“You’re kidding me? White-collar recreational drug user taking care of his dealer? Who’s ever heard of such a thing?”

“I know, right? I guess Warden feels bad about getting the guy in trouble. He said Rodriguez hooking up the girl with some dope was kind of like helping him out, too. This isn’t exactly politically correct, but I got the impression she was quite the box of chocolates?”

“If tall, thin, and ridiculously sexy is your kind of thing.”

“Absolutely not.”

“So you made the deal? I thought Rodriguez would be looking at some serious time with his prior conviction.”

“His prior for Burg of a dwelling with a gun counts as a violent predicate. He was looking at six years minimum under the second felony law. But we made the deal. He and Warden both get dismissals. Rodriguez will lose his job with the club just for the arrest, and he’ll have a hard time finding work anywhere else.”

“You don’t need to sell me on it,” Ellie said, her eyes still scanning the Harrington file as she flipped to the next report. She hadn’t known a prosecutor to ever care in the past whether she approved of a plea deal. Besides, she had learned a long time ago that drug cases-no matter what quantities, no matter how many priors, and despite all the rhetoric about the war on drugs-were all expendable when the prosecution of a violent crime was at stake.

“Our case against Myers is looking strong. Warden’s not only going to testify that Jake left with Chelsea alone, well before closing, but he’s got real corroboration. And it’s good.”

Ellie stopped multitasking so she could focus on Donovan’s news.

“His lawyer produced a photograph that Warden took with his cell phone that night inside the club. He was snapping the picture because some cow-Warden’s words, not mine, I swear-was making an idiot of herself on the runway, but guess who pops up in the background? Jake Myers walking hand in hand with Chelsea Hart out of the front doors of Pulse. And the time stamp says 3:03, almost an hour before closing.”

Sex. Alcohol. Drugs. Now they’d caught Jake Myers in a lie on his alibi, proving not only opportunity, but consciousness of guilt. Unless the DNA on Chelsea Hart’s shirt belonged to someone else, Myers was done.

“How long will it take for the crime lab to give us DNA results from the stain on Chelsea’s shirt?”

“A couple of weeks, but Simon Knight swears he can find a shortcut. The mayor’s office is breathing down our necks.”

“Too bad Myers invoked,” she said. “With Warden flipping on him, we might’ve been able to get a confession.”

“We’re going to get him anyway. If all cops were as good as you and your partner, my job would be a lot easier. I was just telling Knight what a dream witness you are. Smart. Articulate.”

“For a cop.”

“Sorry. That’s not what I meant. It was actually my insanely awkward way of trying to transition into asking if you wanted to get something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been running around all day, and I’m starving.”

In Ellie’s mind, she could feel laser beams from Peter’s eyes penetrating the back of her skull and piercing her neocortex where the words of their phone conversation were being processed.

“Sorry, I’ve got plans tonight.”

“So, does that mean maybe some other night, or should I take that as an extremely polite shutout?”

“It doesn’t sound very polite when you put it that way,” she said with an embarrassed laugh.

“Okay, I think I can take a hint. I hope it’s not weird I asked. Knight will kill me if I alienated our star witness.”

“Consider me wholly unalienated. People get hungry. They eat, sometimes together. Not a problem.”

If Peter had been eavesdropping on her neocortex, she was pretty sure she’d passed with flying colors. Still, Ellie couldn’t help but notice that she was still smiling as she flipped her phone shut, took a sip of her drink, and returned to her reading.

TEN MINUTES LATER, she had finished reviewing the Robbie Harrington file. Her smile was gone. She drained the rest of her whisky, tucked the file into her backpack, and sent a quick text message to Peter, who was still with his boss, chatting up a couple of cops who looked familiar from the Thirteenth Precinct: “I’ve got a little work left, but call me later.”

When she returned to the squad’s huddle, John Shannon was in the middle of some story about a witness who’d made the moves on his partner that day. “She was a ten all right,” he said, taking a swig from his mug of amber-colored beer. “As in four teeth and a six-pack.”

Ellie cut through the laughter and thanked Rogan for the drink.

“You’re heading out already?” he asked.

“Yeah. Another drink, and I might fall asleep right here in the bar. That call before was from Max Donovan at the DA’s office.”

Rogan snuck a peek at the cell phone clipped to his waist.

“That’s funny. He didn’t call me. Hey,” he said to anyone within earshot, “why do you think a young, single ADA might have called Hatcher here for the case update instead of her more senior, and equally fine-looking, partner?”

That got a laugh out of the crowd, but not as much as Ellie’s follow-up: “He was asking for your home number.”

“Nice,” Rogan said, giving her a high five.

She ran through a quick summary of Donovan’s update, pulling on her coat as she talked.

“News like that, and you can’t stay for another drink? Come on.”

“I can’t keep up with you. I’ve got to go home and hit the sack.”

But as Ellie walked out of the bar, she knew she wasn’t going home anytime soon. The case against Jake Myers was sealed up tight. But she had just read the police reports on the murder of Robbie Harrington, and now she was wondering if perhaps it had all been a little too easy.

CHAPTER 21

ON THE NIGHT OF August 16, 2000, a homeless woman named Loretta Thompson thought she had found a safe place to sleep when she passed a pile of Mexican serape blankets tossed into the basement entrance of a Chinese massage parlor on the corner of Fourth Street and Avenue B.

It was a warm, dry night, and Loretta had decided not to check into one of the shelters, filled as they were with strung-out and angry women. She was not like the others. She just needed a break-a friend to take her in for a few weeks, an employer to take a chance on her-some way to get back on her feet after leaving the man whose beatings had caused her to miscarry the only child she’d ever managed to conceive.

When she reached the bottom of the unlit stairwell, she realized that the blankets were wrapped around something firm. Her hope was that it was a rug-something she could use as padding between her body and the filthy concrete. But when she pulled one of the blankets loose from the bundle, she felt something heavy shift beneath it. She tugged at the blanket with more force to get a better look.

Her screams awakened multiple Fourth Street residents. The 911 calls followed.

It took police three days to identify the body as Robbie Harrington, a twenty-four-year-old artist who paid her bills working at a tattoo parlor on the Lower East Side. She was last seen having a drink alone at a dive bar a few blocks from her job. She had been strangled with a brown leather belt that was left wrapped around her neck.

According to the log notes on the outside of the Harrington file, the active investigation had been put to rest about a year after Robbie’s body had been found, and her murder joined the legions of cold case files that gather dust until a new lead lands unexpectedly in the department’s lap. But three years ago, someone had brushed off the dust from the case. Three years ago, Detective Flann McIlroy had requested this file and read the same reports that Ellie had just finished reviewing for the second time at her desk.