All Day and a Night: A Novel of Suspense (Ellie Hatcher)

by Alafair Burke

  “Lot of good it did us,” she muttered.

  “You helped her even after her death,” Ellie said. “A lot of girls would have kept their heads down and their mouths shut. But when you didn’t see your friend for two days, you made a call: you reached out to the police. Even after you learned that her body had been found, you kept helping her. If it hadn’t been for you, they never would have known that Deborah had been working that rest stop. And they wouldn’t have found the E-Z Pass records, so they wouldn’t have had photographs to show you of suspects. You were the key to finding Deborah’s killer.”

  “Deb . . .” The word was hard to make out initially, but then Christy spoke up. “She absolutely hated Deborah. Said it sounded like ‘candelabra.’” Her face softened at the memory.

  “Sorry. I mean, Deb. You helped find Deb’s killer.”

  “Where were you when they were putting my ass in here for life?”

  “Two different things, Christy. All I’m saying is that I know you wanted justice for your friend. I need you to tell me what you remember about Anthony Amaro.”

  “I know he’s a killer, just like you said. Why are we talking about him after all this time?”

  “There are problems with some of the evidence. But you identified him. You told police you recognized him as the man who picked up Deb at the rest stop.”

  “That’s right. Nothing else to say.”

  “My understanding is that Detective Majors showed you several photographs of drivers whose cars had passed through that area around the same time. How sure were you of the identification?”

  “Maybe you should be asking your own boy instead of me.”

  “By ‘my boy,’ do you mean Detective Majors? I should be asking him how sure you were that Amaro was the man you saw? That doesn’t make sense.”

  She pursed her lips and worked her jaw back and forth. The effect was disturbingly goatlike. “What exactly do you want me to say?”

  “The truth, Christy. There’s no right answer except the truth.”

  “You people say that, but it’s never what you mean. Not with Lincoln. Not ever.”

  “Are you saying that you had the impression back then that you were supposed to identify Anthony Amaro?”

  “Duh. He killed Deb. Of course I was going to identify him.”

  This was like talking to a windup doll. “Christy, I really mean this: Did you identify Amaro because you actually remembered seeing him, or because you thought you were supposed to pick him?”

  “He was the guy. His car was in the right place, at the right time. He was a john. And he was from the same town where a bunch of girls got killed the same exact way. So I picked him.”

  “How did you know all that?” According to Majors, Christy had flipped through a series of driver’s-license pictures and homed in on Amaro’s.

  “Because the cop told me when he showed me the photo. So I said, ‘Yeah, that’s the guy,’ and he told me I did a good job. He said that was all he needed for probable cause so he could make an arrest back where the guy lived. And then, when I called him later to find out what happened, he said the dude confessed.”

  “But did you actually recognize him as the man Deb left with?”

  “Yeah, sure. What’s the problem?”

  Law enforcement knew much more now about the fallibility of eyewitness memory, but even back then, Christy should never have been told so much about the evidence against an individual suspect before viewing his photograph.

  “That’s not how it’s supposed to work—” Ellie bit her lip. She wanted to crawl back in time and shake Buck Majors until his teeth rattled. This was his mess.

  She could picture all the mistakes. Majors would have been so pleased with himself for pulling the E-Z Pass information. When he got a hit on a Utica driver with a previous record as a john, he gave the eyewitness a little push. Her ID then confirmed his certainty that Amaro was guilty, so he pushed on the interrogation, either forcing or fabricating that confession. They might never know the truth about Amaro because of his shoddy investigation.

  “You want me to say I remember?” Christy offered. “Then I remember. You want me to say something on that detective, I’m happy to do that, too. I’d do anything to help myself out here.”

  “Funny you should be so willing to make that offer,” Ellie said. “You didn’t sound willing to deal when you thought I was here about Lincoln Turner.”

  Christy lifted her stringy brown hair and turned to show Ellie a tattoo on the back of her neck. LINCOLN’s GIRL. “He did it himself. Lincoln was the only man who ever loved me.”

  Ellie signaled to the guard that she was ready to leave.

  Eighteen years ago, this woman and her friend Deb looked out for each other. They thought they could keep each other safe. Whoever killed Deborah Garner had effectively destroyed Christy McCann, too.

  Ellie’s cell phone flashed a new message from Max as soon as she turned it on. She called him back without listening to it.

  He didn’t bother with a greeting. “Are you on your way?”

  “To where? I’m just leaving Bedford Hills now. We’ve got a problem with Christy McCann. It looks like Majors prompted her ID.”

  “Dammit. Okay, that makes the trip all the more important.”

  “What trip? I didn’t have a chance to listen to the message you left.”

  “Rogan’s on his way to my office now. Swing by the apartment and pack a bag, then meet us here and I’ll lay it all out for you. We may have finally caught a break. I need you guys to go upstate.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  As she approached Max’s office, Ellie spotted Rogan through the open door, swiveling impatiently in one of the guest chairs. As she got closer, she also saw Max leaning over an unfamiliar man who was seated at his computer. “You can’t get any other information?” Max pleaded.

  “That’s the nature of the beast,” the guy at the desk was explaining. “The ISP gives us the IP address, which we can track. But the person went through our contact page for a reason.”

  Ellie rapped her knuckles against the door. “Adding one to the occupancy.” She dropped her duffel bag at her feet with a thud.

  “Hey, you,” he said casually before turning his attention back to his other visitor. “Okay, thanks, Mark. I need to loop these guys in. Give me a call if you think of anything else. And, seriously, ask IT to rethink this part of the website. We’re law enforcement. We need to be smarter than this.”

  “I’ll pass it on.”

  He signaled to Mark to close the door behind him. “Fucking idiots,” he said the minute they were alone. “Sorry, not Mark, but someone two steps up the ladder.”

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Our website. Apparently, last year Martin had IT do an overhaul. There’s a contact page with absolutely no security measures. It supposedly requires a name and e-mail address, but you can type in Rumpelstiltskin at scratch-my-ass-dot-com, and that’s all the system keeps track of. Pretty obvious way for the public to send in messages to the district attorney’s office with no accountability.”

  “Sounds like the kind of change someone would make when he’s trying to be transparent with the community.” Rogan continued to swivel. “Guess that makes your boss the idiot.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, wondering how many times she’d need to play referee before this assignment was over. “Even if the site used the usual safeguards, anyone with half of a brain can open a free, untraceable e-mail account. So what exactly did Rumpelstiltskin at scratch-my-ass-dot-com send?” She took a seat next to Rogan, who at least managed a chuckle.

  “You’ll see why I’m so frustrated.” Max handed them each a printed copy of an e-mail message.

  From: Kelly Matthews, Information Technology

  Subject: Fwd: A message from your website

  To: Max Donovan

  ADA Donovan, see below, from the website.

  KM

  — —
Forwarded Message— —

  From: A friend xx@yy.com

  Anthony Amaro did it. He admitted everything to his cellmate after he was arrested. The guy’s name was Rob Harris. Ask him what he knows.

  This mail is sent via contact form on New York District Attorney

  “That message came into our website about fifteen minutes after we left Judge Johnsen’s courtroom today. Luckily the person in IT who monitors the incoming webmail realized it wasn’t the usual kind of comment, so she forwarded it right away. Mark—the kid who was just here—had our website provider pull the IP address of the computer used to post the message. But, as you heard, it was a public computer.”

  Rogan reached over and slid his copy of the message onto Max’s desk. “There were reporters all over that hearing. I’d be surprised if we don’t get flooded with this kind of nonsense.”

  “We can’t just ignore it.”

  “Oh, I’m aware,” Rogan said dryly. “Well, at least in this instance, the supposed secret new evidence might help us.”

  “Any possibility of finding a witness, or camera footage?” Ellie asked. “Someone who might have actually seen the person typing the message?”

  He shook his head. “The sender used one of the million laptops on display at the midtown Apple store.”

  “Any idea who Rob Harris is?” Rogan asked. “We didn’t see anything about a jailhouse informant in the case files.”

  “That’s because it’s not there. If Amaro made incriminating statements to another prisoner while he was in custody, law enforcement apparently never found out about it.”

  “But whoever sent this message claims to have,” Ellie said. “What if this Rob Harris sent it himself? No, that doesn’t make sense. Why use Internet anonymity just to give us his own name as a witness?”

  “It could be from the same person who sent us the letter linking Helen Brunswick’s murder to Amaro in the first place,” Max said.

  “Yeah, but the letter tried to exonerate Amaro, and this e-mail implicates him. Not to mention, how would one person know both the details of Brunswick’s injuries and a conversation that took place between two cellmates eighteen years ago upstate?”

  “Sorry,” Rogan said, “but you two have a way of working each other up. One thing at a time. Shouldn’t we be looking for Rob Harris?”

  “That’s why I called you guys. I confirmed with the Oneida County Sheriff’s Department that Amaro was housed with one Robert Burton Harris his first night in custody. No further record since completing a drug sentence twelve years ago. Has a current address, still in Utica. Hate to ask you guys to go, but . . .”

  Ellie knew why he was apologetic. Even if it weren’t for their personal relationship, directing police officers for long-distance travel wasn’t usually within an ADA’s job description. This time, she spoke up before Rogan. “You’re sending two NYPD detectives to another county to interview a jailhouse rat who might not actually be a rat?”

  “You’re the only ones I can possibly trust with this. I nearly had to stage a hunger strike to get Martin to approve the budget, but given the complications with Christy McCann, I convinced him that the possibility of new evidence that actually incriminates Amaro is too much to pass up.”

  She was ready for Rogan to gripe about the haul upstate, or to lob another barb about Max’s boss, but instead he rose from his chair and jingled a set of keys in the air. “I’m not driving three hours without my tunes. Now grab your ratty-ass gym bag and let’s hit the road, slowpoke.”

  He had meant what he said at the golf course. They saw this case differently, but they were still partners. They just needed to get through it, and then things would be back to normal.

  “Let’s do like we do,” she said, hoisting her bag over her shoulder.

  She didn’t realize until they were out in the lobby that she hadn’t even said goodbye to Max.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  Carrie pulled her suitcase from the back corner of her bedroom closet. She wanted to cry when she saw the bright blue bikini—tags still attached—that she’d scored on a Bloomingdale’s clearance rack three months earlier. She had thrown the swimsuit there as a promise to herself that the next time she traveled it would be to a white-sand beach with rum drinks and reggae music. Instead, she was packing for a sojourn in Utica.

  Her hometown being what it was, she knew there was no way she could check in to the downtown Governor Hotel, the fanciest joint in the city, without her mother getting wind of it. She had to make the call.

  Her mom picked up after half a ring.

  “Carrie! Is that you?”

  When Carrie bought her mother a digital phone two birthdays ago, her mother had complained that the “gadget” was overly complicated, its features “unnecessary.” Now she watched that caller ID screen with a hawk’s eye.

  “Hey, Mom. Yeah, it’s me.”

  “I’m glad you called. There’s some news coming out here. I don’t want it to upset you.”

  In a strange way, Carrie envied her friends whose parents became less tethered to the real world as they aged. Rosemary Blank, as usual, had her finger on the pulse.

  “That’s actually why I was calling you, Mom. I take it you heard about the, uh, Anthony Amaro thing?”

  “The, uh, thing? I taught you to be more specific with your vocabulary than that.”

  Carrie had a momentary flashback of her mother pinching her neck every time she said “like.” She had left China and learned English from scratch in the United States. She wasn’t about to allow her child to butcher the only language she knew. “Fine,” Carrie said. “His petition for postconviction relief, to be precise.”

  “Yes, they’ve been talking about it on the networks here. I can’t believe some crazy judge is going to let him out Friday. It’s ridiculous.”

  Carrie was wondering what would upset her mother more: the fact that she was representing Anthony Amaro, or the fact that she’d been so insignificant thus far that the media hadn’t bothered to notice her participation.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said. “You know who Linda Moreland is, right?”

  “Of course. She’s quite brash for my tastes, but is very zealous. In one of the introductions on television they said she used to teach at CUNY Law School. Did you know her?”

  Carrie felt like the stars were aligning in her favor. Her best hope was that her mother would be so impressed at the level of the legal work that she would look past the fact that it related to Donna’s death.

  Band-Aid, Carrie said to herself. Just rip off the Band-Aid.

  “She was teaching while I was a 1L there. In fact, she remembered me, so much so that she called me when she needed another lawyer at her firm. I’m working for her, Mom. On the Amaro case. I’ll be coming up to Utica tomorrow.”

  “But you have a job. You don’t have time to work on this—”

  “I changed jobs, Mom. I’m representing Anthony Amaro.”

  “But—”

  “No, Mom. That’s it. I’ll talk to you more about it tomorrow, okay? I’ll be staying at the Governor.”

  “A hotel? For how long?”

  “I don’t know. A while. Until Linda thinks we have what we need.”

  “Why aren’t you staying at home?”

  “Because I’ll need to work, Mom. I need wireless Internet and room service and the business center with the fax machines. And I’m going to have Linda’s assistant with me, so we’ll actually need two rooms, which you don’t have.”

  “Is that—how do you pay for that?”

  “It’s through the law practice, Mom.” Carrie’s mother had pushed her so hard for so many years, but the reality is that her mother had so little for so long that, to her, an indefinite stay at a business-class hotel was the equivalent of lounging on a mattress made of money.

  “I don’t understand. What will you be doing?”

  If only Carrie knew the answer to that question. “Figuring ou
t if the Utica police were negligent in their investigation. If so, we can argue that they added to the deprivation of Anthony Amaro’s constitutional rights.”

  “So you’re basically trying to blame the police?”

  “If that’s where the blame lies. Yes, that’s the strategy.”

  “Well, you know me. I say do what you need to do. But I’m surprised you’re willing to go along with something like that.”

  Her mother seemed willing to look past the fact that Carrie’s new job pulled her into the darkness that was Donna’s life, but she still sounded concerned.

  “Why are you surprised, Mom?”

  “Because you’re such good friends with Bill.”

  She was starting to wonder if her mother was totally confused. “What does this have to do with Bill?”

  “Nothing, not directly. But certainly it involves his father.”

  Bill’s father, Will, still worked at the Utica Police Department. He was the kind of cop who would never voluntarily retire. Carrie had known him since she was in the second grade, and he had given her fatherly advice innumerable times, especially after her own father passed away.

  “It’s not the whole department, Mom. It’s just a question of why they didn’t do more to solve their own cases.” She wanted to say, Why didn’t they pay more attention to Donna’s murder? but she was trying to keep the focus on the work, not the girl Rosemary Blank had refused to recognize as a member of her family.

  “Right. And that’s why it involves Will. Or didn’t you know? He’s the one in charge of the whole investigation. Linda Moreland can’t drag down the UPD without taking Will Sullivan with it.”

  PART THREE

  FREEDOM

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Linda had warned her how difficult it would be to work on the road, but even Linda had probably failed to anticipate the demands that would be put on Carrie for her time once word got out that she was back in Utica. By the time she and Thomas checked in at the Governor Hotel, the front desk had two messages from her mother and three from Melanie. It was late in the evening—too late for her to try to make any headway with the Utica police. The thought of seeing her mother felt like a chore, but the upside of any visit to Utica was seeing Melanie in person.