Donovan set his sangria down and braced his palms against the bar. “Okay, let’s clear up a couple of things. One, I grew up around here, but it was in Kew Gardens, where my father’s still a shoe salesman, and my mother was a dental hygienist. When I told my dad I was turning down a six-digit salary so I could be a prosecutor, he acted more like I was on the other side of an indictment, begging for bail money. So as far as I’m concerned, no one who loves their job ever has to apologize to anyone.”
“I’m so sorry. I just get so used to-”
“No explanation necessary. I should have been more clear about what I meant.”
“You mean you weren’t challenging me to an I-grew-up-poorer-than-you-did contest?” Ellie could still feel the red in her cheeks.
“You’re not like most of the cops I know because you don’t seem to have the same kind of us-versus-them mentality.”
“Ah, well, that’s an easy one,” she said, relieved by the shift in the conversation. “I don’t see the point in any of that. All I care about is getting the work done.”
“And when you were pre-law, did you ever think about being a prosecutor?”
“I like being a cop. I like the directness of it. You’re there from the very beginning. You get to talk firsthand to witnesses and victims and suspects. Your instincts shape the investigation from day one. If I’m going to do law enforcement, I want to do it as a cop. When I thought about being a lawyer, I was in it so I wouldn’t have to deal with the dark, dreary, and depressing shit my father thought about day in and day out. I was in it for the money.”
“So you’re saying I’ve got the worst of both worlds.”
“No offense.”
The truth was, Ellie had wondered a few times in the last two days whether perhaps she was better suited to the district attorney’s office. Where Eckels saw her youth and enthusiasm as hurdles to be surmounted, Knight had seen a dream witness. Dan Eckels and people like him were always going to run police departments, and she would always be butting heads with them. But with Simon Knight, it had seemed like it was all about cutting through the bullshit and getting the work done. She could nail down murder cases for trial without being front and center, on the news, and in books written by ex-boyfriends.
But tonight, when the case against Jake Myers had collapsed, Knight had shown his true colors. He did what he needed to cover his ass with the police commissioner and the mayor’s office. He was talking about a possible task force. Even FBI involvement.
And she had responded just as Rogan had. Possessive. Territorial. Knight had shown his true colors, but so had she. And hers were bluer than she liked to acknowledge.
Her true colors also made her the kind of cop who couldn’t stop talking about work.
“So do you think Myers was right?” she asked.
“To hire some guy at death’s door to take the rap for him? Uh, no, I’m pretty sure in any version of morality, that wouldn’t count as right.”
“No, I mean about us having tunnel vision. We all wanted it to be him. It gave us an arrest. A suspect. A trial. The mayor’s office was happy.”
“I’ve known you three days, and I can already tell you’re a good cop. If he’d told you the truth, you would have fought like hell against everyone to make sure we did the right thing.”
“Maybe,” she said, popping another croqueta in her mouth. “Maybe if he’d come clean Monday night. If he’d told the truth when we first questioned him at Pulse. But once he lied about everything-”
“No jury would’ve believed him,” Donovan said, “that’s for sure.”
“I don’t think I would have either.”
THEY HAD JUST ORDERED another four little plates to share when the television above the bar cut from a break in the Knicks game to a teaser for the night’s local news.
“Tonight at eleven.” At the top of the telecast was a scaffolding collapse on the Upper West Side. A window washer had plummeted thirty-six floors and survived.
Plus, a local newspaper drops an Internet bombshell. Is a serial killer targeting Manhattan’s elite nightclubs? And why isn’t the NYPD telling you about this killer and his shocking MO? The paper promises more details tomorrow morning, but we’ll have the scoop for you tonight, at eleven.
The screen changed to an AT &T ad.
“Jesus,” Max said. “Those kinds of stories piss me off to no end.”
“Did you notice how they phrased it? ‘A local newspaper drops a bombshell.’ That way the story is about the story.”
“That’s what irritates me. One of the tabloid newspapers prints some wild speculation, and then the rest of the bottom feeders pile on, repeating the same crap without having to do any kind of verification like a real journalist.”
“Ah, except this time, the same crap happens to have a wee bit of truth to it,” she said, leaning in so others at the bar would not overhear.
“Well, shit. They don’t know that, and they don’t really care. They scare people and shock them to get better ratings. And if they screw up an investigation, or put people at risk, or make it harder for us to get a conviction-they don’t care about any of that either. Sorry, I get a little riled up.”
“Don’t apologize,” she said. “It’s nice to talk to someone who gets it. My ex-boyfriend-sorry, I know exes are taboo first-date talk, but this was forever ago-he would always ask me why I had to dwell on such depressing topics.”
Like most people, Bill got through each day by refusing to think about the horrible things that people did to each other on a regular basis. With Peter, she had been grateful that he at least shared her inability to blissfully ignore the realities of the world. But they would never see those realities through the same lens. Peter got worked up over crime because a body found in the right location, and abused in just the right way, could make for great copy. His commitment to his book was just a sign that he would never really get her.
“Well, do you know how many women I’ve gotten even semi-serious with before they start asking me when I’m going to cash in on my law degree?”
“Did you go straight from law school to the DA’s office?”
“Nah. I did the big-firm thing for a couple of years to pay down my loans, but I can’t imagine ever going back. Eighty hours a week, all for some multimillion-dollar commercial lawsuit and squabbling over who would get the biggest bonus or who’d make partner first. Once you’ve seen the kind of cases I’ve worked on, you just don’t look at things the same way. What everyone else considers the real world seems like a complete fantasyland. It’s like you get a new definition of normal. Do you know what I mean, or should I stop babbling?”