212

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

2:35 P.M.

“We’re missing something.” Ellie tossed back the rest of her Diet Coke, squeezed the can into the shape of an hourglass, and pitched it into the recycling bin in the corner, the latest sign of a reformed NYPD.

Their whiteboard had spiraled into a spiderweb of tangled lines in blue, black, and purple marker. Photographs, phone records, and printouts from Prestige Parties covered nearly every inch of the table and floor of the interrogation room.

They were missing something. And it had something to do with Tanya Abbott.

“Separate what we know as fact from what we’ve been speculating,” Rogan said. He rotated the plane of the whiteboard to bring forward a clean slate for notes. “Fact: Tanya Abbott was Robert Mancini’s date on the night of May 27.”

“Fact,” Ellie said, “Katie Battle was originally supposed to be the woman on that date, but when her mother had a stroke, Katie called Stacy to cover for her, who in turn called Tanya Abbott.”

Rogan jotted down the facts on the board with a thick black marker. “The date was booked through Prestige anonymously, but the caller asked specifically for Miranda, suggesting he’d dated her before.”

“That second part’s speculation,” Ellie said.

“We’ll write it in blue, then,” Rogan said, switching pens for the final notation.

“Fact: Sam Sparks’s company uses Prestige Parties and, specifically, had previously retained the services of Katie Battle. Fact: Judge Paul Bandon utilized the services of Tanya Abbott. Fact: Judge Paul Bandon took a special interest in our investigation of the Robert Mancini homicide.”

Rogan paused. “You really think we can call that fact?”

“Yes, I do. And I’m not talking about my little stopover in lockup. I’m willing to suck that up as my own doing. But hauling you in for a briefing on the status of the case? That was not standard operating procedure. So, yes, fact. Our speculation was that Bandon was trying to kiss up to Sparks so he would grease the political wheels for him. But maybe we’re missing an entirely different kind of motive.”

“Such as?”

Ellie smiled. “Not to say I told you so, but what if Sparks really did do it? What if he killed Robert Mancini because the bodyguard saw more than he was supposed to?”

“You’re forgetting that Tanya Abbott did it.”

“That’s not fact. That’s speculation.”

“Fact: She posted all that nonsense about Megan Gunther online to throw us off track. Fact: Shortly after disappearing, she threatened us and our families if we kept looking for her.”

“Set aside Tanya and Megan for a second.”

“It’s a lot to set aside,” Rogan said.

“Just hear me out. We’ve got almost twenty charges in the last year and a half by Prestige Parties onto Sparks’s corporate charge card. And we’ve got Robert Mancini’s final night connected to Prestige Parties and to Tanya Abbott.”

“But Abbott’s date with Mancini was not on Sparks’s charge card.”

Sparks had rung up plenty of business at the escort service, but Tanya Abbott’s date on May 27—like Katie Battle’s on Friday night—was booked anonymously as a cash date. “Just hold on a sec. We’ve also got Judge Bandon connected to Tanya Abbott. And Judge Bandon has been bending over backward to help Sparks.”

“And what exactly are you ready to speculate from that?”

“We cleared Sparks on the Mancini murder because we thought there was no way he could have known that Mancini was at the 212 that night. But we’d been assuming that Mancini lined up the date on his own.”

Rogan finished the thought. “But if Sparks was the one who hooked Mancini up with a woman for the night, he would’ve already known where Mancini would be taking her.”

“Correct,” Ellie said. “And then his timeline in the afternoon would be meaningless.”

“But Sparks was at a fund-raiser at the time of Mancini’s murder. Showed up in the tux and everything.”

“A guy like Sparks doesn’t pull the trigger himself. He hires someone to do it for him. And if Sparks was behind Mancini’s murder, Judge Bandon’s special interest in the case takes on a whole new light. If Sparks knew about Bandon’s little visits to Tanya Abbott—”

“That’s a big if,” Rogan interrupted.

“Hey, we’re in speculation land here. Let me speculate. If Sparks knew Bandon’s secret, he could’ve pressed Bandon to keep us away from his financials and to keep a close eye on the case for him.”

“So now we’d be looking at Bandon not just for prostitution, but—”

“Bribery,” Ellie said. “A quid pro quo where Bandon keeps us away from the financial records that would have shown a connection between Sparks and Prestige Parties. And in return Sparks keeps Bandon’s extracurricular activities to himself. Maybe helps him get that plum federal judicial appointment Bandon wants so desperately.”

“You really think Bandon would help cover up a murder?”

Ellie shook her head. “No, but maybe he doesn’t realize Sparks is the doer. He threw me in the clink for even thinking about it. He just thinks he’s helping Sparks cover up the prostitution stuff. Maybe Sparks put it to him as, ‘Hey, I hear we have something in common that would be better kept a secret’?”

“But again, this only makes sense if Sparks and Bandon both knew about the other’s connections to these women. How would that happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t forget that you were setting aside our friend Tanya.” Rogan snapped the caps back onto the markers. “How does she fit into all this if Sparks is our guy for Mancini?”

Ellie looked at the facts on the board. “I don’t know. We’re missing something.”

Rogan shook his head. “If I said something that stupid, you’d throw something at me.”

Ellie paced the interrogation room, taking in the tiny bites of information laid out like oddly shaped pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle. The phone calls. Tanya’s fingerprints at the 212 and in Megan’s apartment. May 27. The photographs.

And then she saw it.

“It’s not Tanya,” she said.

“What’s not Tanya?”

“Our killer.”

“I know, you think it’s Sam Sparks.”

“No, I mean, at all. It’s not her. She’s not a killer. She’s not on the run. Or at least, not from us. She’s running from the killer.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The photographs, Rogan. The pictures. This one.” She plucked one of the color prints of the 212 crime scene from the linoleum-topped interrogation room table. It showed the bathroom of Sam Sparks’s apartment on the night of Mancini’s murder.

“It’s a fucking bathroom.”

Ellie flashed back to her testimony in Paul Bandon’s courtroom. Every room in Sparks’s penthouse had been torn to pieces—except the bathroom. Max had even made that lame joke: I guess extra rolls of toilet paper and back issues of Sports Illustrated aren’t the usual targets of a home invasion.

But the bathroom wasn’t completely untouched. A single cabinet door was ajar; its former contents—a stack of towels—had spilled to the tile floor.

Ellie tapped the open cabinet in the photograph. “That’s where she was. That’s where she was hiding.”

“Tanya Abbott was hiding in the bathroom.”

“Yep. She heard the shots—or maybe an argument preceding the shots—and tucked herself into the back of that cabinet behind the towels. She heard it all. And when the shooter was gone, she crawled out, leaving the cabinet open and the towels on the floor behind her. The shooter never realized she was there. Not until Max posted this photograph in Paul Bandon’s courtroom.”

“Where Sam Sparks saw it,” Rogan said.

“Where Sparks saw it and realized whoever he hired to do the job left a witness behind. Whatever Tanya overheard could lead back to him.”

“So now Tanya’s on the run to get away from Sam Sparks. Or whoever’s killing people on Sparks’s behalf.”

“They came after Tanya at her apartment, and Megan was caught in the crossfire. And then when Tanya saw the news about Katie Battle’s murder, she realized she was being hunted and took off.”

Ellie interrupted her own train of thought as she realized the flaw in this latest thread of speculation. “But wait. The timing’s backward. If Sparks was covering his tracks, he would have started with Katie. She was the one who was supposed to be at the 212 with Mancini. Torturing Katie for answers would have led him to Stacy, who would have eventually led him to Tanya.”

“But Tanya was attacked first, not Katie. And Stacy’s just fine.”

“Damn it.” Ellie flopped into the chair next to the table, still holding the photograph of the bathroom cabinet. “She was there, Rogan. I can feel it. Tanya Abbott was hiding inside that bathroom. And the fact that Sam Sparks saw this picture in Bandon’s courtroom has something to do with all these bodies.”

“If Tanya Abbott’s our victim and not our bad guy, how do you explain the posts on Campus Juice?”

She looked up to the ceiling as if the answers might be found there. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

“Don’t tell me,” Rogan said. “We’re missing something.”

“We’re missing something. But if even part of what I’m thinking is right, then Stacy Schecter is a link in the chain. We have to warn her. Now.”