212: A Novel Part 34

"So you drove here after we confronted you at the Four Seasons."

He nodded. "Nick looked me in the eye and told me all over again that he didn't do it. I could tell something was wrong, but I just didn't want to believe he had that kind of evil in him. I said that to him, you know. I walked out on him and said, 'You better be telling the truth, because whoever would do something like that is evil.' Those were the last words I ever spoke to him. He tried to talk to me today outside the office, but I just got into my car and told the driver to leave. Nick did it, didn't he? He killed Robo."

"We think he also killed a woman named Katie Battle. He brought another woman here tonight named Stacy Schecter, but she made it."

"No. No, he would never-"

"He lied to you. I'm sorry." Fifty-year-old men don't suddenly go from shaking down Afghan opium farmers to murder to torture. Just as Dillon had managed to fool Sam Sparks for eight years, he had hidden inside the NYPD for twenty.

"But, why? Why would he hurt these women? What did they have to do with Robo?"

Ellie explained how Katie Battle was supposed to be Mancini's date the night he was killed, but then the trick had been pa.s.sed off to Stacy Schecter and then ultimately to Tanya Abbott. "We obviously have some loose ends to tie up, but it looks like Nick was trying to find the witness he'd left behind."

A flash of recognition pa.s.sed through Sparks's glazed eyes. "Nick was the one who wanted us to press for information about the woman who was Robo's date that night."

"A woman named Tanya Abbott," Ellie said.

"The girl from the news?"

She nodded.

"But she's missing."

"She was attacked earlier in the week. Her roommate was killed, and she's been on the run ever since."

"And you think Nick did that too?"

"We don't know," she said. "Based on some of the things he said to the woman he kidnapped tonight, we don't think he knew about Tanya Abbott."

"And if he didn't know about her-"

"Then he's not the one who went after her and her roommate."

"That's not much consolation."

She watched him fall into silence-leaning against the Maybach's gleaming hood, alone, staring at the ambulance as the engine started and strangers carried away the body of his dead partner. She could feel sympathy for him now, but none of it changed the fact that he had played a role in Dillon's violence. She finally had to speak.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Sparks. Perhaps it's cruel of me to say this right now, but when Mancini blackmailed you, why didn't you just call his bluff?"

He shook his head as he wiped away a tear from his left cheek. "There's more to it than just being outed. People would've started asking questions about the women. The escorts, the money-"

He cut himself off, but Ellie finished the thought for him. "You used a corporate card. And if that had come out, your investors might have asked about other expenses as well. My guess is, they would have found some other creative accounting? The Maybach. Maybe a little too much spending given the current economic climate?"

She took Sparks's sad nod as resignation, his financial concerns now eclipsed by Dillon's death. "My entire corporate existence is linked to this image of unapologetic consumption. The truth is, I don't have as much as the world thinks." He fought the quiver of his lower lip. "Financing? Advertising? All gone if the world knows Sam Sparks is just another overleveraged developer, and a poof at that. And, even so, I was still tempted. I would have let Robo scream all of it from the rooftops."

"But Nick?"

"Nick? I'm not sure which he was more worried about, that mess in Afghanistan or the truth about us. Ex-cop. Ex-military contractor bada.s.s. A grown man barely out of the closet to himself. Out of the question." For the first time, she heard real anger in his voice and knew that this must have been an ongoing struggle between the two men. "And it wasn't always easy to argue with him. Ask yourself, Detective: How will your colleagues react when they learn that Nick Dillon was queer?"

Ellie wished she could tell Sparks he was wrong. Even so, Dillon had no justification for hurting Katie or Stacy.

"What about Judge Bandon?" she asked.

"What about him?"

"Did you have a deal with him? To protect you?"

"Of course not."

"You didn't have some kind of connection to him through Prestige?"

"I went there for the girls, Detective, not middle-aged judges." A sad smile worked its way through his pained expression, and he seemed to find some comfort in the humor. "You said something about this last night, and I was telling you the truth when I said you sounded like a lunatic."

"He did throw me in jail for you," she said. "And hauled my partner in for an update on the case. We figured his special interest in the case was to protect you."

"Why in the world would the man protect me? It's fashionable to hate the rich these days, in case you haven't noticed."

"But the rich can still help someone like Paul Bandon become a federal judge."

"Well, Guerrero did tell me he was surprised Bandon was hearing the case."

"Why was that?"

"Because Bandon worked at Guerrero's firm for a couple of years before he went on the bench. He didn't officially have a conflict because I didn't start using the firm until after Bandon left, but Guerrero told me Bandon usually recuses himself from their cases so he doesn't have to check on the timing issues."

Ellie remembered seeing a brief law firm entry beneath Bandon's online picture, just between his stint in the Department of Justice and his appointment to the trial court. She'd known from Max that Guerrero was at one of the city's top firms, but she hadn't made the connection.

"It never dawned on you that Bandon might be trying to work you for support?"

"If that was part of the plan, he never told me. Or my lawyer."

Something didn't sound right, but she believed Sparks was telling her everything he knew. She turned away from him, but he stopped her. "Will I be charged with anything, Detective?"

"That will ultimately be up to the DA." If Sparks's suspicions about Dillon had formed only after the fact, she doubted that he had committed any crime, but she didn't want to make any promises.

"Fair enough. Do you know where they'd take him? The ambulance, I mean."

"He'll go to the Bronx Medical Examiner's Office. It's on Pelham Parkway at Jacobi Medical Center."

"Well, the word will be out now for sure. I will insist on viewing his body and making the necessary arrangements, even as I'm sure someone will tell me I'm a non-family member. That should be fun."

She knew it would not be. She handed Sparks her business card. "You have any problems with the ME, you have them call me."

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR.

9:45 P.M.

It was nearly ten o'clock by the time she had a chance to call Rogan. He didn't bother with greetings.

"It's about d.a.m.n time."

"I was at Dillon's."

"No s.h.i.t. I finally gave up and called dispatch. All she could tell me was there was a homicide. She at least knew it wasn't an officer down, or I'd be up there myself by now."

She gave him the short version: Tucker shot Dillon, Stacy was fine, Sparks hadn't been involved.

"Where are you?"

"Outside Paul Bandon's apartment. Donovan and I didn't know what the h.e.l.l was going on, so we kept working on Dillon's arrest warrant. See what happens when you don't call people?"

"I'm sorry. It was total chaos."

"I gotcha. Just be sure to call your boy, Donovan. I could tell he was worried about you. He was the one who sent me up here to track down Bandon. He wanted to make sure the warrant got signed."

"You won't be needing it now."

She flipped the phone shut, seeing no reason to tell Rogan that her first call-back at Dillon's, before she'd even started the engine-had been to Max. She knew it meant something about her feelings for him. Something good.

As she merged onto the Henry Hudson Parkway, she thought about everything she'd learned in the past few hours and realized how off base she'd been. Not unlike those unis who refused to jump a former cop's fence, she had subconsciously bestowed an irreb.u.t.table presumption of innocence upon Nick Dillon, but he'd been in front of them-guilty-the entire time. He had killed Robert Mancini for threatening to peel away a carefully constructed facade that shielded his most coveted secret-a secret about his very ident.i.ty, a secret that shouldn't have to be concealed.

And just as she'd a.s.sumed the best of Nick Dillon because he came from her world, she'd a.s.sumed the worst of Sam Sparks because he did not. She had rationalized her obsession with him, first because of the way he'd treated her at the penthouse and then for his refusal to cooperate with the investigation. But the truth was, more than ten years after she'd moved to New York, people like Sparks still had a way of making her feel like the little girl from Wichita who hadn't known which fork to use until an investment banker boyfriend finally told her. If she had set aside her emotions-if she had looked at Sparks more as a person than a stereotype-she might have seen the truth earlier.

She had been right about one thing: Dillon had been using Robin Tucker, manipulating her obvious desire for companionship in the hope of obtaining inside information about the investigation. But Ellie had underestimated her lieutenant. As much as she must have wanted a relationship with Dillon, she had never told him about the missing girl's connection to the Mancini case, even as Tanya Abbott's photograph dominated local headlines.

Ellie was confident that they could clear the Mancini and Battle cases, but that still left the question of who killed Megan Gunther. If Dillon didn't know Tanya was the woman with Mancini that night, then he was not the man who killed Megan and left Tanya for dead. She'd been so off the mark about Dillon and Sparks. What had she missed about Megan and Tanya?

She thought again about the isolated facts they had gathered about Tanya Abbott. She was an only child from Baltimore. Her mother had worked as a nanny. The family was poor enough that Tanya had lost the house when her mother died but somehow still had money set aside for college tuition. A bright and vibrant preteen, she was busted for prost.i.tution by the time she was twenty years old, when she managed to have access to a private counselor to get her out of criminal charges.

It was as if the girl had a guardian angel watching over her until one morning, when her roommate was stabbed to death in front of her and her life fell to s.h.i.t.

And then Ellie saw what she'd been missing.

Distracted by the noise of Robert Mancini and Katie Battle and Sam Sparks and Prestige Parties, she hadn't focused on what they'd known about Tanya Abbott. When they'd seen the calls between Tanya and Bandon, they'd been so sure it was part of Tanya's current life-the one that had taken her into the bed of Robert Mancini on his last night. But maybe this wasn't about the present at all. Maybe this was all about the past.

Ellie slowed to a crawl in the right lane as she juggled her cell phone and scrolled down to a Baltimore number she had dialed two days earlier.

"h.e.l.lo?"

Anne Hahn sounded annoyed but not groggy. The call to Tanya Abbott's former neighbor was late, but at least she hadn't woken the woman.

"Ms. Hahn. It's Ellie Hatcher from up in New York again. I'm sorry to call so late."

"Benjamin, I told you to go to sleep. Now. Before I put you into that bed myself." Her tone lowered an octave. "Sorry about that. Go on."

"You mentioned that Tanya's mother worked for a family of some means?"

"I'm not sure how rich they were, but, yeah, he was some big fancy lawyer."

"Could his name have been Paul Bandon?"

"Bandon...Bandon. Maybe?"

"His wife's name is Laura. He has a son named Alex."

"Alex." Anne's voice sharpened in recognition. "Yes. There was definitely a little boy named Alex. Tanya talked about him all the time. She was a few years older and, having been an only child, I think she kind of glommed on to him as a sort of little brother. She was the same way with my older son when she'd babysit him. It was always Alex this, and Alex that."

"Do you remember when this would have been?"

Ellie realized now why she had recognized the towheaded kid in the photographs with Tanya. She had seen an older version of the same kid in the high school graduation picture on Judge Bandon's bench when she testified on Wednesday morning.

"Shoot," Anne said, "probably twenty years ago."

"Tanya would have been about ten years old?"

"Well, Marion worked for them for a few years, I'd say from when Tanya was ten to-um-probably about fifteen or so?"

"And were these the years when you said Tanya was the teacher's-pet type or-"

"The Lolita years?"

"Yeah."

"That period of time would have included both. Tanya started changing when she was about thirteen, if I had to say. At first it seemed like the usual teenage girl insecurities. She got quiet, sort of withdrawn. And then slowly she started acting like someone else altogether-sulky, full of att.i.tude, darn right inappropriate when it came to males."

In other words, all the signs of s.e.xual precociousness.

"Thanks for your time, Ms. Hahn. Sorry again for calling so late."

"That's all right. Now you've got me wondering whatever happened to that guy she worked for. I think he was a big deal with the government. Marion used to tell me, just you watch, someday he'll be on the Supreme Court."

As Ellie flipped her phone shut, she wondered if that had been before or after Marion Abbott found out what Paul Bandon was up to with her daughter. She took the Seventy-ninth Street exit off the parkway. Bandon's apartment was right across town.

She had tried to call Rogan in case he was still on the Upper East Side. He hadn't picked up, but she found her partner sooner than expected.

Turning east off of Park, she slammed on her brakes at the sight of uniformed officers dropping gate-style iron blockades at the entrance onto Seventy-eighth Street. Beyond the stopgap, she spotted two fire trucks, an ambulance, and at least six marked police vehicles, all with lights flashing. Even the NYPD's version of SWAT, the Emergency Service Unit, had sent an armored van. A swarm of medical, fire, and police personnel stood among the vehicles in the street. And they all appeared to be looking upward.

Her gaze tried to follow theirs, but all she could see from the driver's seat was the third floor of Paul Bandon's building and the grimy ceiling of the fleet car's interior. A car horn blared, followed immediately in New York style by several others, each more urgent and sustained than the previous.

She pulled up parallel against the metal blockades to get out of the way of through traffic on Park Avenue, then flashed her shield to the uniform officers as she stepped out of the car. As she walked around the barriers, she saw Rogan at the epicenter of the chaos, speaking intensely to Paul Bandon. Even from this distance, she could tell he was using what she called his military voice.