Ellie recalled a mention in one of Eckels’s reports that, according to Alice’s sister, Alice had complained a week before her murder that a man was following her on the street. Eckels was never able to identify who the man might have been, or even to confirm whether he in fact existed.
“It was my understanding from the crime reports that your sister didn’t give you any specific information about the person she thought may have been watching her.”
“What was she going to say? Obviously she didn’t know who it was.”
“But there was no physical description, no identifying information, nothing to give us a lead on the man. You told the police that this happened somewhere near the health club where she worked?”
“Right. It must have been a couple of weeks before she was-well, you know, it was a couple of weeks before. She came home from work and told me she might be going crazy, but that she thought someone was tailing her. She said she noticed some guy behind her on the street when she was a few blocks from the gym. Whenever she’d turn around to look at him, he’d check out a store window or a newspaper or whatever. She was pretty creeped out about it.”
“But she didn’t file a report at the time?”
“You know, I still blame myself. Once she said she didn’t see the guy again after she got to work, I told her it didn’t sound like a big deal, and she seemed to calm down. Obviously it took on more importance after what happened.”
Ellie knew from the reports that police had canvassed a five-block radius around Alice’s branch of New York Sports in an attempt to find a witness who might have noticed anyone suspicious watching either Alice or the club. It had been a long shot, and, as one could have predicted, it hadn’t panned out.
Something was bothering Ellie, though, about Michelle’s recollection of her sister’s complaint. “You said she was on her way to work when she saw the man?”
“Yeah. Near Eighty-sixth and Lex.”
“The file said she usually worked days, eleven to seven, but that she spotted the guy at night. I assumed she was on her way home.”
The canvassing had focused around evening hours on the assumption that people in the neighborhood likely followed the same weekday routines. If the police had searched at the wrong time of day six years earlier, they may have blown their best chance at locating a witness who might have spotted the man who had been stalking Alice two weeks before her murder.
“No, that’s right. She did work days. But she got home late that night, and told me she saw the guy on her way to the gym.”
“So it was in the morning.” Ellie was getting seriously confused.
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t. I even asked her because it just didn’t seem like anything creepy was going to happen in the middle of the morning. She told me it was around eight o’clock. Not late, but dark. She said, ‘It was dark, Shell. I didn’t get a good look at him, but I really think he was following me.’ I’m absolutely positive. For so long I blamed myself for not making her call the police. I’d replay her voice over and over in my head. But you’re right. She worked days. And she was home and telling me this story by, like, ten o’clock.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it. It’s natural for us to fill in memory gaps over time.”
“But here’s the thing. She was on her way to the club. She told me the route and the various places she spotted him watching her. I remember now. She got off work at seven, ran some errands, and then went back to the club for her bag. Oh, shit. Oh, this is weird. Her errands-”
Ellie took a deep breath.
“She went to her hairdresser’s. She wanted a change.”
“How much of a change?”
“About five inches worth. She got her hair cut into a bob, and the guy was following her when she left. I completely forgot about that. It’s coming back to me now, though. I remember telling the detective about it.”
“You told this to Detective McIlroy?”
“No, I mean the detective at the time.”
“Detective Eckels?”
“Yeah, that was the one. I told him the guy had followed my sister on her way back to work from the hairdresser’s. I’m sure of it.”
There was no mention of the hair salon in any of Eckels’s reports, but that was the kind of detail that some cops might not jot down. What troubled Ellie more was the certainty that, in the nine months he had carried around these three cold case files, McIlroy would surely have approached the lieutenant who had been the lead detective on one of the cases. And if McIlroy had run his theory by Eckels, why hadn’t Eckels been the one to point out the resemblance between these cases and Chelsea Hart’s?
CHAPTER 24
PETER WAS WAITING for Ellie at the bar when she walked into Dos Caminos at eight o’clock. The popular restaurant was a bit of a scene, especially for the relatively sedate Gramercy neighborhood, and was much fancier than her usual take-out Mexican fare, but she supposed that had been the point when Peter had selected it.
He handed her a margarita on the rocks, with salt. “I took the liberty.”
“You dear, wonderful man.”
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.”