display then changed to a photograph of the woman whose face had captured the local media’s constant attention for the last three days: Tanya Abbott.
She wished she had never met Tanya. She had no idea what the woman had to do with any of this, but if she’d never met Tanya, she could never have called her to cover that date for Miranda. Maybe then Miranda would be alive. Or, who knows, maybe Stacy would be dead. She didn’t know how her life would be different if she’d never known Tanya, but in that moment, she wished Tanya was the one being followed by the man in the pictures. She wished Tanya was the one with police officers coming to her apartment and asking questions. Worse, she wished Tanya was the one who was dead.
She turned off the television so she would not have to see the face of the woman who had to be at the center of all of this. She slipped her cell phone from her leather clutch. The detective had assumed Stacy had removed her number from her directory, but she hadn’t. She’d certainly thought about it, but for some reason, hadn’t hit the delete button.
She pulled up the number and was about to hit the enter key when the driver turned onto Avenue B. Only five more quick blocks and she’d be home. She didn’t have enough time left in the cab to start the call now. She also didn’t want to wait.
Instead of hitting the call button, she hit the button to send a text message to Detective Hatcher’s cell phone and began composing. “From…Stacy…Schecter…Saw…guy…in…photo…Tried to meet me…Call…when…you—”
She felt the cab come to a stop. “Five-eighty.”
She reached into her purse, gave the driver a ten, and asked for three dollars back. The driver groaned as if the plucking of three singles from his stack pained his fingers. Tucking the change and her phone into her purse, she removed her keys, stepped out of the cab, and crossed Avenue B toward her building. As she slipped the key into the gate, she heard the cab speed south in search of its next fare.
She turned the key and pulled the security gate open. As she lifted her foot to take the one step up from the sidewalk into the building, her strap slipped again, sending her tumbling onto the concrete, the white gate smashing against her shin. She let out a yelp and grabbed her leg to soothe the pain.
“Let me give you a hand there.”
She saw black dress shoes and dark gray slacks and reached on instinct for the hand extended toward her. And then she looked up. It was him. She yanked her hand away and crawled like a crab on the ground, trying to pull her body inside the building to slam the gate closed behind her. He grabbed her by the ankle. She twisted away from him, swatting at his hands to free her leg.
The sight of the gun at his waistband froze her body. She knew she should scream. She knew she should resist. She knew that if she yelled loud enough, that busybody in 2C would call the cops, if not to rescue her then to shut her up. But all she could see was the butt of the handgun. All she could think about was the half a second it would take him to reach for it and put a bullet in her brain. She’d be dead. She’d no longer exist. And she’d never know what happened next. She was paralyzed. He pulled her limp body up from the ground and shepherded her toward the curb.
As he shoved her into the front seat, she slipped her fingers into her clutch purse and hit the send button on her cell phone, followed by the delete button to clear old text messages from her phone. As the man hopped into the driver’s seat next to her, she tried not to think about his gun. She tried not to think about what he would do to her. And, most of all, she tried not to think about the expression this man had left on the face of the woman she’d known as Miranda.
CHAPTER FIFTY
6:15 P.M.
As promised, Tony Carenza was on the southwest corner of Union Square Park. The narcotics officer wore a fitted plaid western shirt, tight white jeans, and cowboy boots. His long dark hair was slicked back in waves across the crown of his head.
Ellie was four steps away when she heard him pawning his wares.
“Smoke, smoke, smoke.”
“Take a break for a second?”
He looked both directions. “Yeah, but follow me like we’re making a deal.”
She did her best to look nervous as she walked south with him across Fourth Street onto McDougal.
“What kind of luck do I have? Two times I see you this week, and both times I’m dressed like a cowboy trannie. More UC shit. Doing some pot sales here, but later on I’ll hit the clubs and get some felony busts.”
That first meeting with Carenza seemed like a year ago. Before Megan and Katie were killed. Before Tanya disappeared. Before she’d ever heard of Prestige Parties. Wednesday morning in court, Sparks’s attorney had argued that Mancini could have been killed in a home invasion gone bad. He’d known about the knock-and-talk at the apartment next door. But when Carenza assured them the neighbor was chump change, they’d moved on to other theories. They had failed to ask the important follow-up question.
“When my partner and I first talked to you about Sparks’s neighbor at the 212, there’s something I never asked you.”
“Ask away.”
She’d wanted to have this conversation in person in case Carenza was uncooperative, but now she wondered if the trip downtown had been necessary.
“You said you told Nick Dillon about your knock-and-talk because you knew Sparks owned the apartment across the hallway?”
“Yeah. I thought Dillon would get a kick out of the two old ladies downstairs, so sure they’d found a drug dealer on the premises. Sorry if I stepped on any toes mentioning it to him, but I figured he’d been on the job and all.”
“When did you mention it to him?”
“A while ago, I guess.”
“How long a while ago?”
He shrugged. “I don’t really remember. Before the knock-and-talk, because I hadn’t gone to the building yet. We were still keeping the old birds busy writing down all their notes.”
She had first learned of the investigation across the hall just that week, when Sparks’s lawyer, Ramon Guerrero, had brought it up in court. And Guerrero said he had just learned about it himself. They had simply assumed that the knowledge was new to Sam Sparks as well.
“How much earlier than the knock-and-talk?” Ellie pressed.
“Way before. Maybe just a couple of weeks after the ladies came into the precinct complaining about the guy. Why?”
The neighbors had first complained in March. If Carenza mentioned their suspicions prior to the murder, and Dillon had relayed them to Sparks, Sparks could have staged Mancini’s killing to look like a home invasion, knowing that a pending narcotics investigation across the hallway would bolster that theory of the crime.
She felt a buzzing at her waist. A new text message:
From Stacy Schecter. Saw guy in photo. Tried to meet me. Call when you
The message stopped mid-sentence. Had Stacy simply hit the send key prematurely? Or was Ellie’s quickening pulse confirming her worst fears?
She hit the call button on her phone, grateful that Stacy’d had the piece of mind to identify herself in her message. It rang four times before going to voice mail. She tried again. Another four rings. She tried again. This time the call went directly to voice mail, as if someone had turned off the phone’s power.
“I’ve got to go.”
She heard Carenza ask her if everything was all right as she jogged east.
The first call was to Rogan. He didn’t bother with hello.
“You ready to switch?”
