CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
10:55 P.M.
Wherever Tanya had been hiding, it could not have been far. Twenty-five minutes after NY1 went live, the woman for whom they’d been searching for three days stepped out of a cab on the corner of Park and Seventy- eighth Street.
Her eyes fell first on Paul Bandon and then directly on Ellie. She looked five pounds thinner and ten years older since they’d first seen her in the hospital. She looked her own age.
Ellie waved her past the blockade, and Tanya wasted no time on explanations.
“Where’s Alex?”
Ellie pointed to the sky. “We’ve had a negotiator on the phone with him for forty minutes. Alex hung up at one point, saying he was going to jump, but I called him back and said you were on your way—that he should at least talk to you first.”
“I don’t understand. Why would he do something like this?”
“Because you came back into their lives.”
“But we used to be so close,” she said.
“And now you’re not. I’m sorry, Tanya, but in the years that have passed, his family has moved on by casting you as a teenage problem child who seduced Paul Bandon.”
“But that’s not how it was. They’ve always taken care of me. Paul loved me.”
Her eyes searched sadly for the judge, who was now sandwiched between the ESU negotiator and Rogan.
“The man who stabbed you: you don’t know who he was?”
“Of course not. He was wearing a ski mask.”
“You assumed it was whoever killed Robert Mancini.”
“So you know I was there?”
“Your fingerprints were on the champagne glass. We’ve been looking for you.”
“The man who came to the penthouse that night said something about it being stupid to try to blackmail a cop. Then all I heard were the shots. I didn’t know who I could trust. I tried to go to your apartment, but I got scared waiting. Some guy was staring at me.”
So much for Jess’s skills of stealth detection.
“There’s something else, Tanya. The man who stabbed you, the man who killed Megan. It was Alex.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “He would never do that.”
“I don’t have time to argue with you about this. He did it, and that’s why he’s up there.”
Rogan was waving them toward the ESU van. “The kid saw the cab pull up. Wants to know if it’s Tanya.”
“Talk to him,” Ellie said as they made their way toward the van. “Tell him you’re not going to testify, that you’ll say the person who did it was shorter than him, whatever.”
“What about those things?” Tanya pointed to the mattresslike structures that the ESU had inflated beneath the building to break Alex’s fall.
“I’m told at that height, they can’t be certain of the path he’ll take. He’s got a knife, too, so there are other ways he can hurt himself. Try to get him down from that roof.”
The ESU officer extended the cell phone, and Tanya took it hesitantly. “Alex? It’s Tanya.”
Rogan leaned toward Ellie and whispered, “Why are we bothering to save this prick’s life again?”
“Because after what he did to Megan Gunther, he doesn’t get to decide what happens.”
Tanya placed her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “He says you guys need to move. He doesn’t want you to hear.”
They looked to the ESU officer for guidance. He nodded, and they all stepped away from Tanya like synchronized swimmers.
They watched as Tanya pleaded. Her eyes to the sky. Him standing at the edge of the roof 150 feet above them. She loved him like a little brother. He hated her so much he’d tried to kill her. So much distance between them, but Ellie could tell that they spoke to each other with the intensity and intimacy of siblings.
She could tell Tanya was crying. She heard her say, “I’m sorry,” more than once. She heard something about a promise. She heard the word
And then Tanya flipped her phone shut, as calm as if she’d just ordered takeout, as sad as if she’d just learned about a family member’s death.
“He’s on his way down.”
The ESU officer radioed the officers waiting inside the stairwell leading to the building roof. “Coming your way.”
“Oh, Jesus. Thank you.” Paul Bandon rushed toward Tanya with open arms, but Rogan held him back.
“He’s turning himself in,” she said. “He wasn’t up there because he was afraid of being arrested.”
“I don’t understand,” Bandon said.
“I promised him two things, though. First, he wants you to know that Megan wasn’t supposed to be home Friday morning. He’d watched her all month. He knew her schedule, and she should have been at a spinning class that morning. When she walked out of her bedroom, he panicked. She wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“And the second promise?” Ellie asked.
Tanya kept her eyes on Bandon.
“I promised him no one would know about us, what happened in Baltimore. He doesn’t want Laura to be humiliated. That’s what this was about from the very beginning. He says you told them I was threatening to go public.”
Bandon opened and closed his mouth like a marionette.
“I have
“But that’s what he told them, Tanya.” Ellie kept her voice low, knowing how much this was hurting the woman. “He said you had forced your way back into his life.”
“And so Alex blamed me?” Her words were sharp and fast like hurled daggers. “He thought this was
Alex Bandon stepped out of the building, ESU officers in Kevlar vests on either side of him. Rogan walked toward them, handcuffs already out. Paul Bandon tried to stop him, but two ESU officers pulled him back. As Rogan recited the familiar Miranda warnings, Alex turned away from his father to face Park Avenue, his wrists behind him to accept the cuffs.
And then Paul Bandon fell to his knees, placed his palms on the dirty concrete, and sobbed alone in the street.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
TWO WEEKS LATER
Just as Laura Bandon had predicted, there she stood, blank-faced and stoic, behind and to the right of her husband as he read from the prepared statement.
Ellie and Max watched from a conference room at the district attorney’s office as the network replayed the footage for the umpteenth time. The television pundits could hardly contain their excitement as they pored over the salacious details of the unfolding saga: a rising legal star resigning from the bench, brought down by a nearly two-
