All Day and a Night: A Novel of Suspense (Ellie Hatcher) Page 4

  Rogan finally took a seat next to Ellie. He tapped his neatly trimmed nails on the tabletop. “The fractures alone would never have been enough to connect Helen Brunswick to these old cases,” he said. “So it’s really about the letter; whoever sent it knew about her injuries. And they wanted to make sure someone made the connection to Anthony Amaro. Brunswick’s husband found the body. That means he had eight days to figure out he was the primary suspect and respond accordingly.”

  “Is the husband still talking,” Ellie asked, “or has he lawyered up?”

  “Last I heard,” Max said, “he was still cooperating. But you should check with the detectives at the 7-8 first. They know you’re taking over.”

  “Great,” Rogan said. “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear from us.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Carrie picked the exact wrong time to leave work.

  Had she bolted from the building as soon as she quit, no one would have heard the news, and so no one would have been paying attention as she walked away with nothing but a purse, a briefcase, and maybe one extra bag filled with her most important office possessions. Alternatively, she could have waited out the other attorneys. She’d pulled enough all-nighters to know how quiet the place eventually got—albeit well after midnight, and that gunner Theo Mayers seemed to linger past two on a regular basis.

  But, no. Carrie stupidly decided to break the news about her change of employment at seven o’clock. She had picked that time because she could definitely count on catching her mentor, Mark, to tell him personally. But then she wasted two hours in her own office, backing up personal files onto a thumb drive and wadding newspaper around picture frames and her beloved crystal elephant—the one she’d won in a raffle and had kept simply because it was the only thing she’d ever own from Tiffany.

  At least when she walked out she should have gone incognito—maybe taking the stairs down to the thirty-second floor (land of the printing department, an obscure collection of state legislative histories that didn’t fit in the firm’s library, and an unused gym) before hopping onto the elevator. Instead—again, stupidly—she had walked out of Russ Waterston in the largest possible way: just before ten p.m., when most associates leave, while juggling a purse, briefcase, two plastic bags, and a potted philodendron.

  By then, everyone had heard the news of her departure, and so everyone watched. People used the term walk of shame to describe the seven-a.m. subway ride in last night’s seductress outfit, but the ten-p.m. walk of shame at Russ Waterston was far, far worse.

  Carrie could see it in their faces as they watched her: HER? Really? She is quitting? Seriously? So it was with great relief that her walk of shame had been interrupted by a call from Bill. He was in the city. It was short notice, and it was late, and he totally understood if she didn’t have time, but he’d love to meet for a drink.

  To Carrie in that moment, it felt like she’d been saved.

  The heel of Carrie’s pump got stuck in the cobblestone as she exited the taxi at Ninth Avenue and Gansevoort. Normally she would’ve changed into more practical shoes to meet a friend this late, but she tried to look her best where Bill was concerned.

  At thirty-five years old, Carrie still had never been to Europe, but as she navigated a route between the postage-stamp-sized bistro tables at crowded Pastis, she pretended she was in Paris, just off the Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Bill waved to her from a table in the back corner. He rose and greeted her with double kisses. “Bonsoir,” she said cheerfully.

  “One of these days, we’re going to make it there,” he said.

  “You remember.” She could feel herself smiling for the first time all day.

  “Of course.”

  She and Bill had always had a special bond. He played big brother to Melanie, too, but he and Carrie used to sneak away by themselves. They would stay up late on the merry-go-round, well after the park was closed, and spin each other slowly as they talked all about the wonderful things life held for them in the future.

  They had never been a couple—at least, not since a one-week period of “going steady” in the fifth grade. Over the years, they had flirted on and off, and had even stumbled into bed together more than a few times, but they always agreed that trying to build a romance wasn’t worth risking their friendship. She would call him her closest friend, and liked to think he’d say the same. Now, perhaps for the first time in their entire lives, they were both—at the same time—on the verge of changes that could be exactly what they had been waiting for.

  Bill was drinking water, as usual. Ignoring the intimidating French wine list, she asked the waiter for a margarita on the rocks, with salt. Tonight she wanted the hard stuff.

  She was dying to tell Bill about her new venture, but didn’t want to squelch their first in-person celebration of his good news. She couldn’t believe it had been more than three months since they’d seen each other. When had they both become so busy?

  “But the question is,” she posed, “when is the state of New York’s lieutenant governor going to have time for a European tour with a lowly little attorney from his childhood?”

  “Stop it. The work’s far more mundane than you’d want to know.” But as he described his passion projects—a training program on community policing, statewide prekindergarten for all, job preparation for parents on welfare—she could tell he was loving every moment of his new position.

  Sitting here with Bill, while he was having such a special moment in his career, made her feel better about her own decision to work for Linda Moreland. Things were working out for both of them. When they were kids, their shared fascination with law and politics had bonded them. Melanie had always been smarter than Carrie, and probably Bill, but she never found a focus for her innate academic ability. Bill and Carrie, on the other hand, were the only high school students they knew who watched Meet the Press, scoured the op-eds of the Nation and the National Review, and knew more about Bill Clinton than they did about the New Kids on the Block or the Backstreet Boys. Back then, after a couple of wine coolers and too many spins on the merry-go-round, they would sheepishly admit their most wild fantasies—Carrie’s to sit on the Supreme Court, Bill’s to be the president of the United States.

  Compared to where most people got with their dreams, and where the two of them had started in Red View, they’d done pretty well for themselves.

  Perhaps because they were each in a unique position to know how much the other appreciated the success they’d managed to achieve, he felt free to share his current frustrations. The head of the state assembly was too stupid to understand basic law that governed the real life of street policing. Public employee unions were too entrenched to understand that the state could not afford to keep up with the rapid increase in retirement benefits. “Plus, I finally sold the condo in Rochester, at a huge loss, and now I find out that the place I bought in Albany might have termites. They need to do a second test. Maybe it’s just the porch, but it could be the whole house. Sorry. I think that’s what they call First World problems.”

  “I think I’m having one of those moments myself,” she said. She took a gulp of her second margarita and slammed the glass on the table. “I quit Russ Waterston today.”

  He nearly spit out his water. “Isn’t that the job you called your happy place?”

  That sounded so ridiculous now, but it was with good reason that Carrie had always felt lucky to work at Russ Waterston. For fifty-seven years, the boutique law firm had managed to attract top-ten-percent graduates from the elite five: Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia. Carrie had shared a hallway with law review editors in chief, Supreme Court clerks, and Solicitor General externs. It was still hard for her to imagine, but her first job out of law school (when she finally graduated) was to join the best legal thinkers and writers in the world for what was arguably the most rarified legal practice imaginable: federal appellate work.

  “I know. It’s a big deal,” she said.

  “
So . . . what’s next?” he asked. “From what I read, people only leave that place if they’re about to accept their own judicial appointment. And if that’s what’s going on here, I’m going to take back all that Podunk state government stuff I just rambled about, because obviously I should be president by now.”

  “No, it’s nothing like that.” She was about to tell him everything about Anthony Amaro and his plea for Linda Moreland’s involvement, but she really didn’t want to make the night about her. “A former law professor of mine has a tiny practice. Postconviction work in criminal cases. More responsibility. More specialization. I’m happy about it.”

  “Good for you.”

  She knew she could count on him not to point out, as her law firm colleagues surely would have, that working for a solo practitioner was not exactly a step up—or even a lateral move—from the job she had left.

  “Good for both of us.” She clinked her margarita against his water glass. There was a pause in the conversation, and she found herself asking, “Do you ever feel guilty?”

  “For being so ridiculously good-looking?” he said. “All the time.”

  “You know what I mean. Every time I talk to Melanie, it’s like I almost want to apologize,” she said. “Maybe she’s different with you. I always wonder if she resents me. Like we both wonder whether I really earned it.”

  The three of them were all clumped together in high school, always within a few hundredths of a point in their GPAs. Melanie, Bill, and Carrie, the three star pupils whom any of their teachers would have pegged to make it out of Red View. In the end, Carrie was the one who got the biggest scholarship any of them had ever heard of, and she always suspected it was because of Donna’s death.

  He shushed her and rubbed her forearm. “That’s not fair. Besides, that stupid prize didn’t even matter. You and I are where we are today because we were willing to look beyond the only narrow slice of life we knew and deal with the larger world. I’ll always be there for Melanie, but let’s face it: she never made that leap.”

  She knew what he meant. At one level, Melanie had to grow up faster than either of them when she’d delivered a baby boy three months after their high school graduation. But in many ways, she was still stuck in that same place.

  Carrie, on the other hand, sometimes felt like she and Bill had each lived three lives since then. She arrived at Cornell believing she’d won a golden ticket, only to discover that the other students were way beyond her academically. She was already struggling in her second semester when she got the phone call on March 17. Her father had pulled the refrigeration truck in front of the grocery store, just like normal. Then he stepped out of the cab and walked directly in front of an oncoming SUV. The company was blaming the fatal accident on her father’s own negligence, claiming that he was tired and distracted because of a prohibited moonlighting gig he’d taken on the side.

  Carrie always suspected, but her mother would never admit, that her father had taken the second job because Carrie had told him about some dormies’ upcoming plans for a spring break jaunt to Cancun. She had mentioned it only because she was shocked at the ability of eighteen-year-olds to whisk away on a beach vacation, but it would have been just like her father to do whatever he could to help her fit in with her new peers.

  Suddenly, Carrie had to worry not only about her classes, but now about her mother being able to keep up with rent, car insurance, and utilities. She took a waitressing job. She went home more often. Her GPA dropped. Within a year, she had lost her scholarship. She moved back to Utica with three semesters of mediocre grades under her belt.

  She lost the golden ticket. It would take her ten years in total to graduate from college.

  Bill was the one who helped her get on her feet and back in the classroom again. He was the one who got her to see: it’s a marathon, not a sprint. While Carrie was at Cornell and Melanie was changing diapers, Bill had spent his postgraduation year in rehab, battling a drug dependency he had successfully hidden until then, even from her. He managed to turn the setback into a new beginning, committing himself to helping other kids who were trying to get clean. He followed his father into law enforcement, continuing to speak openly about his past struggles. At his induction as the youngest chief of police in Rochester’s history, he talked about the terror and the thrill of holding a crack pipe for the very first time. He brought the audience to tears and was invited to serve on the governor’s advisory council on public safety issues. Then last winter, he had been appointed lieutenant governor when a stroke disabled the previous officeholder.

  His path may not have been direct, but he was exactly where he wanted to be: serving as a statewide public official. There were already whispers about him running for governor in eight years. “I’m happy for you,” Carrie said.

  “Then why do you sound so sad?” he asked. “All this talk about Red View and high school?”

  She shrugged. “You’re right. It’s dumb. Just the drama of leaving the firm. I guess it has me feeling melancholy.”

  Bill was probably her closest friend. So why couldn’t she tell him that she had walked away from a perfect job to represent Anthony Amaro?

  As they hugged goodbye outside the restaurant, it hit her: it was because she was wondering whether she’d made a terrible mistake.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Ellie came home to find Max standing on the sofa, holding a tape measure vertically against the living room wall. She kicked off her pumps, headed straight for the fridge, and grabbed two bottles of Rolling Rock. She patted Max on the calf as she took a seat on the edge of the couch and popped off the bottle caps—one for her, one waiting for him, once he finished whatever the heck he was doing to the wall.

  “Does an open beer mean you’re not angry anymore?”

  She and Rogan had spent the afternoon wrapping up the paperwork on the case against Laura Bendel, with a plan to jump into the fresh-look investigation the next morning. They had also agreed that the assignment was now theirs, regardless of how it came their way, and all they could do was make the best of it.

  “I was never angry, Max. I was frustrated. And worried that this case could be a disaster.”

  “And now?”

  “Honestly, I feel the same. But I know you at least believe you chose me for all the right reasons.”

  “I wish you’d take my word on that.”

  She took a long pull from her bottle, searching for a change in subject. Max hopped down and scribbled 108″ on a legal pad on the coffee table.

  “You’re not considering a pet giraffe, are you?” she asked. “Those things live more than twenty years, you know. Major commitment. And think of the food bills. And the smell. Not to mention the weird looks when you walk him on his leash. There goes your anonymity.”

  “You know, a normal person would simply ask why I was measuring our wall.”

  “No fun in being normal.”

  “Then maybe you should be the one with the pet giraffe.”

  “There would be some benefits. We could sell rides to kids on the street. And imagine if someone broke in and saw Mr. Longneck waiting in the hallway. Or maybe we’d get a girl, so I could tie little pink bows to her horns. I seem to recall that when baby giraffes are born, the mothers kick them over and over again so the little cuties learn to stand up on their own. Probably a parenting lesson in there for us human types.”

  He leaned behind her to begin measuring the length of the sofa.

  “Fine, you win. What’s up with the measuring?”

  He smiled and gave her a quick kiss. “I’m finally getting around to hanging those photographs.” He jotted down another number, picked up the second bottle of beer, and clinked it against hers.

  She said, “Oh, right.” But her initial blank expression was a giveaway: she had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Those pictures from Montauk?” He pointed to three framed photographs leaning against the side of the couch. “We agreed we’d hang them on th
is wall?”

  Now she remembered. They’d taken them together on a weekend beach trip last summer, and Max decided to have three of them printed and framed: the train station, surfers on the waves, and—something else. All she remembered was finding room for them in a closet when they were still in the phase of unpacking boxes. Now that they’d been in the apartment for three months, and she knew precisely where to find her clothes, shoes, and other essentials, she was used to the place as it was. If she lived alone, those photographs would remain in the closet until the next time she moved.

  That was one of many differences between Ellie and Max. Before their joint move, he had lived for eight years in the same Nolita apartment. It was on a high floor of a doorman, elevator building. At least by the time Ellie saw the place, it was neatly decorated with coordinated furnishings like the dark-gray sectional sofa she was sitting on, and the modern coffee table with the glass top that was now ringed with two watermarks because she’d forgotten, once again, to use coasters. Max even had lime-green throw pillows that managed to match the decorative vase perched on the cabinet beneath the television.

  Max had taste.

  Ellie? She had good taste when it came to food and people. She had a taste—not sure everyone would say it was good—when it came to her clothing. But in terms of decorating, she had no preferences whatsoever. She’d never had the luxury to make choices.

  In Kansas, she’d always lived at home. The scholarship awards she’d cobbled together on the Kansas teen pageant circuit had barely covered part-time tuition at Wichita State. Then, when she’d followed her brother, Jess, to New York City, she had been one step above transient, moving from one ratty sublet to the next, waiting tables to cover rent.

  Her first year on the NYPD, she had a brief respite from the constant shuffling when she’d accepted her then-boyfriend’s invitation to let her sublease expire and stay with him. The boyfriend was an investment banker, and his apartment looked it. But it had been decorated, inch for inch, by a designer hired for the job, so it didn’t reflect his taste, let alone Ellie’s. Ellie had never even thought of the place as her own. In an entire year, she never got to the point of answering the apartment phone or getting a copy of the mailbox key. It was more like she’d been crashing there a lot. When the boyfriend made it clear that he didn’t understand why Ellie insisted on working as a cop when she could be not-working as an investment banker’s wife, she knew she had to get out.