“That’s him. That’s the guy who looks like Jake Gyllenhaal.”
CHAPTER 17
“HOW MANY TIMES do I have to tell you?” Jake Myers’s voice was strained. Twenty minutes in, and he was sticking by his story. “She told me she had an early flight and left the club before I did. I haven’t heard from her since.”
“What time did she leave?” Rogan asked.
“I don’t know. I remember that bitchy friend of hers coming by and trying to get her to leave right before.”
“Well, that bitchy friend just ID’d you as the last person to see Chelsea Hart alive. You might want to start coming up with specifics.”
Myers licked his lips nervously. “My guess is she left about half an hour after that, but I’m not sure. It was a late night, and I wasn’t checking my watch.”
“Did you walk her out?”
“No. She left by herself, as far as I could tell.”
“Were you outside of the club with her at all?” Rogan asked.
“No.”
“Not at any point?”
“I told you, we were just dancing and hanging out.”
“When did you leave?”
“Late. Ask Nick. He was with me.”
“Anyone else leave with you?”
“No, just me and Nick.”
“Here’s the problem with that, Jake. Nick’s not talking. Neither is your friend Tony Russo.”
Myers had a hard time hiding the slight smile. “Well, I don’t have any control of that, do I? We left at closing time, so I’m assuming it was four, but sometimes the clubs go a little later if they don’t think they’ll get caught. Like I said-”
Rogan completed the sentence for him: “You weren’t checking your watch. Did anything happen between you and Chelsea before she left?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Single guy. Hot girl. Flirting. Did anything come of that?”
“No, man. I was just dancing with her.”
“You didn’t have any sexual contact at all?” Rogan was making sure to lock down all of Jake’s various denials, no ambiguities to exploit down the road if they caught him in a lie.
“No. I kissed her-not even, just a peck-when she left. That was it.”
“And no drugs?”
“I told you. I could tell she was drunk, but I didn’t take any drugs. I didn’t give her any drugs. And I didn’t see her with any drugs.”
Ellie interrupted. “Her friend says you were pretty eager to have Chelsea stick around. You didn’t want her to leave.”
“We were having a good time. Did I think maybe it was going somewhere? Sure, but when she said she had to go, she had to go. No means no, right?”
“Not always,” she said.
“It does with me. There’s always another girl.”
“Was there one last night?” Ellie asked.
“No,” Jake said quietly, some of the attitude falling into line.
“All right. Let me talk to my partner for a second,” Rogan said. He waved Ellie to the front of the office, and she followed. “What do you think?”
“I think he’s lying.”
“Well, he’s not coming up with any details.” Innocent people tended to have excellent memories when it came time to account for their whereabouts.
“And I’m not buying all that indignation. Fear? Nervousness? That’s what I would understand from him right now. But he’s so put out by half an hour of conversation?”
“That’s ’cause lying is hard work.”
“And we know he’s lying about the drugs. It’s too much of a coincidence that Chelsea had meth in her system, and we just happen to catch these guys hooking up a girl with meth through Rodriguez.”
“But Rodriguez wasn’t working last night.”
“Doesn’t matter. If he’s dealing out of the club, then he’s probably working with someone else who supplies on his days off. These clubs have more drugs going in and out of them than a Duane Reade. A club can’t be known as a place to score unless they’ve got every night covered. And if Myers is lying about the meth-”
“Then he’s also lying about the girl leaving alone, him leaving without a girl, and everything being Doris Day innocent.”
“Otherwise his friends would back him up,” Ellie said. “Instead, they invoke, and he’s sitting pretty. He’s rolling the dice that we don’t have enough to hold them. The minute we cut them loose, they’ll get together and line up their stories.”
“Not exactly a high-stakes bet,” Rogan said. “No PC for the murder, and the ADA will shoot us down on material witness warrants.”
“So let’s give Mr. Myers what he wants. Let’s go ahead and spring him.”
“So he can get his buddy Nick to vouch that they left together?”
“Nope. Because we’re about to introduce Nick Warden to the overnight comforts of the Tenth Precinct.”
“JAIME RODRIGUEZ. NICK WARDEN. You’re both under arrest for criminal sale of a controlled substance and conspiracy to commit criminal sale of a controlled substance.”
Ellie placed her cuffs on Nick Warden, while Rogan pulled Rodriguez’s wrists behind his back. They might not have probable cause to hold anyone for Chelsea Hart’s murder, but she’d personally witnessed Warden negotiate the drug deal between Rodriguez and that Amazon of a law student.
They walked the two men toward the back of the office, where officers from the Tenth Precinct would take them out a rear exit to complete the booking process.
Jake Myers took a step in their direction. “Whoa, what are you doing?”
Ellie pointed him back toward his corner at the front of the office. “Stay over there. Move again, and I’ll arrest you for obstructing. Someone get Mr. Myers a glass of water to keep him busy, all right?”
The decision to book Warden entitled her to conduct a search incident to arrest. She pulled a money clip from his jacket pocket, and slipped the entire wad into a baggie. If some of the cash came back with Rodriguez’s fingerprints, it would at least corroborate the deal she’d seen go down between them.