212

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

12:40 A.M.

Ellie returned to the detective squad just as Rogan was resting the handset of his phone in its cradle.

“That was quick,” he said.

“Didn’t feel like it when I was talking to the mom, but I hauled ass on the LIE.” The call she’d made to her own mother from the car had made the drive feel even longer. “Where’s Stacy?”

He tilted his head toward the interview room. “We’ve got something.” As they made their way to the interrogation room, Rogan walked Ellie through the tangled web of connections he and Stacy had pieced together from the phone records. “We think the call from Megan Gunther’s apartment to Stacy was a return call from a girl Stacy only knows as Tanya.”

“Who the hell’s Tanya?”

“Hold your horses. I’m about to tell you. At the end of May, Katie Battle called Stacy to cover a date for her. Stacy said no can do, but called her friend Tanya to see if she could do it. An hour later, Stacy got a call from Megan Gunther’s landline. Her best recollection is that it was Tanya getting back to her. Now, here’s the kicker: about three weeks before all of that went down, we’ve also got Tanya calling Megan Gunther’s cell.”

“So we know Tanya’s connected to Megan. She’s calling her and using her landline. So, again, who the hell’s Tanya?”

“I did a reverse search on her Baltimore cell phone number. Comes back to someone named Tanya Abbott. I just hung up from Baltimore PD. She’s thirty years old. Only prior was a misdemeanor solicitation pop ten years ago. Cited and released. Went through a diversion program and got her case thrown out.”

“How in the world could Megan know this Tanya person?”

“Maybe Megan had a side of her no one knew. If she was turning tricks, she might’ve piled on the makeup.”

They found Stacy still in her seat, still staring at the phone records. Rogan placed Megan Gunther’s photograph on the table in front of her.

“She might have changed her appearance. Makeup. Hair color. Even wigs. Take another look.”

Stacy let out a heavy sigh as she pondered the photograph. “I’ve never laid eyes on this girl.”

“What about Heather Bradley?” Ellie asked. “She’s this girl’s roommate. Also at NYU.”

Stacy looked disheartened as she shook her head once again.

“Her picture. We need Heather’s picture.” Ellie darted from the interview room and bee-lined to her computer, where she pulled up the New York Department of Motor Vehicles database. Ninety-seven Heather Bradleys. She narrowed the field to college-age women, but still came up with twenty-one hits, with no guarantees that any of them was her Heather Bradley.

She looked up the phone number for St. Vincent’s Hospital, and dialed it on her cell as she made her way back to the interview room.

“I’m going to have someone at the hospital snap a photo and send it over.”

Rogan and Stacy both listened as she navigated her way through the various connections at the hospital until she finally reached a desk nurse on Heather’s floor and explained what she needed.

Ellie felt the pace of her heartbeat quicken as the seconds and then minutes passed while she was on hold. The Web site. Campus Juice. The harassing messages. They had immediately assumed that Megan Gunther was the intended target. She, after all, had been the one who died. And once they focused on Megan, their attention narrowed in on the Internet threats like a pinpoint laser.

But Megan Gunther wasn’t the only person who lived in that apartment. There was her roommate. There was Heather Bradley—the roommate who said she hadn’t had a date since transferring to NYU, but who, according to Keith Guzman, spent all her time with some “mystery boyfriend” she never told Megan about. And she had dark hair, pale skin, and almond eyes. Just like Stacy Schecter and Katie Battle.

“I’m sorry, Detective, but that patient checked out this afternoon.”

“How is that possible?”

“You’re the ones with handcuffs, not us. I left you on hold for so long because I was asking around. Apparently there was an issue with the insurance information she gave us. Someone went down the hall to inquire about it, and the next thing we knew, she was gone.”

As the nurse spoke, Ellie heard a tap on the interrogation room door. She cracked it open to see one of the civilian aides extending a document in her direction. “This was marked urgent for Rogan.”

Ellie took the pages from the aide and flipped past a cover sheet from the Baltimore Police Department to find a grainy enlargement of a Maryland driver’s license. The name on the license was Tanya Jane Abbott, but Ellie recognized the woman in the photograph. Dark hair. Pale skin. Almond eyes. Ellie had seen this woman in the hospital just that morning. Tanya Abbott was Megan Gunther’s roommate, Heather Bradley.