“Good call arresting the friend instead of Myers,” he said, clearly directing the comment to Rogan. “If you’d hooked up Myers and he broke on what you had, the DA wouldn’t have run with it.”
“Thanks, Lou, but it was Hatcher’s idea.”
The idea earned Ellie a nod of acknowledgment. To the untrained eye, it was just a tilt of Eckels’s chin, but to Ellie it was the Thirteenth Precinct equivalent of Armstrong’s one small step from the Apollo 11.
“That explains the call from Kluger in the mayor’s office this morning. Apparently he got wind of some kind of arrest last night from the parents. What the hell kind of luck do we have that our vic’s somehow related to the deputy chief of staff?”
“Actually,” Ellie said, “I think he’s a frat brother of the father’s brother-in-law.”
Eckels gave her an annoyed look, and she decided it was best to move on.
“I just got a call from the city’s taxi commission,” she reported. “They circulated the picture I sent them yesterday of the victim. One of the drivers thinks he may have seen her that night outside Pulse. We’ll follow up.”
“Good, because we’ve been popular this morning. I also heard from the DA’s office. They want to get in early, so I’d start by having them set up a face-to-face with your Nick Warden before his arraignment. A night in jail might have given your hedge fund boy some different priorities.”
Eckels peeled off the top sheet of a Post-it pad next to his phone. He started to reach toward Rogan, but then handed the yellow square to Ellie. ADA Max Donovan for Knight, followed by a phone number. “Some kid called Donovan was the one to reach out, but it’ll be Knight’s case.”
Ellie had no idea who Max Donovan was, but anyone who followed New York City criminal trials knew about Simon Knight, the chief prosecutor of the trial unit at the district attorney’s office. His day-to-day job was to run the busiest trial unit in one of the nation’s largest prosecutor’s offices, break in the newbies, and ensure that the other assistants didn’t wuss out. His personal and early attention to the Chelsea Hart case was yet another indication that this one was big.
“We’ll call this Max Donovan straight away, sir.”
“Very good.”
Ellie and Rogan meted out tasks on the short walk back to their desks. She’d track down the cabdriver while he checked in with ADA Donovan, the medical examiner, and the crime scene unit.
She’d just plopped down into her chair when Eckels called out after them. “And, in case this wasn’t clear, don’t screw up.”
Nothing like a pep talk to kick-start the day.
ACCORDING TO THE TAXI COMMISSION, the driver who last saw Chelsea Hart alive was one Tahir Kadhim. Ellie dialed his number, then flipped open the Daily Post and checked out the byline: reporting by George Kittrie and Peter Morse.
Last night Peter had mentioned staying late at the paper to write something up with his editor. Now she saw that Kittrie had taken first billing for himself. Given the history there, she could only imagine Peter’s aggravation. A few years earlier, Kittrie had made the leap from career crime-beat reporter to author, and then editor, when he published a book about all of the opportunistic crimes that had been perpetrated in the chaos following September 11. From what Ellie understood, the book had put enough extra cash in Kittrie’s pocket to pay for a cottage in East Hampton. In the back of Ellie’s mind, she wondered whether George Kittrie was in part responsible for Peter’s excitement about writing a true-crime book. She also wondered if Kittrie’s success as an author might explain why Peter harbored such resentment toward his boss.
“Balay!”
Ellie held the phone away from her ear. The man on the other end of the line was yelling over some kind of Persian music in the background.
“This is Detective Hatcher. NYPD. Is this Tahir Kadhim?”
The music immediately quieted. “Yes, this is Tahir. This is about the picture, yes?”
Ellie was relieved she wouldn’t need a translator. The city’s taxi drivers sometimes appeared to have problems with the English language when you told them to turn on the air conditioning or turn down the radio, but their difficulties often faded away under less convenient circumstances.
“That’s right. The taxi commission told me you recognized the girl in the photograph?”
“I was not certain last night when I first saw it because of how it was printed from the fax, but I sent in a message nonetheless because I did think it was the same girl. But now that girl is the one in the newspapers. It is most definitely the same girl I saw yesterday morning.”
“We’re going to need to talk to you in person, Mr. Kadhim. Where should we meet you?”
“Where are you located?”
“Thirteenth Precinct. Twenty-first and Second Avenue.”
“I am ten blocks away. You will help me with parking?”
“I think that can be arranged.”
Rogan was still on the phone when Ellie hung up. He covered the mouthpiece with his palm. “Asshole put me on hold and never came back.”
Ellie scanned the DD5 containing the information that had come in about the case on the department’s tip line. The vast majority of calls were complaints about the city’s 4:00 a.m. closing time for bars-thirteen separate calls, by her count. Every time some crime was even tangentially associated with the late-night bar scene, the same people who complained on a weekly basis about the noise at the clubs in their neighborhood used the case as an opportunity to lobby against their favorite pet peeve.
Then there were the usual crackpots: three-count them, three-psychics offering their abilities to communicate with the dead; a woman whose schnauzer got sick early the previous morning, certainly a sign that he shared a karmic connection with Chelsea Hart; and some crank call from a guy who wanted to know if the girl had any cute midwestern friends heading to the city for the funeral.
No false confessions yet, but there was still time.
One entry tucked in among the rest caught her attention. “Bill Harrington. Daughter (Roberta, aka Robbie) murdered 8 years ago. Similar. Flann McIlroy thought there were others.” At the end of the notation was a ten-digit phone number. Ellie recognized the Long Island area code.
She found herself staring at two words: Flann McIlroy.
Detective Flann McIlroy had been famous-infamous, many would say-for his creative theories about investigations, creative enough to earn him the nickname “McIlMulder” within the department, an allusion to the agent who chased space aliens on the television show The X-Files. Ellie’s own experience with him had been far too brief, but she had come to trust him as both a man and a cop. If Flann had spoken to a murder victim’s father about his suspicions of a broader pattern, then Bill Harrington at least deserved a return phone call.
She wrote down the name “Roberta Harrington” and walked the slip of paper down to the records department. She was still trying to learn the names of the Thirteenth Precinct staff, something that had paid off in her previous assignments. A clerk who introduced herself as Shawnda promised she would order the old police reports from the Central Records Division immediately. Ellie thanked her for her time and made a point of repeating her first name.
Rogan was just hanging up his telephone when Ellie returned to her desk. “Something better shake soon, because the lawyers want us at the courthouse in two hours.”
TAHIR KADHIM WAS DARK, slight, and reluctant to leave his taxicab in front of a fire hydrant on East Twenty-first Street.
“It’s the only spot on the street, Mr. Kadhim,” Ellie said. “I’ll leave a permit on the dash.”
“Some meter maid will not believe that a taxicab is with the police. If the city tows my car, that is my entire day, not to mention the record I get on my medallion number.”