All Day and a Night (32 page)

“Well, we’ve got a plan for that,” Rogan said.

“It was a plan you first mentioned, actually,” Ellie added. “According to her chatty assistant, Thomas, Linda Moreland’s arriving on the twelve-thirty train from the city. We’ll tail her from there.”

I
n New York City, all types of people could be found coming and going on the trains in Penn Station: business commuters, tourists, runaways, group trips, con men. But as Ellie watched the Amtrak train stop in Utica, she lumped the arriving passengers in two: locals coming home, and visitors already looking forward to leaving.

Linda Moreland clearly fell into the latter camp. She wore jeans, but in an obvious I-never-wear-jeans kind of way. Her Louis Vuitton handbag and high-gloss, polycarbonate suitcase with ball-bearing wheels quickly set her apart from the authentic locals. So did the driver standing beside a black limousine with a handheld sign bearing her name.

Ellie pulled behind the limo in her Crown Vic, borrowed from UPD. She remained an average of two blocks back, staying within eyesight but varying her speed and changing lanes periodically. She followed from Main to First Street, then onto Oriskany. So far, so good. It was the route any car would take to the outskirts of the city.

She merged onto the I-90 Thruway. As expected from UPD’s unsuccessful canvass of Utica motels, Linda was leaving town.

At the fork near Whitesboro, Linda’s driver veered right, abandoning the interstate in favor of local Route 49. This was good. No way was Linda staying out here on her own. She was heading toward Amaro.

Ellie composed a text to Rogan.
Route 49
. Send.

Ten miles outside Utica, the limo took the exit for NY-365. The area was rural. She sent another text:
365
. According to the signs, they were in Rome.

Linda’s car took a left at the fork in the road, merging onto NY-825, heading north.
Fork. 825-N
.

They were approaching a building. Ellie felt her hopes elevate. From this distance, the building up ahead looked like it could be a motel. No. The sign read “Rome Free Academy.”

Linda’s car turned right, away from the school. Atlas Drive, according to the street sign. The limo took a quick left. Falcon Avenue. A right onto Thor Avenue, which looped around and intersected again with Atlas. There was no development in sight. These were cul-de-sacs waiting for homes to be built on them.

Dammit. Linda’s driver was verifying the tail.

Ellie sent another text:
School on left. Rome Free Academy. Stay
.

Ellie heard a buzz on her cell phone and looked at the screen, expecting a reply. Instead, the message was from Max:
Judge signed arrest warrant for Amaro. No knock
.

Excellent timing.

The limo came to a sudden stop on Atlas, and Linda hopped out of the back seat and stomped over toward Ellie’s fleet car. Another message from Max popped up on Ellie’s screen:
All vics except Donna Blank
.

Max could explain the details later, but Ellie had the information she needed for the moment.

A
lthough Ellie could hear the attorney’s voice fifty feet away, she eased down the Crown Vic’s window. “You lost?”

“This is absolutely unacceptable, Detective.”

“Too cloudy for a road trip?”

“You are interfering with the ability of an attorney to communicate with her client. Should I add a count of harassment to our growing list of lawsuits to file against the NYPD?”

“Your client is wanted, Ms. Moreland. You’re welcome to communicate with him, right after I place him in handcuffs.”

“An officer-issued be-on-the-lookout is the legal equivalent of the tooth fairy, Detective.”

“It’s not just a BOLO anymore. Your client’s got an active warrant for the murders of Nicole Henning, Jennifer Bronson, Leticia Thomas, and Stacy Myer.” They deserved to have their names remembered. She didn’t see any need to tell Moreland that the warrant had been approved as a no-knock warrant, allowing them to force entry into Amaro’s residence without first knocking and announcing their presence.

“I didn’t hear you say ‘Donna Blank.’”

“Your client has a warrant out for the murder of four women and you think he deserves a pat on the back for it not being five?”

“I think it’s obvious that the court knows you have a problem. Those cases were closed in the first place because whoever killed one, killed them all. Now my client has been exonerated on the Deborah Garner case, and—”

“Undermining a conviction is not the same thing as exoneration.” She stopped herself before getting sucked any further into the vortex. She understood now why the cable talk shows loved having this woman as a guest.

“So, guilty until proven innocent? Thank you for the quote, Detective. I’ll add that to our civil complaint. Good luck proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt of any one of those murders. You may want to conveniently ignore Donna Blank, but juries love DNA. Plus, I hear your Utica colleagues assassinated a man this morning who looks a lot better for these crimes than my guy.”

The morning news had reported the Utica Police Department’s fatal shooting of a suspect in the murder of Helen Brunswick. It was impossible to know how much additional information Linda Moreland might have.
Do not engage
, Ellie reminded herself.

“Sounds like you’ve got your jury argument all ready to go. Think of me as helping you get your shot in the courtroom. Where’s Amaro?”

“Goodbye, Detective. If you continue to follow, I’ll head straight back to the train station.”

“You have been notified that your client is being sought by police for multiple counts of murder, Ms. Moreland. If you harbor him, warn him, or give him any assistance, you’re hindering prosecution.”

“You’re a lawyer now, Ms. Hatcher? Or perhaps you think sleeping with a prosecutor makes you one by sexual osmosis.”

Ellie tucked her head back inside and put the car in gear. “You win for now, Counselor. Enjoy your drive. We’ll have to catch up to your client another way.”

As Ellie rolled up her window, Linda gave her a look of smug satisfaction and pivoted toward her own car. Ellie followed the black limousine to the end of Atlas and watched it hang a right, continuing on toward NY-365. Ellie took a left, heading back to Utica, giving Linda a quick
beep-beep
as a send-off.

She pulled up Rogan’s number on her phone and hit dial. “You were right. She wouldn’t give him up. And I officially hate Linda Moreland.”

“The club will send your membership card shortly.”

She saw his BMW pull out from the Rome Free Academy and take a left on 365, in the opposite direction.

She pulled a U and headed back to the school, prepared to resume Rogan’s former position in the academy’s parking lot. “Text me when you’ve got a location,” she said.

“Will do.”

She placed another call, this one to the Utica PD, instructing backup to start heading in her direction. It shouldn’t be long.

Ellie had done her job, allowing Linda Moreland to have the last, snarky word. Riding away in the comfort of her limousine, free of that pain-in-the-butt cop from New York, the lawyer would never give a thought to the BMW behind her.

C
arrie found herself in a dark, empty theater. The air was cold. She heard the hum of an air conditioner. The screen flickered with crackling images of white. The movie was about to start.

The film opened with a narrow shot through a doorway. It was dark inside, but even darker outside. It was the music that helped Carrie recognize the scene. AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.” To this day, Carrie had to leave a room if that song came on.

Carrie felt fear infiltrating her blood as she craned her neck to see the girls on the stage. She forced herself to look away from their bare breasts. Her cheeks felt warm each time they spread their legs, flaunting the tiny triangle of fabric.

She scanned their faces, relieved not to recognize them. There was one last girl, on the right edge of the stage. Her face was obscured as she bent over, allowing the pole to rub slightly between her buttocks. Long brown hair. Thin.

At the time, Carrie had prayed for it not to be her. Maybe she had misheard her father, yelling at his ex-wife on the phone, saying one of the other drivers was gloating about Donna working a pole at Club Rouge.
Was it true
? he had demanded to know.

Even though Carrie expected what was coming, she sucked in her breath when the woman on the screen flipped her hair and turned toward the camera. It was Donna. She gripped the pole and arched her back, accepting a man’s dollar bill between her teeth.

And then, just as she knew he would, another man appeared, his bulky body filling the doorway, blocking the view of the club inside. “Hey, you got ID? The boss is always looking for Chinese girls, but you’re gonna need ID if you wanna work, sweet thing.”

The film cut suddenly to Donna’s living room, where Carrie found her sister sleeping the next day when she got out of school. Carrie, asking what was it like to have those men staring at you, exposed that way. Please don’t let her like it, she had hoped. That’s how I’ll know she’s really broken. But Donna wasn’t broken. On the screen, she covered herself with a sofa cushion, as if she were embarrassed to have any part of herself in view as she spoke about the act of trading visual access to her body for money. “I hate them,” she said. “The way they paw at me, dangling those singles like I should have to beg for them.”

“Is that all it is?” Carrie asked. “Letting them look?”

Behind the pillow, Donna shrugged. “So far. But, honestly, what’s the difference?”

“Why can’t you just stop using heroin?” On the screen, she saw the surprise on her own face as Donna started to cry. Back then, Carrie had no idea how much power might reside in that simple question.

The screen cut to two still images, flashing in rapid succession. Carrie at the bank counter, withdrawing money from her college fund to pay for Donna’s rehab. The receptionist at Cedar Ridge Behavioral and Psychiatric Care, telling her that Donna wasn’t a patient there.

Then the film jumped to a full shot of a house. Somehow Carrie knew it was her family home, even though the house on the screen was larger, as if someone had built additions on both the left and right sides of what Carrie had always thought of as a tall, narrow house. It was freshly painted, too, and tastefully landscaped.

Again, the soundtrack brought back memories.
Don’t go chasing waterfalls
. It was that last day Donna came to the house. Carrie had watched from upstairs, but now she viewed the scene from Donna’s perspective as she begged her stepmother to let her see Carrie. “You can’t do this. I have a plan. I promise.”

The film sped up on fast-forward, the audio sounding like quarreling chipmunks, then slowed down again. “We have a friend on the police force,” Carrie’s mother was saying.

“Right,” Donna was yelling, “because you and your friends—the people
you
approve of—are so much better than the rest of the world.”

The film cut to Carrie’s conversation with Will Sullivan outside the Utica Police Department. It was just a few days ago but felt like it was from another lifetime. “But do you
know
?” Carrie was asking. Had Donna really crossed the line into prostitution? “On Sandy, a couple of times,” he had told her.

And then Carrie was in Tim McDonough’s face outside the probation department, doing everything in her power to prompt a smack. She watched a replay of his rambling on about the past, the way Melanie had trusted Donna with news of her pregnancy when she saw her at the clinic, only to be told she couldn’t possibly finish college with a baby.

In her dream, she yelled to the anonymous film operator at the back of the theater to rewind.
Go back
! she yelled.
Go back
! Something was wrong. She was missing something. But the film was over. The theater went black. She heard a voice next to her. Something about “neurologic function” and “purposeful eye movements.” “Unresponsive.”

The words made her remember falling forward into her apartment. The feeling of warm blood beneath her head.

She pushed the thoughts away. She wasn’t ready to wake up. She wanted to crawl back into the movie theater, back into her dream. Somewhere in that dream were the answers to Donna’s death.

Donna was killed for a reason.

It was all Carrie’s fault.

I
think I got you,” Ellie said into her cell phone. “Gas station across the street?”

“That’s me,” Rogan said. He’d been keeping an eye on King’s Motel since Linda Moreland’s car had pulled into the lot. The motel was a two-story job, each room with its own exterior door. The sign boasted that the rooms had “Cable TV/Microwaves/weekly rates. Only best for r guest.” Thanks to Linda’s housecall, they knew Amaro was in room 219, first door on the second floor. The last Ellie had heard from Rogan, the curtains on the room were drawn. If they were lucky, Amaro wouldn’t know they were coming.

“You see us?” Ellie asked.

“How could I miss you?”

Ellie had led the way from the south, followed by four marked Utica PD cruisers, the first of which was keeping a hundred yards’ distance behind her Crown Vic. A SORT van—filled with a Special Operations Response Team on loan from the New York State Police—was in view up ahead, having broken away onto Route 60 to approach the motel from the north. Two additional marked cars were barely visible behind the armored vehicle.

The cavalry had arrived.

A
s planned, the SORT van stopped at the corner, out of the motel’s view. Ellie recognized the voice on the radio as the team leader. “How’s it look?”

They had discussed a variety of capture strategies, the final decision to be made according to circumstances on the ground. She pulled out a pair of binoculars and inspected the motel. The door to 219 was closed. Curtains still drawn. Linda’s driver was at the wheel of the stopped car, engine off, reading a newspaper.