“No, sir. It’s about the murder we’ve been investigating. A customer named Chelsea Hart.”
He nodded again.
“You’ve apparently been talking about it,” Rogan said.
“Of course. One of the regulars in our club kills another customer? Everyone has been talking about it.”
“But only you seem to know more about the case than some late-night club janitor should know.”
“I don’t know anything. Just what others have been saying.”
“The problem,” Ellie said, “is that one of the others tells us that you’ve had some things to say about the case that aren’t in the public domain. Obviously we’ve got to look into an allegation like that.”
“An allegation? Against me? I don’t know anything.” Symanski seemed very interested in the threadbare carpet beneath his feet.
“Is it true that you told a coworker that Chelsea Hart’s killer took a souvenir?”
“Like a New York City tchotchke?”
“No, I think you know what I mean, Mr. Symanski. A souvenir. Did you tell one of your coworkers that whoever killed Chelsea Hart took something from her? Because that’s our understanding of the words you used: that the killer ‘took something’ from her. What did he take?”
Symanski laughed nervously and scratched his balding head. “Is this a riddle or something? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“It’s not hard. Let’s start with this: Did you say anything like that to anyone?”
Rogan was already giving Ellie an I-told-you-so look. He was apparently writing off Rodriguez as a liar and preparing to collect on his bet.
“No. I didn’t-I don’t even talk about the case, really. Everyone else does. I listen.”
“So if someone came to us and told us that they heard you say those words, you’d tell me they were lying?”
“Yes.” His eyes fell again to the floor. “Or, I don’t know, maybe they didn’t hear me right.”
“And if I tell you I have a recording of you saying that?” Ellie asked. She pulled the digital recorder she kept on hand for witness interviews from her purse. “You know how many of those new high-tech gadgets have things like microphones in them.”
“Maybe. Maybe I said it. I don’t know. I may have repeated something I heard from someone else.”
“Tell us who you heard it from, Leon, and we’re out of here. We’ll go talk to them instead. We’ll confirm that they were the ones who told you, and then we’ll be on our way.”
“I don’t remember. I don’t even know the names of most of the people who work there. They all look the same.”
“What did he take from her?” Ellie asked again. “Tell us what he took.”
She watched Symanski closely. She knew Rogan was doing the same, because they were the same kind of cop. They trusted their instincts. They believed that a suspect’s reaction under pressure could tell a good cop-in the gut, where it mattered-more than even the most damning piece of physical evidence.
And because they were the same kind of cop, she knew Rogan was seeing the same thing in Symanski that she saw. The slow swallow. The darting eyes. It was more than nervousness. It was an awakening, a realization. They were watching the man come to an understanding about his new reality.
He had a problem. And he knew that they knew.
“Let me propose a suggestion,” Ellie said. “Why don’t you let us take a quick look around the house, make sure we don’t see anything that might have belonged to Chelsea Hart. That’ll put our minds at ease, I think, and we can go back to the DA and assure him we did what we were asked. Is that all right with you?”
“If you go through my house?”
“Just to take a look around.” Taking a look around sounded so much less intrusive than searching. “You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”
“No. No, I don’t have any problems with the police.”
“All right. Can we ask you to stay put right here while we do that? We can trust you not to run off, right?” She smiled at the ridiculousness of the thought.
“No, I’m not running anywhere.”
“And you’re here alone?”
“Yes. I live alone. My wife died many years ago.”
“What about the woman who just left here? She doesn’t live here?”
For the first time since they’d walked into the house, Ellie saw something dark cross Symanski’s face. “No. I live alone.”
“So who was she?” Rogan asked. “The girl who left?”
“No one. You said you were going to look around and then leave me alone.”
“And we’re going to do just that,” Ellie said. It was better to let the subject drop for now before Symanski revoked his consent to search. “You just sit tight here for a second.”
The house was small, just the living room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the kitchen. It was clean and uncluttered.
They started in the smaller of the two bedrooms. It was even cleaner and less cluttered than the rest of the house, apparently unused. The room’s only contents were a nightstand, dresser, and double bed with baby pink sheets and a darker pink quilt.
Ellie opened a small drawer in the nightstand. “Empty, unless you count a couple of rubber bands and an old Chapstick.”
“Same with the dresser,” Rogan said.
She walked to the closet and opened it. It contained nothing but empty hangers and a few items of women’s clothing.
“His wife’s?” Rogan asked.
“Depends what he meant when he said she died a long time ago. These look pretty new to me.”
“Right, because you’ve got your finger on the pulse of fashion.”
“Mean,” Ellie said.
They made their way to the master bedroom, with its own separate bath. Ellie opened the medicine cabinet. Heavy-duty psychotropic drugs might have been a tipoff, but instead, she found a razor, shaving cream, deodorant, aspirin, cough syrup, and all the other usual stuff. The only pills she found were some vitamin B supplements and two prescriptions she had never heard of. She was jotting down the names in her notebook when Rogan called to her from the bedroom.
“You better get out here.”
It took her a moment to recognize the object dangling from the pencil Rogan was holding out toward her in the master bedroom. It was a red beaded chandelier earring.
Beyond the bedroom, she heard a door slam.
“God damn it. He’s running.”