“Please, you’re not babbling, and I know exactly what you mean.”
Donovan, like her, had seen the aftermath of the crimes of people who were inhabited by pure, untarnished evil-men who inflicted sexual torture, who casually took the lives of others, who could bury a child alive and then make themselves a bologna sandwich.
Ellie had spent her entire adult life chasing the normalcy that came to others as naturally and effortlessly as breathing. Since the day her father’s body was found, Ellie had been convinced that her darkest thoughts would someday be put to rest, once she finally uncovered the true circumstances surrounding his death. But she had returned from Kansas with a new acceptance of the possibility that serenity would never be a part of her makeup. She would always wake up with nightmares. She would never learn to turn off the job.
A new definition of normal. Maybe that was what she needed to get past the feeling that she was never going to be like other people.
The vibration of her cell phone startled her. It was Peter, yet again. She felt the phone buzz in her hand seconds later, indicating a new message.
She did her best to ignore it. She was having a delicious dinner with a smart, sweet, over-the-top-good-looking guy who might actually share her same ridiculous sickness. She had every reason to ignore her stupid phone. She made it through four more bites of chorizo before excusing herself to the ladies’ room.
“HEY. IT’S ME. I swear, I’m not a fucking stalker. Well, okay, maybe a little bit of a fucking stalker, since I am calling from outside your apartment.”
Ellie shook her head. “I shouldn’t have come, I know, but I hate the idea of you hating me. I don’t want things to end this way.” Jess had been right about Peter. The ending itself wasn’t the problem for him. He just couldn’t stand the idea of being the bad guy.
“So I’m sitting on the stoop of your building, being semi-stalkerish, and I noticed a car circle around the block a few times, then park out front. By the time the driver got out, I had gone into the coffee shop to warm up. Anyway, it was your lieutenant. I couldn’t tell if he rang up to your apartment or not, and I just saw him drive away, but I thought I’d let you know. Either you’re having a secret affair with your nemesis, or it’s something important. And, no, I won’t try to figure out what it is so I can write about it.”
She found herself smiling sadly.
“Sorry for rambling. I won’t bother you anymore. The ball’s in your court. Bye, Ellie.”
Ellie knew she’d eventually go to Peter’s apartment to end things with him on a better note, but at that moment all she could think about was the image of Dan Eckels outside her building.
No DNA. Clean crime scenes. A knowledge of city crime patterns. The stakeout abilities to nail down her running routine.
Simon Knight had asked her earlier in the day where they might begin looking for a killer among forty thousand officers in the NYPD. One of them had just jumped to the top of the list.
CHAPTER 44
J. J. ROGAN AND MAX DONOVAN seemed out of place on Ellie’s familiar brown couch. A few weeks ago, she hadn’t met either one of them, and now they sat side by side on her living room sofa, hips nearly touching, surrounded by piles of magazines, clothing, and empty beer bottles, all of which she made a point of blaming entirely on Jess.
As soon as she’d heard Peter’s voice mail, she’d known she had to head straight home. If Eckels was looking for her, she wanted to be here. She wanted to be found. She wanted to look him in the eye and figure out how he’d fooled so many people for so long.
Max had insisted on coming with her. And when she’d called Rogan from the cab, he’d insisted on driving in from Brooklyn. And so now here they sat on her sofa in a room that was usually restricted to her, Jess, and restaurant deliverymen.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Rogan was saying. “Lieutenant Dan Fuckin’ Eckels? Strangling chicks and cutting them up and hacking off all their hair? I mean, Jesus H. We need to think through this shit.”
“I have thought it through,” Ellie said. “He was the lead detective on Alice Butler’s case. He mentioned in the reports that Alice told her sister someone was following her shortly before her murder, but he left out the fact that she picked up on the guy after she left a hair salon.”
“And you’re so sure that’s a detail that you would have included in a report?”
“Would I have included it? Of course.”
“Okay, but you’re fricking rain man. You’re positive that every cop would’ve noted that?”
“Of course not. That’s why I assumed Eckels had simply left it out. But after we caught the Chelsea Hart case, he never bothered to mention the possibility of a pattern. We know for a fact that McIlroy went to Eckels three years ago about the earlier cases. And one of those was Lucy Feeney’s-and you can say that Robbie Harrington and Alice Butler and Rachel Peck don’t look like the Chelsea Hart case, but you can’t deny the similarities between Chelsea and Lucy. Both strangled. Both stabbed. And the hair-give me a break, that’s not something you miss. Why didn’t he mention it? He pressured McIlroy three years ago not to pursue a connection, then did the same thing with me yesterday morning in his office.”
Donovan cleared his throat before interjecting. “And McIlroy’s snooping around three years ago could explain the gap in the killings. Eckels may have been ready to kill again, but got scared off when McIlroy picked up the pattern.”
“And with McIlroy gone,” she said, “the coast is clear. Eckels also knew that the photograph in the Sun-taken that night at the restaurant-came from Jordan McLaughlin. And as a cop, he could have easily come into contact with a guy like Darrell Washington. The neighbors said he had a way of talking to the cops too much.”
“Shit,” Rogan said. “You said Washington lived in the LaGuardia Houses?”
“Right off the Manhattan Bridge. With his grandmother.”
“Eckels used to work out of the Seventh back in the day. He would’ve been in and out of those projects all the time when Washington was a kid. Now I’m getting sucked into this whack idea.”
“And Eckels isn’t exactly my biggest fan,” she reminded them.
“He thinks you’re a pain in the ass,” Rogan said. “That’s not the same as wanting to carve your initials into some girl’s forehead.”
“Then do you want to tell me why Dan Eckels suddenly showed up at my apartment tonight, circling the block and coming to my front door?”
“Maybe Peter made that shit up just to have an excuse to see you.”