CHAPTER
TEN
You ready to talk?” Ellie asked. According to her watch, they’d been in the car for five minutes. They had already hit the Manhattan Bridge, and her partner’s only words had been “Not yet,” muttered when she started venting about Linda Moreland. Since then, he’d been surfing the radio. He’d been briefly satisfied by the tail end of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” but once the song ended, he’d gone back to channel flipping.
“Stupid department-issue p.o.s. Impala. Should’ve taken my ride. Terrestrial radio is tired.”
At least he was using his words now. Ellie was ready to press him for answers. “So, I assume the paucity of decent music on FM isn’t what’s actually eating at you. Is this about Santos? I thought he handled the case reassignment pretty well under the circumstances.”
Rogan didn’t respond.
“Or the stuff he said about Buck Majors?” she asked. “We knew we’d have to double-check the Amaro investigation. If anything, the fact that Majors had a solid reputation makes it more likely Amaro’s guilty, which seems like good news to me.”
Still nothing.
“Look, I talked to Max about this whole ‘fresh look’ thing. He wants to believe he picked us because we’d do the best job, but I don’t blame you for feeling like it’s my fault.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that. Though, don’t get me wrong, there is a that. But this is about Linda Moreland.”
“Oh, she’s the worst. I see her enormous head on TV and I want to throw it out the window. The television. Her head, too, if that were possible.”
He turned off the radio but didn’t say anything.
“And that voice,” Ellie added. “It’s like getting stabbed in the ear with a metal skewer. I don’t understand why cable channels give her a platform. How is she possibly—”
Rogan cut her off. “They give her a platform because she feeds a certain part of the population their red meat. It’s no different from what politicians on both sides do. Hell, Nancy Grace and Jeanine Pirro have gotten rich and famous railing against criminals. Linda Moreland has simply turned the tables and is railing against us.”
“Yeah, but we’re the good guys.” She blinked her eyes and flashed a smile, but Rogan wasn’t in a joking mood.
“Her audience would disagree,” he said.
As far as Ellie was concerned, Linda Moreland’s representation of Amaro was just one more log on the fire—a loud, annoying, camera-hogging log, but a minor irritation in the big picture.
Rogan, on the other hand, seemed more than inconvenienced.
Her attempt at humor having failed, she tried another tack. “In the end, Rogan, she’s just another lawyer. And I hate to say it, but she’s getting results. She’s made a name for herself by proving that sometimes the system gets it wrong. No one should want to keep an innocent person behind bars.”
“Did you hear me say I wanted innocent people in prison?”
“No, of course not. It’s—”
“My problem with Moreland is she’s not just about correcting mistakes. I get it—every once in a while, an eyewitness gets it wrong, or the forensic evidence is flawed. But that’s not how Moreland operates. She’s not just out to free her clients, because they can’t afford to pay her. It’s not enough for her to prove someone made a mistake. The only way she gets bank is by pressing claims of misconduct. In the only story she knows, her clients are perfect little angels, victimized by cops and prosecutors who don’t give a rip whether they have the right guy or not. I know you can’t be cool with that.”
“Whoa, I wasn’t cool with her. I was saying that dealing with her is no different from dealing with any other defense lawyer. Every time we get a confession, we know some lawyer’s going to accuse us of coercion. Every time we do a consent search, there’s the inevitable claim that we’re ‘testilying.’”
“I’m telling you, Moreland’s different. There’s no line she won’t cross. She’ll watch your house. Check your finances. She will get up in your shit. With her it’s personal.”
Then Ellie realized this was personal for Rogan, too.
“You’re speaking from experience, aren’t you?”
He paused, then nodded. “She was basically behind that whole IA mess.”
Not long after becoming her partner, Rogan had made a vague reference to a time when he had to cooperate with Internal Affairs against a previous partner who was dirty. This was the first time she could recall him mentioning it since.
“The bad guy was a captain with the Ballers,” he explained. “Went by the name of Snowball, supposedly because of a white birthmark on his face, but mostly because he was the head of a major cocaine crew. He ordered a hit on the boss of the Grant Avenue Gunners, a rival crew that was encroaching on his territory. The vic also happened to be the son of a one-season, bench-warming halfback for the ’82 Washington Redskins. His father’s Super Bowl ring was his proudest possession. I was the lucky detective who found that ring inside a Gucci loafer at the back of Snowball’s closet. At trial, the banger who pulled the trigger testified that I coerced him into naming Snowball as the man in charge and must have planted the ring. He also said I told him that I worked for the Gunners and would kill him and his entire family if he didn’t take down Snowball.”
“Sounds like something out of a bad television show,” Ellie said. “No one would believe that.”
“Except his lawyer—a younger, less famous Linda Moreland—went looking for corroboration. She had an investigator take pictures of my car and house. She had financial records showing—how did she put it? Assets inconsistent with my NYPD salary.”
Ellie remembered how Rogan had quashed her early curiosity about his Cavalli suits and Patek Philippe watch. “When a brother’s got some extra spending money, he must be up to no good. Is that about right?” It was only after the entire squad room watched her try to pull her foot from her mouth that he explained the true source of his outside income—an inheritance from the grandmother who had married a well-known R&B singer.
“Up until then I was still sort of trying to keep my money situation to myself, coming to work in cheap suits trying to blend in.”
“You in a cheap suit? Did you compensate by sleeping in silk pajamas?”
He smiled, but quickly became serious again. “Once my finances were out at trial, IA had to get in on the action—looking me over, as well as my partner. Turns out I had an explanation for my extra cash, but he didn’t.”
She knew the story from here: Internal Affairs assumed Rogan had known about his partner’s corruption, and he had no choice but to cooperate. To a lot of cops, anyone who worked with IA could never be true blue.
“I’m sorry, Rogan.”
“IA was bad enough, but having to testify in court in front of some lowlife gangbanger about my mom and my grandmama and my life? I can honestly say that I hate Linda Moreland.”
She had already felt guilty about getting Rogan dragged into the whole “fresh look” thing. Now he was so upset about Linda Moreland, he had just missed the turnoff from the FDR Drive for their precinct.
“We’re just getting started on this,” she said softly. “It’s not too late. I could put it all on me—because of living with Max and everything. Just say the word: Do you want out?”
“Oh, hell no. But let’s just say I won’t cry when we prove that Anthony Amaro is as guilty as he looked eighteen years ago.”
“That means explaining who wrote that letter to Moreland and the DA’s office, which means finding Brunswick’s killer.”
Rogan hit the wigwag lights on the car dash and increased their speed. “That’s why we’re going to the Upper East Side. Let’s track down Mitch Brunswick and see if we share Tommy Santos’s not-so-warm-and-fuzzies about the grieving ex-husband.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Carrie’s list of documents to request was seven pages long by the time her cell phone buzzed against the table. It was
Melanie.
“Hey, Melanie.”
“Are you all right?”
No “Hello.” No “Hey, it’s Melanie.” Just: “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Why?”
“I sent you an e-mail this morning. It bounced back—”
“About what?”
“What do you mean?”
“The e-mail. What was it about?”
“Oh, it was—it’s this dog. On a couch. He jumps up there but the owner has it booby-trapped.” Carrie remembered how much Melanie had wanted to be a pediatrician. Now she seemed to spend her days forwarding YouTube videos. “You’ve got to see it. Trust me, it’s hilarious. Anyway, I sent it to you, and then it bounced back with an automated message saying to contact the firm for details. Then I called your office and your secretary picked up and said you weren’t working there anymore. Is everything all right?”
That was the world Melanie knew, because it was the world they had grown up in. If you had a job and then you didn’t have that job, then something must have gone terribly wrong. People lost jobs; jobs didn’t lose people.
“Everything’s good,” she assured Melanie. “Believe it or not, something pretty amazing came along. I’ll give you all the details when I have more time.”
“You’re not glossing it over, are you? You can tell me if you got fired. I mean, I just talked to you last weekend, and now you’re out of there? No notice or anything?”
“It’s not like that with law firms.” Russ Waterston was not the kind of place that wanted lawyers to stick around once they announced they were leaving. Short-timers had no motivation to work and every motivation to poach clients. “I swear, everything is really good. I’m working for a lawyer named Linda Moreland. She does postconviction criminal—”
“The Linda Moreland? Oh my GOD!”
Carrie had to hold her cell away from her ear.
“I see her on Headline News and TruTV all the time. How did that happen?”
“She was the one who called me. She was running a criminal advocacy program at CUNY when I was there. I transferred to Fordham, but she remembered me from the essay I wrote for the program.”
“You mean Linda Moreland just called you out of the blue and offered you a job because she remembered you from an essay you wrote years ago? You must have made one hell of an impression.”
“The essay was supposed to explain why we were interested in criminal law. I wrote about growing up in Utica. How afraid we were—you know, like a boogeyman out there might grab us at random. And then it wasn’t random. He got Donna.”
“It still seems weird that a story about being a kid from Utica who lost a half sister she barely knew would be enough to get you a job.” Coming from anyone else, the comment might have sounded cruel, but Carrie and Melanie had been glued at the hip since first grade. They had fallen out of touch during Carrie’s time at Cornell, and then Carrie was so ashamed for allowing that gap to form that the distance continued to grow further, even after Carrie moved home. But within a few months, Melanie heard from Bill about how hard Carrie was working to help her mother. And Carrie heard from Bill that Melanie had kicked Tim out of the house after yet another arrest and was taking care of their toddler alone. They found their way back to each other and made it through the rough spots. Carrie had gone back to school. Melanie had taken Tim back yet again. Their lives were on different tracks now, but would always be entangled. At this point, she thought of Melanie as a sister.
She had wanted to talk to Melanie about the Amaro case in person, but saw no way to avoid the subject now. “Well, it makes sense, considering the nature of the job. She’s gotten to the point that she has too many clients to handle alone. One of the other defendants is Anthony Amaro.”
“Anthony Amaro? You have to be kidding me.” Carrie had to hold the phone away from her ear again. This time, though, Melanie’s excitement was more outrage than enthusiasm. “You had a good job, making good money. And now you’re working on something like that?”
“Work like that? You sound like my mother, when she used to say that girls like us didn’t need to worry.”
“Oh, I can’t even imagine what Rosemary’s going to say.”
Melanie had always been afraid of the force called Rosemary Blank. “My mother is in favor of anything that proves that her daughter is a success. Linda Moreland is exactly the kind of go-getter she wants me to be. She opened her own firm. She has eight exoneration cases under her belt. She’s a new breed of celebrity lawyer. She doesn’t try cases—she wins them through postconviction claims of innocence. This is putting all that esoteric appellate work I did at Russ Waterston to good use.”
“Sounds like you’re practicing your talking points for your mother.”
Carrie laughed. “Yeah, a little. Okay, a lot, definitely.”
Carrie heard another call beeping through. She recognized the number of the law office she had been trying to reach.
“Just a second, Melanie.” She switched to the new call. “Carrie Blank.”
“Carrie, hi. This is Kristin McConnell. You left a message about an old client of my father’s, Anthony Amaro.”
It was the daughter of Amaro’s original defense attorney. “Thanks so much for getting back to me. We’re representing Mr. Amaro on a petition for postconviction relief and were hoping to obtain any files your father might have. I know it’s a long shot but—”
“I can have everything ready in an hour.”
“Seriously? That’s amazing.”
“Long story. You’ll have a messenger pick them up?”
Carrie looked at the pile of Redweld files. She could use a break. “No need,” she said. “I’ll pick it up myself.”
She thanked Kristin again and clicked back to her call with Melanie. “Sorry about that.”
“I get it. I know how valuable your time is.” All these years later, Carrie could never tell when Melanie was being self-deprecating and when she was being passive-aggressive.
“Anyway, thanks for the concern, Melanie, but I’m happy about this new job. I’m getting paid to find out the answers to all those questions I’ve always had about Donna’s death. She was an addict, but I’ll never believe she was a prostitute. As Amaro’s lawyer, I can get access to everything.”
“But at what expense? He was the guy we were hiding from. And now you’re going to help him? He’s a murderer. He killed your sister.”
“Half sister,” she said, chopping at the first syllable like her mother used to, though Melanie didn’t seem to see the humor. “Linda Moreland says he didn’t do it, which means the real killer is still out there.”
“And what if it turns out Linda Moreland is wrong?”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Rogan pressed the button for the ninth floor.
“Am I crazy or is this the same building you and Donovan almost rented at some point? I know it was somewhere up here.”
They were in Yorkville, the far east side of the Upper East Side, just a block from the East River, but a serious hike from the Lexington Avenue subway line. Traditionally, it was one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Manhattan, the site of the real Gracie Mansion and the fictional Michael Corleone’s penthouse. But, these days, Yorkville was also the site of some of the more-affordable(ish) new high-rises in Manhattan, which is how Max’s real estate agent had ended up pressuring them to consider a unit in this behemoth rental building. Ellie had forced Rogan to make a detour on the way back from a witness interview in Harlem to check the place out. After saying thirteen times that it was “fine,” he finally conceded that the walls were thin, the construction shoddy, and the entire building too “cookie cutter,” validating her own antipathy for it.
For Mitch Brunswick to have moved from the prewar townhouse he’d shared with his family to a “starter” rental in Yorkville was a serious step down in the New York City real estate hierarchy.
Ellie recognized the man waiting at an open apartment door when they
exited the elevator. He had been photographed countless times, usually trying to shield his face, since his wife was murdered in March.
“Dr. Brunswick?” Rogan asked. “We’re the detectives your office called about.”
Brunswick’s answering service had explained that the doctor had shifted his office hours to “increase patient convenience.” They took it as code for taking more weeknight appointments to increase the size of his practice. Rogan had made the call to give Brunswick advance notice of a home visit. Now they each introduced themselves.
“Oh, I assumed it would be Detectives Santos and Hayes.”
“Of course,” Ellie said. “Can we have a word inside to explain?”
He stepped aside to allow them in. A chocolate Lab jumped from the sofa to give them a quick sniff and then resumed his position.
If Rogan had declared the building itself cookie-cutter, she could only imagine his assessment of this particular apartment. The living room looked like the lobby of an airport hotel, the generic furniture most likely circled from a catalogue.
Just as they’d agreed in advance, Ellie laid out the reasons for the reassignment of his wife’s case—at least the version they had decided to give him. “We could sugarcoat this, Dr. Brunswick, but I’m sure you’re more aware than anyone that several weeks have now passed without an identified suspect. We’ve been asked to take a new look at the case.”
“You are sugarcoating it if you say I’ve not been treated as a suspect. Every attorney friend I have tells me I shouldn’t be talking to the police. I’m home right now because my patients are leaving in droves. My own neighbors step out of the elevator when they see me coming, pretending they forgot to pick up their mail. Yet here I am, opening the door for you, hoping I can convince someone—anyone—that I didn’t do this. Maybe then you’ll actually start looking for whoever killed Helen.”
All Day and a Night: A Novel of Suspense (Ellie Hatcher) Page 7