“Hi there. George Kittrie. I believe you’re the famous Ellie Hatcher?”
“Hopefully less famous by the day.”
“Not if we have anything to say about it, isn’t that right, Peter?” Kittrie nudged the visibly uncomfortable reporter. “Ignore me. I’m being a jerk, even if I was only kidding.”
Kittrie looked familiar. She tried to place him-probably the author photo on his book. “Have we met before?”
“Nah, but you may have seen me around. I’m a big believer that any crime-beat reporter worth his salt has got to hit the cop bars. It’s all about contacts. I had a real good relationship with Flann McIlroy, by the way.”
Given the circumstances of McIlroy’s death, Ellie supposed her name would always be linked with his in New York City law enforcement circles.
“What kind of drink can we get you?” Kittrie asked.
She turned to see J. J. Rogan encircled by Thirteenth Precinct cops, a lonely Johnnie Walker Black on the bar next to him, getting more watered down by the second, calling out to her: Drink me.
“I’ve got some friends waiting for me,” she said.
“Sounded like a celebration when I passed. I don’t suppose there’s a break in the Chelsea Hart case.”
“Just an after-work drink is all.” The Daily Post would get wind of Jake Myers’s arrest soon enough from the Public Information Office. She said her good-byes and left poor Peter on his man date with Kittrie.
As Ellie made her way over to Rogan, she saw that the first patrol officer who responded to Chelsea’s crime scene was holding court. If she had to guess, he was probably leaving out the part where he tossed his cookies and was sent off to fetch her clothes.
She plucked her drink from the bar, and Rogan nodded his head in her direction.
“Capra here was just telling everyone about being first on the scene this morning.”
Ellie saw a hint of color creep into the cheeks of the young officer. “First uniform on the scene, Detective. Your partner, of course, was first man there. Or woman, or-”
“Someone get this officer another drink,” she said with a laugh. John Shannon, the detective whose desk was behind hers, raised his glass in a toast. The rest of the crowd, however, greeted her with stony stares and uncomfortable glances. It was apparently going to take more than one arrest and a round of drinks to win some folks over.
Her cell phone vibrated at her waist. The screen read, “Unavailable.”
“Hatcher.” Ellie plugged one ear shut with her index finger.
“Hi, it’s Max Donovan from the DA’s office.”
“You got our message?” She maneuvered her way to the front of the bar.
Their message had actually been left by Rogan. She stole a look at her partner.
“Yeah, this is my first chance to get back to you. The good news is, well, it couldn’t be any better. I cut a deal with Nick Warden.”
“He’s flipping on Jake?”
Ellie opened her backpack and pulled out a manila folder that the Central Records Division had delivered that morning. It contained the file on the murder of Roberta Harrington, aka Robbie. The original reports dated back to the summer of 2000. Given that Jake Myers was barely out of middle school at the time, any connection between the two cases now seemed impossible.
She skimmed while Donovan brought her up to speed.
“No question. It helped that I could go in there this morning with the fingerprint match and the cabdriver’s ID. I told him, ‘Look, we’ve got our case against Jake. The only question is whether we’re going to have one against you, too.’ Once he and his lawyer heard what we already had on Myers, and what Warden was looking at on his drug case, it was easy. The guy’s got loyalty, though. He wanted a deal for Jaime Rodriguez, too.”
“You’re kidding me? White-collar recreational drug user taking care of his dealer? Who’s ever heard of such a thing?”
“I know, right? I guess Warden feels bad about getting the guy in trouble. He said Rodriguez hooking up the girl with some dope was kind of like helping him out, too. This isn’t exactly politically correct, but I got the impression she was quite the box of chocolates?”
“If tall, thin, and ridiculously sexy is your kind of thing.”
“Absolutely not.”
“So you made the deal? I thought Rodriguez would be looking at some serious time with his prior conviction.”
“His prior for Burg of a dwelling with a gun counts as a violent predicate. He was looking at six years minimum under the second felony law. But we made the deal. He and Warden both get dismissals. Rodriguez will lose his job with the club just for the arrest, and he’ll have a hard time finding work anywhere else.”
“You don’t need to sell me on it,” Ellie said, her eyes still scanning the Harrington file as she flipped to the next report. She hadn’t known a prosecutor to ever care in the past whether she approved of a plea deal. Besides, she had learned a long time ago that drug cases-no matter what quantities, no matter how many priors, and despite all the rhetoric about the war on drugs-were all expendable when the prosecution of a violent crime was at stake.
“Our case against Myers is looking strong. Warden’s not only going to testify that Jake left with Chelsea alone, well before closing, but he’s got real corroboration. And it’s good.”
Ellie stopped multitasking so she could focus on Donovan’s news.
“His lawyer produced a photograph that Warden took with his cell phone that night inside the club. He was snapping the picture because some cow-Warden’s words, not mine, I swear-was making an idiot of herself on the runway, but guess who pops up in the background? Jake Myers walking hand in hand with Chelsea Hart out of the front doors of Pulse. And the time stamp says 3:03, almost an hour before closing.”
Sex. Alcohol. Drugs. Now they’d caught Jake Myers in a lie on his alibi, proving not only opportunity, but consciousness of guilt. Unless the DNA on Chelsea Hart’s shirt belonged to someone else, Myers was done.
“How long will it take for the crime lab to give us DNA results from the stain on Chelsea’s shirt?”
“A couple of weeks, but Simon Knight swears he can find a shortcut. The mayor’s office is breathing down our necks.”
“Too bad Myers invoked,” she said. “With Warden flipping on him, we might’ve been able to get a confession.”
“We’re going to get him anyway. If all cops were as good as you and your partner, my job would be a lot easier. I was just telling Knight what a dream witness you are. Smart. Articulate.”
“For a cop.”
“Sorry. That’s not what I meant. It was actually my insanely awkward way of trying to transition into asking if you wanted to get something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been running around all day, and I’m starving.”
In Ellie’s mind, she could feel laser beams from Peter’s eyes penetrating the back of her skull and piercing her neocortex where the words of their phone conversation were being processed.
“Sorry, I’ve got plans tonight.”
“So, does that mean maybe some other night, or should I take that as an extremely polite shutout?”
“It doesn’t sound very polite when you put it that way,” she said with an embarrassed laugh.
“Okay, I think I can take a hint. I hope it’s not weird I asked. Knight will kill me if I alienated our star witness.”
“Consider me wholly unalienated. People get hungry. They eat, sometimes together. Not a problem.”
If Peter had been eavesdropping on her neocortex, she was pretty sure she’d passed with flying colors. Still, Ellie couldn’t help but notice that she was still smiling as she flipped her phone shut, took a sip of her drink, and returned to her reading.
TEN MINUTES LATER, she had finished reviewing the Robbie Harrington file. Her smile was gone. She drained the rest of her whisky, tucked the file into her backpack, and sent a quick text message to Peter, who was still with his boss, chatting up a couple of cops who looked familiar from the Thirteenth Precinct: “I’ve got a little work left, but call me later.”