The girl shut the door before reopening it, this time wide enough for them to enter. The apartment was on the large side for a studio, or perhaps it just seemed large because of its sparseness. The only seating to be had was on a twin mattress that rested in the corner beside a milk crate doubling as a nightstand. The rest of the apartment was empty except for a plastic folding table and two easels. The easels held stretched canvases exploding with abstract smears of primary colors. On the table were a sprawl of painting supplies and an iPod plugged into miniature speakers from which the offending music had blasted.
Stacy Schecter wore a
“I’d offer you a seat, but I’m pretty much the only one allowed in my bed.”
“Not a problem,” Ellie said. “You’re alone here?”
Stacy pretended to glance around the room. “To my knowledge.”
“Mind if I take a look around to be sure?”
“Um, no, I guess not.”
Ellie opened a sliding door to reveal a cramped closet, while Rogan opened and closed the only other door in the apartment. “Bathroom’s clear,” he said.
“So this is definitely not about the noise,” Stacy said.
“You know a woman named Katie Battle?” Ellie asked. “She’s a real estate broker?”
Stacy shook her head. “Not exactly in any position to buy real estate, in case you can’t tell.”
“How about Megan Gunther? She’s a sophomore at NYU. Lives near Union Square Park.”
Stacy shook her head again. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“We think you can.”
Silence filled the room until Stacy broke out into a surprisingly disarming smile. “You two clearly know something I don’t. And I was kind of in the zone here, so if we could just cut through the usual whatever-it-is-you- guys-do-to-break-people-down, I’d be happy to help you out.”
“You got a cell phone call yesterday from a woman named Katie Battle, and we’re trying to figure out why.”
“No clue. I told you, I’ve never heard of her.”
“You mind if we take a look at your phone, then? If this is some kind of mistake on the part of the phone company, we can take it up with them.”
“Um, yeah, I guess I do kind of mind.”
“So maybe you’ve heard of her after all.”
“No, but…how about I check out my phone and see what you’re talking about?”
Ellie looked to Rogan, and he nodded. They watched as Stacy removed a flip phone from a bright blue Pan Am vinyl travel bag on the bed.
“The call came in at 3:15 p.m.,” Rogan said.
“Yeah, I see it now. It was a hang-up. I figured at the time it was a wrong number.”
Stacy’s failure to answer the call didn’t explain why Katie Battle had called Stacy’s number in the first place, nor why Megan Gunther had called her four months ago.
“What about Megan Gunther?” Ellie asked. “She called you in May from her apartment.”
“Last summer? I have no clue how I’d remember that. And I told you, I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Why don’t you let me take a look at the screen with yesterday’s incoming call on it? That would help us sort through this whole thing.”
“My phone’s private.”
Ellie needed Stacy to be the one to spell it out. If Ellie’s instincts were wrong and she voiced them aloud, she’d lose all leverage.
“See, that’s what’s bugging me, Stacy. You let us check out your apartment—your bathroom, your closet—no problem. But one little glance at your cell phone, and now you’re all about your privacy. We can straighten this out just by looking at your screen there. We see the digits of Katie Battle’s phone number, and we’ll know she wasn’t listed in your directory. But I have a feeling we’re not going to see just her number. We’re going to see her name, and then we’ll know you’re lying to us about not knowing her. And that’ll be that.”
Ellie saw Stacy’s fingers twitch against her phone.
“And don’t even think about trying to delete anything right now, Stacy, or we’ll pry it out of your hands if we have to, and things will get extremely unpleasant for everyone.”
The girl froze, and Ellie spotted a look of panic cross her face before the warm smile returned.
“I really don’t understand what’s going on.”
“That’s correct, and you don’t have any right to. We came here thinking you could help us out, and you assured us you would. But I’ve got to tell you that, right now, Stacy? You’re about ten seconds away from being taken into custody as part of a homicide investigation.”
“A homicide?” Her eyes widened beneath the makeup.
“Turns out your phone number is the single link between two women who were murdered today.”
“Murdered?”
“The call to your phone yesterday? The woman who dialed your number was killed tonight.”
“Miranda? Miranda’s dead?” And with that, Stacy Schecter’s black eyeliner began to stream like the cascades of paint on her canvases.
CHAPTER THIRTY
10:30 P.M.
Stacy Schecter was a different woman without the makeup. The rock-and-roll eyeliner and pale face powder were gone, rubbed away by tears and half a box of tissues. The dry, droll attitude had dissolved as well. She looked at Ellie across the table with the puffy, red-rimmed eyes of a scared and lonely child.
“I don’t know why I can’t keep it together,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “I hardly knew the girl.”
“You knew her at some level. You had her number in your cell phone.”
Because her apartment had scarcely enough room for one person to sit, Stacy had agreed to come in to the precinct to be interviewed. It had been half an hour already, and only now had she calmed down sufficiently to get her words out.
“I didn’t even know her real name. To me, she was Miranda. No last name, but that would have been fake also.”
“How did you know her?” Ellie asked.
“We met last year at a friend’s party. We didn’t stay in touch or anything. We just hit it off, and so I put her number in my phone.”
J. J. stood with his arms crossed behind Stacy in the back corner of the interrogation room. He rolled his eyes when Ellie glanced at him.
“So why was she calling you yesterday?”
“I told you. It was a hang-up. I figured if she wanted to talk to me she’d call back. People pull up the wrong number on their cells all the time.”
“We’re getting the records from the cell phone company, Stacy. They’re going to show any other calls between you and Katie, or Miranda. And I have a feeling we’re going to find a lot more calls than we’d expect to find between two women who met at a party a year ago but didn’t stay in touch.”
Stacy pressed her eyes closed. She was thinking. Hard. She was smart enough to recognize the problem. She needed one more press.
“What are you hiding, Stacy? You obviously cared about this woman.”
