“Did Keith happen to have a pierced lip?”
“I’m not sure,” Patricia said. “Wait. Maybe. I don’t know. Megan said something once about how we wouldn’t approve of him, even at first sight. Something like that. So maybe.”
“Do you know anything else about this Keith? A last name? Where he lives? Is he a student?”
Patricia shook her head. So did her husband, but for a different reason.
“You knew this? Why didn’t you say anything yesterday? The sergeant—he was on our side there at the end, but he said there was nothing he could do. If we’d known this boy’s name, he could have called him. Scared him. Told him to back off.”
“Don’t, Jonas. Don’t say that.”
“Why didn’t you say something? Was I that hard on Megan? You couldn’t even trust me enough to let me know she had a boyfriend? Even yesterday? Even with those messages?”
“I’m very sorry,” Ellie said, interrupting. “It would be helpful if you could make a list of some of your daughter’s friends. We can follow up with them.”
She pushed a pad of paper and a pen across the desk toward Patricia, who looked relieved by the distraction.
When Ellie finally escorted the Gunthers back to the lobby of their dead daughter’s apartment complex, she noticed that they did not hold hands on the way out of the elevator, as they had on their way up to the superintendent’s office. As she watched them walk into the sunlight of University Place, she wondered if that meager oversight—the failure to grab a spouse’s hand—was just the beginning.
For the next few months, they would be grateful to have another person who cherished Megan. But as time passed and they began to long for at least one hour during which they did not think about what they’d lost, Jonas might begin to wish that Patricia’s nose wasn’t pointed at the tip the way Megan’s had been. And Patricia might look away when Jonas jutted his jaw out, the way Megan had.
And Ellie wondered if she had witnessed the beginning of the transformation: that moment in Gorsky’s office. Jonas asking why Patricia hadn’t spoken up yesterday. Patricia thinking, but not saying, that she would have— Megan would have—if Jonas hadn’t been so overbearing.
Resentment. Fault. Blame.
She wondered if whoever killed Megan Gunther had also destroyed the very best of what she had known in her parents.
She had shoddy reception inside the building, so she stepped outside to call Max. He picked up after just one ring.
“Hey, you.”
“Hey.”
“I hear you got another callout.”
“You’ve got spies tailing me? We may need to have a little chat about boundaries.”
“No spies,” he said with a chuckle. “I was with Rogan this morning when he got your message.”
“Yeah, how’d things go with Bandon? J. J.’s been a little jumpy since he showed up.”
“It was fine. Just Bandon pretending to be principled, thorough, and objective. Of course, that didn’t stop Rogan from going on a tear both before and after we were in chambers.”
“But he was on good behavior for the middle part at least?”
“Yeah, he held it together. What have you been up to?”
“New callout. Still figuring out who’s who.”
“Which means you probably weren’t calling me to whisper sweet nothings in my ear.”
“Sweet nothings.”
“Wow,
“What can you tell me about Web site postings?” She gave Max a quick summary of what she had learned from the Gunthers and the complaint they had made yesterday about Campus Juice.
“Sounds like the cop they talked to at the precinct had it about right, although he should have filed a report to build a record.”
“We don’t like being told to write stuff down that’s never going anywhere. If that sergeant had been told by the DA’s office that nothing could be done, that’s the only part of the discussion he’s going to remember.”
“The DA’s office was involved?” he asked.
“According to the parents, that’s what this sergeant told them.”
“You just need to know any identifying information for whoever posted those messages. Is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, give me the dates, times, and titles of the posts.”
Ellie flipped through the printout the Gunthers had given her and recited the information Max had requested.
“All right. Let me look into it, and I’ll call you right back.”
“Thanks.”
“It was the sweet nothings that did the trick.”
Ellie was on her way back to the apartment building when Rogan stepped outside.
“Got word from the hospital. The roommate’s conscious.”
“She’s going to make it?” Ellie asked.
“Yeah. At least one of them had luck on her side.”
As they turned the corner onto Fourteenth Street, Ellie could see that the lunch-hour rush at the Union Square green market was under way. The skateboarders who transformed the south park steps into stunt ramps dodged shoppers juggling canvas tote bags filled with organic greens and heirloom tomatoes. Dog walkers tugged on leashes, pulling their hopeful charges past the enticing displays of fresh food. Only a few passersby even stopped to glance at the gathering of official city vehicles that had descended upon the corner of Fourteenth and University.
“Your ride or mine?” Rogan asked, looking at the two identical fleet cars.
“The usual.”
As she hopped into the passenger side of the Crown Vic, she overheard a woman who was walking into the bank tell her friend, “Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing. Crime’s so low, the police show up for anything these days.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
12:10 P.M.
The half-mile drive to St. Vincent’s was a straight shot west on Fourteenth Street, then a quick left turn on Seventh Avenue. Rogan swerved around the two layers of ambulances stacked on the west side of the hospital and took another quick left on Eleventh Street, pulling the car to a halt at the curb.
As they exited the car, a bicyclist pedaling west on Eleventh yelled out, “Wrong way on a one-way, idiot.”
“NYPD,” Rogan hollered. “And you’re not wearing a helmet, so who’s the idiot? I’d give you a ticket, but I guess you’ll learn your lesson when your brains wind up on the dash of a cab.”
The cyclist flipped them the bird as he sailed through the light at Seventh Avenue.
“Picking fights with boys on bikes?” Ellie asked.
He threw her a dry look and opened the hospital door. Ellie flashed her shield at the front information desk. “We need to see Heather Bradley. She was admitted about two hours ago with multiple stab wounds.”
She turned back to Rogan while the clerk tapped away at her computer keyboard. “Are you going to tell me what’s up or not?”
“This morning, that’s all.”
“Bandon put you through the ringer?”
“Detectives, Heather Bradley is in the ICU. You’ll find it—”
