“The only friend of his we care about is at Rikers Island on a no-bail hold,” Knight said.

Then Parker dropped the second surprise. “I’m talking about Jaime Rodriguez.”

“That’s the bouncer?” Knight asked, looking to Donovan for clarification. Donovan nodded. “I would have thought your client would be scared enough to just say no these days. I don’t need him taking another pop before Myers’s trial.”

“We have a problem,” Parker said, any playfulness in her tone gone now. “Much to my considerable consternation, there is apparently still contact between Rodriguez and my client. And that’s how I’ve come to learn that Rodriguez has a story to tell that you might find interesting.”

“Enough with the teasing,” Knight said. “Get to the part where we have a problem.”

“According to Rodriguez, another employee at Pulse knows a little too much about the murder of Chelsea Hart.”

“What’s there not to know?” Knight asked. “The press has been all over this from the second that girl’s body was found.”

“So you’re saying everything’s out there? There’s nothing left that only the real killer would know?”

“Jake Myers is the real killer,” Donovan said.

Parker held up her hands. “Not my job to figure this out. Apparently someone at Pulse says the killer took something that belonged to the victim. I for one had not read that in the paper, so I thought I was doing a good deed by persuading Rodriguez to come here and talk to you. If you don’t care about that, send the guy home.”

“Rodriguez doesn’t even work at Pulse anymore,” Rogan said.

“No, but he still has friends who do. And one of those friends talked to this janitor who seems to think he knows something.”

“It’s a janitor who said this?” Ellie asked. Besides Rodriguez, the only other employee at Pulse who had a conviction was the janitor, Leon Symanski.

“That’s right. Why? That means something to you?”

Ellie didn’t have a chance to respond, because apparently Simon Knight had heard enough. “I think we need to have a little chat with Mr. Rodriguez before we ask for our indictment.”

CHAPTER 29

AN HOUR LATER, without a word to the other three people in the room, Simon Knight picked up the telephone in a conference room in the District Attorney’s Office and dialed an extension.

“Call the clerk to give the grand jurors their lunch break. We won’t be presenting any further evidence this afternoon in the Myers case.”

Knight had just closed the door behind Jaime Rodriguez, Nick Warden, and Susan Parker, and apparently had heard enough.

Rogan was the first to speak up. “We came down here because the case was ready for grand jury.”

“And that was before Rodriguez told us that a janitor with a past sex offense somehow knows more about Chelsea Hart than what’s been reported by the media. So far, of course. I’m told the Daily Post is onto the fact that the victim’s hair was cut. And that’s why the two of you need to go see this Symanski while we still have some control over that information.”

“As far as the NYPD is concerned, the case has been cleared.”

“You’re telling me you want me to call your lieutenant and notify him that you’re refusing to investigate your own case?” Knight asked.

“I was giving you my opinion that the case has been fully investigated. We’re a team, right?”

Ellie could see where Rogan was going. There had been cases in which the department had pressured the DA’s office to pursue charges by threatening-implicitly or explicitly-to portray prosecutors as obstructionist if they delayed. But Rogan wasn’t necessarily packing the heat he’d need to win this fight.

Knight turned to Ellie. “What do you think, Detective Hatcher?”

Ellie looked at Rogan. Rogan looked at Ellie. Ellie looked at her bag, still holding three files about murders that had occurred when the janitor named Leon Symanski was in his thirties-still well within the window for serial violence.

“The man asked for your opinion,” Rogan said.

“I think we should check out Symanski, but only so Myers’s lawyer can’t spring anything during trial. We’ve got the right guy,” she said, doing her best to sound convinced.

Donovan backed her up. “The whole thing’s going to turn out to be bullshit. Rodriguez probably heard about this guy’s prior and is making all this up to help out Myers. It’s payback, since Myers’s pal got him his deal on the drug case. ‘The killer took something from the victim?’ What does that mean? It could be a robbery, a souvenir, her virginity. Say it in any case, and it’s bound to be true. It’s like those so-called psychics who say, ‘I’m getting a message from someone, and I see the letter B.’ It’s vague, meaningless P. T. Barnum stuff. It lets us see whatever we want.”

“So we’ll have a chat with Symanski,” Ellie said. “We’ll find a way to prove Rodriguez is lying.” Or they could find something to tie Symanski not only to Chelsea Hart’s murders, but to the other cases as well.

“Very well, then. Are you all right with that, Detective Rogan?”

“Right as rain.”

“Call me when you’ve got something. And by the way, Hatcher, I saw you last month on Dateline. You were terrific.”

As they left the district attorney’s office, her cell phone rang. She flipped it open. It was Peter.

“I need to take this,” she said, holding her palm across the mouthpiece. “I’ll meet you outside?”

This was a conversation that would require some privacy.

SHE FOUND RELATIVE SOLITUDE and decent cell phone reception next to a window in the courthouse hallway.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Peter. I need to talk to you-”

“Too late,” she said. “You might’ve given me a heads-up before you called the Public Information Office three hours ago. Or how about last night over dinner, or on the way home? Or, oh yeah, while you were reenacting the Kama Sutra in my bedroom?”

“That’s not fair, Ellie. I didn’t even know about it until this morning. And I couldn’t call you.”

“Your phone suddenly stopped working?”

“Did you call me when you found a body by the East River? Did you bother mentioning that you’d made an arrest when I saw you Tuesday night?”

“That’s not the same.”

“It’s exactly the same. And don’t think I didn’t start to call you. I did. But even if I had, it would have been like I was feeling you out for information. And the last thing I’ve ever wanted to do since we met is to take advantage of you as a source. But you can’t expect me to notify you any time we unearth something the department wants to remain secret.”

“Well, as it stands, my lieutenant assumes I was your source. He knows about us, and now you know something you’re not supposed to know.”

“But that’s ridiculous. I’m on the crime beat. Is he going to think you’re helping me on every case I cover?”

“Yeah, probably. If it’s a case of mine.”

“So I’ll talk to him. I’ll tell him-”

“You’ll tell him what, Peter? The only thing that’s going to convince him I’m not the leak is if you give him another name.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“You don’t need to. I already figured it out. It’s that kid Jeff Capra. I checked him out. He’s not even in the Thirteenth, but he shows up at Plug Uglies to tell everyone he was first uniform on the scene. He’s one of about ten people who knows what was done to Chelsea.”

“So it is true. Her head was shaved.”

She resisted the temptation to tell him that he wasn’t quite accurate. “I can’t believe you. You just did exactly what you said you didn’t want to do, your supposed reason for not calling me this morning before I got bombarded by Eckels.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. Can you please just stop and look at this from my perspective? I’m a reporter. Just like you can’t tell me inside information about your case, I can’t tell you a source, or even whether I know the source.”