All Day and a Night (2 page)

Ellie played the odds, but only when she knew the odds were in her favor. And she damn sure was
not
going to lose today’s bet against her partner, J. J. Rogan.

They were in an interrogation room of the homicide squad of the 13th Precinct. Seated at the small aluminum table was a woman named Laura Bendel, who had dialed 9-1-1 three hours ago, screaming for an ambulance to save her husband. Ellie and Rogan had already listened to the recording of the call:

        
9-1-1. What’s your emergency
?

        
Oh my God. The blood. So much blood. Please, help
.

        
Someone is hurt
?

        
Seth. My husband. Please, oh my God. I need help
.

        
Why is your husband bleeding, ma’am
?

        
He’s cut. In the . . . stomach, I think. Oh my God. I—I think I stabbed him
.

The dispatcher did her job, textbook style. The name. The address. Keeping Laura on the phone, as calm as possible, until officers arrived.

Just as the dispatcher’s conversation was textbook, so was the scene. A spilled Macallan bottle next to the upturned coffee table. Broken lamp. A button from Laura’s torn designer blouse on the hallway runner leading to the threshold of the kitchen. The wood knife block knocked to the floor, the light-gray marble now smeared with Seth Bendel’s blood, thanks to the ten-inch gourmet chef’s blade protruding from his gut.

The responding officers found Laura weeping over her husband’s dead body, her hand still holding the phone she’d used to call for help. “I didn’t mean to. I’m so sorry, Seth. I’m so sorry. I love you. I love you.” It took them fifteen minutes to calm her down enough to tell the story: he was beating her once again, and she only meant to scare him. He charged at her—hard. The knife was in her hand. Now he was dead, and she was heartbroken.

Rogan was buying the tale. Ellie wasn’t. They had a hundred bucks riding on it.

Right now, Rogan’s was looking like the stronger hand. A civilian aide had just entered the interrogation room to deliver four pages of medical records from Bellevue Hospital.

According to the records, Laura showed up at the emergency room with a bloody nose two months earlier, claiming that she had “
walked into a door
”—quotation marks courtesy of the attending physician, whose notes indicated his skepticism:
Followed suspected-DV protocol
. Ellie knew that if a doctor believed that domestic violence was the true cause of injury, the doctor would ask the patient directly and encourage her to report it, but would call the police independently only in the face of actual evidence of a crime. That evidence was lacking in Laura’s case, so, once the doctor confirmed that Laura’s nose wasn’t broken, he sent her on her way with an ice pack, antibiotic ointment, and a pamphlet about domestic violence.

“What is that?” Laura asked, eyeing the documents in Rogan’s hands. “Is that about me?” The two first fingers of her right hand continued to stroke the front of her throat, still red from the black Armani belt she claimed Seth had used to choke her before she wrestled free and grabbed the knife. Even after hours of hysterical crying, she was still gorgeous. Long, shiny blond hair. Clear, porcelain skin. Bright green eyes. High cheekbones. A knockout by any measure.

Ellie saw the sparkle in Rogan’s eye. He was counting his hundred bucks already. Not that he needed the money, but Ellie’s partner was almost as competitive as Ellie. Almost. “We got the medical records from Bellevue for last February’s bloody nose. Why didn’t you tell the doctor that it was your husband who punched you?”

The question might have sounded hostile to a casual observer, but Ellie knew Rogan was giving the woman a chance to recite the obvious explanation. Ellie could barely suppress an eye roll as she listened to Laura’s version, once again textbook. She covered for her husband for all the same reasons most women covered for their abusive lovers: she was afraid of him, and for him, and because she loved him, when he wasn’t hitting her.

Ellie was still reading the emergency physician’s notes. Rogan had seen what he’d wanted to see, and now she was processing the rest. She pulled her cell phone from her jacket pocket and pretended to see a text message on the screen. “Sorry,” she said. “Gotta deal with this.”

She moved to the corner of the interrogation room and pulled up Facebook. Sure enough, like seemingly every other thirty-two-year-old man, Seth Bendel had a profile. Better yet, he was an active poster and hadn’t bothered with privacy settings. She scrolled down the page to last February’s activities. Bingo.

Y
our emergency-room visit was on February 14th,” Ellie said, tucking her phone back into her pocket.

“Was it?” Laura asked. “I couldn’t remember the exact date.”

“That’s Valentine’s Day. Did you and Seth do anything to celebrate?”

She gave a sad smile. “We used to, when we first met. But once we were married, we had an anniversary to celebrate instead. Seth always says Valentine’s Day is more of a Hallmark-card holiday for people who don’t have the real thing. Amateur night.”

Rogan’s eyes had moved to Ellie’s jacket pocket. He knew something was up.

“The ER doc who treated you made a note: he saw you snap a cell-phone picture of your injured face before he cleaned you up.” Ellie’s best guess was that the doctor added the notation to aid the prosecution in the event Laura subsequently changed her mind and decided to press charges.

“I thought I might need it someday. Plus it was just something to remember. I take pictures of my food, too.” Laura laughed nervously at her own self-deprecating comment.

“Or you wanted to be able to show Seth the lengths to which you’d go to ensure you had power over him. That you would tell people he was beating you. That you had evidence. That you would ruin him.”

“I don’t understand,” Laura said, complete with a confused head shake.

“I would have been pissed too if my husband spent Valentine’s Day drinking at the Soho Grand with all his unmarried work buddies.” She placed her cell phone on the interrogation room table in front of Laura. Rogan craned his neck, trying to get a better view of the screen. From his vantage point, he would only be able to see that it was a Facebook profile, but that would be enough for him to figure out that Ellie had found a flaw in Laura’s story.

“Right here, Laura.” Ellie pointed to the relevant post. “A ‘check-in’ at the Soho Grand bar on February 14th at 11:10 p.m. He didn’t even bother covering his tracks. Did he tell you he got stuck at work?
Sorry to miss Valentine’s Day, babe, I’ll make up for it?
Or was he the type who didn’t even bother to call? You just sat there in your living room—maybe even in a new dress—wondering where he was and why he didn’t pick up his cell or answer your texts. Then you checked his Facebook page. Look, one of his buddies was even nice enough to tag everyone so you could see whose company your husband chose over yours.”

“The time on the hospital report must be wrong,” Laura said. “He came home drunk. Picked a stupid fight, like always. Then he punched me.”

“Speaking of his drinking, I notice from all these many pictures your husband posted, he seemed to favor martinis.”

“What about it? I don’t know why you’re treating me this way,” Laura protested. “You told me I was here voluntarily. That I’m not under arrest. And now—”

Ellie looked at Rogan and could tell he knew it was over. “I’m trying to give you a chance to keep it that way, Laura. Just hear me out. See, he always seems to be drinking martinis in these photos. Meanwhile, this woman standing next to him in every single group shot on Valentine’s Day—according to the tag, her name is Megan Underhill, works with your husband at Morgan Stanley, went to Harvard,
very
attractive by the way. She appears to favor a dark drink served in a highball glass. Could even be Macallan, like the bottle I saw thrown on your living room rug tonight.”

“Sometimes he drank martinis, sometimes he had scotch.”

“Fine, let’s say your husband’s beverage choices ran the gamut. No big deal. But here’s the more curious thing. This very attractive woman named Megan? She’s not as attractive as you, if you ask me, but she’s different, especially in her coloring. Olive skin. Black hair. That dark-plum lipstick she’s wearing in these photographs wouldn’t do much for blondes like us, and yet it would appear to be a perfect match to the lipstick I noticed on the rim of a highball glass in your kitchen sink.”

“This is crazy,” Laura said. “I had a drink myself when Seth first started to pick at me tonight. Sometimes it would calm everything down if I would just tell him I needed to take the edge off—like I was taking the blame for whatever imaginary slight set him off. And maybe I wear the wrong colors for my skin. I didn’t realize this was a makeover session.” She looked to her ally Rogan for help.

“Fine, then,” Ellie said, crossing her arms. “Just tell me where I can find that lipstick in your apartment. Or your purse. Or, you know, wherever you keep your makeup.”

“Um, I don’t know where I put it.”

“Okay, so how about the name of the color? Or the brand? Anything you can give us to help clear up the confusion.”

Ellie flashed a glance at Rogan. He knew—when was he ever going to learn?—that she’d been dealing from a stacked deck all along. At her side, she rubbed her thumb and index finger together.
Pay up, partner
.

L
ess than an hour later, they had Laura’s confession on videotape. The woman was still blaming her husband for his own death, but instead of self-defense, she claimed that the discovery of the lipstick-stained highball glass had sent her into an uncontrollable rage. A battered woman might have had a shot getting past a prosecutor, but not a jealous wife. Laura would be indicted for murder, no question; a jury would handle the rest.

Rogan was handing Ellie a crisp new set of twenties from his wallet when John Shannon emerged from their lieutenant’s office to witness the transaction. “Looks like a nice wad of dough you guys got there.”

Ellie could already see where this was heading. The most effort Detective John Shannon ever put into the squad room was cracking wise. With money changing hands from Rogan to Ellie, his wee brain was probably overheating from the collision of potential barbs: Would it be the attractive female detective earning her money the old-fashioned way, or yet another comment about Rogan’s family wealth? Lucky for Ellie, more often than not Shannon had a way of opening the door for her go-to retort.

“You mean like those wads of dough you snarf down every morning at Krispy Kreme?” She tapped out a “bu-dump-
bump
” on her desktop. “I’m sorry, man. You just make lame cop-eating-doughnut jokes so . . . damn . . . easy.”

“When you got it, you flaunt it,” he said, patting his oversized belly. At least the guy had as good a sense of humor about himself as he expected in others. Ellie saw his gaze move to the squad room entrance. “You don’t see your man enough at home, Hatcher? He’s got to come see you in
our
house? I owe him a follow-up report, so I’m heading for the can till he’s out of here.”

The
he
in question was Ellie’s boyfriend, Max Donovan. She had only just gotten used to the word
boyfriend
to describe a relationship between two level-headed grown-ups when the nature of that relationship suddenly changed three months ago. Now they lived together. And at this minute, he was—as Shannon noted—coming to
her
house.

Max knew better than to greet her with a kiss, hug, or even a handshake in the squad room. Once he reached her desk, he simply said, “I must not have heard the music.”

“Music?” she asked.

“Of whatever ice cream truck had Shannon hauling ass.”

Ellie laughed, but Rogan shook his head in mock disappointment. “You two are morphing into the damn Wonder Twins, is what you’re doing. You realize that, don’t you?”

“The Wonder Twins didn’t actually morph into one,” she corrected. “They touched each other to activate their individual morphing powers. One could transform into water and its various states; the other changed into animals.
Form of
—” She held up her fist for Rogan’s return tap, but all she got was a death stare.

“Don’t
make
me join Shannon in the men’s room. You don’t want to know what that man is capable of in there.”

Max feigned a shudder. “So I need to run something past you in my official capacity as a representative of the New York District Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit.”

“Conviction integrity unit” was the preferred prosecutorial language for a specialized unit that reviewed what defense attorneys would call either “innocence cases” or “wrongful convictions.” Ellie knew that Max viewed his recent appointment to the unit as a sign that the elected district attorney, Martin Overton, was looking at him as a potential supervisor.

Max took a seat in the worn, wooden guest chair next to their face-to-face desks. “And before you get too worried, it’s not a claim from a defendant, and it’s not a claim about you. This is about a conviction that was locked and loaded eighteen years ago: a serial killer named Anthony Amaro. Problem is, we got an anonymous letter. The author claims that Amaro is innocent and that the same guy who killed six women twenty years ago is still at it.”

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out, not a letter, but an eight-by-ten photograph of a woman’s face. He handed it to Rogan, who gave it a quick look and passed it to Ellie. “And supposedly the latest victim is Helen Brunswick.”

H
elen Brunswick is looking up at the camera from beneath a “Life Is Good” baseball cap as she accepts a face lick from a chocolate Lab. Someone who had never seen the photograph before would have placed the woman in her mid-to-late thirties, but Ellie knew she was forty-five. Ellie also knew that the cap had been a Mother’s Day gift from the woman’s ten-year-old daughter, Jessica. The dog’s name was Gus. The photographer had been Jessica’s fourteen-year-old brother, Sam.