sister.”
“I already told you what happened. The entire thing got out of control.”
“You don’t get out of control, Ellie. It’s not your nature. You are the most controlled person I have ever known.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’ve seen how you work. Even at home, when you’re reading cold case reports, you hunch over your documents and create this private world that no one else can penetrate. That little notebook of yours? You treat that shit like the gold at Fort Knox. So you tell me: How’d that rich prick’s lawyer wind up sneaking a peek?”
“You think I did this on purpose?” She shook her head and laughed. Catching the bartender’s eye, she pointed to their empty glasses to signal for another round. “Maybe we should take this conversation home so I can lie on the couch while you tell me what other Freudian tendencies I have.”
“I’m not saying you did it intentionally. I’m saying you did something that’s not you, El. You’re usually the chick who can talk her way out of anything.”
They sat in silence while the bartender set down two fresh glasses. Ellie gave the guy an awkward smile as he cleared away their empties, extricating himself from what he clearly sensed was a private conversation.
“I can’t believe you’re blaming me for this. Do you have any idea how much last night sucked? It was filthy, and awful, and lonely, and terrifying. And totally humiliating.”
“You’re misunderstanding me,” he said, his voice softening. “I’m not saying you wanted this to happen. All I’m saying is that it could only have happened if you were off your game. And I’m sorry, El, but that scares me. For your own whacked reasons, you are totally committed to doing the same crazy work Dad did. This time you got twenty-four hours of hell, but next time, you might really fuck up. That’s the kind of shit that can really get you hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” he said, holding her stare.
Her brother was rarely serious, let alone stern. As she looked at his concerned face, she felt her defiance begin to melt away. She didn’t want to talk about this. She didn’t want to think that Jess had seen something in her that she was completely unaware of.
“I don’t know what happened. It’s Sparks. It’s this feeling in my gut that I missed something, and now he’s getting away with it. Because of me. And no one else cares because he’s who he is. And that poor man, Jess.” She thought about Robert Mancini’s body, laid out naked and bloody against the crisp, clean white cotton sheets. God, she was tired. And the whiskey on a near-empty stomach was taking its toll. “It’s been four months. He has a sister, and two little nieces, and they don’t have any answers. And Sparks. He doesn’t even care. And his lawyer had the nerve to bring up the
Media interest in her father had briefly landed Ellie in the national spotlight. Back in Wichita, Jerry Hatcher spent the better part of his career as a detective—close to fifteen years—hunting the infamous College Hill Strangler. When he was found dead behind the wheel of his Mercury Sable on a country road north of town, the department labeled it a suicide, but Ellie had spent the length of her father’s search and then some convinced it was not. The media became momentarily fascinated with Ellie when the Wichita Police Department finally captured the killer, nearly thirty years after his first murder. Ellie thought the attention would pressure the WPD to honor her father’s pension.
That was all in the past. Six months ago, she had begun to accept the truth about her father’s death. Sometimes fathers killed themselves. Ernest Hemingway. Kurt Cobain. Jerry Hatcher. She’d never understand it, but she had finally stopped fighting. But then Sam Sparks’s lawyer tried to use it all against her in court.
“I let him get to me,” she said. “I hate him. I hate him, and I let it show. I let him get to me.”
She felt her brother’s arm around her shoulder and saw him throw crumpled bills from the front pocket of his jeans onto the bar. He managed to shuffle her out of Plug Uglies, away from the view of her fellow officers, before she began to cry.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26
8:15 A.M.
Eight-fifteen a.m. on Friday.
Two days had passed since Megan Gunther had discovered that hideous Web site, Campus Juice. Day one had been spent reading and rereading the posts, trying to digest the fact that someone out there apparently despised her. Day two had brought her parents and a trip to the police station, but nothing had changed. She wondered whether day three might finally be the end of it.
She laid belly-down on her double bed, kicking alternating calves against the bedspread while she read her next biochemistry assignment and listened to Death Cab for Cutie on her iPod. With a neon pink highlighting marker, she traced a sentence in her textbook about the biosynthesis of membrane liquids. She had an exam in a week and was going to have to set the curve to have any shot at an A after missing lab yesterday.
She had e-mailed her lab TA with a polite explanation for the absence, but had not received a reply—at least not when she’d last checked her e-mail twenty minutes ago. She thought about logging in again but didn’t want to go online. She didn’t want the temptation of reading those horrible messages about herself again. She didn’t want to think about the possibility that there could be newer postings.
As impossible as it seemed, she was trying to follow Courtney’s advice to ignore the Web site altogether. She and Courtney had practically grown up together in New Jersey. When they had both accepted college admissions in the city—Courtney at Columbia, Megan at NYU—they had celebrated the fact that going off to school was not going to separate them. But now they were sophomores, and the reality was that the six miles between Courtney’s Morningside Heights apartment and Megan’s Greenwich Village place may as well have been a train ride between Chicago and Philly. Between classes, homework, and making new friends at their respective schools, they were lucky to see each other once a month.
But Courtney had dropped everything when Megan had called her yesterday. And Courtney had proved more helpful than either Megan’s parents or the police. Courtney was a volunteer at a domestic violence hotline and had some experience dealing with stalking—or at least its victims.
According to Courtney, Megan would be best off ignoring what had been written about her on the Web site. They were merely words in cyberspace. The first post she’d found went back three weeks, and until she came across her name two days ago, the words had sat online—stagnant, black and white, incapable of harming her. She simply needed to erase the problem from her mind—forget she’d ever seen the posts, and force herself to go back to normal.
Easier said than done.
She kept replaying Sergeant Martinez’s words in her mind.
She reminded herself that there were thousands of posts on that Web site, millions if one were to count all of the many anonymous chatboards and blog comments that were on the Internet overall. She couldn’t let a couple of sentences—among all of that garbage—get to her.
Still, instead of learning more about how the molecules of life were synthesized, she found herself running through a host of possible suspects. Her father had immediately brushed off the sergeant’s suggestion that Megan might know the author of the notes. That’s the kind of father he was, the kind of father who instinctively leaped to his daughter’s defense. Of course he had sought to protect Megan against the notion that she might have made herself an enemy. Of course he hadn’t stopped to wonder.
But he had reacted so quickly that Megan hadn’t stopped to wonder, either. Even standing for half an hour in the precinct, she had never paused to really think through the question of who might be in a position—or have a
