“Did you find any other guns in the apartment?”
“We found the murder weapon. That’s usually the one that counts.”
“I know, but my robbery victims said Washington was armed. I’m wondering whether you found the gun he may have used.”
“Good catch. I guess we’ll need to look into the possibility he was killed with his own gun.”
As Ellie thanked the detective for his time, she wondered what other possibilities she had overlooked this week.
“HOW’S THE HAND?” Rogan plopped himself down at his desk.
“Not bad,” she said. “Okay, brace yourself for another argument with me: I think whoever killed Darrell Washington killed Chelsea Hart.”
“That’s the dude from the projects?”
“Think about it. Street crime’s down all over the city, especially in Manhattan. Two girls whose friend was murdered just happen to get robbed in broad daylight on the Upper East Side? And then the man who did it just happens to get shot? That’s too many coincidences for me. Someone saw that picture of Chelsea in the Sun and realized he could have been in it. He hired Darrell Washington to steal Jordan’s cell phone, but knew Washington couldn’t be trusted to turn over all the loot. The minute we got a hit on Jordan’s credit card, we would’ve been at Washington’s door, asking questions. Our guy killed Washington to make sure there was no link back to him.”
Rogan nodded throughout her monologue, digesting every argument. “You’re making a whole lot of sense, Hatcher.”
“It’s about time you came around.”
“All except one thing. Given Jake Myers’s current custodial status, he can’t be the someone you’re talking about, correct?”
“No, but it could easily be Symanski. He could have gotten to Washington before we showed up at his front door.”
“One problem with that: I just got off the phone with American Express. Capital Research Technologies took a cash advance of a hundred thousand dollars about four and half hours before we arrested Jake Myers for murder. And Myers signed for it, at the Mohegan Sun.”
The casino was at best a two-hour drive from the city. “So either Myers plowed through a hundred grand in record time-”
“Or he used the company credit card and some casino chips to hide one big-ass payment to someone.”
“Then, lo and behold, two days later, Leon Symanski conveniently steps up and confesses to Chelsea Hart’s murder.”
“The baby daddy’s the missing link,” Rogan said.
She was picturing the same chain, one leading from Myers to Symanski. The connection between Myers and Nick Warden was clear: between their friendship and the hedge fund, the two men were practically inseparable. Warden was tight with his drug supplier, Jaime Rodriguez. And after last night’s sighting of Symanski’s pregnant daughter at the hospital, the safe bet was that Rodriguez was the father of Symanski’s unborn grandchild. Combined with Myers’s quick, covert, and well-timed disposal of a hundred thousand dollars, it all led to one conclusion: Myers had paid Symanski to take the fall for him.
Rogan tapped a ballpoint pen against his palm. “I guess now we know why Warden wanted a deal for Rodriguez as part of his cooperation agreement to flip on Myers: that was also part of the quid pro quo.”
“It also explains why Symanski was so evasive when we asked about the girl we saw at his house. If we’d gone to her, we might’ve found Rodriguez and started drawing the same connections.” Ellie shook her head. “Jesus. First Rodriguez knocks up Symanski’s daughter, then he asks him to go down for a murder he didn’t commit?”
“Maybe he didn’t ask him. Rodriguez spent a night in jail when we popped him on the drug charge. Symanski’s daughter couldn’t have been happy about that. She shows up back at Daddy’s house, crying about the father of her child heading upstate for six to nine as a repeat drug offender. Daddy sees the chance to be a hero before he powers down in a few months anyway from the melathemiona.”
“Mesothelioma.”
Rogan rolled his eyes. “Plus, you’re going to love this. I was picturing how it must have all gone down, and I kept coming back to Nick Warden’s smoking-hot lawyer.”
“Susan Parker.”
“Exactly. The junior associate at a law firm that doesn’t even handle criminal defense. But she’s the one who told us Warden wanted a deal not just for himself, but also Rodriguez. And she was the one who brought Rodriguez to us at the courthouse, pointing the finger at Symanski.”
“You think she was in on it, too?”
“I went to her law firm’s Web site. Turns out she graduated from Cornell.”
“Jake Myers’s alma mater.”
“Right again. She graduated one year ahead of him. They were both members of some club called the Entrepreneur Society. I still haven’t figured out whose idea this was, but she should have known about it. They all did, every link in the chain.”
“Damn it,” Ellie said. “Symanski was looking good for it all.”
“But now we’re back to Myers-who couldn’t have started killing nearly ten years ago.”
“You certainly had a busy morning while I was wasting my time trying to pull up the lost background of a photograph from the computer vortex. You didn’t happen to cure cancer while you were at it, did you?”
“No. I’m saving that for the afternoon, but I do have a health tip for you.” He eyed the half-eaten pastry on her desk. “Did it ever dawn on you to watch what you eat? You aren’t that young.”
“I watch what I eat every day, right before I pop it into my pie hole.”
“Hatcher.”
Ellie looked up to see Lieutenant Eckels standing at his office door on the perimeter of the squad room.
“Morning, boss.”
“How’s that hand?”
“A lot better. Thanks.”
“A word with you both?”
He closed his office door without waiting for confirmation.
“You hear that? He asked about my injury. My lieutenant cares about my well-being.” She used her good hand to fan away fake tears of emotion. “I’m verklempt.”
“You really think Simon Knight saved your ass, don’t you?”
“He said he would last night.”
“You know Eckels could be calling us in there to pull you off this case for good, right? He seems damn chipper about something.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“WHERE ARE WE on this Symanski clusterfuck?”