All Day and a Night: A Novel of Suspense (Ellie Hatcher) Page 3

  Dougie’s momma was a ho. The reason the po-po didn’t care was because the victims were all prostitutes.

  Not to be one-upped by Monique, other kids came forward each day with new information, each report more gory and lurid than the last. Dougie didn’t even know who his daddy was; his mom had gotten knocked up by a john. Dougie had an uncle in town, but the state wouldn’t let Dougie stay with him, because he was the one who was pimping out his own sister.

  Then, by the ninth grade, there were rumors about the other victims—three, then five, then six, then ten, then forty. The police thought the perpetrator might be a cop. Or maybe it was a teacher. Some of the victims had their eyes plucked out. Or their stomachs cut open. Or their genitals mutilated. Why hadn’t the adults realized what would happen when they instructed children not to talk about a killer in their midst?

  Carrie and Melanie had formed a pact to stay together on the walk to and from school, enlisting Bill for additional protection whenever possible. They ducked into storefronts at every sighting of a container van, which struck them as the perfect vehicle for abduction and torture.

  The two girls were still virgins, but they also knew they were among a dwindling minority—and Melanie had let first one boyfriend, and then another, get to third base. (In fact, Carrie suspected a few stolen steps past that, though remaining technically short of home plate.) At a time when they were just starting to think about their sexuality, the idea of women being killed for selling it made their bodies seem dangerous. And intriguing.

  When Carrie’s mother finally overheard the girls whispering after school about the latest link in the gossip chain—a new victim—she decided she needed to intervene. She told them that the victims were at risk. They had a perilous lifestyle. They weren’t good girls—like them. And because Carrie’s mother was Carrie’s mother, she could not resist admonishing them to let this be one more reminder of the importance of working hard in school and going to college.

  But as much as Rosemary Blank tried to maintain the protective bubble she had inflated around her daughter, Carrie had always known that the realities of their life put her one tiny little pin-pop of a bubble away from the hardships of Red View. The walk between their house and the Burlingame Mall inevitably took her to Sandy Avenue, where sometimes the men slowing on street corners mistook two fourteen-year-old girls for fresh meat on the block. Carrie herself had been to Doug Bronson’s house more than once in the sixth grade. His mom hadn’t seemed like a prostitute. And if rumors could be trusted, Trina Martin—who used to stick up for Carrie when the older middle schoolers made fun of her honor-student ways—had started giving bj’s in the high school parking lot for money, defending the practice because it “wasn’t really sex.”

  And then there was Carrie’s own sister, Donna. Or “half sister,” as her mother consistently corrected. (And that was when she was feeling generous. “That girl,” “bad seed,” and “your father’s little accident” were some of the other terms that were known to flow effortlessly from her tongue—and that was in English. Carrie could only imagine the meaning of the Chinese words her mother often mumbled under her breath when Donna was around.) Donna—ten years Carrie’s elder and a high school dropout—was another subject her mother tried to wall off from the Blank home. But for the first sixteen years of her life, Carrie had overheard snippets of her parents’ fights about her half sister: drinking, a friend who was a bad influence, a phone call from police, posting bail, drugs. These were words Carrie had been raised to fear.

  And now she had words about dead women to add to the mix.

  As much as Carrie’s mother had tried to convince her the killings had nothing to do with them, all Carrie knew was that she was becoming a woman in a place where someone was killing women. Without any real information to make her feel safe, Carrie’s imagination—sometimes boundless—filled in the blanks. Then, her senior year of high school, the danger wasn’t only in her imagination.

  Donna was dead.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the click-click sound of four-inch heels on the hardwood floor of the small waiting area. She looked up to see a pair of well-moisturized, muscular legs beneath a skirt three inches shorter than hers. It was her former professor, Linda Moreland. Carrie was surprised that such a busy lawyer would even remember her, but the woman had called Carrie three times in the last week to discuss the possibility of joining her law practice. When Linda initially explained the nature of the case Carrie would be working on, Carrie nearly hung up. But proving how effective a lawyer she was, Linda had not only persuaded Carrie to accept the appointment but had Carrie convinced that the assignment was inevitable.

  “So tell me, Carrie: Are you ready to make those SOBs find out who really killed your sister?”

  She rose from her chair, trying to conceal her nervousness. Was she really considering working for Anthony Amaro’s lawyer?

  “Half sister. But, yes, I’m very glad you called.”

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  The newly comprised “fresh look team” rode together from the precinct to the New York County District Attorney’s Office at 80 Centre Street—Rogan at the wheel of the fleet car, Ellie riding shotgun, Max in the back, no sound except Rogan flipping radio stations.

  As they were heading up the courthouse stairs, Rogan announced that he’d left something in the car. He tapped Ellie’s arm before turning back: “Just say what you need to say. I’ll be up in five.”

  As soon as the elevator doors closed, Ellie said what had been on her mind for the last forty-five minutes. “You had to pick me? Of all the detectives in the NYPD? And you didn’t even talk to me about it. You went to our lieutenant.”

  “I honestly thought you would be excited.”

  Her eyes widened. “Excited? About reinvestigating a case that other cops already closed? About stealing an active investigation from the detectives who’ve been working Helen Brunswick’s murder for weeks? Do you know what kind of position that puts us in?”

  “If other detectives aren’t doing it right, you should want to fix it.”

  “Why are you assuming someone did something wrong? That’s the risk of this kind of second-guessing. Not to mention that we live together.”

  When the elevator doors opened on the tenth floor, he led the way, in silence, to a conference room, and then shut the door behind them. “I thought about running it past you first, but I know how you feel about special treatment. This is how I would have handled it with anyone else.”

  “But you didn’t dump this on anyone else.” She looked around at the boxes covering the conference table. From the notations on the whiteboard, she could tell this had been the Conviction Integrity Unit’s workspace for the Amaro case. “You dumped it on us.”

  “I wouldn’t call it dumping, and the choice was completely on the level. You guys have worked a serial case before. You’re both new enough that you don’t have connections to the original players. And I didn’t think you had that ‘us versus them’ mentality; I thought you’d be willing to work outside the chain of command, reporting to the DA’s office. You’re both pros, and the whole office knows it.”

  “A lot of people in the department are pros, Max.”

  “They don’t have your background, Ellie.”

  “You mean living with an ADA? Working outside the chain of command, as you put it?”

  He shook his head and forced a calm smile to his face. “Please don’t twist my words around. If you really want to know the truth, I picked you to work on this—you, specifically—because I know you’re the very best.”

  “That sounds a lot like special treatment.”

  “No, it sounds like the truth. I know you, Ellie. I know your background, and I know the empathy you have for victims. You’ve told me how your best memories of your father were down in that basement, playing jacks and serving as his sounding board for the competing theories.”

  The father he referred to had been a detective, the basement
was in Wichita, and the competing theories had been about a sadist who tortured and murdered women and children.

  Max closed the distance between them and rested a hand on her shoulder. “You saw the compassion your father had for those victims. And that compassion—that relentless desire to get to the truth—is part of who you are now. You don’t play politics, Ellie, and you don’t take shit from anyone. Not even me.” This time, his smile came naturally. “So, yeah, you’re absolutely right: I picked you for a reason. You’re the kind of person I can trust to do the right thing. And so is Rogan.”

  “But, like you said, your decision was about me. How do I explain that to Rogan?”

  “You don’t. This isn’t about personalities. If Anthony Amaro is innocent, that means someone left a serial killer on the street. And Helen Brunswick might just be the tip of the iceberg. There could be more victims, and Amaro will have spent eighteen years in prison for no reason. This is the most important job I’ve ever been asked to do as a prosecutor. To do it with anyone other than the two of you? That would be showing you special treatment.”

  They heard a tap on the door. “Hey,” Rogan said. “Wasn’t sure I had the right room.”

  They both knew he was testing the waters. Ellie took one more look at Max. He wasn’t going to budge.

  “This is the place,” she said, taking a seat. “Max was about to fill us in on what’s in these here boxes.”

  The six cardboard file boxes formed a line across the rectangular top of the mahogany-veneer table. At the head and foot of the table stood matching white boards on wheels, both covered in an array of neatly printed, multicolored ink.

  “Our team figured we’d leave our work to help get you started.”

  Rogan had already erased one of the boards by the time Max finished speaking.

  “Hey, I get it,” Max said. “I can leave if you want.”

  Rogan pulled the top from one of the boxes and handed it to Max. “No way those stupid color-coded bullet-points were your handiwork. Show us what you’ve got.”

  “Six boxes of files: one for each of Amaro’s victims. That one”—he pointed to the box in front of Rogan—“is our office’s entire file on the murder of Deborah Garner, including all police reports.” Ellie could see that the various Redwelds and manila files barely fit inside. “It’s also the most complete. Although the other five cases were all closed, Amaro was only charged with, and only pled guilty to, one crime: the murder of Deborah Garner.”

  “Why just her?” Ellie asked.

  “To start with, it was the strongest of the cases and the one that led to Amaro’s arrest. Garner was also the last of the six victims. Think about the timing. Eighteen years ago? What was happening with criminal law in New York?”

  Rogan made the connection faster than she did. “New York passed the death penalty,” he said.

  Max pointed at Rogan. “Exactly. Deborah Garner was murdered two weeks after the death penalty went into effect. Pataki campaigned on the issue, and signed the law that Mario Cuomo wouldn’t. The courts have put a hold on it since then, but at the time, the fact that New York State was going to start executing people was big news. Deborah Garner was the only victim killed after the law went into effect, meaning it was the only case that was death-eligible. The threat of lethal injection was enough to leverage a guilty plea from Anthony Amaro in exchange for a life sentence, no parole. She was also the only victim in our office’s jurisdiction. The others were all found in Amaro’s hometown of Utica.”

  “That’s up near Albany, right?” More than a decade after moving to New York from Wichita, Ellie was like most city residents and had only a vague sense of the state’s geography beyond the metropolitan area.

  “Closer to Syracuse, but yeah, up there. If I had to guess, there was no point in another county going after Amaro for additional convictions. He was already behind bars forever, and—”

  “And they were only prostitutes,” Ellie added. They all knew the reality. Last year, she’d worked a case with a Los Angeles homicide detective who told her that either everyone counted or no one did, but in her experience, some people seemed to count a lot more when it came to prioritizing the resources of the criminal justice system. “Any other commonalities?”

  “Certainly not in appearance,” Max said. “The victims ranged in age from twenty-five to forty-three. Heights from five-one to five-seven. Some were thin, some were heavy. All white, but complexions and hair colors were all over the map. All shot, but all with different guns.”

  “Meaning he was smart enough to dump the weapon with each kill,” she said. “Cheaper to buy replacement guns on the street than risk getting nailed with ballistics evidence.”

  Max continued his summary. “Same postmortem injuries. There was geography, of course: the five victims killed before Deborah Garner were found in Roscoe Conkling Park. And we’re talking about a relatively tight time frame. Six women killed within seven years.”

  Ellie was realizing the enormity of the task awaiting them. Two presumably competent homicide detectives had been working on the Helen Brunswick case for weeks without an arrest. The other six cases were ancient—the original investigators most likely retired or dead by now—and involved victims at the fringe of society, where witnesses tended to be few and forgetful. “You haven’t mentioned DNA,” she said.

  Max shook his head. “No DNA. At least, not at the time. Is there anything to be found today? We don’t know, but we’ve got NYPD looking at the Garner evidence and the state crime lab analyzing the Utica cases.”

  “Isn’t that a little premature?” Rogan asked.

  “It was Martin’s call.” Martin Overton was the elected district attorney. There were four levels of managers between him and Max. Max’s comment about this being the most important case of his career was taking on new meaning.

  Rogan still hadn’t sat down. Now he stepped away from the table, leaned against the conference room door, and crossed his arms. “Did your boss stop and think about what you’re supposed to do if the labs actually find something new?”

  “Martin has made it very clear that this needs to be a transparent process. Any exculpatory evidence will get turned over to the defendant.”

  “He’s worrying about his next election,” Rogan muttered. “The pendulum has officially swung.”

  When Ellie first put on a uniform, city residents would regularly flash her a thumbs-up. Crime was down, the streets felt safer, and zero-tolerance policing was all the rage. Now, after years of decreasing crime and increased security, voters had revolted against any elected official who publicly supported the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices. They kicked out the long-serving Brooklyn DA for failing to protect defendants’ rights. And now Martin Overton appeared to be acting more like Anthony Amaro’s defense attorney than a prosecutor.

  Ellie wanted to hit rewind and tell Max he should know better than to parrot his boss’s talking points to them. Instead, she tried to translate Rogan’s comment. “Does Martin understand the problem of jumping straight to the DNA?”

  Rogan still looked like he was trying to press his body through the closed door and escape unnoticed. “These were working girls, Donovan. The science is so good now that the lab is bound to find something that was undetectable all those years ago. Just because some john leaves behind a drop of saliva, that doesn’t exonerate Amaro.”

  “No, but our office strongly believes that something like that—in combination with this letter—would need to be looked at closely.”

  “Right, because of a transparent process.” Rogan stepped forward, reached into the open cardboard box, and removed a file folder. He flipped it open on the table and stopped on a color photograph of a woman’s corpse. Her face was gray-white and bloated, her pale, dry lips starting to droop. “This woman had a name: Deborah Garner.” He kept flipping and landed on an image of Deborah Garner’s partially nude body splayed on dirt. All four of her limbs had multiple fractures, leaving them with a wavy appearanc
e. “Eighteen years ago, someone who had your job and someone else who had our job assured someone who cared about this woman that at least her killer would never see another day of freedom. This isn’t about transparency or process. This is about whether the kind of man who could do this to a woman—to six women—gets a second shot, just because some fishing expedition turns up DNA from a sloughed skin cell overlooked twenty years ago.”

  Ellie knew Rogan was right, but found herself saying, “We’re getting way ahead of ourselves.” Barely into the assignment, she was already playing mediator. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the lab will find Amaro’s DNA. What about the letter? Did that go to the crime lab?”

  “It was the first thing we did. I think we hoped to find something linking it to a sick practical joke. Maybe a leak with the medical examiner to a wannabe comedian. Instead, we’re still at a dead end: the envelope was self-sealing, the stamp self-adhesive. No prints. It was postmarked eight days after the Brunswick murder, mailed from Manhattan. That’s all we got. Now the reality is setting in, and we’re wishing we’d made better use of all this time.”

  “What about the therapist, Helen Brunswick?” she asked. “No physical evidence there, either?”

  “You’ll need to get all the details from the Brooklyn detectives who’ve been working the case,” Max said. “My understanding is that they have plenty of trace evidence—hairs, fingerprints, skin cells—but with no certainty that any of it necessarily belongs to the killer. They just heard back yesterday that none of the profiles hit in the DNA database.”

  On television, these things happen in a matter of minutes. Even in a high-profile case, it had taken six weeks for the lab to run DNA through the database.