He raked his fingers through his hair, clearly frustrated.
“Damn it. I can’t believe I have to ask you what I’m about to ask you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My boss is a fucking asshole. Kittrie wanted me to call you this morning. I was trying to get around it, and he figured out we’re having some problems. So now he’s taking some perverse pleasure in my discomfort.”
“Jesus. You’re about to ask me about the case, aren’t you?”
He pressed his lips together.
“Go ahead and spit it out.”
“There was a body found last night at some strip club on the West Side Highway.” It dawned on Ellie that Peter hadn’t spent enough time with her brother even to know where he worked. “The girl’s friend said she wandered off from Tenjune. I’m covering it, but Kittrie wants to write a separate piece. It’s those cold cases you mentioned the other night. The ones Flann McIlroy was digging around in.”
Ellie felt a vein in her head starting to throb. She knew she shouldn’t have mentioned those cases to Peter. She shouldn’t have called George Kittrie. He wouldn’t have connected the dots on his own.
“He’s going to speculate about a connection?”
Peter nodded. “He’s working on it now. The three old cases. Chelsea Hart. Rachel Peck from this morning. I really hate this, Ellie, but he’s my boss, and you know what an ass he is.”
“Tell him you were a good boy who did precisely what he asked of you, and I said ‘No goddamn comment.’”
CHAPTER 40
CELINA SYMANSKI OPENED the front door of her father’s house before they had a chance to knock. She stepped aside, and they treated the movement as an invitation to come in.
She took a seat in the middle of a small worn sofa in the center of the living room, leaving only a single recliner for her three guests. Ellie helped herself to the spot. She was the obvious candidate to play the good cop in this scenario.
This was Ellie’s first opportunity to view the woman without her coat. She wore a hip-length cable-knit sweater and leggings. Both were stretched tight across her belly. She was an otherwise small woman. Young, probably early twenties. Light hair. Fair skin. Ellie’s best guess was that the baby would be coming in a couple of months.
“I’m Detective Hatcher. This is my partner, Detective Rogan. Max Donovan is from the district attorney’s office. I think you know why we’re here, Celina.”
She shrugged.
“Your father’s not a murderer.”
“I never said he was.”
“No, but he did. And he did it to protect you. Now it’s time for you to step up and protect him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Celina said.
So much for guilt.
“What your father’s done is going to be all for nothing. We know about the payoff. You won’t be able to spend a nickel of that money. In the meantime, Mr. Donovan can tell you about the potential criminal charges.”
Donovan uncrossed his arms and took a step toward Celina, as if preparing to cross-examine a witness. “We’re filing charges against your father this afternoon, not for murder, as he intended, but for obstruction of justice. We also intend to reinstate drug charges against Nick Warden and Jaime Rodriguez.”
That got her attention.
“See,” Ellie said, “we also know about the father of your child.”
“He made a deal,” Celina said. “The case got dismissed.”
“It was dismissed,” Donovan explained, “without prejudice as a condition of Nick Warden’s cooperation agreement to testify against Jake Myers. But with evidence that Warden was a part of a conspiracy to pay your father to undermine our case against Myers, I can get a judge to set aside the agreement. That means I can go after Rodriguez.”
He turned to Ellie, and she took it as her cue to jump in. “And once your father, Jaime, and Nick Warden are codefendants for conspiracy to obstruct justice, who do you think’s going to get the plea deal then, Celina? The convicted sex offender and janitor who stabbed a cop, the brown guy with a rap sheet and two prior drug pops, or the rich white hedge fund manager?”
Celina sniffled and wiped away a tear, and Ellie knew that one more push should do it.
“That leaves you and your baby alone,” she continued. “No father for either of you.”
Celina stared at her with wide eyes. Ellie saw her upper lip quiver. One more push.
“And that’s assuming the DA’s office doesn’t come after you, too. If you were an active participant in this, your kid might be born into the foster care system.”
Celina placed her face in her hands and began crying. The words were hard to decipher between the sobs, but Ellie got the gist of it. Her father. Her baby’s father. Her fiancé. Poor them. Poor Celina.
Donovan cut in, and Ellie realized that Knight had made the right call in sending him. Pressure from a cop was one thing, but when it came time for cooperation, nothing worked better than a chat about the power of a prosecutor to determine who went to prison and for how long.
“I’ll be in a better position to help everyone involved if we know exactly what happened. At the end of the day, what we really care about is catching Chelsea Hart’s killer. All the rest of this is a distraction. The longer the distraction, the heavier the sentence my office is going to be looking for.”
This time when Celina spoke, her words were clear.
“What do you need to know?”
SUSAN PARKER LOOKED BROKEN. As if a bulb had burned out. The batteries had gone dead. A processor had failed.
Ellie and Rogan were used to hitting defendants with the news that, despite their cagiest plans, they’d been busted. Sitting in Parker’s office, however, Max Donovan was the one doing the talking.
Ellie was almost positive that what Donovan was asking of Susan Parker was wildly unethical. She represented Nick Warden, not Jake Myers. Pressuring her to convince her client to approach Jake Myers on their behalf was definitely not kosher. But Donovan had worded his request in a cagey way, so Ellie assumed he knew what he was doing. More importantly, if the DA’s office didn’t have a problem with it, she certainly wasn’t going to object.
“We don’t have all day here. Are you going to talk to your client or not?”
Parker’s blank stare unfroze with a blink. The parts were turning back on. “You know you’ve created a conflict of interest for me now. I should withdraw from my representation of Nick Warden so he can retain separate counsel.”