All Day and a Night (25 page)

She wanted to tell him he was being unfair, but she knew he was right. One minute, she was seething about Amaro getting out of prison. The next, she was convinced she was seeing connections among Helen Brunswick, Joseph Flaherty, and Will Sullivan in police reports written when she was still in junior high school.

She was about to speak when Rogan turned the corner outside their hotel. The flashing lights of multiple marked cars flooded the street with color. A uniformed officer stepped forward to stop them at the parking lot entrance, and Rogan rolled his window down.

“You two guests here?” the officer asked.

Rogan said yes, and the officer waved him through.

“Impressive police work,” Ellie muttered as they stepped out of the car.

A
mix of uniformed officers and plainclothes police were milling around the lobby, the crackling sounds of shoulder-mounted radios clashing with the piped-in adult contemporary music.

Rogan made a beeline for the nearest uniform, but Ellie wasn’t in the mood for another apology to Utica police for being in their city. She walked to the check-in desk and waved to the two clerks whispering to each other in the corner. “Sorry, but is there a problem here?” she asked. “I don’t want to stay anywhere that’s not safe.”

“Nothing to worry about,” one of them assured her. “A guest believes something may be missing from their room. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

Ellie heard the automatic doors opening behind her. It was Carrie Blank. She looked like she had been crying.

This really was a small town.

The clerk turned his attention from Ellie to Carrie. “Ah, there you are, Ms. Blank. Your friend has been trying to reach you.”

A man rose from one of the lounge chairs in the lobby, where he’d been talking to police. His once tidy hair was tousled and he was no longer wearing his eyeglasses, but Ellie recognized him as the assistant who had been glued to Linda Moreland as they left the courtroom.

“Carrie, oh my God. I’ve been trying to call you.”

Ellie noticed the attorney check her phone and then power it on.

“I’m so sorry,” the assistant continued. “That food—I think my stomach had a bad reaction. I was in so much pain. I just went back to my room to lie down. When I got back—someone had been there, Carrie. In your room. All that work I did? Everything is thrown on the floor, torn to pieces, a huge mess. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Thomas. It’s not your fault.”

Ellie didn’t know Thomas from Adam, but even she could tell from his expression that, in fact, it had to be his fault.

The uniformed officer next to him explained the problem to Carrie. “Ma’am, we found the door to your hotel room ajar.”

He gave a sideways glance to Thomas, who continued the explanation. “I went into the hallway for ice. Cold water helps my stomach.” One hand touched his belly. “I flipped the latch so I wouldn’t get locked out. I must have forgotten when I came back, and then I used the pass-through door to lie down in my own bed. I
swear
, Carrie, I’m going to redo everything. I’ll get it back exactly the way it was.”

“Is anything missing?”

He grimaced. “I’ll figure it out. I promise. Linda’s going to
kill
me.”

“No, if she’s going to kill anyone, it will be me for stuffing you full of McDonald’s and then disappearing for three hours with my cell phone off.”

“I’m so, so sorry, Carrie.”

Ellie stepped forward. “If I could interrupt, Ms. Blank?”

The attorney looked at her impatiently. “What?”

“You know who the most likely suspect here is, don’t you?”

“Look, I honestly have no idea.”

“Anthony Amaro, or someone he sent on his behalf. Where is he, and why are you representing the man who killed your own sister?”

The attorney swallowed and immediately composed herself. “This is completely inappropriate, Detective Hatcher. You are attempting to interfere with my client’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel. I will file the necessary complaint with the Utica Police Department about the break-in, but, frankly, you’re a private citizen here as far as I’m concerned. Unless you have some other reason to speak to me, I’d ask you to give us some privacy.”

Carrie Blank’s words were firm, but Ellie could tell that the sudden transformation into a tough-talking lawyer was forced. Something about her demeanor had shifted. She had her doubts about Amaro’s innocence.

Good. So did Ellie.

E
llie was channel-flipping through reality-show repeats when the word
MAX
appeared on her phone screen. As much as this case had highlighted some differences between them, she never would have believed that three letters could make her so homesick.

“Hey.”

“You sound tired.”

“Must be sympathetic sleep deprivation. Rogan was fading. I sent him away for a nap while we had the chance.”

“Ooooh, a nap sounds good.”

She allowed herself to shut her eyes and pretend she was home in their bed, that she’d never heard the name Anthony Amaro.

“We got another message,” he said, breaking her daydream. “This time, a phone message, left with the switchboard. She said her name was Debi Landry, calling for me about Anthony Amaro. Obviously, I called back right away. The woman who answered was a Debi Landry, but she said she had no idea who I was. She insisted she’d never heard of me and didn’t call. So then I said, ‘The call was about Anthony Amaro,’ and she said, ‘What’s this got to do with
Tony
?’ Get this: she was in foster care with him when they were children.”

According to Buck Majors, Amaro had said he was in New York City to see someone he’d lived with in foster care. “But she wasn’t the one who called you?” she asked.

“Not according to her. I pushed a little, since the last time we got a mysterious tip, it led us to Harris. I asked if Amaro had ever told her anything about his involvement in the murders. She went ballistic and said that we had no idea what they’d gone through. How Amaro protected her. How there was no way she would call a DA about him, that he was the best thing that ever happened to her as a kid. She told me not to contact her again unless she had the right to a lawyer, and hung up.”

“Any way to track the original call to the switchboard?”

“Nope.”

The line was quiet. Someone out there was sending them information, but they didn’t know who, or why.

She heard a beep on her phone. Another call was coming in. It was Jess. “Oh, I gotta get this. Love you.” She clicked over to the new call. “Hey.”

“Some favor, little sister. Mona’s freakin’ terrified.”

“Of what?”

“I asked her if the cop she remembered from Utica was named William Sullivan, and she said yeah, that sounded right. And then she asked me why. I told her that Amaro got out and you were up there, doing your whole
Cagney and Lacey
thing. She flipped when she heard Amaro was released. Now she’s wondering if it was a cop all along, like her friends suspected. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with this. I’m telling you, Ellie, I’ve never seen her this way. She’s terrified.”

“Please reassure her, Jess. She’s not involved, and I won’t let her be. You vouch for me, okay? Tell her she’s just fine where she is.”

Rogan had accused her earlier of making this case more complicated than it had to be, but as she hung up her phone, Ellie found herself wondering whether Mona might not have good reason to be afraid of William Sullivan.

C
arrie was focused on the center of a pink tulip. It should’ve died weeks ago, but somehow this one stem lingered on at the edge of the courtyard behind the hotel.

She was outside because she couldn’t stand to hear another apology from poor Thomas. He was trying to Scotch-tape scraps of torn pages from the floor of her hotel room into usable documents. She didn’t think he would sleep until someone forgave him.

Her thoughts were broken by the sound of her phone. As she expected, it was Linda. She couldn’t put this off any longer.

“Hi, Linda. I don’t know what’s wrong with my cell phone here. I keep losing my signal.”

“I spent most of the day talking to Tony.” When had he become “Tony”? “He’s panicked. He called me collect from a pay phone. He got a call at the motel from his sister, saying that a girl he knew from foster care was trying to reach him. Her name is Debi Landry. She told Tony that an ADA called her. It was Max Donovan, and he
insisted
that he had received a message from her. He was asking her a ton of questions, trying to get her to implicate Tony. Did you see her name mentioned anywhere in the case records?”

“Not the ones I’ve reviewed. At least, not so far.”

“You’re still not done? How is that possible?”

Carrie knew the answer she wanted to give her:
Because I’ve been running around Utica, trying to explain myself to Melanie and my mother and Tim and Mr. Sullivan? Because you pile more work onto one attorney and one assistant than could possibly be completed? Because you’re an insane woman who practices law by the seat of her pants instead of doing anything methodically and thoughtfully? Because some stranger pulled a Tasmanian Devil in my hotel room
.

The truth was that Carrie hadn’t been able to bring herself to help Thomas complete the impossible task of identifying which, if any, case materials had been stolen. She’d looked through her personal belongings. The only thing that was missing was the journal she’d left on the nightstand. She realized she cared far more about that than anything relating to Anthony Amaro.

It was suddenly clear what Carrie had to do.

“I don’t think this is working out.”

“Well, what do you need? Would an investigator help?”

“No. I mean, it’s not working out
at all
. I don’t want this. I wanted to find out who killed my sister. You told me that Anthony Amaro was innocent, and that I could help get to the truth. I’m not insulting what you do. I get it. But it’s not why I am here. I think you know I’m only in the way. I’m too close.”

Carrie realized that part of her wanted Linda to argue with her. Why did she care so much about what people thought of her?

But she was relieved when Linda said, “Fine, take the next train back to the city if that’s what you want. No hard feelings.”

“Thanks, Linda.” She started to add an apology, out of habit. She was always apologizing, but this time, she wouldn’t have meant it.

I
t was two hours later and still no sign of Rogan. He wasn’t kidding when he said he needed some sleep. Ellie had been monitoring the activity in the hotel lobby, and Carrie Blank was nowhere in sight.

Instead, she spotted Will Sullivan at the far end of the first-floor hallway. He didn’t look especially happy to see her, but he didn’t run away, either.

“Any progress with the break-in?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t call it progress. The hotel has cameras, but only to monitor the car prowls and hand-to-hands going down in the parking lot. Anyone in or out on foot could just stay close to the perimeter of the building and avoid detection.”

“What about inside the building?”

“Maybe the hotels in New York do that.” It was another obvious dig. “But they don’t have high-tech gear on the floors here. Hotel security has been helping us touch base with all the employees, but it’s not exactly a hotbed of activity. They keep a very light staff. The housekeepers had mostly left for the day. No room service or anything. And no one reported seeing anything unusual. My gut tells me we’re not getting anywhere.”

“Any clear motive yet?”

“Nope, but it looks like the documents were the target. The attorney knows that at least one journal is missing.”

“It has to be Anthony Amaro. He’s out for the first time in eighteen years. Maybe he’s worried there’s something in those files he didn’t want to get out.”

“That’s an interesting way to look at it,” he said. “But in my Podunk experience, there’s this thing called attorney-client privilege. It usually means the one person a criminal defendant can count on is his attorney, and I watched Carrie Blank cry today because she owes a legal duty to that man, whether she wants to or not, and it was clear she was not about to break it. There’s also something called tabloid journalism. We don’t see it a lot here, but you must, down in the city, with the paparazzi and all. We had Taylor Swift up here filming a music video. You would’ve thought it was the world’s fair. Then you got the people who collect what they call serial-killer memorabilia. I think the pool down at the station house has the over-under for documents going up on eBay by the end of the day tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong with you?” The words were out of her mouth before she intended to speak them. Earlier, Rogan had accused her of focusing on Sullivan out of a subconscious hope that Max’s insistence on a fresh look would pan out. But now she was certain that Sullivan’s responses were seriously off kilter. “Don’t you even want to catch a killer?”

“You really want to go there?”

“Hey, what’s going on?” Rogan had risen from the dead. He did not look happy to find her going toe-to-toe in the lobby with Sullivan.

“Your partner was just accusing me of not caring about the deaths of six women.”

“I’m sure Miss Congeniality didn’t mean to suggest that—did you, Hatcher?”

Sullivan didn’t wait for an apology. “If you want to talk about dropping the ball, I’d point out that you barely mentioned earlier today that your victim Helen Brunswick was a psychologist up here. That seemed like something that should be looked at, so I ran her. She had a patient named Joseph Flaherty. She was so scared of him that she broke confidentiality and called us. The guy’s a major nut. He even turned up at my house more than a few times.”

“We went through the same steps,” Ellie said. “Helen Brunswick rotated through some of the hospitals up here before she quit. I figured out your connection to Flaherty as we were leaving the station house. Your names were in the reports.”