Rogan tapped a ballpoint pen against his palm. “I guess now we know why Warden wanted a deal for Rodriguez as part of his cooperation agreement to flip on Myers: that was also part of the quid pro quo.”
“It also explains why Symanski was so evasive when we asked about the girl we saw at his house. If we’d gone to her, we might’ve found Rodriguez and started drawing the same connections.” Ellie shook her head. “Jesus. First Rodriguez knocks up Symanski’s daughter, then he asks him to go down for a murder he didn’t commit?”
“Maybe he didn’t ask him. Rodriguez spent a night in jail when we popped him on the drug charge. Symanski’s daughter couldn’t have been happy about that. She shows up back at Daddy’s house, crying about the father of her child heading upstate for six to nine as a repeat drug offender. Daddy sees the chance to be a hero before he powers down in a few months anyway from the melathemiona.”
“Mesothelioma.”
Rogan rolled his eyes. “Plus, you’re going to love this. I was picturing how it must have all gone down, and I kept coming back to Nick Warden’s smoking-hot lawyer.”
“Susan Parker.”
“Exactly. The junior associate at a law firm that doesn’t even handle criminal defense. But she’s the one who told us Warden wanted a deal not just for himself, but also Rodriguez. And she was the one who brought Rodriguez to us at the courthouse, pointing the finger at Symanski.”
“You think she was in on it, too?”
“I went to her law firm’s Web site. Turns out she graduated from Cornell.”
“Jake Myers’s alma mater.”
“Right again. She graduated one year ahead of him. They were both members of some club called the Entrepreneur Society. I still haven’t figured out whose idea this was, but she should have known about it. They all did, every link in the chain.”
“Damn it,” Ellie said. “Symanski was looking good for it all.”
“But now we’re back to Myers-who couldn’t have started killing nearly ten years ago.”
“You certainly had a busy morning while I was wasting my time trying to pull up the lost background of a photograph from the computer vortex. You didn’t happen to cure cancer while you were at it, did you?”
“No. I’m saving that for the afternoon, but I do have a health tip for you.” He eyed the half-eaten pastry on her desk. “Did it ever dawn on you to watch what you eat? You aren’t that young.”
“I watch what I eat every day, right before I pop it into my pie hole.”
“Hatcher.”
Ellie looked up to see Lieutenant Eckels standing at his office door on the perimeter of the squad room.
“Morning, boss.”
“How’s that hand?”
“A lot better. Thanks.”
“A word with you both?”
He closed his office door without waiting for confirmation.
“You hear that? He asked about my injury. My lieutenant cares about my well-being.” She used her good hand to fan away fake tears of emotion. “I’m verklempt.”
“You really think Simon Knight saved your ass, don’t you?”
“He said he would last night.”
“You know Eckels could be calling us in there to pull you off this case for good, right? He seems damn chipper about something.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“WHERE ARE WE on this Symanski clusterfuck?”
Rogan gave Eckels a rundown on the previous night’s events, carefully avoiding any mention of Ellie’s presence at the hospital. He also walked him through Myers’s hundred-thousand-dollar cash advance and their theory about the agreement between Myers and Symanski, all facilitated by Susan Parker.
“Now this, I like. Both guilty. Myers of the murder. Symanski of obstruction. We can get everyone in between as accomplices to the obstruction. Prove it, and we might actually come out of this OK.”
No department ever wanted to admit that they’d arrested an innocent man, but having to make such an admission about a rich kid like Myers would be even more costly-both in reputation and money.
“You’re on board with all this, Hatcher?”
“I’m not working the case for now, but, yeah, Rogan’s obviously on to something.”
“What do you mean, you’re not working the case?”
“I was told last night that you wanted me off-”
“I sent you home because any cop needs a night off after being torpedoed in an alley by a cutter. Are you saying you want off the case?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Good, because it’s yours. Yours and Rogan’s. Always has been. I’m sorry if you misunderstood that. Now, does this mean you’re off that nonsense about McIlroy’s cold cases?”
“We’re working the Chelsea Hart case. I get that.”
Of course, if other files turned out to be relevant to the Hart investigation, she’d chase the evidence wherever it led. But she was beginning to wonder herself if the similarities she’d seen among the four murders had in fact been, in Eckels’s words, nonsense.
“One more thing, guys. I spoke to Simon Knight earlier this morning.”
Ellie resisted the temptation to throw a smile in Rogan’s direction.
“Since both Myers and Symanski are in custody, we’ve got to work this thing closely with the DA’s office as they make their charging decisions. From now on, you’ll be working directly with Knight and his assistant through the DA’s Homicide Investigation Unit.”
“What does that mean exactly?” Rogan asked.
“I want you to treat them like your chain of command. Is that a problem?”
They both shook their heads, but Rogan didn’t look happy about it.
“Very well, then. Don’t be surprised when I’m still on your ass. I want updates.”
“Not a problem, sir,” Ellie said, before they both left the office.
“Holy shit,” Rogan said once they were at a safe distance. “Everything last night was a so-called misunderstanding? You weren’t kidding about Knight being smooth.”
“Downright silky.”
“Don’t get too excited. What’s that saying about out of the frying pan and into the fire?”
“All I know is that we need to call the rest of the dream team and tell them we want to have a word with Susan Parker.”
Ellie’s phone buzzed. She checked the screen, worried it would be Peter again, but it was Jess.
“What’s up?”
“I just got a call from Candy at Vibrations.”
“Oh, and I’m sure that’s her real name.”
“They found a body in the parking lot last night.”
Her smile faded. “One of the girls?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s-it’s those files you were reading on the couch the other night. I thought you ought to know.”
“What is it, Jess?”
“When Candy called, she said the girl was all cut up and that her hair looked like part of a costume.”
CHAPTER 38
“HANK DODGE.” The detective waiting for Ellie in the medical examiner’s office was probably in his late fifties. Tall. Bulky. Scruffy gray hair and a five-day beard. When she had called him to track down the details of the body discovered the previous night at Vibrations, he had insisted on being present if she were going to view the victim. “Dr. Karr was just telling me he’d already met you.”
Ellie recognized the bearded pathologist who had conducted the autopsy on Chelsea Hart. She shook hands with both men.
“You were cutting it close on timing, Detective Hatcher. I was just about to start the autopsy when you phoned Detective Dodge.”
“I think that’s the doc’s polite way of saying he hopes you had a good reason for asking us to wait.”
“My brother works at the club where your victim was found. It sounded like there were similarities between this case and the Hart murder.”
“Your brother works at a titty bar?” Dodge asked.
“Long story.” It wasn’t, really. The job at Vibrations was the first Ellie could remember Jess holding down for two months straight. “My impression is that any similarities had to do with the appearance of their bodies. That’s why I was hoping to see the vic before the postmortem.”