212

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

8:02 P.M.

Despite a natural aversion to his father’s profession, Jess turned out to have some cop in him after all. The call to Ellie dropped before he could make out her final request, but his instincts had led him east on Thirty-eighth Street and then north on Park Avenue, the same route Ellie had chosen in the hopes Tanya was heading for Grand Central Station. But he never did spot Tanya Abbott. Neither did Ellie, Rogan, or the team of patrol officers who scanned the streets of Murray Hill and a twenty-block surrounding radius for the next two hours.

By eight o’clock, they had regrouped outside Ellie’s apartment complex.

“You sure your brother didn’t just make a mistake?”

Ellie didn’t know the uni, but could tell from the glance at his watch that he didn’t appreciate chasing ghosts.

“He didn’t make a mistake.” If Jess said he was positive, then he was right. She was certain enough that, for the first time since Tanya disappeared, the Public Information Office had published an immediate press release of a confirmed sighting of the missing woman at the corner of Thirty-eighth Street and Park. The notice had gone out on the live local news updates.

None of it had mattered. Tanya had managed to slip past them.

“So you want us to repeat the drill again?” the uni asked, still looking at his watch in case she’d missed the hint the first time.

“You know, we could expand the radius,” another uni suggested, to the vocalized annoyance of his fellow officers.

Rogan placed his hands on his hips and looked up and down Thirty-eighth Street, as if one last scan would do the trick. Finally, he dropped his arms and sighed.

“We got to move on, Hatcher. She’s gone.”

“So we’re out of here?” one of the unis asked.

She nodded. “Good work,” she offered feebly, triggering a few groans as they walked away.

“I’m hungry,” Rogan said once they were alone.

Ellie’s only nourishment for the day had been a Hershey’s bar from the DA vending machine and a few fast scoops of Nutella at the precinct. She shared the sentiment but wanted to keep grinding away at the case. “Fine, but we eat fast.”

“Girl, you always eat fast.”

Ellie reached for the cheeseburger before the plate even hit the table and took an enormous bite. Food had never tasted so good.

They had settled in at Molly’s, an Irish pub two blocks from the precinct with sawdust floors and arguably the best burgers in Manhattan. She withstood the urge for an accompanying Guinness, knowing they weren’t yet done for the night.

“Maybe your brother did made a mistake,” Rogan said as he picked at a piece of eggplant on his vegetarian sandwich. Ellie knew he was struggling to get his cholesterol down and wasn’t happy with the diet Sydney had asked him to follow for a month. Watching her tear into a juicy cheeseburger was probably torture for him, but it didn’t keep her from taking another eager chomp.

“He’s not like that,” she said once she’d finally swallowed.

“Not to be rude, but the man’s nearly forty years old and lives on your sofa. He has to have made a few mistakes somewhere along the line.”

“Not about this kind of stuff. He’s not paranoid, you know? If he saw someone and thinks it’s Tanya Abbott, then I’d bet money it was her.”

“But Jess said she was by herself.”

“Then she probably was.”

“Why would she do that? The entire New York Police Department is looking for her. Why would she go after you? And why go on her own?”

“Because she’s not after us. She was hiding in that bathroom cabinet, and she’s scared. First she was scared of the police, but now she’s more afraid of whoever killed Katie Battle and whoever’s after her.”

Rogan shook his head. “Why do you feel sorry for this girl? She had to be involved in what happened to Megan.”

“Why are you so certain of that?”

“Because she posted that threat against us on Campus Juice using that ISP concealer or whatever it’s called, which means she also posted the original threats about Megan. And there’s only one reason she would’ve done that.”

Ellie couldn’t ignore his point, but she also couldn’t ignore the feeling in her gut that Sam Sparks’s connection to Prestige Parties was not just a coincidence.

“Let’s say I’m right and that Sam Sparks had Mancini killed and that Tanya was simply a witness.”

“Okay. Then Sparks would go after the woman Mancini was with that night, and that was supposed to be Katie Battle. The problem is, you can’t explain why someone went after Tanya first, and then Battle.”

“So maybe we’re both right,” she said.

“How so?”

“Maybe Tanya’s a victim and a bad guy. She was hiding in the bathroom at the 212. Had nothing to do with that. But four months later, her roommate’s a problem.”

“That works,” Rogan said, completely ignoring his dinner by now. “She uses Campus Juice to create a distraction, kills Megan, and cuts herself to make sure no one suspects her.”

“But she’d need an accomplice for that,” Ellie said. “There was no weapon in the apartment.”

“Or maybe she just hid the weapon really well and went back for it when she left the hospital. I mean, it’s not like we looked in the toilet tank.”

“Okay, good. And then she leaves the hospital, either because she realizes we’re going to figure out who she was, or maybe she saw the news reports about Katie’s murder.”

“Which, if you’re right, could be Sparks cleaning up his mess. And now that Tanya’s figuring out that she could be next, she might have been reaching out to you for help. Or maybe the last couple of days have given her time to come up with some story that gets her out from under Megan’s murder.”

This felt right. The pieces fit together. “It doesn’t matter. We still can’t find her.”

“No,” Rogan said. “But we do know where Sam Sparks is.”

“But we can’t prove any of this, and we don’t have PC for an arrest. If we go to him with more questions, he’ll just lawyer up and Guerrero will never let us near him again.”

“So we won’t question him.”

“What? We’re just going to stare at him real hard and hope he comes clean?”

“No. If we’re going to assume we’re both right about Tanya, let’s assume you were right about all of it. Not just Sparks, but about Paul Bandon doing him special favors. If we go to Sparks and rattle his cage, he might reach out to Bandon again. If we can prove that, we can flip Bandon to find out what he knows, and then we might be in business.”

“When should we begin the rattling?”

“I’m still good to go. You?”

“Let’s do it.”

“You going to finish that?” He pointed to the last piece of burger on her plate, which she promptly stuffed into her mouth.

“You’re a cruel, heartless woman, Hatcher.”

If working a room were a competitive sport, Sam Sparks would line a wall with gold medals. Wherever he paused in the ballroom, clumps of curious onlookers followed, hoping for a handshake, a quick hello, a look into the glint of those steely eyes, perhaps even a photograph of themselves beside the next American celebrity tycoon.

Tracking him down to what the Four Seasons called its Cosmopolitan Suite had not been difficult. They’d started with a phone call to Kristen Woods. Ellie had hit redial seven times before Kristen finally picked up. Over the background noise of light jazz and cocktail chatter, Kristen had insisted that Sparks was unavailable to speak with them until the morning. He was delivering an address for the Columbia Business School alumni association. With that nugget of information in hand, it took only a quick scroll of the school’s Web site to learn that Sparks was delivering a keynote speech that night at the Four Seasons about the relevance of business education in the new economy.

Ellie watched from the ballroom entrance as waitstaff cleared dessert dishes and eager alumni lingered to greet Sparks. “I can’t take much more of this.”

“There’s your girl Kristen.” Rogan nodded toward a spot not far from the jazz quartet in the corner of the room. They worked their way through the crowd toward her.

“Detectives, my boss will not be happy to see you here.”

“I’m sure he won’t. If you could find a way to pull him aside, we can be discreet in the hallway. There’s no need for this to be uncomfortable.” Ellie said it as if she had any authority to force a confrontation.

“Fine. I’ll do my best.”

Kristen interrupted Sparks’s conversation with an older, well-dressed couple. His eyes flashed toward them as he headed for the exit. They took their cue to follow.

Sparks did not waste any time once they were on the opposite side of the lobby outside the ballroom.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t call my lawyer right now and enjoin you from having any further contact with me.”

“Because we would move to have your favorite judge, Paul Bandon, disqualified from hearing any issues involving you or this case.”

“Now what kind of paranoid theory have you come up with?”

“You had to know we’d eventually ask ourselves why Bandon took such a special interest in your case,” Ellie said.

“I don’t think he had a particularly strong interest until you essentially perjured yourself in his courtroom, Detective.”

Ellie steeled herself to accomplish what they had come here to do. For months, Sam Sparks had been under her skin. Now it was their turn to slide beneath his. “We know why you wanted access to the evidence involving Mancini’s date the night he was murdered.”

“As I believe my attorney explained, I wanted my team to follow through on any steps you might have missed in your zealousness to focus attention on me.”

“It’s all about the photographs we used during the court hearing. You saw the open cabinet in the photograph of the bathroom and realized there was a witness. Someone knows what happened in your apartment that night, and you don’t want us to find her. We know why Bandon was willing to bend over backward for you. We know about Prestige Parties.”

Sparks had retained his usual self-possessed demeanor, but at her mention of the escort service, his eyes darted toward the alumni event as if someone there might save him from this conversation. She had been right. Something about Prestige Parties linked him to Mancini’s murder and to Paul Bandon.

“You may think you know something, Detective, but until you’re ready to put your money where your mouth is and file charges against me, you should keep your theories to yourself. My lawyer could have a field day with you in a slander suit.”

“We’ll be quiet, Sparks, but that won’t mean we’re not working. And listening to people who aren’t so silent.”

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“You should ask yourself how much you trust the people who’ve been so eager to help you.” She needed to plant doubts. She needed Sparks to wonder how much pressure a man like Paul Bandon could resist. She needed him to think that Bandon might admit he’d been pressured to show preferential treatment. “You should ask yourself if your secrets are safe.”

She saw it then. A crack in the effortless facade. A hint of apprehension in that otherwise omnipresent stare of resolved confidence. He was no longer certain he was in control.

“Enjoy the rest of your night, Mr. Sparks. We’ll be in touch.”

As they took the stairs to the main lobby, she said to Rogan, “You were awfully quiet back there.”

“I thought you needed to do that on your own.”

He was right. She had. The tables were turned. She had gone toe to toe with Sparks and hadn’t broken. Now he was the one with something to worry about.

Outside the hotel on Fifty-seventh Street, Rogan threw her the keys to the Crown Vic. “You sure you want the night shift?”

“Absolutely.” She was ready to see where Sam Sparks was heading next.