Ellie’s own role was to work collectively on the profile of the victims. Was there a hidden commonality among them that they had missed? She reviewed every piece of background information they had on each of the victims. She made follow-up calls to friends and family members. This was usually her forte: imagining the lives that had been lost and figuring out where those lives had collided with danger. The entire time she’d been a detective, that skill had been facilitated by cell phones, computers, and security cameras—technology that allowed her to draw connections between people who wanted their associations to remain covert. She was realizing how much easier it had been for the bad guys to cover their tracks two decades ago.
She was on the phone with the third victim’s sister, searching hopelessly for some new shred of information, when she heard a voice break through the cacophony that had become the day’s background noise.
“I think I have something. Holy shit, I think I’ve got someone.” She couldn’t make out the responsive murmurs. “That’s him,” she heard from the same voice. “It’s the same guy.”
She rushed off the phone so she could find the speaker. He turned out to be an analyst who looked like a fan at one of Jess’s dive-bar gigs: pomade in the hair, eau de cigarettes, lots of tattoos. Central casting for hipster-punk.
“What do you have?”
“I’m on the Park Slope camera crew.” It was the unimaginative label they’d given to a duo of workers tapped with reviewing all available security camera footage within a ten-block radius of Helen Brunswick’s office. They still didn’t know if Brunswick’s death was related to the older murders, but her case was the most recent, making her their best chance of catching a break. There were no security cameras in the immediate vicinity around her office, but they had expanded the radius as part of the last-ditch surge. “You asked us to look for anything that might be worth following up on.”
“And?” Ellie asked.
The hipster-punk pushed back from his workstation to make room. “Right there. See that guy?” He pointed to the paused black-and-white image on his computer.
Ellie bent over and squinted at the screen. She looked for Rogan and found him hanging up a phone, his eyes simultaneously scanning the room. She waved him over.
He recognized the face, too.
“Where and when?” he asked.
“Three hours before Brunswick’s murder. He bought a lottery ticket seven blocks west. Isn’t that the same guy those people are talking about?” The hipster-punk’s gaze moved to a rolling bulletin board parked at the front end of the room. At the center of the board was a photograph of Joseph Flaherty. The two people standing in front of it had been dubbed “the Joseph team.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Rogan said.
Joseph Flaherty may not have won the lottery, but he had a certain kind of luck. There was no doubt he was the man on the screen. On paper, he’d spent his entire life in Utica. But now they had ironclad proof placing him within six hundred yards of Helen Brunswick the day of her murder.
“Wait, there’s more,” the analyst announced. “His face isn’t even what caught my attention, because it only appears in the camera for a second.”
He hit rewind. On the screen, Joseph’s head tilted forward, and they watched as he appeared to walk backward to a refrigerator case, return his Snapple to the top shelf, and then continue to rotate other bottles toward him to inspect the variety of flavors.
The analyst hit pause and pointed at the screen. “See that? That’s what I first noticed about the guy.”
With Joseph’s arm raised, the back of his jacket was lifted. He had a handgun in his waistband.
CHAPTER
FORTY-FOUR
If there were a photograph of an alien abduction of the abominable snowman burying Jimmy Hoffa, it could not have gotten more scrutiny than this crappy video from a bodega seven blocks from Helen Brunswick’s office. They had processed various freeze-framed images from the video fifty different ways. Twenty pairs of eyes had made the relevant comparisons. All twenty agreed that the man walking out of the bodega with a Snapple Peach Tea and a handgun was Joseph Flaherty.
Ellie held an enhanced copy of the photograph next to a mugshot from Flaherty’s most recent booking. By now, she had memorized the details of his repeated interactions with law enforcement and the mental-health system. His history was typical of those individuals trapped at the intersection between the two. Busts for disruptions that were alarming enough to justify an arrest but too petty to warrant serious jail time. Stints in mental-health facilities—some voluntary, some court-mandated—but never enough to break the cycle. These were the lost people muttering to themselves beneath bridges and overpasses. They were the ones both systems churned through their respective mills, until they really hurt someone, and then they made front-page news.
“We’ve done all we can do with one picture,” Max said. “Let’s make sure the Utica folks know it’s time to focus in on Joseph.”
“I’ll make the call,” Ellie said.
Joseph Flaherty was about to hit the front page. And Ellie needed to be the one to give Sullivan the credit.
Sullivan picked up on the third ring. “Ah, Detective. I hope your trip home was uneventful.”
“Very much so, thank you.”
“See how I knew it was you, even before you said so? We hicks way up here in the boonies have this thing called caller ID, real cutting-edge. I saw ‘City of New York’ on the screen and figured it was either you or your partner. I believe that’s what fancy people call deductive reasoning skills.”
“I get it, Detective Sullivan, and I’m calling to tell you I deserve the ribbing. We should have reached out to your department earlier.”
“Glad to hear you think so. And I’m sure you’re calling to remind me we’re supposed to be looking for Anthony Amaro.”
“Actually, no. I was—”
“Still haven’t got eyes on him. I suspect Linda Moreland moved him further out from the city to make it harder for us. And I happen to know that the attorney who was here left to go back to the city.”
“I got the impression you knew her.”
“Since she was three feet tall. Here’s the thing: Moreland’s legal assistant is still at the hotel. I figure that means the big gun is on her way. I’m planning to put a tail on her. Can’t imagine she’ll be happy about it, but I don’t plan on her finding out.”
“Smart.”
“I thought so, too. And you must have meant it about the change of heart. You don’t even sound surprised.”
She couldn’t believe that just yesterday she had been so suspicious of this man that she’d carried a plastic stick covered in his saliva all the way from Utica. “You know, for what it’s worth, I grew up in a place not unlike your city. Bigger, but the same, in the sense that most people are born and bred there. And I owe you an apology. I realize it’s my own baggage about my hometown that made me too quick to believe that your department had swept these murders under the rug.”
“That’s a harsh thing to believe about any group of hardworking police officers.”
“Long story. My dad was a cop. But a justified belief as to one place doesn’t mean it applies everywhere else. So, I’m sorry.”
“Well, okay then. Cornball hick-versus-city-slicker jokes will hereby cease. That it?”
“Nope. Have you had a chance to find anything new on Joseph Flaherty?”
“Not much. I tried getting the specifics of his most recent hospitalization, but they’re demanding a subpoena. Guess that’s the one last piece of privacy we still have. But I did manage to get some general information. For a civil commitment, even if the patient shows up voluntarily, the hospital has to certify that the person is a danger to himself or others. I know Joseph’s history. He’s usually just ranting and raving about delusional stuff; no evidence of danger.”
Ellie had seen the pattern herself in the reports. “As I recall, he has a tendency to see Satan in his many fo
rms.” Helen Brunswick originally called police because Joseph was making nonsensical accusations that a fellow patient was the devil and had tried to kill Joseph’s five wives. The complaints by Sullivan’s own neighbors had been more about Joseph’s general disruptiveness, but even the vague complaints mentioned Joseph’s accusations that Sullivan could control people’s minds and was the devil.
“That’s Joseph, all right. So I’m thinking one of two things. Maybe he killed Brunswick, came back home, and had some kind of psychotic break. Or, more interestingly, maybe he faked a more serious level of crazy.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Hard to get into that kind of mind, but if he just wants a little mental-health tune-up—a change in the meds, someone to watch him for a few days—he knows how to do that. But that’s not what he did. He walked in on his own and wound up with an official commitment-hold, which is something that shows up in the system. Maybe he’s setting the stage for an insanity plea. Or maybe he figured that if some cops on a fishing expedition started looking up every patient Helen Brunswick ever had an encounter with, they might see the hold and move on to the next person without noticing the timing.”
“Worked on Rogan and me,” she said.
“I was looking forward to the intense pleasure of pointing that out until you went and warmed my heart with that apology.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “Right now, it’s just a theory, though. I haven’t been able to find anything proving that Joseph left Utica.”
“Well, we can help you with that. Are you near a computer?”
“Yes indeed. We have those here, you know.”
“Well, there’s this modern invention called e-mail. You have that, too, I imagine.” She typed his address as he recited it, and then sent a message with three attachements. “Tell me when you’ve got it.”
“Okay, there it is. Clicking on it now. All right, I’ve got photo number one.” It was a recent photograph of Flaherty. “And, whoa, what am I looking at here?”
“A still from the security-camera footage of a bodega near Helen Brunswick’s office. Joseph may have been acting crazy for the hospital up there, but he was in Brooklyn, calmly buying a Snapple three hours before Helen Brunswick’s murder. And make sure to check out door number three. That’s a close-up of the back of his waistband.”
Sullivan was silent.
“You still there?”
“Sorry. I’m—wow, I think I’m actually stunned.”
“Well, don’t be. You were the one who put him out there as a suspect.”
“Yeah but, honestly, it was just a theory.”
“Well, you nailed it. Technically, it’s a break in the Brunswick case here, but our ADA talked to yours. It’s time to pick up Joseph. They’re working on the warrant application now. You’ll be in charge of executing it.”
“And you and Rogan are okay with that?”
Ellie was never “okay” with someone else handling any aspect of one of her cases, but she was more okay with it under these circumstances than usual. “Absolutely. You guys have the insider knowledge on Joseph, and you’ve got the advantage on location. We’ll come up and work it together once you have him.”
“I have a past with him. Once he’s in custody, I might be able to get him to talk to me. If we can get an admission as to Brunswick, we might be able to leverage that into a confession for the other victims. Geez, is it really possible Amaro wasn’t the guy?”
“Too soon to tell. We’ll also get a cheek swab. A DNA match to Donna Blank would . . . Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You and your people pick up Joseph. We’ll recanvass the area around Brunswick’s office now that we have a photograph to show. We can also take care of checking E-Z Pass and Amtrak to see if we can lock down the mode of transportation he used. Do you have enough manpower to do what you need to do up there?”
“We’ve got it. For now.”
She was about to hang up when she saw Rogan rushing toward her. He looked like he had news. “Just a sec, Sullivan. Whatcha got, Double-J?”
“It’s Carrie Blank. Someone bludgeoned her in her apartment this morning.”
On the other end of the line she heard Sullivan let out a quiet gasp for the lawyer he had known since she was three feet tall.
CHAPTER
FORTY-FIVE
All these years as a cop and Ellie still hated hospitals. She could handle the chaos, the sight of sick and injured people, the antiseptic smell. What got to her was the fear—not in the patients themselves, but in the loved ones left waiting for news. As they approached the emergency-room check-in desk at Bellevue, an intake nurse snapped at a frantic woman. “Have a seat! I told you, a doctor will be out to talk to you about your sister when he’s ready.” The same woman then called gently for a Mrs. Hale and told her that a doctor needed to speak to her about her husband, and would she please follow her.
Ellie wanted to tell the two women she knew how this worked. The first lady’s sister was fine. Mrs. Hale’s husband was not. The last thing you should wish for is kindness from the staff in an overworked emergency room.
Rogan flashed a badge to the remaining nurse at the front desk. “Carrie Blank. Brought in this morning.”
At the sound of Carrie’s name, Ellie saw a man speaking nearby to a doctor look suddenly in their direction. Notebook in hand. Holster on shoulder. Detective.
She nudged Rogan.
“You guys Hatcher and Rogan?” the detective asked.
They nodded, and he waved them over. “John Colgrove. Caught the case after her downstairs neighbor called the police. Blood started dripping through the ceiling.” He winced at the image. “From the looks of her apartment, someone tossed the place pretty good: drawers trashed, shelves emptied, the works. Her mom told me she was Anthony Amaro’s lawyer until a couple of days ago, so I figured the two of you needed to be plugged in. I’m just getting the update from the doctor here.”
The doctor launched straight into her report. “The assault involved a series of blows from a blunt instrument, but the worst were to her head. She suffered a significant head injury, with some bleeding in the brain. At this point, however, she’s improving, and seems to be neurologically normal or near normal.”
“Can we talk to her?” Colgrove asked.
“Not yet. The bleeding impaired her breathing for quite some time, which has led to a coma-like state. We’ll know more over the next few days, but a full recovery is certainly possible.”
“Is Carrie’s mother here yet?” Ellie asked. The last time Ellie saw her, Carrie Blank was in Utica, working on Amaro’s defense. Sullivan had mentioned that she’d come back to the city, but if she was no longer Amaro’s lawyer, it was news to them.
“She’s on her way. She was boarding a train when I updated her a few minutes ago. But with her permission, I just allowed a family friend in to see her. The lieutenant governor, actually. He’s with her now, if you’d like to speak with him.”
Ellie didn’t usually follow politics, but from the hallway outside Carrie’s hospital room she recognized the man sitting on the edge of Carrie’s bed, holding one of her hands in his. Bill Sullivan had thick, dark hair, perfect teeth, and a strong jaw. She knew that his looks had probably played a role in his anointment as a rising political star, but Ellie figured a second-generation cop was as good a pretty boy as any to run the state. She had not followed his biography closely enough, however, to have made the connection—until now—between him and Utica police detective Will Sullivan.
She was about to knock on the open door when the younger Sullivan began to speak.
“You’re going to be okay, Carrie. You have to be. Please . . . for me . . . for us. There’s something I have to tell you. I should have told you so long ago . . . All these years . . .”
She knew now why Will Sullivan had a soft spot in his heart for Carrie. She understood why he’d even reach out to her drug-addicted older half sister. He had known Carrie since she was three feet tall, but he also
knew that his son was in love with her. She turned away to avoid interrupting the moment, but Bill must have heard her in the doorway.
“Hello?” He wiped one eye with the back of his hand.
“Sorry. NYPD. I’ll wait in the lobby while you visit your friend.”
“No, please. Come in.” He rose from the bed and introduced himself simply as Bill.
“Ellie Hatcher. I’ve been working on a case with your father—involving Carrie, actually.”
“Anthony Amaro,” he said. “She was up in Utica, and wanted to get together. I can’t believe I let some stupid schedule get in the way. At least I was in the city when Rosemary called—that’s her mother. Kind of like my mother, too, in a way.”
“I got the impression from your father that your families were close. When he found out what happened, I could tell he wanted to come down. Instead, I think he’s working the case even harder up there.”
“That’s my dad.”
“Carrie’s mother told the doctor that Carrie was no longer representing Amaro. Do you know anything about that?”
He looked confused by the news. “You think Amaro did this?”
The pretty-boy lieutenant governor was not only a second-generation cop. He was a cop who thought just like her.
She found Rogan in the lobby, just saying goodbye on his phone.
“You got hold of her mother?”
“Yep, and the doctor didn’t hear wrong. Carrie went to her mom’s yesterday morning saying she had a blowout with Linda Moreland the previous night. She told her mom that Moreland was using her as a pawn. That she had used Carrie’s emotions about her sister. It sounds like Carrie saw the light and walked away.”
“And then today someone tries to kill her.”
“And whoever did it tossed the place, and only two days after someone broke into her hotel room.”
All Day and a Night: A Novel of Suspense (Ellie Hatcher) Page 22
