the single digits. You holding up okay? I think you’ve put in more time in your first week in that unit than I have all month.’
‘I’m good. The truth is, I put in a ton of time off the clock even when I was working garden-variety property cases.’
Finally, for the first time in forty-eight hours, Ellie had a chance to breathe. She was in a great restaurant with a terrific guy and a tasty margarita. She could finally think and talk about something other than Chelsea Hart, Jake Myers, and the little mistakes that had turned a night of spring break into a tragedy.
She should have been appreciative. She should have been bubbling over with non-work-related chatter. But she found herself thinking about those cold case files. She finally allowed herself to raise the subject over her pork tacos.
‘I was following up on some old cases Flann McIlroy had been looking at,’ she said.
‘You get ten minutes of downtime, and you start poking around in someone else’s cold cases?’
‘I know. I’m a glutton for punishment. But, you know, he meant a lot to me, and so –’
‘No explanation necessary.’
‘Anyway, he had these three cases he thought might be connected. I was wondering if he ever reached out to you about them. It would’ve been about three years ago.’
‘Why would he call me?’
‘That was just his way. He’d plant stories in the press as a way to stir up public attention. Maybe turn up a witness who’d never come forward.’ Of course, McIlroy’s critics would have said it was a way of calling attention to his own career.
‘No, I never spoke to the man until I met you. But I’m still pretty new to the crime beat. If he was going to call someone at the Daily Post, it would’ve been Kittrie. You should ask him.’
‘Your editor? You haven’t exactly described him as the most accessible man on the planet.’
Peter shrugged. ‘He’s not that bad. Just a little rigid. I might be, too, if I was a boss.’
‘Oh, my God. You look like you’re in physical pain trying to say something nice about the man.’
‘Fine, he’s a fuckstick.’
‘I don’t think you’re allowed to say that about a guy with a tumor.’
‘I told you, I think Justine’s just screwing with my mind, trying to force me to be nice to him.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ she said. ‘You know what they say: People live longer, we’ve got crummy lifestyles, the environment’s going to hell. Cancer rates are up, my friend. We’re pretty much all dying as we speak.’
‘Jesus, you’re depressing. I’m telling you – Kittrie’s fine, in that respect, at least. Just call him, okay? He’s a tool, but he definitely would’ve had a line in to a guy like McIlroy.’ Peter pulled out his own business card and scribbled George Kittrie’s name and number on it. He extended it toward Ellie, then pulled it back. ‘I don’t need to be jealous now, do I?’
‘Oh, definitely. Because, as you know from my own history, I have such a weakness for overbearing, micromanaging bosses.’
He handed her the number. ‘If McIlroy had a story to plant, it would have been with him.’
‘Okay, now I have a single remaining demand of you this evening.’
‘Ooh, a demand? Daddy likey.’
‘Okay, two demands. One, don’t ever say that again. And two, don’t let me talk about work anymore.’
‘But, Detective, what in the world would you talk about if not work, when that’s all you ever do?’
‘Fine, I can talk about normal-people work stuff – my partner, my boss, the heroin addict who left behind his prescription methadone during a burglary –’
‘You’re kidding.’
She shook her head. ‘But I don’t want to talk about my cases.’
‘I think we can work around that.’
And for the rest of the evening, Ellie forced herself to be normal. No talk of killers, either past or current. She and Peter were on a date like two regular people.
And when Peter offered to walk her home, she had anything but work on her mind.
Chapter Twenty-Five
There’s always an easy way and a hard way.
Ellie had spoken those words to the drug-buying law student at Pulse as a warning that there were two ways she could search her purse. Now it was Thursday morning, and she repeated the phrase to herself as an entirely different kind of warning. She had three cold case files tucked discreetly in her top drawer, and she had a decision to make.
She could return the files to Central Records and pretend she had never received a call from Bill Harrington. Or she could try to retrace Flann McIlroy’s steps, a task that was probably impossible and would only complicate the case against Jake Myers.
She sat at her desk nursing a spoonful of Nutella, looking at the handwritten phone number on the back of Peter’s business card. An easy way or a hard way.
The dream witness in the solid case against Jake Myers. Easy. Cherry pie. Or the cop who breaks the news to Rogan, Dan Eckels, Simon Knight, Max Donovan, the mayor’s office, and – worst of all – Miriam and Paul Hart that there’s a problem. Not easy.
One more phone call.
‘George Kittrie.’
‘This is Ellie Hatcher. We met the other night at Plug Uglies, with Peter Morse?’
‘You finally dumped that kid?’
‘Nope. Not yet, at least. I’m actually calling about another mutual acquaintance – Flann McIlroy?’
‘I’m just giving you a hard time. Morse told me you might reach out. I think he was afraid I might tear your head off if you called without notice. Something about three girls?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve got a murder victim’s father calling the department for an update, saying McIlroy thought his daughter’s death was related to a couple of others. I figured I’d try to piece together what McIlroy was up to.’
She was walking a fine line here. She wanted to know if McIlroy had contacted Kittrie, but she didn’t want to tip him off to a story in the event that he hadn’t. The vaguer the information, and the more innocuous the request, the less likely Kittrie would go digging.
‘Yeah, that rings a bell. He called, what, it must have been a few years ago – definitely after my book came out, so 2004? 2005?’
‘That sounds about right,’ Ellie said. She wondered if Kittrie had a regular habit of dropping references to his book.
‘He wanted me to write a piece speculating a connection between three murders, all a few years apart. All the girls had been out on the town.’
‘Do you have any notes?’
‘Nah. It sounded like garbage at the time. The city’s a dangerous place at night, you know? And he wasn’t giving me anything to tie it all together. I realized by then that Mac wasn’t above using us. I figured he had an agenda of some kind.’
‘So the club angle was the only thing tying the murders together?’
‘Yeah. You know, same demographics, I guess – young women. But that was it. I’ve always been pretty cautious about what I’ll print under my byline. There was nothing to verify, so I wasn’t going to run with it.’
‘Well, I can see why you’d pass. Thanks a lot for your time. I’ll get back to the victim’s dad and let him know there’s nothing new.’
‘Glad to help those who protect
and serve. Maybe I can hit you up for a return favor?’
Ellie had known when she called a reporter that there’d be a quid pro quo. ‘Yeah, shoot.’
‘In the Chelsea Hart case, can you confirm that Jake Myers shaved the victim’s head?’
It felt like Kittrie had punched her in the throat. His information was not a hundred percent accurate, but it was close enough. She couldn’t remember the number of times the Wichita papers had printed something about the College Hill Strangler that may have started out as truth, but had morphed into something entirely different by the time it reached the press, like a fifth-hand message in a child’s game of Operator.
She couldn’t find words as her mind raced through Kittrie’s possible sources. She finally mustered a ‘No comment.’ She was surprised by the force of the handset as she returned it to the carriage.
She was still processing Kittrie’s bombshell when Rogan showed up, a cup of Starbucks in one hand, his cell in the other.
‘You seen the Lou yet?’ He used his jaw to flip the phone shut.
‘Huh-uh. You got a sec? We need to talk.’
‘It’s gonna have to wait. Eckels just called me, pissed off about something. He wants us in his office, like, ten minutes ago.’
Rogan led the way, waving off her attempts to slow him down. He rapped his knuckles against the glass of Eckels’s closed door, then helped himself to the doorknob. Ellie caught a brief glimpse of their lieutenant speaking animatedly into his phone. He held up a hand momentarily, then gave them the all-clear.
‘Ah, Rogan. I see you didn’t come alone.’
‘You said it was about the Myers case. I figured you wanted me and Hatcher.’
‘Sure. Why not? This is, after all, something that should definitely concern her. Have a seat.’
Rogan threw her a worried look.
‘So, I got a phone call from the Public Information Office this morning,’ Eckels announced. ‘Seems they just heard from a reporter at the Daily Post. You two know anything about this?’
‘I just gave a no-comment to George Kittrie about five seconds ago.’ Another worried look from Rogan. ‘He wanted confirmation that Myers shaved the vic’s head.’
‘Shit.’ Rogan bit his lower lip.
‘Yeah, no shit, shit. So is one of you going to tell me why we’re losing control of this investigation?’ Although the wording of the question was aimed at both of them, Ellie felt Eckels’s eyes fall directly on her. ‘And, by the way, the reporter who called the PIO wasn’t Kittrie, it was one Peter Morse. I want to know who let this leak.’
The insinuation was obvious. Ellie’s case. Ellie’s boyfriend. Ellie’s leak.
Before she could defend herself, Rogan was doing it for her. ‘Hatcher wouldn’t do that.’
One simple sentence. No hesitation in his voice. No question mark. Rogan wasn’t simply backing her up out of mandatory partner loyalty. He had no doubt at all about her innocence.
‘I wouldn’t,’ she confirmed. ‘And I didn’t.’
‘Who the hell was it, then?’ Eckels demanded. ‘Even inside the house, we kept a lid on that. It was our ace in the hole: the killer took the hair and the earrings, and that was how we’d head off a bunch of whackadoos trying to give us fake confessions.’
‘With all respect, Lou,’ Rogan said, ‘now that we’ve got Myers dead to rights, what does it really matter? The press was going to get hold of it eventually.’
‘It matters because I expect my detectives to show a little discretion.’
‘Maybe it was the girl’s family,’ Rogan said. ‘They’ve been talking to the media.’
‘They were using the media to put pressure on us. Telling the world that their daughter was mutilated, after we’ve already caught the guy, wouldn’t appear to fall into that game plan. Only a handful of us knew the condition of that girl’s body when she was found. And it just so happens that one of them’s boinking the very same reporter who seems to be a leg ahead of every other reporter in the city.’
Ellie wanted to tell Eckels he was out of line. That she didn’t have to sit here and take his abuse. That he wouldn’t make the same assumption if one of his male detectives was dating a female reporter.
But she knew she couldn’t do any of it. He was drawing the same inferences she would in his position. Her case. Her boyfriend. Her leak.
Once again, it was Rogan who spoke up. ‘Hatcher and I – we’ve kept it in the vault. But other people saw the girl. The joggers. The medical examiner. The EMTs. Could be anyone.’
Ellie’s memory flashed to Officer Capra, the first uniform on the scene, holding court the night of Jake Myers’s arrest at Plug Uglies. Peter and his boss, George Kittrie, had gone to the bar that night for the express purpose of finding loose-lipped cops. She would’ve cold-cocked Capra on the spot if he were in the room, but she still wasn’t going to dime him out to Eckels.
‘I knew Peter Morse when everything went down with Flann McIlroy, and you know I didn’t give him any tip-offs on that. It’s your choice whether to believe me, Lou, but I would hope you’d give me the benefit of the doubt.’
Rogan leaned back in his chair. ‘You said the reporter asked if Chelsea Hart’s head was shaved? See, now that shit’s not even right. No one who saw that girl would’ve said that. Myers hacked that shit up. Sounds like the paper’s heard something third-or fourth-hand.’
Ellie had been wondering whether to point out the discrepancy to Eckels herself, but it sounded more persuasive coming from Rogan. She was finding it hard to focus on anything beyond the question that kept echoing in her mind: Why hadn’t Peter mentioned any of this last night?
Whether Eckels was persuaded or simply acquiescing to the fact that he couldn’t prove his suspicions, he moved on. ‘For what it’s worth, I told the Public Information Officer to shell out a no-comment to Morse. I expect you – both of you – to do the same. I just got off the phone with Simon Knight to give him a heads-up on the story, and I assured him that we will keep control over this case. The last thing we need is a media circus around Myers’s trial.’
Eckels picked up a newspaper that was open on the corner of his desk and dropped it in front of the detectives. ‘This, of course, didn’t help.’
It was a copy of the morning’s New York Sun. Most of the page was occupied by a photograph of Jake Myers’s perp walk, snapped while Rogan and Ellie escorted him from the back of a squad car to be arraigned after his lineup at 100 Centre Street.
But it was a smaller headline on the sidebar that Eckels was tapping with a meaty index finger: ‘For Victim’s Friends, Another Encounter with NYC Crime.’ Ellie skimmed the first paragraph. As Jordan McLaughlin and Stefanie Hart had sat on the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art the previous afternoon, an armed assailant had snatched their purses from the sidewalk and escaped through Central Park.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Ellie said. Those girls had been put through enough.
‘You mean to tell me you haven’t seen this?’ Eckels asked.
‘I’ve been catching up on other work,’ Ellie said. She’d scanned the coverage of the Hart case this morning, but hadn’t noticed the ancillary sidebar.
Eckels looked at Rogan for his explanation.
‘I just walked in,’ Rogan said. ‘I had some personal stuff I’d pushed off during the heat of the case.’
‘Why didn’t we hear about this yesterday?’ Ellie asked. ‘We spent a lot of time with those girls.’
‘They reported it to museum security,’ Eckels said. ‘The museum turned it over to Central Park precinct, where some uniform took a complaint without thinking to reach out to us.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll call the girls right away.’
Eckels held up his hand. ‘Already done. Public Information’s getting a victim’s advocate in touch with them for damage control. Make sure they’ve got all their credit cards canceled, that kind of thing. We’ll get them to the airport for their flight later this morning. They’re more than read
y to go home. Just promise me you’ll do everything you can to make sure no more shit sandwiches.’
She and Rogan both nodded. Ellie was beginning to detect a pattern: Eckels liked to blow off steam but generally calmed down before breaking the huddle.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t quite ready to break. Easy way and a hard way. All things being equal, she was one to opt for ease. But she saw no detour around this one. She didn’t want to be that cop who twenty years down the road – after an innocent man had been exonerated – had lacked the courage to challenge the conventional wisdom.
‘Sorry, sir. One more thing, while we’re here. We got a phone call off the tip line from a victim’s father on a cold case. His daughter was also killed after getting a little wild, on the Lower East Side in 2000.’
‘So call him back and make nice.’
‘I did, sir. But here’s the thing. His daughter also had her hair chopped off. And if the news is going to come out about Chelsea, then he’s going to see the resemblance between the two cases.’
‘He’s going to see the resemblance, or you are?’ Eckels shot her an annoyed look, but then a glimmer of recognition crossed his face. ‘Please tell me this isn’t that same case McIlroy bothered me about a few years ago.’
‘Probably,’ she said. ‘He apparently was looking into three different cases – all young blondes, all killed late at night, all possibly having to do with their hair.’
‘Emphasis on possibly. As in impossibly. You really are McIlroy’s long-lost love child. The case I had didn’t fit the pattern at all, as I recall.’
‘It depends what you mean by the pattern. The victim thought someone was stalking her when she left Artistik, a salon on the Upper East Side. Her hairdresser took off five inches. We could be talking about one killer – someone with a hair fetish. He cuts his victims’ hair. In your case – Alice Butler – he could have been set off by the haircut. Or he could have taken more of it when he killed her, and no one noticed because she’d just had the big change.’
Eckels shook his head in frustration. ‘Our job, despite what you may have learned from McIlroy, is not to work cold cases. If you think you’ve got something, send it to the Cold Case Squad and listen to them laugh at you. Until then, Rogan, please get your partner out of my office. I believe you have grand jury today on Jake Myers?’
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