Angel’s Tip

by Alafair Burke

  Ellie wanted to defend Peter, to say he wasn’t just some reporter. He was the first man she’d met in a long time whom she could actually picture herself with. He cared about her. He could be trusted. But instead she sat in silence on her sofa, wishing she had never spoken to Peter about William Summer.

  “Ellie, are you listening to me? You need to call that editor and tell her Peter’s full of shit and that you never said any of this to him.”

  “I can’t lie, Jess.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Not this Girl Scout shit. He’s the one who’s the fucking liar.” He flipped open her laptop on the coffee table. “There’s something you need to see, Ellie. He’s still online. I’m really sorry.”

  And, sure enough, there he was. “Unpublished,” the journalist and struggling author she’d first noticed online two months ago, was still listed on the very Internet dating service where they had first met.

  Same profile. Same photograph. Same just-out-of-bed brown hair and piercing green eyes. All the same, as if he hadn’t met anyone yet. As if they hadn’t spent those nights together before she left for Kansas. As if they hadn’t spoken every day while she was gone.

  “I’m sorry, El. He’s not the guy he pretended to be.” He placed a hand on her outstretched leg.

  Ellie wiped her face, suppressing a sniffle. “I’ll call him first.”

  “No. Don’t call him. Don’t talk to him. Ever.”

  “I at least owe it to him to let him explain.”

  “No, you don’t. You met him, what? Two months ago? And you were out of town for almost all of it? Jesus, I’m sorry if this is harsh, but you’re such a 1950s monogamist. Just because you go on a few dates with a guy doesn’t make him your husband. You know how many women I’ve dated who just stopped taking my calls one day? I’ve been dumped by text message. My e-mail address is blocked from, like, half the women in Manhattan.”

  She gave him a sad smile.

  “Trust me, he’ll get over it. I mean, it’ll take a while. This is, after all, the one and only Ellie Hatcher we’re talking about.” His tone became serious again. “I mean it, El. You’re one of the last single girls to make it to thirty without some asshole doing a number on your head. You know how many good guys are out there who’d kill for a chick like you? Don’t let this guy turn you into a basket case for the next good one who comes around the corner. Save the drama for your mama. You need to cut him loose.”

  Her cell phone rang. She recognized the prefix as a courthouse number.

  “Hatcher.”

  “It’s Max Donovan. I heard what happened at Symanski’s. Knight wants to talk to you.”

  “I’m not sure that’s going to work. My lieutenant seems to have sidelined me.”

  “That’s why Knight wants you to come in. It would just be the three of us.”

  “I don’t hide anything from my partner.”

  “Fair enough. We’re not trying to get in the middle of things. Knight just wants to make sure everything’s getting a proper look. He can help you out with Eckels; he just wants to meet with you first.”

  “What time?”

  “He’s tied up until six.”

  That gave Ellie an hour before she would need to leave her apartment.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “And, not to press my luck, but I’m pretty much sitting here waiting around with nothing to do until then.”

  “Why do I sort of doubt that?”

  “Okay, fine. But I do have time for coffee. If, you know, if coffee sounded good to you.”

  Ellie looked at her brother’s worried face. She pictured Peter boasting to some editor about his relationship with her to sell a book. She remembered his attempt that morning to blame his boss for the story about Chelsea Hart’s shorn hair. She looked at his smiling photograph on her open laptop screen.

  “Coffee would be good.”

  AN HOUR LATER, the man sat at his desk and watched another minute tick by on his computer’s digital clock. He had a little time to spare.

  He opened Mozilla Firefox and typed “youtube” in the address box. Once he was on the site, he entered the search he had memorized as the quickest method for pulling up the clip he wanted: “Dateline College Hill Strangler.”

  A list of videos filled the screen. He clicked on the top one and waited while the data loaded. There she was, face to face with Ann Curry against a severe black set, in her white turtleneck sweater and black skirt. He’d seen the entire segment many times—her walking in front of the site of William Summer’s first kill, kneeling at her father’s grave, the childhood photograph with those little blond pigtails—but this was the part he liked best.

  It wasn’t about her childhood. It was about the present. It showed the woman she had become—smart, cocky, joyously uppity with that I’ve-got-your-number half-smile.

  “How do you explain the fact that it took the Wichita police thirty years to capture this man? Was he that much of a master criminal?”

  There was the half-smile. “Oh, no. My father had a profile that was spot-on: he’d be a man who craved authority, maybe a badge bunny. Like a wannabe cop,” she said, quickly clarifying her use of the police slang. “The people who worked with him would describe him as petty and autocratic. He might be in a relationship but would frequent prostitutes. All of it turned out to be right. The problem is, the WPD shut down the investigation. My father was one man working out of his basement around his other cases, and without any support. This person was no master criminal.”

  “So if the department dropped the ball, how did they finally catch the killer?”

  “He did himself in. It was his own desire for recognition and notoriety that led police to him. His desire to taunt and to show off—the letters, the drawings, the poems—were the equivalent of a billboard pointing directly to him. Killers like William Summer get caught because of their insatiable egos.”

  The man hit the pause button at that moment. Such confidence.

  Killers like William Summer get caught because of their insatiable egos.

  On that point, he had to take issue. Summer got caught because he was stupid. He, however, was not.

  Still, he hoped he had not made a mistake getting rid of the gun he’d fired only three hours earlier. In a straight contest of strength, he would always have the upper hand against a girl, so he had avoided guns until this afternoon. Too noisy. Too unpredictable.

  But as he looked at the face of Ellie Hatcher, he wondered if he couldn’t use the extra help.

  He went to the Tools menu and clicked on the Clear Private Data command, erasing his search information on YouTube before closing the browser window. Rachel Peck would be leaving work soon and enjoying her night out on the town.

  CHAPTER 35

  ELLIE HAD SUCKED DOWN half of her grande peppermint mocha by the time she finished giving Donovan the play-by-play of the events at Leon Symanski’s house.

  “Unbelievable. When Susan Parker showed up at the courthouse this morning with Jaime Rodriguez, I really assumed it would all turn out to be b.s. Either Rodriguez was lying, or his friend was lying, or maybe Symanski was some insane criminal wannabe.”

  “Instead, he’s some insane criminal actually-be who says he killed Chelsea Hart. Although,” she quickly added, “Rogan did float the possibility that Myers is still our man.” As things stood, she had mixed feelings about meeting alone with Donovan. Until Rogan was around, the least she could do was to sound neutral.

  “Well, with Symanski’s confession, we’ve got enough to prosecute him, but whether we’d win at trial is another question.” Donovan broke off a chunk of the banana bread they were sharing. “They’ll argue the confession’s coerced. And then even if we can use the confession, we need other evidence to corroborate it. At least we’ve got the earring. That would get the case to a jury, but convincing twelve people beyond a reasonable doubt wouldn’t be easy.”

  “Rogan thinks a good lawyer can argue the earring fell off while Chelsea was at the club and Sy
manski found it.”

  “It also doesn’t help that the guy who pointed us in Symanski’s direction was a drug dealer who runs with one of Jake Myers’s buddies. They’ll argue Rodriguez was sending us in the wrong direction as a favor to his pal.”

  “So it all comes down to Symanski’s confession in the alley. Either it’s real, or I forced it out of him at gunpoint. Terrific. Now I can see why Eckels sent me home.”

  “That’s why Knight wants to see you. Eckels thinks it looks bad if you’re working the case after what happened between you and Symanski in the alley, but Knight thinks it looks a lot worse if you get pulled. If the department treats you like a bad apple, a jury might be inclined to see it the same way. The key is to keep you on this. You and Rogan work well together, right?”

  “Yeah. No question.”

  “All right. So you work it side by side. Two good detectives, backing each other up. That way there’s not too much pressure on the word of either one of you. By benching you, Eckels is causing major problems for us at trial.”

  “Between me and you, Eckels doesn’t care if he causes problems for other people.”

  “Hey, stop worrying about it. Knight will work something out. You saw that the Daily Post broke the story about the victim’s hair being chopped off?”

  “Although I believe they said ‘shaved.’ Salacious just the same, though.” She’d seen the update on the paper’s Web site at her apartment. Byline: George Kittrie and Peter Morse. Ellie wondered if breaking the story had been worth it all to Peter.

  “So, come on, you haven’t given me your take yet. Is Symanski our guy or not?”

  “I don’t know.” Neutral. Report the facts. Present both sides. Let Donovan make up his own mind.

  “Oh, come on. The guy told you he did it. What’s in your gut?”

  I strangled her, and I cut her up, and I took her earring. There were only two possible explanations for what happened in that alley. Either Ellie forced Symanski to speak those words, or he had murdered Chelsea Hart. And whether anyone accepted it or not, Ellie knew that Symanski hadn’t simply recited that sentence. He’d looked her in the eye. He’d spoken with a pleading desperation that was unambiguous: he had truly wanted her to believe him.

  “I know I didn’t coerce that confession, so, yeah, I think he did it.” Ellie felt guilty that she might be biasing Donovan, but at least she was still keeping the cold cases to herself. She wanted to raise the subject once more with Rogan before she brought anyone else in on her theory.

  “And Jake Myers is totally innocent?”

  “It would follow. But are you really sure enough to drop the charges?”

  Donovan shook his head. “What a mess. I’ve got law school friends who make four times my salary, and all they have to think about is which enormous company should get how large a pile of cash. Why do we do this to ourselves?”

  “Hey, speak for yourself, Mr. ADA. I get paid even less than you, but all I have to do is catch the perps and hand them over. You get to make all the decisions about charges and plea bargains and sentences and all that business.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have to worry about getting stabbed in an alley.”

  “Well, at least not at work.”

  “Oh, and you’re funny too. That’s just great.”

  “You’ve got something against funny?” she asked.

  “No, in fact I’m a very big fan of the sense of humor.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “It’s yet another reason to wish this coffee wasn’t just a coffee. But, that’s all right. I’m good at keeping it strictly professional.”

  “Is that what this is? A strictly professional coffee that’s just a coffee?”

  “I assumed so, what with the nondescript ‘plans’ you had the other night and everything.”

  “Actually, I don’t think I’ll have any plans along those lines in the future.”

  “So, the extremely polite shutout from the other night—”

  “Consider it retracted. If I’m permitted to retract, that is.”

  “I think it can be managed.” He looked at Ellie with a cool smile that made her suddenly aware of the unflattering overhead lights in Starbucks. “Unfortunately, with that, our coffee that wasn’t just coffee may have to end. Knight will kill me if we’re late.”

  THANKS TO CALLER ID, Rogan didn’t bother with a greeting.

  “Let me guess. You’re on your third drink and have pasted Eckels’s picture to a dartboard.”

  “One beer, one peppermint mocha. No dartboard, but an excellent suggestion nevertheless.”

  “Beer and peppermint mocha? Disgusting.”

  “Where are you?”

  “St. Vincent’s. Symanski’s finally awake.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Ellie hung up before he could argue.

  SHE FOUND ROGAN sitting in a wheelchair in the third floor hallway of St. Vincent’s Hospital. A uniform officer stood guard at the door across the hall.

  “You shouldn’t sit on that when your legs work,” she said, kicking one of the wheels. “Bad karma.”

  “I’d lie in an empty casket right now. My ass is whooped tired.”

  “Is Symanski talking?”

  “Yeah, if ‘Get me a lawyer’ counts as talking.” He used his hand as a puppet to act out Symanski’s single sentence.

  “Fabulous.” She used the wall next to Rogan as support and slid down into a crouch.

  “Speaking of karma,” Rogan said, “Symanski’s in bad shape.”

  “He’s probably faking it. You didn’t hit him that hard.”

  “No, not from me. He’s got some kind of melanoma.”

  “Skin cancer?”

  “No, like lung cancer or something. The doctor said it was from asbestos?”

  “You mean mesothelioma?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. You’ve been attending med school on the side?”

  “No, like almost everything I know, I learned it from the television.” She parodied a familiar ad for one of the city’s omnipresent personal injury law firms. “‘If you’ve been diagnosed with mesothelioma, you know there are hundreds of questions about what steps to take. Let Datz and Grossman help you with your legal rights while you deal with this difficult diagnosis.’”

  “Damn, girl, you do watch too much TV. Now you better go and get your butt out of here. Eckels will go nuts if he finds out.”

  “That’s what we need to talk about. Simon Knight called me in and said he wants us both working on this—together. He’s worried that if a jury hears Eckels pulled me from the case, it will taint me as a witness.”

  “A witness against who?”

  “Pick one. It’s eventually going to be either Myers or Symanski. The whole point is, we’ve got to figure out which one of them killed Chelsea, and whoever it turns out to be, I’m already part of the picture of the case. They don’t want me to be a problem at trial.”

  “No, we couldn’t let that happen to the dream team, could we now?”

  “I know you’re not a big fan of Simon Knight.”

  “And you are? That guy doesn’t give a shit about anyone. He just wants to win his cases. And he’d sell either one of us out in a heartbeat if necessary. Casey had a trial about eight years ago where the defendant said Casey planted evidence. Instead of proving the fat fuck was a liar, Knight went in front of the jury and said, ‘So what?’ Detective Casey might be a bad cop, but all the other evidence showed the guy was good for it.”

  “The rogue detective framed a guilty man,” Ellie said.

  “Except Casey was a good, honest cop. And Knight didn’t care what he said about the man as long as he got his conviction.”

  “That’s a DA’s job.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Well, Knight’s getting my back on this one. Big-time.”

  “As long as you realize that could all change, like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  “I’m a big girl, Rogan.”


  “Did you tell him about those cold cases?”

  “No, not yet. I want to, though. It was different before we knew about Symanski. Now that he’s part of the picture—”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, as in, you’re okay with it? Or okay, as in, you’re pissed at me and want me to stop justifying my position?”

  “Believe it or not, okay as in okay. I see the point. If we’re taking another look at the case against Myers anyway, we should at least make sure we do it right.”

  Ellie wanted to jump on Rogan’s wheelchair and give him a big bear hug. Instead, she nodded. Nodding was always an acceptable way for cops to communicate with each other.

  She was scooching her way out of her crouch when she spotted the woman in an orange coat step from the elevator. In the time it took Ellie to realize she looked familiar, the woman caught sight of the officer posted outside Symanski’s door and stepped back into the elevator.

  “Did you see that?” Ellie asked.

  “What?”

  “The woman at Symanski’s house. The pregnant girl.” Ellie was already running down the hall. “She got spooked and jumped into the elevator.”

  Ellie pushed the call button, but the elevator was heading down. Slamming open the door to the stairwell, she took the stairs two at a time. She could hear Rogan’s footsteps behind her.

  “Try the second floor,” she yelled. “I’m going to the lobby.”

  On the first floor, she looked both ways, but there was no sign of the bright orange coat. She bolted out the hospital doors to Seventh Avenue in time to see the woman shut the passenger-side door of a gold Acura Legend.

  And, once again, the day dealt Ellie a surprise. As the car drove off, she recognized Jaime Rodriguez behind the wheel.

  ROGAN WAS WAITING for her when she emerged from the stairwell on the hospital’s third floor.

  “I asked the nurse whether a pregnant woman had been here earlier to see Symanski.”