212: A Novel Part 3

"And she's still better looking than anyone you ever dated, Shannon," Rogan interjected.

"I'm just saying, cut me some frickin' slack."

Rogan draped his suit jacket on the back of his chair. As he took a seat at the gray metal desk that faced Ellie's, he threw Shannon a look that sent the detective's attention back to his own work.

"Just because the man's stonewalling us doesn't mean he's our guy." Rogan reached for a tin of Altoids on his desk and popped a mint in his mouth. "Rich a.s.sholes s.h.i.t on us all the time. They usually aren't murderers. You don't think this has something to do with Bandon throwing you in the clink?"

She gave him her middle finger and her friendliest smile. "Did I say anything about investigating Bandon? I'm talking about Sparks. All we wanted was a closer look at his financials. Just a way to check on his enemies. Why go to court over something like that?"

"Donovan said going into it that we were probably going to lose. We didn't have PC."

She opened her top desk drawer and removed a jar of Nutella. She'd long ago given up offering any to Rogan. "So?" she asked. "Most innocent people cooperate with us even when we don't have squat."

"Like I said, not the a.s.sholes."

"No, but even the jerks usually have a reason. I was sitting in the courtroom watching Guerrero bill four hundred dollars an hour to fight us. Sparks even showed up personally, and his time's got to be worth way more than Guerrero's. Why?"

Ellie's father had always told her that the key to good police work was to scrutinize people's motives. "Find the motive," he used to say, "and the motive will lead you to the man."

She understood why the innocent citizens of Bushwick didn't cooperate when some Trinitarios took out another banger. In a neighborhood run by gangs, a conversation with the police could be followed by a knock on the door in the middle of the night by a machete-wielding messenger. She even understood when some corporate bureaucrat wouldn't open the company records without a warrant. Regular people had jobs to protect.

But Sparks wasn't a regular person. He was the boss. He was a billionaire. This was his call, and he'd made the wrong one.

Rogan leaned his weight back in his chair and rested his palms on top of his closely shaved scalp. "Sparks showed up personally, huh?"

"Yep."

"s.h.i.t," he said, letting his weight bring his chair back to the floor. He pointed a finger at her across the desk. "You know I never liked Sparks for it."

From the very beginning, Rogan had firmly believed that a man as savvy as Sam Sparks wouldn't eliminate a threat inside an apartment he owned. She, however, had believed it was just the kind of reverse psychology that someone as arrogant as Sparks would employ. Me? But why would I draw attention to myself by having the man killed inside my own apartment?

"J. J., you know as well as I do how quickly we eliminated him as a suspect. All that mattered to us was the time line, the call records, and the personal a.s.sistant." The same a.s.sistant was in charge of both Sparks's personal calendar and the schedule for the 212. According to her, Mancini hadn't asked to use the apartment until 2:30 on the day of the murder, and she had never mentioned it to Sparks. She insisted that Sparks could not have known that Mancini would be at the apartment that night.

And because they had scratched Sparks from the list of possible suspects, they had never scratched beneath the surface of Sparks's public persona to unearth whatever secrets Mancini could have stumbled on.

"You win," Rogan said. "We look at Sparks again."

Ellie smiled as she took another bite of Nutella.

"You go tell the Lou, though. She was on the warpath yesterday."

"At me or Bandon?"

"A little of both. A lot of both, actually. She'll want to know you're back."

"Yeah, okay."

She started toward her lieutenant's office, but then turned again to face Rogan. "Do me a favor?"

"Burn those clothes you're wearing?"

"Track down that guy we talked to in May at Narcotics. Tell him to expect us at about"-she looked at her watch and calculated the time she'd need for another stop-"five o'clock."

"Any hint as to why?"

"In court, Sparks's lawyer claimed we've got an investigation running on the apartment next door."

"And how would he know that?"

"We figure that out after we see if he's right."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

3:00 P.M.

Ellie rapped her knuckles against the gla.s.s window that separated Lieutenant Robin Tucker's office from the cramped detective squad, packed as it was with unmatched desks, dilapidated chairs, and the chaos of eighteen homicide detectives working out of a single room. She swept her bangs to the side as she watched through the gla.s.s. Tucker's head tilted ever so slightly toward her office door.

"It's open," she called out, still reading whatever report she held between her fingertips.

"Afternoon, Lou. Rogan says you wanted to touch base?"

Tucker set the doc.u.ment down on her desk. "Did you really need your partner to tell you that, given what happened in court yesterday?"

Ellie had finally won over her former lieutenant three short months before he was demoted due to an internal affairs investigation, the details of which were still wholly unknown and therefore rampant fodder for the NYPD rumor mill. When she found out that her new lieutenant was called Robin Tucker, she had a.s.sumed that the gender-ambiguous name belonged to a man. Statistical odds. But when Ellie learned that this particular Robin was of the female variety, she was optimistic. Maybe her luck would be better with a woman as a supervisor. Unfortunately, though, Ellie's problems were with authority, not men.

"No, Lou. Just making sure Rogan got credit for keeping me in check."

"If you were in check, you might not have spent the night in jail for contempt of court."

Ellie pressed her lips together. Explanations had done nothing to help her with Judge Bandon. She wasn't going to waste her breath attempting to persuade Tucker that the judge had overreacted.

Tucker looked Ellie in the eye during the silence. Ellie knew from asking around that her lieutenant was forty-eight years old, but her makeup-less skin was clear and bright. Her wavy hair had probably been shiny and blond years before turning to its current wiry mix of gray and light brown.

She gave Ellie a nod. "Actually, a little bird already told me that the judge teed off on you for no good reason."

Ellie shut her eyes and thought about the ribbing she was going to get in the house if Max called her lieutenant in an attempt to protect her. Then as quickly as the idea had come to her, she rejected it. Max knew better.

"You know Nick Dillon." The way Ellie said it, it wasn't a question. As an ex-cop, the head of Sparks Industries' Corporate Security Division would know more than a few former colleagues at the NYPD.

"We were both in the Seventh when I was just a rookie. He called this morning looking for your Lou. I guess he wanted to save you from a month's worth of desk duty. Anyway, we recognized each other's names from back in the day."

Tucker's affect changed as she spoke about Dillon-her eyes softened, the corners of her lips raised into a slight smile-and Ellie noticed for the first time that with a little effort her lieutenant could be attractive.

"He's been pretty decent to Rogan and me."

"He's a good guy. When he called, he gave me a heads-up that Sparks may go back to court to get access to our evidence."

"On what basis?"

"Given where you spent the last twenty-four hours, do you really think Sam Sparks considers himself bound by the usual rules?"

"Valid point." A week earlier, Ellie had read online that Sparks was in negotiations for a reality show in which contestants would show off their eye for potential real estate jackpots. Sparks would supervise their work, like Donald Trump on The Apprentice, but meaner and with better hair.

"Dillon knows it's futile. No court will give Sparks what he wants, no matter how much he pays his lawyers to go through the motions."

"But Dillon does know you from back at the Seventh."

"Exactly. A guy like Dillon doesn't chat up someone like me just for s.h.i.ts and giggles. Someone who looked like you? Now that would be different."

Ellie was used to her fellow cops making remarks about her looks. She would probably always look a little bit like the girl who was once the runner-up in the Junior Miss Wichita pageant. But what she usually chose to take as a compliment sounded like a dig coming from Tucker.

"So Dillon was sniffing around to see what he might turn up?" she asked.

"Yeah, I actually felt sorry for the guy. You can tell he thinks Sparks is a schmuck. I guess Sparks wants everything we know about the missing girl. He figures that if he can find her, we'll work that angle and forget about him."

"That's a dead end. We've got the latents from the champagne flute and the DNA on the outside of the condom, but no hits on either one. She's a mystery woman."

Ellie hadn't been particularly surprised. In a criminal justice system dominated by male perpetrators, and with a DNA database consisting almost entirely of s.e.x offenders, striking a hit on a female subject was rare.

"I guess when you've got enough money, the sky's the limit," Tucker said. "He wants Dillon to work the case from beginning to end with his own people. You know, Dillon spent ten years between homicide and special victims before he went private. I got the impression the work in the private sector was pretty high-speed-corporate kidnapping prevention. He's a good cop."

"Except he's not a cop. He's been a ten with me and Rogan, but he's still a guy making four times what you're pulling in, doing half the amount of work, for some rich p.r.i.c.k who thinks he's ent.i.tled to more safety than regular people."

"Tell me how you really feel, Detective."

"I just did. Because for a second there it actually sounded like you wanted us to share our evidence with Sam Sparks."

"No, I don't. I was, however, suggesting that a cop with those kinds of years under his belt might catch the sort of details that a less experienced detective-someone who got promoted too early, someone who was the bra.s.s's darling-might miss."

"Seriously, I've got to defend Rogan here. He paid his dues."

Tucker was unamused. "So what's the next move?"

"Rogan and I were thinking we'd take another look at Sparks." She set out her theory that Sparks's resistance to their investigation could have more to do with his role in Mancini's death than any concern for privacy.

"For what it's worth, I told Dillon we wouldn't be giving his boss special treatment."

"So we're a go?" Ellie asked.

She nodded. "But I also told him you'd continue to work every angle. Don't just focus on Sparks. And I don't want to hear from anyone in the house that you're shucking off new cases, either. We stopped pushing full-time on this two months ago."

"We know."

"And watch your back, Hatcher. You already spent one night in jail. I'd hate to see what Sam Sparks could do if he was really p.i.s.sed off."

CHAPTER NINE.

3:00 P.M.

Megan Gunther stood in the lobby of the Sixth Precinct, fighting back the tears that were pooling in her eyes and threatening to roll down her reddened cheeks.

"What do you mean, there's nothing you can do?"

She had never seen her father like this. Jonas Gunther was an insurance man. That wasn't to say he was weak-quite the opposite, in fact. He was a man of principle, who valued character above all else. At work, he expected others to live up to their word. In his personal life, he expected people to do what was right. And he did not hesitate to stand up to those who failed to deliver on his expectations.

But Megan's father, however forceful he could be about making a point, was always in control. Strong, but subdued. Emotions, he would tell her, got in the way of an effective argument.

Today, though, Jonas Gunther was emotional.

Megan's mother, Patricia, placed a comforting arm around her daughter's shoulder and gave her a squeeze. She stroked her straight blond hair and told her that everything would be all right.

"We don't know everything will be all right, Patty. That's why we're here. Things don't become all right just because we hope for them to be. They become all right when the men and women who have sworn to protect and serve us pay attention when someone is threatening another citizen."

Megan noticed a woman and her young son seated on a bench on the other side of the lobby watching them, alarm registered on their faces. The child dropped his gaze and burrowed his cheeks against his mother's abdomen.

"Mr. Gunther, I understand your frustration, but I need you to lower your voice right now."

According to the metal nameplate affixed to his uniform, the desk sergeant trying to calm Megan's father was called Martinez. His words did nothing to mitigate Jonas's anger.

"When I told my daughter to call the police two and a half hours ago, I expected an officer to go to her apartment to start an investigation. Then she tells me she's required to come into the precinct, so her mother and I drove into the city from New Jersey, expecting something to be done about this. My daughter has done everything one could ask of her. She missed a biochem lab today. She found each and every mention of her name on this disgusting Web site. She printed out copies for you." He shook the quarter-inch stack of paper for emphasis. "And now you tell us there's nothing you can do to protect her?"

"Sir, I've tried to explain, we have received more than our fair share of calls in this precinct from other NYU students, all complaining about what people are saying about them on this very Web site. And we've run our options past the district attorney's office, and the same problems are going to apply here. First of all, the site doesn't require users to give a name, address-anything. It's totally anonymous."

Jonas was already shaking his head. "That's not true, that's not true. I called the IT person at my company, and they tell me there are options. There's a way to track-you can track the IQ or something like that. What's it called again, honey?"

"IP address, Dad."

"Yes," he said, pointing to Sergeant Martinez. "The Web site should have that information. You can use it to-"

"And that's the second problem, sir. This company is not willing to release that information without a subpoena-"

"So go get a f.u.c.king subpoena."