“Between me and you, Eckels doesn’t care if he causes problems for other people.”
“Hey, stop worrying about it. Knight will work something out. You saw that the Daily Post broke the story about the victim’s hair being chopped off?”
“Although I believe they said ‘shaved.’ Salacious just the same, though.” She’d seen the update on the paper’s Web site at her apartment. Byline: George Kittrie and Peter Morse. Ellie wondered if breaking the story had been worth it all to Peter.
“So, come on, you haven’t given me your take yet. Is Symanski our guy or not?”
“I don’t know.” Neutral. Report the facts. Present both sides. Let Donovan make up his own mind.
“Oh, come on. The guy told you he did it. What’s in your gut?”
I strangled her, and I cut her up, and I took her earring. There were only two possible explanations for what happened in that alley. Either Ellie forced Symanski to speak those words, or he had murdered Chelsea Hart. And whether anyone accepted it or not, Ellie knew that Symanski hadn’t simply recited that sentence. He’d looked her in the eye. He’d spoken with a pleading desperation that was unambiguous: he had truly wanted her to believe him.
“I know I didn’t coerce that confession, so, yeah, I think he did it.” Ellie felt guilty that she might be biasing Donovan, but at least she was still keeping the cold cases to herself. She wanted to raise the subject once more with Rogan before she brought anyone else in on her theory.
“And Jake Myers is totally innocent?”
“It would follow. But are you really sure enough to drop the charges?”
Donovan shook his head. “What a mess. I’ve got law school friends who make four times my salary, and all they have to think about is which enormous company should get how large a pile of cash. Why do we do this to ourselves?”
“Hey, speak for yourself, Mr. ADA. I get paid even less than you, but all I have to do is catch the perps and hand them over. You get to make all the decisions about charges and plea bargains and sentences and all that business.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have to worry about getting stabbed in an alley.”
“Well, at least not at work.”
“Oh, and you’re funny too. That’s just great.”
“You’ve got something against funny?” she asked.
“No, in fact I’m a very big fan of the sense of humor.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“It’s yet another reason to wish this coffee wasn’t just a coffee. But, that’s all right. I’m good at keeping it strictly professional.”
“Is that what this is? A strictly professional coffee that’s just a coffee?”
“I assumed so, what with the nondescript ‘plans’ you had the other night and everything.”
“Actually, I don’t think I’ll have any plans along those lines in the future.”
“So, the extremely polite shutout from the other night-”
“Consider it retracted. If I’m permitted to retract, that is.”
“I think it can be managed.” He looked at Ellie with a cool smile that made her suddenly aware of the unflattering overhead lights in Starbucks. “Unfortunately, with that, our coffee that wasn’t just coffee may have to end. Knight will kill me if we’re late.”
THANKS TO CALLER ID, Rogan didn’t bother with a greeting.
“Let me guess. You’re on your third drink and have pasted Eckels’s picture to a dartboard.”
“One beer, one peppermint mocha. No dartboard, but an excellent suggestion nevertheless.”
“Beer and peppermint mocha? Disgusting.”
“Where are you?”
“St. Vincent’s. Symanski’s finally awake.”
“I’ll be right there.” Ellie hung up before he could argue.
SHE FOUND ROGAN sitting in a wheelchair in the third floor hallway of St. Vincent’s Hospital. A uniform officer stood guard at the door across the hall.
“You shouldn’t sit on that when your legs work,” she said, kicking one of the wheels. “Bad karma.”
“I’d lie in an empty casket right now. My ass is whooped tired.”
“Is Symanski talking?”
“Yeah, if ‘Get me a lawyer’ counts as talking.” He used his hand as a puppet to act out Symanski’s single sentence.
“Fabulous.” She used the wall next to Rogan as support and slid down into a crouch.
“Speaking of karma,” Rogan said, “Symanski’s in bad shape.”
“He’s probably faking it. You didn’t hit him that hard.”
“No, not from me. He’s got some kind of melanoma.”
“Skin cancer?”
“No, like lung cancer or something. The doctor said it was from asbestos?”
“You mean mesothelioma?”
“Yeah, that’s it. You’ve been attending med school on the side?”
“No, like almost everything I know, I learned it from the television.” She parodied a familiar ad for one of the city’s omnipresent personal injury law firms. “‘If you’ve been diagnosed with mesothelioma, you know there are hundreds of questions about what steps to take. Let Datz and Grossman help you with your legal rights while you deal with this difficult diagnosis.’”
“Damn, girl, you do watch too much TV. Now you better go and get your butt out of here. Eckels will go nuts if he finds out.”
“That’s what we need to talk about. Simon Knight called me in and said he wants us both working on this-together. He’s worried that if a jury hears Eckels pulled me from the case, it will taint me as a witness.”
“A witness against who?”
“Pick one. It’s eventually going to be either Myers or Symanski. The whole point is, we’ve got to figure out which one of them killed Chelsea, and whoever it turns out to be, I’m already part of the picture of the case. They don’t want me to be a problem at trial.”
“No, we couldn’t let that happen to the dream team, could we now?”
“I know you’re not a big fan of Simon Knight.”
“And you are? That guy doesn’t give a shit about anyone. He just wants to win his cases. And he’d sell either one of us out in a heartbeat if necessary. Casey had a trial about eight years ago where the defendant said Casey planted evidence. Instead of proving the fat fuck was a liar, Knight went in front of the jury and said, ‘So what?’ Detective Casey might be a bad cop, but all the other evidence showed the guy was good for it.”
“The rogue detective framed a guilty man,” Ellie said.
“Except Casey was a good, honest cop. And Knight didn’t care what he said about the man as long as he got his conviction.”
“That’s a DA’s job.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Well, Knight’s getting my back on this one. Big-time.”
“As long as you realize that could all change, like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.
“I’m a big girl, Rogan.”
“Did you tell him about those cold cases?”
“No, not yet. I want to, though. It was different before we knew about Symanski. Now that he’s part of the picture-”
“Okay.”
“Okay, as in, you’re okay with it? Or okay, as in, you’re pissed at me and want me to stop justifying my position?”
“Believe it or not, okay as in okay. I see the point. If we’re taking another look at the case against Myers anyway, we should at least make sure we do it right.”
Ellie wanted to jump on Rogan’s wheelchair and give him a big bear hug. Instead, she nodded. Nodding was always an acceptable way for cops to communicate with each other.
She was scooching her way out of her crouch when she spotted the woman in an orange coat step from the elevator. In the time it took Ellie to realize she looked familiar, the woman caught sight of the officer posted outside Symanski’s door and stepped back into the elevator.
“Did you see that?” Ellie asked.