212: A Novel Part 17

"And how hungry are we?"

"Very."

"Good. We like hungry people here." Dennis topped off Max's gla.s.s of red wine and made his way to the other end of the bar.

"To the end of the day," Max said, raising his gla.s.s for a clink.

They had been keeping their relationship casual, but she had allowed Max deep enough into her life that he knew how much she hated the natural pause points in a hot case. You jump from lead to lead, from witness to witness, from the morgue to the crime lab, but at some point, you have to rest. Take a breath. Take a break. Take a fresh look later.

Some cops could turn off during those moments. Close out all thoughts of the case and live their lives until it was time to tune back in. Not Ellie. She'd been moving nonstop for nearly twelve hours on an empty stomach and knew she'd be awake the rest of the night from the lingering adrenaline.

"So what's next on that Web site case of yours?" Max also knew her well enough to antic.i.p.ate she'd need to talk about the case to transition back into any kind of normal conversation. "Hopefully you'll get something off the boyfriend's laptop."

Ellie had called Max from Gaslight to make sure she had probable cause to seize Guzman's computer. He agreed that she could act without a warrant to prevent Guzman from cleaning out the hard drive. Unfortunately, he also agreed it was premature to haul Guzman in for questioning.

"I dropped the laptop off with the a.n.a.lyst. I swear, that kid looked like he was fifteen years old. And he called me ma'am. But, f.u.c.k it, I told him he could call me Grandma as long as he had something for me tomorrow afternoon."

A skinny Italian kid with an ap.r.o.n and ponytail set a collection of dishes in front of them, and Dennis interrupted to announce the contents of their meal. It involved meats and cheeses she couldn't even p.r.o.nounce, but to her it all boiled down to pizza and pasta and was therefore perfect.

She plunged her fork into a plate of spaghetti carbonara without waiting for Max. "And how was your day today?"

"Fine. I had that ridiculous charade this morning with Bandon, of course. Then after you left for Long Island, I spent the rest of the afternoon on a murder plea with Judge Walker. It was like pulling teeth."

"The defendant wussed out?" Exchanging twenty-five years to get out from under a true life-sentence sounded like a good deal until the defendant actually had to seal his own fate in open court.

"No, he got hungry and apparently pretty sick of the prison slop he'll be eating for the next quarter century. He wouldn't plead guilty unless the judge got him some McGriddle cakes and gorditas."

"You're kidding me."

"He wouldn't plead unless we got him his food. And not just any fast food. Two McGriddle cakes and two Taco Bell Gordita Supremes, one chicken and one beef."

"I'm not falling for this." Max had a way of exaggerating or even fabricating entire stories, anything to make her laugh.

He held up his right hand in a mock oath. "I swear to G.o.d. After an hour trying to explain why the guy shouldn't waive important const.i.tutional rights in exchange for fast food, Judge Walker finally broke down. Apparently, though, it violates personnel rules for the guards to give anything unauthorized to the prisoners. So then Walker sent his bailiff out on a food run, but he came back without the Mickey D's. I guess McGriddle cakes are a breakfast menu item and therefore unavailable after eleven a.m. I finally schmoozed up a manager and got it done."

Of course he had. Max could talk the archbishop into converting. "Now that's power."

"No, real power in the culinary world would involve persuading you to leave me some of that spaghetti."

She shook her head quickly and took another bite, but pushed what remained on the plate in his direction. Just as she felt the tension of the day leave her body, her phone vibrated at her waist. It was Rogan.

"Yeah," she said, cupping her free hand around the mouthpiece to block out the Clash song playing overhead.

"You're with your boy, aren't you?"

"Maybe."

"Well, say good-bye. We've got another body."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

9:15 P.M.

Police presence at the Royalton Hotel was glaring. The streets of midtown had otherwise quieted after the evening commute bustle, leaving the relatively few pedestrians free to gawk at the growing collection of NYPD officers and marked vehicles camped out on Forty-fourth Street.

Ellie's cabdriver, glimpsing the chaos ahead, had refused to turn off Madison Avenue out of fear that he'd be stuck for twenty minutes in a tangle of double-parked city cars and rubber-necking tourists on the cross street. She tried to persuade him with the badge, but finally paid the fare with no tip and hoofed her way east to the hotel.

The uni posted near the elevators paid more attention to the lobby decor than the people walking past him. She rode up to the fifth floor and found Rogan in the hallway, his finger in the face of a young officer in uniform.

"I don't care if you need to call your precinct commander. Someone needs to clear out every rubbernecking uni who's got no business in this hotel."

The officer gave Rogan the appropriate "Yes, sir," but she caught the eye-roll when he turned toward the elevator.

"Who called the cavalry?" she asked.

"Bunch of numbskulled unis want to get a glimpse of how the other half lives. Their usual callout to a hotel's gonna be at some rub-and-tug rathole by the Lincoln Tunnel."

"What are we doing in midtown, Rogan?" He'd given her an address and a room number on the phone, but no details.

"I brought Sydney here for a drink."

"Nice."

"It was till I saw hotel security huddled in the lobby like they'd just gotten a call from bin Laden himself. Sydney made me check what was going on."

"Which was what?"

"Take a look for yourself."

He used a plastic card key to open Room 509. A uniformed officer shook his head silently as he pressed past them on his way out. The gesture didn't begin to convey the disgust Ellie felt when they walked into the hotel room.

The girl had been left hog-tied on her side, her pale skin gray against the bright white sheets as livor mortis set in. Black nylon rope bound her wrists and feet together at the small of her back. Smears of blood on the sheets and on her body suggested the girl had been cut as well.

On the pillowcase next to the woman's head were blots of mascara, face powder, rouge, and lipstick the color of blackberries. Like a makeup mask, the smudged colors created the outline of a face with wide, pained eyes and a contorted mouth. It was a mask of terror.

"Jesus," Ellie said.

"A housekeeper came in for evening turndown service at eight. There was a Do Not Disturb sign on the door when she circled the floor an hour earlier. She probably just missed the guy. She got one look at this and walked right on out and radioed security. I was up here before the first responders."

Two crime scene unit officers scoured for physical evidence, one in the bathroom, one kneeling at the edge of the bed. The one near the bed looked up in their direction.

"The meat truck's here. They were waiting for you before moving the body. We all set?"

Rogan shook his head.

"You know I back you up on everything, Rogan, but my last forty-eight hours have been c.r.a.p. Do you really need me here to wait for Midtown South DTs to show up?"

"This is our case."

"I don't understand."

"I'll tell you in a sec, but I want your first impressions. I found a business card in her purse. Her name's Katie Battle. She was a real estate broker for Corcoran. She put the four-hundred-dollar room on her credit card."

Ellie was about to press him for an explanation, but could see there was no point. "I don't know. My first guess would be rough s.e.x gone bad. Bondage, pretty typical. A little too much pressure on the neck, it happens. But cutting? Pretty hard-core for the luxury hotel crowd."

She moved closer to the body. "You mind?" The CSU officer kneeling on the floor rose and stepped aside. Ellie took his place, crouching to get a better look. She suppressed a gag reflex. "This woman was tortured."

Rogan stood behind her, and she pointed as she spoke. "Her nipples have been slashed on both sides. And look here, beneath the blood, she's got at least three cigarette burns on her chest."

"Holy s.h.i.t. Look at her hands."

Ellie rose so she could see the other side of the woman's body where her hands and feet were bound. Several of the girl's fingers were bent at various angles.

"I counted at least six broken fingers here," Rogan said.

"Broken bones. The bondage. Burning. Cutting. This wasn't just a little light S&M getting out of control. She was tortured to death."

"Bingo."

"So now tell me: Why are we here?"

"Because that business card wasn't the only thing I found in the vic's purse. I checked out her BlackBerry. You remember those call logs I had from the Megan Gunther callout?"

"Sure."

"Well, yesterday afternoon, Katie Battle called one of the numbers on that list."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

9:40 P.M.

"Hey, Rain Man. Get around this idiot, will you?"

Rogan swerved his BMW around a minivan with Vermont plates meandering in the right lane.

"How long are you going to keep up this Rain Man s.h.i.t?"

Ellie looked at her watch. "It's been about thirty minutes. I'm thinking about sixteen more years and I'll be done."

"Really, it's no big deal."

"Yeah, okay. Whatever. 'I'm an excellent driver. Fifteen minutes to Judge Wapner. 82-82-82. 246 total.'"

"Look who's the Rain Man."

"I can't believe, out of all the numbers on Megan Gunther's call list, you recognized a match to Battle's BlackBerry."

"This is coming from the woman who still remembers the date of birth of the first perp she arrested?"

"And I'm pretty sure you called me a freak when I made the mistake of telling you about it."

"You know how long I stared at those call logs trying to figure out who we needed to talk to first? I remembered a call that went from Megan's landline to some number in Connecticut. But it was a onetime call, and four months ago at that, so we didn't get to it yet. But I looked at the lists long enough to recognize those same digits when I saw them again."

The number belonged to a cell phone owned by a woman named Stacy Schecter. Schecter had a Connecticut area code, but according to AT&T, the bills went to an apartment on the Lower East Side.

"A twenty-year-old-college student and a thirty-one-year-old real estate agent, both making phone calls to the same woman." Rogan pulled the car to a stop in front of a fire hydrant on Avenue B and 4th Street. "So who's Stacy Schecter going to turn out to be?"

Ellie pictured the scene back at the Royalton, thought about the room's four-hundred-dollar price tag, and imagined a possible scenario.

"I've got a guess, but there's only one way to find out."

The brick building stood out from its other brick neighbors, thanks to layers of bright white paint interrupted by red, yellow, and blue accents on what were probably architecturally significant details on the building's exterior. The overall effect was Miami Beach meets Sesame Street.

As they crossed the street, they spotted a man balancing an insulated red pack the size of a pizza box against his hip as he pressed the buzzer next to the building's gated entrance. Rogan stepped up his pace to catch the gate before it closed. The deliveryman was unfazed by the sight of the two of them entering behind him. They followed him up the stairs, breaking off at the second floor.

Ellie recognized the Kate Bush song blasting inside Apartment 2B as a tune she and Jess had enjoyed in high school. She rapped her fist against the door. The music continued, and she tried again, this time harder. "Police. Open up."

The volume decreased drastically, and Ellie pounded on the door again.

A matter-of-fact voice finally spoke to them from the other side of the door. "You don't look like cops."

Ellie held her badge up in front of the peephole, and then listened as three separate locks untumbled. A pair of black-lined eyes peered out to them over a safety chain. "Sorry. He usually waits till ten o'clock before b.i.t.c.hing about the noise."

"Who?"

"The misanthrope in 2C. I a.s.sume he's the one who called you. It's sort of his thing."

"Are you Stacy Schecter?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"We're not here about the music. Can you open up?"