“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 Symanski 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.”