All Day and a Night (36 page)

“We swore we wouldn’t traumatize you,” Ellie said with a smile. They had assured the attending physician that Carrie’s desire to speak to them made sense in the context of the investigation, and promised they would ask for a doctor if Carrie seemed the least bit confused.

“They’re acting like I might fall into a coma any second, but they’ve also made it clear that I’m losing my bed, come morning. I guess unemployed lawyers don’t have the best health insurance.” She offered a weak laugh.

“How much do you remember about what happened?” Rogan asked.

“This?” she said, looking up at the bandages still wrapped around her head. “I feel like I remember every millisecond. Every ounce of pain. The temperature of my blood on the floor. Separating from the present. I was sure I was going to die. No, more like, I remember
actually
dying. And I remember the smell of cigarettes.”

Debi Landry was a heavy smoker.

“We made an arrest just this morning,” Rogan said. “A woman named Debi Landry.”

Carrie blinked vacantly.

“She’s Anthony Amaro’s former foster sister?” Ellie prompted.

Carrie showed no sign of recognizing the name. Maybe the doctor’s concerns had been correct.

Rogan looked at Ellie, and then explained. “She assaulted you when you came home and then removed several of your journals from your apartment. She gave them to Linda Moreland, who has now been charged with receiving stolen property.” He managed to suppress any sarcasm as he relayed the charging decision he had only just learned about himself. “Linda also ordered the supposed burglary at the hotel in Utica, and it will be up to local prosecutors there whether to charge her with that.”

“But . . . why?” Carrie was asking a question, but she sounded like her mind was elsewhere.

“Linda Moreland wanted to keep you from proving Amaro was guilty,” Rogan said. “She told Debi Landry what you were doing. Debi says she went to your apartment initially just to confront you, but the fact that she went with a weapon leads us to believe she wanted revenge.”

“I’m sorry. Revenge for what? Quitting?”

“No,” Rogan said slowly. “For the leads to new evidence.”

“What new evidence?”

“An old cellmate of Amaro’s?” Ellie said. “Plus some information from his time as a foster child that showed motive?”

Carrie’s expression was still vacant. If only Ellie’s own poker face were so good.

Ellie stepped in closer. “We know who sent the information to the district attorney’s office, Carrie.”

More blankness, followed by impatience. “So who was it?”

“It’s okay,” Ellie said. “We know.”

“Yeah, but
I
don’t. Am I missing something here?”

Dammit. Ellie was so sure that, once alert, Carrie would give them more helpful information. But now she saw the problem: of course, Carrie couldn’t admit to sending the anonymous tips without risking disbarment.

“We don’t want to get you in trouble,” Ellie said. “But it’s important that we be able to establish the motive for your assault. And if you have any other evidence against Amaro—”

“Wait, you think I—? Absolutely not. I was his lawyer. That would be a blatant ethical violation.”

Carrie wasn’t bluffing. She was genuinely confused by the entire discussion.

“If you weren’t the anonymous source, and you didn’t see who attacked you, why did you have the hospital call us?”

“Because I think I know why Donna was killed. And I don’t think it was Anthony Amaro who did it.”

T
ell me why everyone’s so sure Anthony Amaro killed my sister.”

Rogan started walking out of Carrie’s room. “There are limits to what we can tell you, Ms. Blank. I suggest you call the ADA in the morning.”

“Wait! I’m sorry. I’m—I’m trying to help, okay? But—I’m—I want to make sure I’m on the right track. Let me put it this way. I think Donna was different.”

Jess’s friend Mona had said the same thing.

“She wasn’t into the life,” Ellie said. “Not like the other girls. She worked at a strip club—”

“Club Rouge,” Carrie said. “I know about that.”

“And she had a drug problem. But we don’t know of anything firmly connecting her to street prostitution.”

“And I saw the autopsy. Her fractures weren’t nearly as severe as the other victims. Plus, there’s the skin beneath her nails. She fought. There’s no evidence the others defended themselves. They must have been knocked out or incapacitated first. I think Donna was killed by someone else. I found an oversight in the police files. When Donna’s mother first reported her missing, she said Donna was on her way to my house.”

Ellie and Rogan both nodded.

“My mother said she never got there,” Carrie said, “but she did. She came over to apologize.” She sounded frustrated as she tried to make them understand a conflict that had meant everything twenty years earlier, but probably sounded trivial to her ears today. “There was this whole drama where I gave Donna money from my college fund, but instead of going to rehab—”

“Her mother told us,” Ellie said. “Go on.”

“So when she was at the house to apologize, she kept promising that she had a plan to make everything better. She was going to make sure that I got the opportunity I deserved. I heard her crying—screaming—she meant it. Donna could be determined when she wanted. That was why I thought rehab would work—”

Carrie’s voice started to drift, but Ellie needed her to focus.

“You don’t think—your mother?”

“Oh, God no. My mother can inflict more damage with words than force. What I keep coming back to is Donna’s insistence that she had a plan to pay me back. It was only eight thousand dollars, but to my family it was a fortune. She couldn’t make that dancing at a crummy strip joint in Utica.”

“So you think she had some other income in mind,” Ellie said.

“Maybe stealing it, or selling drugs. I don’t know, but something that could have put her in danger. I keep thinking that whatever she was saying to my mother about having a plan is the reason she was killed.”

“You wound up getting that scholarship,” she said. “It had to have been much more than the money Donna stole.”

“You know about the Morris Grant? So you probably also heard that I blew it. It figures. Two of my friends were much more likely to get it. Everyone—including me—knew I was basically third in line. But by the time the committee picked a winner, I was the poor kid whose sister got offed by a serial killer. I always assumed that’s why they picked me.”

“Sorry,” Rogan said, “but how is any of this connected to the bodies found at Conkling Park?”

Ellie hadn’t mentioned her conversation with Rosemary Blank because it hadn’t seemed important at the time. Now she was reconsidering.

“Am I correct in understanding that your two friends withdrew from consideration?” she asked.

Carrie nodded, then winced in discomfort. “Down the road, I realized they both had their reasons—one was pregnant, and one had a drug problem.”

“Didn’t that strike you as odd that they thought that far in advance? I’d expect most kids would go ahead and apply, and then deal with the fallout later. Is it possible Donna knew about your friends’ problems?”

Carrie blinked vacantly and then opened her mouth in sudden realization. “Yes, that’s it. When I was back in Utica, I saw the husband of the friend who got pregnant, Melanie. He said Donna had found out that Melanie was pregnant and basically bullied her into withdrawing. Melanie obviously told Tim about it at the time. And I know Tim has violent tendencies. Oh my God. It was about the scholarship.”

Rogan had his eyes closed, trying to process all the new names and facts that were coming in. “I’m not sure I see why this guy Tim would target your sister. Your friend was still pregnant. Her secret was coming out one way or the other.”

“It could have started out as a fight and escalated from there,” Carrie said, “which would explain the skin beneath Donna’s nails.”

Ellie pictured Donna Blank pleading for another chance to be part of her father’s second family. She imagined Donna bullying Carrie’s friend to drop out of a life-changing competition. She tried to force her mind to leap to the idea of the friend’s boyfriend shooting Donna, and then staging her body to resemble a victim of Anthony Amaro.

She couldn’t make the leap. Ellie had seen the Utica Police Department’s records. They had managed to bungle a lot, but she couldn’t imagine some random hothead discovering insider knowledge about the case.

But Carrie was competing with
two
friends.

“You mentioned a second friend, with a drug problem?” Ellie asked.

Carrie nodded. “Bill Sullivan. He’s the lieutenant governor now.”

“And he was in rehab?”

She nodded again. “Back then, I didn’t realize how bad it was. I mean, I’d seen him drink to the point of blacking out, and he was smoking weed. But that was nothing at our high school. Then when he went to rehab after graduation, I just assumed he was holding the bar higher for himself since his dad was a cop. But he’s been remarkably open about the truth.”

“Which is what exactly?” Ellie had a vague recollection of Bill Sullivan’s backstory but couldn’t remember the details.

“I think the way he put it was ‘human garbage can.’ He was using anything he could get his hands on. Heroin, speed. Meth was brand-new. I think the main problem was crack. But look at him now.”

Something about the timeline didn’t sound right. If Bill was too addicted to compete for a scholarship, why did he postpone counseling until after graduation? And how many kids skipped college for rehab when their own friends hadn’t even noticed a problem?

“This may sound like an odd question,” Ellie said, “but are you sure he actually went to rehab?”

“You mean, did he pull a walkout like my sister? No. I visited him, so I know for a fact he went.”

“Where did he go?”

“Same place I wanted Donna to go. Cedar Ridge. A few months of inpatient did the trick.”

E
llie was mentally replaying the conversation with Carrie Blank as they made their way to the hospital exit. The sound of Rogan’s muttering pulled her from her thoughts. “Five victims,” he was saying to himself.

“Now who sounds like Rainman?”

“That’s what Amaro told his pedantic cellmate, Robert Harris—that he was afraid that the other prisoners would figure out he killed
all five victims
.”

Ellie opened her mouth to speak, then paused as she realized his point. By the time Amaro was housed with Harris, he had already been charged with killing Deborah Garner in the city, and five bodies had been found in Conkling Park. Harris had insisted that he was a stickler for wording. If Amaro had feared that the other inmates would realize he’d killed the local women in addition to Garner, he would have referred to all
six
victims.

“It’s just like Carrie said: Donna was different,” Rogan said, hitting his clicker to unlock the car doors. “If she was killed because of whatever plan she had to pay Carrie back, that would leave only five total victims, including Deborah Garner. We know Donna Blank had a drug problem, and that Utica’s a small town. Wouldn’t take a lot for her to find out Will Sullivan’s kid was a fellow addict.”

Ellie hopped in the passenger seat, pulled up a contact on her phone, and hit enter. Michael Ma picked up his line in the crime lab.

“M and M, it’s Ellie Hatcher.”

“Hey, Ellie Belly. Where are my cookies?” As far as Ellie could tell, Michael Ma had three favorite things: his work, nicknames, and the peanut-butter cookies he thought Ellie made for him from scratch as a token of appreciation when he bent over backwards for her in the crime lab. Ellie Belly might lose her favored-cop status if M and M ever found out that her “homemade” Nutter Butters came from Bouchon Bakery.

“That plastic coffee stirrer I brought you the other night? Do you still have it?” Ellie was now glad she’d forgotten to cancel the request.

“Is that how we’re playing now? You used to show up, treats in hand, before you even asked for something. Now I need to produce results before I get . . .
yummy cookies
?”

His Cookie Monster impersonation wasn’t too shabby. “A double batch, Mike, I promise. This is important.”

“Yeah, I’m working on it. Compare coffee stirrer against Donna Blank fingernail scrapings. It’s DNA, from a fucking swizzle stick. I’m a miracle worker, but miracles take time.”

“When?”

He let out a pained whine. “Tomorrow. I can get back to you tomorrow.”

“What time?”

“I remember when I used to like you. Morning. Okay?”

“As in barely before noon, or
real
morning?”

“Morning!”

Ellie had a lot of practice detecting when people were about to hang up on her. She yelled “
Wait
” to keep him on the line. “With the DNA, if it’s not a true match—you can still tell if it’s a family member, right?”

“Don’t they teach biology in Kansas? Of course.”

“Be sure to check that too, okay? And thanks, M and M. Extra cookies, and love, and appreciation, and world peace, and
namaste
, and you are so awesome.”

“You can stop now. We’re good.”

Rogan started the engine as she hung up. “God help me,” he said, “but I think I actually followed that entire conversation. Do I understand correctly that you brought home one of Will Sullivan’s gnawed-on, nasty coffee stirrers as a souvenir?”

“I was having a particularly dubious moment.”

“And you didn’t bother to tell your partner you were comparing his DNA against the Donna Blank samples?”

“You would have tried to stop me,” she said.

“Because you were wrong about him.”

“Maybe so, but we could be right about his son.”

He pulled away from the curb. “Where am I dropping you?” Rogan asked. “Back at your restaurant, or home?”

Ellie briefly pictured herself sprawled on the sofa in her old apartment on Thirty-eighth Street. “Home.”

“You mean the new place.”

“Of course. Why would you ask that? That’s where I live. Home.”

“No reason.” Sometimes it scared her how well Rogan could read her.