All Day and a Night (14 page)

Carrie closed her eyes and tried to focus on Linda’s words. She pushed back the images that were flashing before her—Donna being pushed to the ground, Donna feeling the palm of a man’s hand against her face, Donna scratching wildly at her assailant. She tried to come up with her half of the conversation.

“So, what’s next?” she finally asked.

“You don’t get it, Carrie. This is huge. Judge Johnsen’s courtroom tomorrow. Ten a.m. It’s happening faster than I thought, but this is it. This is
it
. We’ve got the pattern of similar confessions from Buck Majors; we’ve got Helen Brunswick killed with the same MO; and now we’ve got someone else’s DNA. I cashed in chips for an expedited hearing, and I’ll be calling the press.”

“A hearing on what?”

“Our motion to vacate. We’re ready to ask for Anthony Amaro’s release. And the prosecution has no idea what’s coming.”

P
lenty of cops would be troubled if a family member just happened to be friends with a former prostitute. But Jess wasn’t a typical cop’s family member. First, he seemed to know half the people in New York City, so it was no surprise that his cast of acquaintances was diverse. More important, given that Jess seemed most comfortable straddling a fine line between an adventurous lifestyle and the fringes of hard case crime, a friend with
past
criminal associations was the least Ellie had to worry about.

Jess breezed past the black-T-shirted doorman with a wave. As she followed, Ellie felt the doorman’s gaze on the V-neck of her own shirt. Jess must have noticed, too, because he stepped backwards, blocking the view. “Dude. My sister.”

Not to mention the badge and big gun, she wanted to add.

“Not a problem, man.”

The darkened club was lit, here and there, in pockets of neon. By now, Ellie was familiar with the typical clusters of clientele: the young finance types, yucking it up bachelor-party-style after too many drinks; the occasional couples, the man looking on while his curious girlfriend accepts a lap dance; the regulars, staring with glazed eyes while they chew the prime rib. Two girls in thongs and pasties were working the stage to Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” More like pour some penicillin on me, Ellie thought.

Jess made a beeline to the bar. Ellie had no trouble identifying the woman who had to be Mona. She looked to be in her early fifties and was perched on the farthest stool. Physically petite, she came across larger than her frame thanks to a getup fit for a drag queen: blue-black hair piled high on her head, thick layers of colorful makeup, and a floor-length chiffon gown in bright turquoise. Jess signaled that Ellie should stay back. She watched as Jess greeted Mona with a friendly shoulder squeeze.

She felt her cell phone buzz. It was Max.

“Hey.”

“Jesus, where are you? Is that hair metal in the background?”

She pressed her open ear shut with her index finger. “Unfortunately.”—
From my head to my feet, yeah
.—“I’m at the Shake Shack with Jess. There’s a woman here who might—”

“Sorry, what?”

Mona was throwing skeptical glances in Ellie’s direction as she spoke to Jess.

“Jess knows a woman from Utica.” A man at the next table—a prime-rib chewer—glared at her like she was a child giggling in church. She traded her index finger for the next digit and let it fly in his direction. “Yeah, right—like you’re here to enjoy the music.”

“I just got home. Was wondering where you were.”

“Sorry.” How many times had she apologized to him today? “I thought I’d be back by now, but I’m with Jess.”

“When are you coming home?”

She looked at her watch. It was already past eleven o’clock. “Do you mind if I just crash at his place? I can’t sleep in that hot apartment.”

“Yeah, okay. It’s late, anyway. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

As she snapped her phone back into place, Jess waved her over to the bar. Mona spun on her barstool to greet her.

“Jess mentioned how hard it was to be a big brother to a pretty sister, but he didn’t do you justice.” Mona had a low, smooth voice, suitable for public radio. Based on the getup, Ellie had expected something different. “What a knockout.”

“Thanks to Jess, I grew up absolutely convinced that I was repellant to men. I didn’t find out until I was a senior in high school that he’d been telling all the guys, ‘You touch her and you die.’”

“That’s a good brother, you ask me. Sorry for the evil eyes I was throwing your way, Detective.”

“In my line of work, you get used to it.”

“Oh no, it’s not like that. I’m usually a big supporter of law enforcement. But when Jagger here mentioned the hunter, I wanted to crawl under the nearest table.” She smiled softly at Jess. “Jagger. That’s what I call your brother the rock-and-roller. I even have two Dog Park songs on my iPod.”

Ellie happened to be a fan of Jess’s band, too, but it was safe to say that she and Mona probably constituted five percent of the people who had Dog Park on their playlists.

“Sorry to bring up bad memories. You called the man ‘the hunter’?”

“We all did, once we started hearing about why some of our friends were disappearing.”

“And by
we
, you mean—”

“The girls. Call girls. Prostitutes. Hookers. Never cared for the term
whore
, though. I danced back then, too, but I’ve learned, over time, to admit that I was making most of my money doing a whole lot more. Part of what I do here for the girls is teach them the difference. Once you’re bumping and grinding on a guy in the VIP Room, it feels like a small step into more . . .
intimate
contact. But, psychologically?” She shook her head. “There’s a line, and I help girls find theirs. They can make a good living just from the dancing, especially with New York City tips. And if they stay off drugs and keep a sensible budget, they can build a mighty nice nest egg.”

She sounded like a 1960s home ec teacher instructing young ladies on how to manage a household.

“Did you know any of the hunter’s victims personally?”

“Oh yes. You have to understand, Utica is not a large city. About sixty-eight thousand people when I left; smaller now, if I had to guess. And so you’re talking about a small pool of girls who were involved in the kinds of activities I was engaged in at the time. I knew Jenny Bronson real well. She had a nasty brother—one of the meanest pimps around. She wouldn’t have had anything to do with the work if he hadn’t gotten her into it—his own sister. And she had a sweet little son to take care of—so, one plus one, and there she went. And then I heard they found Leticia—don’t remember her last name.”

“Thomas. She was the third victim.”

“That’s right. Leticia Thomas. I didn’t know her well, just to see around. But when I heard she was gone, too, I pulled back. Way back. I kept strictly to the dancing. But then when they found Donna Blank, I knew it was time to get out of Dodge.”

“I can only imagine,” Jess said. “Three women you knew were all killed.”

“And it wasn’t just that Donna was number three. When the hunter got to Donna, I knew none of us were safe.”

“Why is that?” Ellie asked.

“Because Donna wasn’t like Leticia and Jenny. She wasn’t walking the streets or going out on calls. She stripped, did lap dances. Crossed the line when she was desperate enough to give a few handjobs behind the bar. But no way did she get in a car with a john. No way. I even tried to tell the cops that. I told them they should be doing more than just watching the streets. They needed to keep an eye on us girls at the clubs, because he was coming for us, too.”

Ellie hadn’t seen any mention of that information in the case files. “What did they say?”

“I’ll tell you what he said—he threatened to arrest me if I didn’t calm the fuck down. He didn’t want to listen, but I knew what I knew about Donna. I’ll go to my grave believing that, and so I believed I might go to my grave sooner rather than later if I kept working in Utica. Came downstate and never looked back.”

“Did you and your friends ever have any ideas about who the killer was?”

“We know who it was: that man Anthony Amaro. Oh, just saying his name gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Did you know Amaro before he was arrested?”

She shrugged. “Hard to say. You see a picture in the newspaper and soon enough, you start believing it’s familiar. In my case, I thought I’d seen him around a couple of times, driving by in his car, looking at the girls. Guys like that: usually it’s a married man, excited by the temptation, wondering what it would be like, and then they drive home with nothing but a fantasy. But maybe with Anthony Amaro, he was hunting.”

“And what about before Amaro was caught? Did the girls have any theories?”

“Oh, we had plenty. Pimps doling out punishment. Johns who gave us a bad vibe. A lot of girls thought the killer would turn out to be a cop.”

“Why is that?”

“Because he didn’t get caught, that’s why. And because the police did a damn good job keeping the rest of the public from caring about a few dead hookers. I gotta admit: when that one dude got so mad at me for telling him they better start helping us girls at the clubs, I started to wonder myself if a cop might be the one.”

Ellie couldn’t think of anything else to ask Mona except for her last name in case she needed it. “Winston. Jane Emily Winston to be more accurate.”

Jess let out a laugh. “Jane Emily Winston? Sounds like someone who would marry Thurston Howell the Third.”

She smiled, more to herself than to either of them. “Yes, indeed, that’s who she was supposed to be. But I’ve been going by Mona since I left Utica and stopped turning tricks. Mona sounded like a strong woman, a woman who could take care of herself. Not the little broken girl whose father got to her at ten years old. Mona the Persona, is what I told myself; fake it till you make it. And
this
”—she gestured to the club around her—“for me, is making it.”

I
n the parking lot, Jess asked if they should spring for a shared cab. It was late and still hot, and the nearest subway was a fifteen-minute walk.

“I’ll pick it up since you did me a favor. Speaking of favors, can I crash on the couch tonight?”

“A blip in your domestic bliss?”

“No. The apartment’s eighty-five degrees. I’m sick of sticking to the sheets.”

“You know the deal. You can always crash; and the apartment’s still in your name.” When Max had asked Ellie to get an apartment with him, she had been relieved when Jess agreed to take over the rent on her place. As far as she was concerned, walking away from a rent-stablized residence in New York City was a more permanent commitment than even marriage. “Just say the word, sis, and it’s yours again.”

“Jess, I just need some air conditioning.”

“Okay, whatever you say.”

I
t seemed only minutes later when Ellie heard what sounded like a dentist’s drill grinding against tooth enamel. She opened her eyes and saw chipped paint on the ceiling. She searched for the buzz and found her cell phone inching along the trunk in what used to be her living room.

She answered without looking at the screen. “Hatcher.”

“How’s life on your former sofa?” It was Max.

“A little too
Freaky Friday
for my tastes. I’m afraid if Jess and I bump into each other in front of the bathroom, we’ll switch bodies. What’s up?”

“I just got a call from Judge Johnsen’s clerk. She’s handling the expedited hearing docket this week, and on this morning’s calendar is an emergency request from Anthony Amaro, petitioning for release.”

“But we just got notice of the motion.”

“I know. But Linda Moreland apparently has sources in the crime lab. She got wind of the DNA results.”

Ellie forced herself to sit up and gave her spine a quick stretch. “What time?”

“Ten o’clock. Fifth floor.”

“This is exactly why your boss should’ve held off on that DNA testing. The science is going to sound shiny and fancy. It’s a distraction.”

“I know, but Martin doesn’t want it to look like we were trying to hide the results. I need to make sure we send the message that we’re trying to do the right thing—thorough, methodical, neutral. I need you and Rogan to be there—the fresh-look team, no ties to the original investigation.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll call Rogan.”

She could only imagine how happy her partner would be to hear the news.

M
ax had warned Ellie that the hearing that morning would not be routine, but she had failed to anticipate the full extent of the media attention that would accompany the challenge of a criminal conviction that, in human years, would be old enough to vote. Local and national news vans lined the sidewalk as they entered the courthouse, and Ellie recognized at least seven observers in Judge Carol Johnsen’s courtroom as reporters.

So far, Linda Moreland had taken the lead, laying out the grounds for her client’s motion. Like the district attorney’s office, Amaro had received an anonymous letter alleging a connection between Helen Brunswick’s murder and the crimes for which he was supposedly responsible. The defense also had somehow managed to learn from the crime lab that, on reexamination of the physical evidence, DNA that could not be Amaro’s had been discovered beneath two of Donna Blank’s fingernails.

Next to Linda, a younger woman was scribbling furiously in a leatherbound book that looked more like a child’s diary than a legal pad. Ellie recognized her from her Google research as Donna Blank’s sister, Carrie. Behind them in the first row, a late-twentyish-looking man in a bowtie and cardigan sweater leaned forward, riveted by Linda’s argument.

Fortunately, Max was armed with compelling counterpoints.

“We have been exercising due diligence, Your Honor, as should be fully expected in light of the recent developments. But to put the focus where it should be: the defendant was convicted of one, and only one, homicide—the killing of Deborah Garner. With respect to that charge, the defendant was arrested after an eyewitness identified him. Once he was arrested on the basis of that identification, he confessed. And after he confessed and was charged, he pled guilty. Ms. Moreland is trying to undermine the finality of that conviction with DNA evidence found on a woman killed a year earlier, nearly two hundred miles away, who was never named in any indictment against Mr. Amaro.”