212: A Novel Part 2

"Precisely. That is what the police believe. And usually when we talk about what the police believe, we subject that belief to a standard of probable cause. I don't see probable cause to search through the personal records of Sam Sparks."

"Exactly," Guerrero chimed in.

"But, Your Honor, Mr. Sparks is not a suspect. If that's his concern, we can work out an immunity agreement to placate Mr. Guerrero."

"Immunity?" Guerrero asked. "Immunity? The last thing Sam Sparks needs is for some newspaper to report that he has received immunity in a murder case. As the police themselves have acknowledged, he had nothing to do with the events at his apartment on May 27. Because he's at no risk of criminal charges for those events, immunity from prosecution is worthless to him." Guerrero pressed his weight into his hands on counsel table and leaned forward for emphasis. "The government fails to appreciate importance of public opinion and the privacy of information to Sam Sparks's significant net worth. His real estate holdings are valuable, yes. But as we all know, the real value to the industry that is Sam Sparks lies in his reputation as a businessman. The fact that someone was shot at one of his properties is not great PR. But if the police are actually investigating Mr. Sparks-even as a potential target-then, before you know it, people are speculating about improperly financed debt, the Mafia...who knows what? And of course the risks of disclosure of information regarding pending deals cannot be understated in this kind of market."

Ellie found herself tiring of the invest-in-Sam-Sparks-for-your-future sales presentation and began doodling on the notepad she had removed from her purse. She let her gaze move to the left, where the head of what Sparks Industries called its Corporate Security Division, Nick Dillon, sat on a bench behind Sparks and Guerrero.

Before Dillon was a.s.sociated with either Sparks or Mancini, he'd been a member of the NYPD. After a stint working for a private military contractor, he'd moved on to Sparks. Now he was one of those lucky former cops who collected both a city pension and a private paycheck. Dillon had been Mancini's immediate supervisor. He had also been his friend.

Ellie and Rogan had spoken to Dillon at least once a week since that initial callout four months earlier. He had done his best to play mediator, but they'd nevertheless wound up here in court. Dillon nodded along with Guerrero's argument, but Ellie knew from earlier conversations that Dillon would like nothing more than to elbow his boss in the throat for his refusal to cooperate with the police. She liked the image.

"Your Honor," Max protested, "counsel's argument a.s.sumes that any information disclosed as part of this investigation will become public. The suggestion is an insult to the fine detectives who have worked-"

"Which brings us back to Detective Hatcher," Guerrero jumped in. "Our background information shows that in the short time she's been in the homicide division, her name has appeared in forty-nine newspaper articles in a LexisNexis search. Prior to that, she granted various interviews to outlets like People magazine and Dateline NBC about her own family background-"

Ellie looked up abruptly from her notepad. Dillon glanced over with a barely perceptible shrug. The thought of his coaster-sized elbow crushing Sparks's windpipe was growing more appealing by the second.

"Counsel's comments are wholly inappropriate," Max said.

Complete and utter bulls.h.i.t. She continued to scribble as she listened to her boyfriend's voice rise half an octave. "Two of the NYPD's biggest collars in the last year. A Police Combat Cross for rescuing another officer in the line of duty. Personal interviews granted only at her peril and only to help her mother, who was widowed in Kansas when-"

Judge Bandon cut him off. "I've been known to read the occasional People magazine myself. I'm familiar with the circ.u.mstances of her father's death."

"My point," Guerrero continued, "is that Detective Hatcher is relatively inexperienced, and although she has created quite a record for herself in a short period of time, she also has a knack for finding herself in the public eye. She also made it clear with her outrageous arrest of my client that she has a personal grudge against him."

"I would hardly call it an arrest," Max argued. "She placed him in loosened handcuffs after he twice disobeyed a request that he leave the crime scene. Once he was out of the apartment and in the hallway, she immediately removed the cuffs and gave Mr. Sparks another opportunity to stay out of the way, which he wisely took advantage of. Any other citizen in the same situation would have spent the night in Central Booking."

Judge Bandon cut him off. "Are you seriously suggesting that Mr. Sparks should be treated just like any ordinary citizen?"

Max had warned Ellie that Judge Bandon might be starstruck by Sparks, but she had never imagined that she would hear a judge admit on open record the favoritism shown to the rich and powerful. She turned to glance at Genna Walsh, who was shaking her head in disgust.

"What I mean to say," the judge said, catching himself, "is that Mr. Sparks was at that point known to Detective Hatcher, both as the owner of the property in question and as a respected member of this community. Those considerations would appear to undercut her decision to arrest him, however briefly. I must admit, I am troubled by what I see here."

"As well you should be," Guerrero added. "That same obsession with Mr. Sparks that caused her to jump the gun on that first night has distorted this investigation from the outset. Your Honor, we are outsiders to this investigation, and even we are aware of at least two far more credible theories as to motive for Robert Mancini's murder."

Guerrero ticked off his theories on two stubby fingers. "First, the police still-four months after the murder-have not identified the woman who by all appearances had s.e.xual relations with the victim prior to the murder. Second, and separately, we have recently learned that the NYPD is conducting a drug investigation of the apartment directly next door to the apartment where this murder occurred."

The movement of Ellie's pen against her notebook stopped.

"Could this have been a home invasion at the wrong address?" Guerrero continued. "Have the police looked into that possibility?"

Home invasions were often the m.o. of choice in drug-related robberies, so one of the first steps she and Rogan had taken was to look into the possibility of a mistaken entry. Immediately after the murder, she had personally checked the department's database of ongoing drug investigations. They even reached out to Narcotics to be certain. They found no addresses that might have been confused with Sparks's apartment, let alone one on the very same floor.

"With these two very important unanswered questions, Your Honor, it strikes us as quite audacious indeed for the police and the district attorney's office to stand here demanding private information from my client as part of a fishing expedition while a killer runs free."

"I don't like it either," Judge Bandon said, settling back into his overstuffed leather-backed chair. "The court is granting Mr. Sparks's motion to quash the state's subpoena-"

"But, Your Honor-"

"I've heard enough, Mr. Donovan. Interrupt me again, and there will be consequences. Under Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, the prosecution does have a right to obtain evidence from nonsuspect third parties, but only upon a showing of probable cause that the party has actual evidence to be found. There has been no such showing here. A written order will follow."

Max lowered his head momentarily before he began packing his hearing materials into a brown leather briefcase. It was a subtle movement, but Ellie noticed. He was disappointed, and not merely about the court's ruling. He'd warned her that morning that their chances weren't good. But that small motion suggested a fear that he had let her down.

He glanced over his shoulder in her direction. His brown curly hair was bushier than usual; for a week he'd been trying to find time for a trim. His gray eyes looked tired, but when she lifted her chin toward him and winked, they smiled back at her.

The private exchange did not last long.

"Your Honor!" Guerrero's exclamation was quickly followed by an audible sucking of air from Sam Sparks. They were both staring at her notebook, still open on her lap beneath her pen.

She felt Judge Bandon's eyes follow their gaze.

"I take it there's more to see than tic-tac-toe boards and vector cubes?"

Silence fell across the courtroom.

"Your notes, please, Detective Hatcher." It took him only the briefest glance before he called her back up to the witness stand. "I have a few questions of my own, Detective."

CHAPTER SIX.

2:45 P.M.

Megan Gunther The twelve letters formed just two words-one name-on a screen filled with many other words about scores of other people on the NYU campus. But those two words-her name, as the header on a subject link of the Campus Juice Web site-had made the last three hours the longest one hundred and eighty minutes of her lifetime.

Megan had closed her laptop the second that Professor Ellen Stein busted her. But that hadn't stopped Stein from instructing her to stay late after cla.s.s-an example to all the other seminar students who might have been tempted to ignore the cla.s.s discussion in favor of more interesting online material.

By the time Stein had finished lecturing her on the importance of group discussion and the empirical research demonstrating the deleterious effects of mult.i.tasking on learning, Megan was running late for her biochem lab. She would have blown off a lecture, but the labs counted for 60 percent of her grade and couldn't be made up. And med schools would care about her biochem grade. No, the lab couldn't be skipped. And it was impossible to juggle her computer while t.i.trating liquids and triggering chemical reactions over a Bunsen burner.

Now she had finally made it back to her building on Fourteenth Street, three hours after first seeing her name posted on a Web site that promoted itself as the home of the country's juiciest campus gossip. She walked quickly through the lobby, pressed the elevator call b.u.t.ton, and then pushed it several more times as she watched the digital readout on the elevator tick down to the lobby level. As she rode up to the fourth floor, she pulled her laptop and keys from her bag.

She slipped a key into the doork.n.o.b-she never bothered with the other locks-and turned. Once inside the apartment, she glanced at what had once been the empty bedroom, the one that now belonged to her roommate.

Megan's parents had originally justified the purchase of this two-bedroom condo as both an investment while Megan attended college and also a place for them to stay when they visited the city. But with the economy down and Manhattan rents still sky-high, the prospect of additional cash flow outweighed the Gunthers' desire for a room of their own in the Big Apple: Megan had to tolerate a roommate after all. Heather called the first day the ad hit Craig's List in May. She was transferring into NYU in the fall and seemed pretty normal, so Megan went with her gut.

The truth was, Heather was easy to tolerate. Today, as on almost every other day, Megan returned home to find Heather's door closed and the apartment quiet and in exactly the same condition she'd left it. Whether Heather was out or at home, this was the usual state of their shared home. Sometimes Megan wished Heather would come out of her sh.e.l.l and start treating this as her apartment, too, but today she was grateful that her roommate kept to herself.

Inside her own room, she closed the door, flopped down on top of her pale yellow bedspread, and opened her laptop. The connection to her wireless network seemed to take forever. Once the signal was finally established, she opened Internet Explorer, clicked on her history bar, and scrolled down to www.campusjuice.com.

She navigated her way to the NYU message board. All of the posts on the first page were new, entered within the last three hours. She clicked through the board, searching for her name again. What had once appeared on the fifth page of the forum was now on the seventh. The site was clearly getting some use.

She moved the cursor to her hyperlinked name, took a deep breath, and clicked.

11:10 AM-noon Life and Death Seminar 12:10a3 PM Bio Chemistry Lab 3a7 PM Break: Home to 14th Street?

7a8 PM Spinning at Equinox The schedule was hers, down to her five-times-weekly cycling cla.s.ses at the gym. Whoever posted the message obviously knew her comings and goings. They also knew where she lived, or at least which street. The short message was detailed enough to convince her that the final line of the post was no exaggeration: Megan Gunther, someone is watching

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25.

2:00 P.M.

Rogan s.n.a.t.c.hed a gallon-size Ziploc bag from the grasp of the booking clerk at 100 Centre Street.

"I'd get that smile off your face real fast, son."

The clerk lowered his eyes and continued to complete the release form Ellie would sign as the official termination of her sentence for contempt of court.

"'What if Sparks did it?'" Rogan asked Ellie in a hushed voice. "How about, what in the big bad f.u.c.k were you thinking?"

What if Sparks did it? It had been a little more than twenty-four hours since Judge Paul Bandon read those words in Ellie's notebook. She had scribbled them next to a cartoon drawing of a stick figure with stubbly hair and a striped jumpsuit, standing behind prison bars.

"Apparently I was thinking that we'd been too quick to give Sparks a pa.s.s." She removed her tiny gold hoop earrings from the plastic bag and began looping them through her lobes.

Rogan held the bridge of his nose and shook his head. "Like jewelry's gonna do anything for you looking like that."

Partners were like families that way: the booking clerk had best keep his mouth shut, but for Rogan, the subject of her incarceration was fair game.

Ellie had been replaying the scene in the courtroom for twenty-four hours, and she still couldn't believe Bandon had pulled the trigger on her. She was convinced that until that moment-when Bandon had said, "Your notes please, Detective Hatcher"-she hadn't even been aware of the words and images that were forming in her scribbles.

Her mistake had been trying to persuade Bandon of that fact. If she had simply admitted to carrying vague suspicions that she hadn't disclosed on the stand, she probably would have gotten off with a lecture.

But instead Ellie had tried to explain. And Bandon, instead of understanding, had accused her of being "cute." And then when she argued even more insistently, as Max tried to quiet her down, Bandon had concluded that she was lying. To him. Personally. And that, no judge would tolerate.

And now because Bandon thought she was a liar, she had spent the night in a holding cell.

"No bo-hunk boyfriend to bail you out?" Rogan asked.

"You didn't bail me out. I was released after fully serving my twenty-four-hour sentence."

"Whatever. Where's your man, Max?"

"I didn't want to chance Bandon finding out about us. I'm obviously on his s.h.i.t list now. No need to add Max to that picture. Besides, you're the one who insisted on picking me up. I could've gotten back to the precinct on my own."

"What? And miss the opportunity of you doing the walk of shame in your jelly slippers?"

Ellie looked down at her black leather flats, happy to have her own shoes back. "Please tell me that smell in my nostrils is just the memory of my overnight sojourn at the lovely Centre Street inn."

"Sorry, chica. I'm afraid you absorbed the permeating funk of your surrounding atmosphere."

"I'm so happy that my personal and professional misery has brought you such happiness."

"So are you going to explain those notes that landed you in this s.h.i.t pile?"

"My mind was wandering in court. We both get some of our best ideas when we aren't even trying."

"Are you forgetting that we looked real close at him early on? Real close." Rogan's arms were crossed, fingertips tucked beneath his underarms. Always well dressed, today Rogan wore a black wool suit, a crisp lavender dress shirt, and an Hermes tie worth more than Ellie's entire outfit. He might have a cop's blue-collar values, but, thanks to a grandmother who married well late in life, he could live beyond a cop's salary.

"Look, you mind if we talk about this in a slightly less depressing environment?"

Ellie led the way out of the holding floor onto the street, and Rogan didn't stop her. By the time they reached the fleet car that Rogan had parked on Centre Street, she was ready to talk.

"So we took a look at Sparks and cleared him."

Rogan glanced back at the building from which they had just exited. "Pretty sure I was the one saying that back there a couple of minutes ago."

"Keys." She held up her right hand for the catch. In the six-plus months they'd been partners in the homicide task force of the Manhattan South Detective Borough, Ellie was usually happy to leave the driving to Rogan, but after the last twenty-four hours, she wanted control over her own movements. Rogan obliged, tossing the keys across the hood.

"We've had this case four months now," she said, turning over the ignition as Rogan climbed into the pa.s.senger's seat. "We checked out the obvious angles first: s.e.x and money."

A guy gets filled with bullets after leaving his s.e.m.e.n inside a knotted condom on the nightstand, and the first theory is s.e.x. But when it came to s.e.x, everyone who knew Robert Mancini said he was uncomplicated. Thirty years old. Unmarried since a starter marriage to a high school sweetheart had ended eight years earlier. No children. If he had a girlfriend-and he didn't at the time of his death-he was with that woman, and that woman only. If he didn't have a girlfriend, he hooked up and made it clear that hooking up was all he was interested in. Apparently there was no shortage of women willing to play by those ground rules.

Unfortunately, they'd been unable to locate the woman who played the game that particular night. The 212's overnight doorman had no memory of either her or Mancini, and had since been fired for routinely leaving his post to play video games with the teenage son of a tenant. Without a video recorder, the building's monitoring system was useless, and Mancini's phone records and e-mail messages had also led nowhere.

Then there was money. But again, with money, the picture seemed equally uncomplicated. Mancini had been working at Sparks Industries for almost a year before his death. Prior to that, he'd served in the U.S. Army, where he met a private contract worker named Nick Dillon in Afghanistan. When Dillon hung up the Middle Eastern travel and became the head of the corporate security division of Sparks Industries, he offered Mancini a job back home, which Mancini accepted as soon as his military commitment was up. His salary was in the low one hundreds, a figure that Rogan and Ellie had confirmed as the going rate for a decent corporate security gig.

He owned a two-bedroom condo in Hoboken, only two and a half miles from the childhood home where his sister's family still lived. He was up to date on a moderate mortgage. He had no unusual debts, no irregularities in his bank records.

"s.e.x and money didn't get us s.h.i.t," Rogan said. "And when s.e.x and money and gambling didn't get us s.h.i.t, we took a close look at Sam Sparks and cleared him. I think that's now the third time we've agreed on that."

But the notes Ellie had scribbled during the motion hearing were asking them to revisit that determination. And Rogan wanted to know why.

As she drove up Centre Street, Ellie hit the wigwag lights on the dash to cut through the standstill traffic that was blocking the intersection at Ca.n.a.l through Chinatown.

"We looked at Sparks before he decided to stonewall us. Now that we know just how much he wants to be off our radar, we have to look at him again."

"Holy c.r.a.p, Hatcher. Rogan told us you got into some s.h.i.t at the courthouse, but we didn't think he meant literally."

John Shannon was a portly detective with light blond hair and ruddy skin. He sat directly behind Ellie in the squad room and had a bottle-a-week Old Spice habit.

"I got two hours of sleep on a mattress thinner than the layer of fat around your neck, Shannon; haven't eaten since I bit into the mystery meat burger they handed me for dinner; and spent the last twenty-four hours in city-issued underwear approximating the consistency of eighty-grit sandpaper-"