212: A Novel Part 22

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

9:52 A.M.

As Ellie made her way to the brick walk-up on 128th Street, she reached back to her days on patrol to identify the tags of gang graffiti that marked the East Harlem neighborhood. BBV for the Bronx Bound Vets. The numbers 031, code for "I'm a Blood." CK for Crip Killaz. ADR, short for Amor de Rey, or the Love of Kings, a local offshoot of Chicago's notorious Latin Kings.

She suppressed an involuntary shudder as a rat the size of her purse scurried along the sidewalk near a stack of black garbage bags lining the curb.

The building she was looking for stood out as the best on the block. Brushed bleach stains against the brick walls and concrete steps revealed someone's stubborn t.i.t-for-tat against unwanted spray paint. On the third floor, recently planted begonias popped from a planter outside a window. Still, standing outside Keith Guzman's apartment building, Ellie could see why the DJ had felt so threatened by his ex-girlfriend's world.

Tanya's phone records remained their best hope of finding the missing woman, so Rogan was working those. He was also nudging CSU again about running the latent prints Tanya had left behind in the apartment. If she had a habit of invoking aliases, she could have been arrested under another name that she was using now that she'd left Heather Bradley behind.

In the meantime, Ellie wanted to find out more about the woman Keith Guzman had known as Heather Bradley.

It took five minutes of persistent buzzing on Apartment 3B's bell before she heard footsteps against the wood staircase inside. Seconds later, a disheveled Keith Guzman headed toward the gla.s.s of the front door, still b.u.t.toning his jeans.

"Yo, it's early, woman," he said, opening the door.

"It's nearly ten in the morning, Keith. I think you'll live."

"I was at Gaslight till four. Good crowd, too. Would've been hot to play, too, if you hadn't taken all my s.h.i.t. Now get the h.e.l.l off my porch before you wind up with my TV, too."

He tried to shut the door, but Ellie snuck her black boot inside just in time.

"Now why do you have to be so rude, Keith? Especially when I come bearing gifts."

She reached inside her backpack and pulled out the laptop she'd seized from him at Gaslight. The pressure of the door against her foot eased.

The begonias belonged to Apartment 3B.

"Nice flowers," she remarked as she took a seat in a green upholstered chair by the window. She was careful not to let her weight disrupt the linen cloth that had been draped against the chair back, presumably to conceal the tatters that were starting to rip in the fabric.

"My moms likes them."

She placed the laptop on the coffee table in front of her.

"So the geek squad cleared you on the Campus Juice postings. No visits to that site in the last six months, and no sign of the software that whoever posted those threats used to block the tracking information."

"I told you."

"So you said something the other night about Megan's roommate hitting on you one time."

"Well, you know, everyone wants a piece of DJ Anorexotica."

Ellie shook her head and laughed. "You realize that this whole shtick of yours is a little off-putting, right?"

"What shtick, girl? An-Ex is one hundred percent authentic."

"Are you old enough to remember Vanilla Ice?"

"You mean Ice-T? Sure. He's one of the original gangstas."

Ellie smiled. "No, Vanilla Ice. Now that you've got your laptop back, you can Google him when I'm gone. Trust me: someone else has already mined this creative territory pretty thoroughly. Just try, today, this morning, one time only, to talk to me like a normal person. Talk to me the way I know you talked around Megan."

The sound of her name made him pause, but not for long. "You're trippin'."

"I'm serious, Keith. I need to know about Heather. She's missing. And she's not who Megan thought she was. Her real name was Tanya Abbott." She watched as Keith's eyes widened. "She was a thirty-year-old prost.i.tute from Baltimore. We need to find her, and anything you know about her might help us."

"Oh, s.h.i.t." The language wasn't elegant, but at least she'd gotten through to him.

"Exactly. Obviously we need to find this woman, and you appear to be the only friend of Megan's who ever spent any amount of time around her."

"Not much."

"Well, not much is more than what we have right now. You said something about her having a boyfriend? She told us she hadn't had a date since transferring to NYU."

"I never saw her with any guys, but me and Megan always joked around that she had some secret sugar daddy on the side."

"Why was that?"

"You know, she was always getting dressed up and s.h.i.t, and when Megan asked where she was going, she'd act all cute and stuff. Like, 'Just a friend,' with this little smile. And then Heather'd disappear into her room and have these long phone conversations. They'd get kind of heated, you know, like Megan and I could kind of hear the tone. One time Megan was like, 'Guess someone ain't puttin' out tonight.' Like we just a.s.sumed it was boyfriend-girlfriend stuff."

"Any idea who the guy was?"

He shook his head. "It was only a couple of times, so I don't want to make a big deal about it or anything. It was more like something me and Megan would joke about-this whole secret life we thought Heather had. I guess she had it after all. I tried eavesdropping once. Megan was trying to stop me, but I could tell she was liking it." He smiled at what was obviously a happy memory.

"You get anything good?"

"Not really. Something about New York being expensive and her being broke. Man, she was trickin'?"

"Looks like it."

"No way Megan would have stood for that." Ellie could tell what he was thinking. If he'd known, if he had listened to more of those calls, Megan would have kicked her out. She would have needed another roommate. Megan would be alive, and they might still be together.

"What about the night she came on to you?"

"I might have overstated that. Just a tiny bit," he added, holding his fingers an inch apart.

"I thought everyone wanted a piece of the An-Ex."

He sniffed as he tugged the sleeves of his sweatshirt up his forearms. "Well, you know. Mostly."

She shared in the laugh. "So what's the real version?"

"I don't know if she was trying to hook up or what, but it was weird. Megan went to sleep early because, you know, she had cla.s.ses or whatever. I was in the living room mixing some files on my laptop when Heather came home. And, man, she was lit. At the time, I a.s.sumed she was just really drunk, but now that you're saying she's a hooker and stuff, I don't know. Maybe it was more like heroin or something. Anyway, she wasn't herself. She went straight to the kitchen, poured herself a gla.s.s of tequila on the rocks, and started asking me what I was doing. We started talking, and eventually we're doing shots together."

"Would you say you were friends before that?"

"I wouldn't say we were friends after. And I wouldn't say she was friends with Megan either. At the time"-he squinted-"I figured she was one of those weak chicks who's more into guys than any female friends. She started babbling about how nice I was and how lucky Megan was to have someone her age who admired her intelligence and her talent. And then she said something-and, yeah, this was why we always thought she had a boyfriend-she said something about always having a guy who takes care of her. She said it was a kind of a sickness, that she even saw a shrink about it. Then this was why I thought maybe she was coming on to me. She said it all started with this guy who popped her cherry when she was young, and that someone like me would be a change. I thought it was weird because she said I was young, even though I'm three years older than Megan. I guess if she's actually thirty, that explains it."

"Did she ever mention any of this to you afterward?"

"No way. She avoided me like an STD, you know? I figured she was embarra.s.sed. I tried telling Megan later she was a head case, but she a.s.sumed I had it out for Heather because, well, I wanted to live there instead of her."

"This place doesn't seem so bad," she said, looking around the apartment.

"I wanted to be with Megan."

"I know."

"Hey, Detective."

"Call me Ellie."

"Did any of this help? Are you going to be able to find Heather, or whatever her name is?"

"I honestly don't know, Keith. But, yeah, I have a feeling this is going to be helpful."

Ellie found Rogan deep in thought in front of his computer.

"What's so interesting?" She bent to look over his shoulder.

"You want little news first, or big?"

"Save the best for last."

"All right. To start with, I think I figured out how our girl created a little life for herself as Heather Bradley." Ellie caught a glimpse of a Morgan Stanley logo before Rogan switched screens on his computer, pulling up an article from the Arizona Republic Web site. The headline read, "ASU Students Mourn," with a smaller tagline beneath the larger print: "Third DUI Fatality This Semester." A black-and-white photograph showed a crashed Audi A4 with a pickup truck firmly lodged against the driver's side.

The date on the article was from last January.

Ellie skimmed the text. Arizona State University students had held an on-campus vigil after a third student this semester-a freshman named Heather Bradley-was killed by a drunk driver on Apache Boulevard. A summary of the accident followed: pickup truck driven by a thirty-two-year-old carpenter who was being charged with manslaughter. A summary of the other two accidents. And then quotes from Heather's friends and one of her professors.

She reread the penultimate paragraph of the article, the quote from the math professor: "Heather was an outstanding student and a brilliant mind. I had only recently written a letter of recommendation for her. She was very happy here close to home but was ready to leave Arizona after all. I was sorry we'd be saying good-bye to her, but I never expected it to be like this."

And then the final paragraph: "After earning acceptances from New York University, Smith College, and several other prestigious schools, Bradley had accepted an offer from Stanford. She would have matriculated there as a soph.o.m.ore this fall."

Forging a college application would have been extremely complicated, requiring fake transcripts, an SAT report, and phony letters of recommendation. But Tanya Abbott did not have to forge anything. The application had already been taken care of and the acceptance letter already sent in the mail.

"She just picked up the phone and called NYU," she said.

"Correct," Rogan said. "Think about it. The real Heather Bradley had already made her transfer decision. The family would have contacted Stanford to notify them that Heather wasn't coming, but there was no need to call the schools she had turned down.

"All Tanya had to do was tell NYU she changed her mind. She gives them a change of address, and Heather Bradley's family has no idea that their dead daughter's enrolled in school.

"I called the NYU admissions office and learned more than I ever wanted to know about some federal statute restricting their ability to release academic records, but I also got an unofficial, off-the-record confirmation that that's what happened. And homegirl must've been doing some magic s.e.x tricks in the bedroom, because I more or less confirmed that our girl wasn't on any financial aid. The rest of it is pretty standard ident.i.ty theft. Fake Maryland ID card. Managed to open a checking account from there. And she found the room in Megan Gunther's apartment on Craig's List without the formalities of a credit check and references."

"You call all this the little news?"

"Yep. Here's the kicker. Any doubts we had about Tanya being the one behind Megan's murder and her own stabbing would appear to be resolved by this." He used his mouse to open a new browser window, clicked on his recent history, and scrolled down to campusjuice.com. From there he navigated his way into the recesses of old postings until he found the most recent thread about Megan Gunther. A new reply had been added.

Don't bother looking for me. You won't find me. And if you look for me, I'll look for you...and your families.

Rogan leaned back in his chair. "We kicked ourselves for getting distracted by this Web site, but we looked precisely where Tanya wanted us to focus. It's like those magicians with the sleight-of-hand tricks. The harder you try to find the quarter, the easier it is for the magician to dupe you into looking left while he's pulling a coin out of your right ear. Tanya knew Megan's schedule, and she used it to make us look left. We saw those posts and just a.s.sumed Megan was the target. This woman's coldhearted. She killed a girl she lived with for months, just as a distraction."

"Jesus, Rogan. This message was posted less than an hour ago."

Immediately after they'd caught the Gunther murder, they'd asked one of the computer technicians to track any new comments about Megan on Campus Juice. He a.s.sured them he could write a simple computer program that would alert him of any replies posted to the threads containing the threats. Apparently the program had worked.

"I know," Rogan said. "I was notified within two minutes and immediately called Jabba the Hutt out in Long Island for the Internet provider information."

"The fact that we're sitting here tells me that didn't pan out."

"She used that cloaking device again. The chick's out there somewhere, threatening us, but we have no idea where. She's an electronic ghost."

"We've got her picture up all over the city. The news is running it twenty-four/seven. Eventually someone's going to spot her."

The only thing the media loved more than young, attractive murder victims were young, attractive missing women. The story of one who had walked away from a hospital and disappeared after surviving a murder attempt was like the crack cocaine of tabloid crime reporting. Patrol officers throughout the borough were tracking down the wingnut calls that were flooding the tip line, but so far, none of the spottings had panned out. Now Tanya had upped the ante with this threat.

"Rogan, if Tanya had any details about our personal lives, she would have used them, just like she posted Megan's schedule on Campus Juice to scare her. Threatening our, quote, 'families' shows that she doesn't know anything about Sydney."

"Or Jess," Rogan added.

"Or Jess." But even as she tried to convince herself that Tanya would be more worried about disappearing than targeting the family members of police officers, she used the camera in her cell phone to take a snapshot of Tanya's Maryland ID. She e-mailed it to Jess, then followed it with a text message: "Crazy chick making threats. Likely BS, but just in case, photo in your e-mail."

She hit the send b.u.t.ton and asked Rogan if she should send the picture to Sydney as well.

"I kept her up late enough watching the news that she knows that girl's face just fine by now," he said. "I'll call her myself to tell her about this latest garbage. She doesn't always take the job in stride, at least not when it comes home with me."

Rogan's phone rang.

"Yeah, this is Rogan."

Ellie's cell buzzed in her hand. A reply text message from Jess: "Crazy chick's hot. Will definitely be on the lookout."

She was about to text a response to Jess when Rogan's side of the phone conversation caught her attention.

"Yeah, the Megan Gunther case. You got a hit?" She recognized the excited look on his face. There was news. Ellie reached across him to hit the refresh b.u.t.ton on the Web browser. No new messages on Campus Juice.

"What?" she whispered urgently. "What?"

Rogan shook his head to shush her.

"No s.h.i.t?...You're sure?...Sweet. I need you to do me a favor, though. We're going to need DNA to confirm it.... No, we don't have a sample. Send someone back to pull hair from the shower drain?...Cool. Thanks."