“UTL.”
“Did they look in the garage?”
More crosstalk. “The only window’s in the back. They’d have to jump a fence to look inside.”
“Tell them to jump the fence.”
“The detective’s requesting that you check the garage…. Detective, I’ve got the officer telling me to remind you of the Fourth Amendment. They’re reporting clear on the call.”
“Do
More crosstalk, and this time Ellie thought the dispatcher had placed a palm over the microphone. “Detective, they’re outside the house and will watch until further notice.”
“Damnit,” she said, flipping the phone shut. “Dillon’s obviously got buddies up there in Riverdale. They probably think this is some spat between him and a girlfriend, and they’re not doing shit to look for him.”
“Can’t jump a fence without a warrant.”
“Or exigent circumstances. Don’t tell me for a second that those same assholes don’t claim exigency whenever they don’t feel like bothering with a warrant.”
“I’ll go up there myself,” Rogan said. “You get to work on the warrant?”
The image of Katie Battle looked out at her from the canvas.
“No, I’ll go.”
She could tell he was thinking about arguing, but he must have realized the futility. “Okay.”
“Call Max to help. And call Tucker. This is going to crush her, but she needs to know.”
“You want to stay here and make all those calls, woman? If not, you better stop telling me what to do and get the hell out that door right now.”
She spotted the cruiser around the corner from Dillon’s house, just yards from where she’d parked the previous night as Tucker had kissed Dillon on his front porch. She pulled parallel to the marked car and rolled down the passenger-side window. The uni in the driver’s seat gave her a how-you-doin’ smile, then did a double take at the fleet vehicle and lowered his window.
“You here about Nick Dillon’s place?”
“You know him?” Ellie asked.
The officer shrugged. “Just to say hi to. He was on the job, you know.”
His partner leaned her way from the passenger seat. “Pulled his full twenty.”
The uni in the driver’s seat looked away from her. “We about set? It’s busy out there tonight. Already heard from some wiseasses accusing us of cooping up here.” Cops were always looking for a place to nap in their parked cars.
“Don’t suppose you knocked on any doors to check if the neighbors have seen Dillon tonight?”
“No one asked us to do that, Detective.”
She nodded in silence, knowing full well what she was dealing with. Dillon was an ex-cop and therefore came with a strong presumption of being stand-up. Without the luxury of time to burst their loyal bubbles, she backed her car against the curb behind theirs. She rested her hand on the open driver’s side window of the cruiser.
“If I’m not back in fifteen, call for backup. Shield 27990. Hatcher. They’ll have me down as Elsa.”
She ignored the driver’s chuckle and made her way down Dillon’s block, cutting through front yards to keep out of view from his windows. As she approached the perimeter of his property, she ducked low, grateful that the sun had begun its descent. She made her way first across his lawn, over his unoccupied driveway, and then to the outer edge of his garage.
Just as the dispatcher had relayed earlier, the solid brick along the side of the garage prevented her from peering inside. She leaned over an adjacent four-foot-high fence and spotted a window in the garage’s rear wall. She braced her hands on the fence top and jumped, wincing at the weight of her body against the pointed boards of the picket fence. If she was wrong about this, no one would ever know she peeked. If she was right, she’d save Stacy Schecter’s life and figure out a way to justify it later.
Through the dusty glass of the back window, she spotted Dillon’s black Infiniti sedan parked in the spot closest to the interior door leading into the house. The other half of the two-car garage was empty. Sam Sparks had parked his Maybach there last night. Dillon’s date, Robin Tucker, had not. She had parked on the street, the way most visitors did.
Not Sparks. He had parked not on the street, nor even in the driveway. He had pulled into the garage. Like a man who was comfortable here. Like a man who stayed overnight. Like a man who practically lived here.
She pressed her ear against the glass. No sounds of a cooling engine, but it had been nearly an hour since Stacy’s page. The motor could be long cold.
She worked her way along the glass toward the attached house. The blinds were all drawn. She leaned against the back wall of the house and closed her eyes. A dog barked somewhere down the block. A car started and left. Total silence.
The fence at the other side of the property was higher, too high to jump. She worked her way along the back of the house the same way she’d come. As she passed the garage, she peered inside again. This time, she caught sight of an object just beneath the passenger’s side of the Infiniti.
She looked for a way to open the garage window, but it was a solid piece of glass, strictly for light, not air. She craned her neck for a better look, squinting to focus her eyes on the object beneath the car. She finally made sense of the dark shape. It was the stiletto heel of a woman’s shoe.
She looked at her watch. Only four minutes since she’d told the uniforms to call for backup in fifteen. She sprinted to the front of Dillon’s house, across his front yard, and down the street to the corner where she had parked.
The cruiser was gone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
7:50 P.M.
“Ihad a cruiser here five minutes ago. Where are they?” She felt the pressure of her fingers around the radio handset and forced herself to loosen her grip.
“It’s hopping out there tonight, Detective. There was a DV beef a half mile from your location. That car reported clear and caught it.”
“They weren’t clear. They were standby. I’ve got a missing person located. I’m going in.” She repeated Dillon’s address twice. “Suspect is Nick Dillon. Known to be armed. I need felony arrest backup.”
Using familiar radio 10-code, the dispatcher relayed the information and assured Ellie that officers were on their way.
Ellie pulled her car around the corner, stopping one house short of Dillon’s. Then she waited. She heard the dog barking again, but no sirens. She looked in her side-view mirror. No cruisers.
She imagined the tiny glimmer of hope Stacy must have clung to as she pressed the send button on the text message to Ellie. She saw that spark of hope fading away with each minute Stacy remained alone with Nick Dillon.
Still no sirens. Still no black-and-whites.
Her first homicide case had been on a special assignment with a detective who got himself killed checking out a suspect without backup. But she’d saved another cop’s life and earned a Combat Cross by walking into an armed murderer’s house without a weapon. And even though the NYPD awarded her one of its highest honors for her work on that case, she knew in her heart that she could have stopped the blood spree even earlier if she had thrown out all the rules and followed her own instincts from the beginning.
This time, she wouldn’t hesitate.
She opened her purse, removed a L’Oreal powder compact, and slipped it into her pants pocket. Then she hopped out of the car, popped the trunk, and retrieved the standard black baton from the equipment trunk. She followed the path of her own footsteps on the bent blades of Dillon’s grass, across the front yard, along the side of
