“He wanted me to write a piece speculating a connection between three murders, all a few years apart. All the girls had been out on the town.”

“Do you have any notes?”

“Nah. It sounded like garbage at the time. The city’s a dangerous place at night, you know? And he wasn’t giving me anything to tie it all together. I realized by then that Mac wasn’t above using us. I figured he had an agenda of some kind.”

“So the club angle was the only thing tying the murders together?”

“Yeah. You know, same demographics, I guess-young women. But that was it. I’ve always been pretty cautious about what I’ll print under my byline. There was nothing to verify, so I wasn’t going to run with it.”

“Well, I can see why you’d pass. Thanks a lot for your time. I’ll get back to the victim’s dad and let him know there’s nothing new.”

“Glad to help those who protect and serve. Maybe I can hit you up for a return favor?”

Ellie had known when she called a reporter that there’d be a quid pro quo. “Yeah, shoot.”

“In the Chelsea Hart case, can you confirm that Jake Myers shaved the victim’s head?”

It felt like Kittrie had punched her in the throat. His information was not a hundred percent accurate, but it was close enough. She couldn’t remember the number of times the Wichita papers had printed something about the College Hill Strangler that may have started out as truth, but had morphed into something entirely different by the time it reached the press, like a fifth-hand message in a child’s game of Operator.

She couldn’t find words as her mind raced through Kittrie’s possible sources. She finally mustered a “No comment.” She was surprised by the force of the handset as she returned it to the carriage.

SHE WAS STILL processing Kittrie’s bombshell when Rogan showed up, a cup of Starbucks in one hand, his cell in the other.

“You seen the Lou yet?” He used his jaw to flip the phone shut.

“Huh-uh. You got a sec? We need to talk.”

“It’s gonna have to wait. Eckels just called me, pissed off about something. He wants us in his office, like, ten minutes ago.”

Rogan led the way, waving off her attempts to slow him down. He rapped his knuckles against the glass of Eckels’s closed door, then helped himself to the doorknob. Ellie caught a brief glimpse of their lieutenant speaking animatedly into his phone. He held up a hand momentarily, then gave them the all-clear.

“Ah, Rogan. I see you didn’t come alone.”

“You said it was about the Myers case. I figured you wanted me and Hatcher.”

“Sure. Why not? This is, after all, something that should definitely concern her. Have a seat.”

Rogan threw her a worried look.

“So, I got a phone call from the Public Information Office this morning,” Eckels announced. “Seems they just heard from a reporter at the Daily Post. You two know anything about this?”

“I just gave a no-comment to George Kittrie about five seconds ago.” Another worried look from Rogan. “He wanted confirmation that Myers shaved the vic’s head.”

“Shit.” Rogan bit his lower lip.

“Yeah, no shit, shit. So is one of you going to tell me why we’re losing control of this investigation?” Although the wording of the question was aimed at both of them, Ellie felt Eckels’s eyes fall directly on her. “And, by the way, the reporter who called the PIO wasn’t Kittrie, it was one Peter Morse. I want to know who let this leak.”

The insinuation was obvious. Ellie’s case. Ellie’s boyfriend. Ellie’s leak.

Before she could defend herself, Rogan was doing it for her. “Hatcher wouldn’t do that.”

One simple sentence. No hesitation in his voice. No question mark. Rogan wasn’t simply backing her up out of mandatory partner loyalty. He had no doubt at all about her innocence.

“I wouldn’t,” she confirmed. “And I didn’t.”

“Who the hell was it, then?” Eckels demanded. “Even inside the house, we kept a lid on that. It was our ace in the hole: the killer took the hair and the earrings, and that was how we’d head off a bunch of whackadoos trying to give us fake confessions.”

“With all respect, Lou,” Rogan said, “now that we’ve got Myers dead to rights, what does it really matter? The press was going to get hold of it eventually.”

“It matters because I expect my detectives to show a little discretion.”

“Maybe it was the girl’s family,” Rogan said. “They’ve been talking to the media.”

“They were using the media to put pressure on us. Telling the world that their daughter was mutilated, after we’ve already caught the guy, wouldn’t appear to fall into that game plan. Only a handful of us knew the condition of that girl’s body when she was found. And it just so happens that one of them’s boinking the very same reporter who seems to be a leg ahead of every other reporter in the city.”

Ellie wanted to tell Eckels he was out of line. That she didn’t have to sit here and take his abuse. That he wouldn’t make the same assumption if one of his male detectives was dating a female reporter.

But she knew she couldn’t do any of it. He was drawing the same inferences she would in his position. Her case. Her boyfriend. Her leak.

Once again, it was Rogan who spoke up. “Hatcher and I-we’ve kept it in the vault. But other people saw the girl. The joggers. The medical examiner. The EMTs. Could be anyone.”

Ellie’s memory flashed to Officer Capra, the first uniform on the scene, holding court the night of Jake Myers’s arrest at Plug Uglies. Peter and his boss, George Kittrie, had gone to the bar that night for the express purpose of finding loose-lipped cops. She would’ve cold-cocked Capra on the spot if he were in the room, but she still wasn’t going to dime him out to Eckels.

“I knew Peter Morse when everything went down with Flann McIlroy, and you know I didn’t give him any tip-offs on that. It’s your choice whether to believe me, Lou, but I would hope you’d give me the benefit of the doubt.”

Rogan leaned back in his chair. “You said the reporter asked if Chelsea Hart’s head was shaved? See, now that shit’s not even right. No one who saw that girl would’ve said that. Myers hacked that shit up. Sounds like the paper’s heard something third- or fourth-hand.”

Ellie had been wondering whether to point out the discrepancy to Eckels herself, but it sounded more persuasive coming from Rogan. She was finding it hard to focus on anything beyond the question that kept echoing in her mind: Why hadn’t Peter mentioned any of this last night?

Whether Eckels was persuaded or simply acquiescing to the fact that he couldn’t prove his suspicions, he moved on. “For what it’s worth, I told the PIO to shell out a no-comment to Morse. I expect you-both of you-to do the same. I just got off the phone with Simon Knight to give him a heads-up on the story, and I assured him that we will keep control over this case. The last thing we need is a media circus around Myers’s trial.”

Eckels picked up a newspaper that was open on the corner of his desk and dropped it in front of the detectives. “This, of course, didn’t help.”

It was a copy of the morning’s New York Sun. Most of the page was occupied by a photograph of Jake Myers’s perp walk, snapped while Rogan and Ellie escorted him from the back of a squad car to be arraigned after his lineup at 100 Centre Street.

But it was a smaller headline on the sidebar that Eckels was tapping with a meaty index finger: “For Victim’s Friends, Another Encounter with NYC Crime.” Ellie skimmed the first paragraph. As Jordan McLaughlin and Stefanie Hart had sat on the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art the previous afternoon, an armed assailant had snatched their purses from the sidewalk and escaped through Central Park.

“Oh, Jesus,” Ellie said. Those girls had been put through enough.

“You mean to tell me you haven’t seen this?” Eckels asked.