All Day and a Night (30 page)

“Janet wasn’t that bad. Like I told that DA who called, Tony always protected me.”

“But Tony was always getting in trouble,” Ellie said. “And he wouldn’t listen to Janet. Then she called CPS, asking to give Tony back to the state.”

“She overreacted. She was just mad because she loved that stupid doll collection so much. She caught me playing with three of the dolls one time, and held my elbow against a hot burner while she counted to three, one for each doll. Told me if I did it again, next time would be my face.”

Rogan made a
tsk
sound. “I thought you said she wasn’t that bad.”

She shrugged. “I never touched the dolls again.”

According to the report, Janet wanted Amaro removed from her care because he was, in her words, “a sicko.” When a social worker asked the nature of the problem, Janet said the only way she could get control over Amaro when he was misbehaving was to grab his favorite child in the house, fourteen-year-old Debi, and threaten to break her limbs if he didn’t behave. “Now that little sicko’s obsessed with the idea,” the foster mother complained. “It’s not right.”

“You read the whole report?” Ellie asked Debi.

She nodded.

“Janet told CPS that she noticed her dolls disappearing, one by one. She finally found them hidden under Tony’s bed. He had broken all their arms and legs. Some of them were posed in what she called perverted positions, and she found drawings depicting similar images of women. When she confronted him about the dolls, he told her it was just a matter of time before he did the same to her.”

“It was just talk.”

“You never noticed any kind of fascination he may have had with hurting women in that specific way?” Ellie asked. “Maybe perhaps a sexual fascination?”

“Yuck, I don’t think of him that way. He’s like my brother.”

Ellie looked at Rogan. Just as Debi hadn’t denied to Max on the phone that Amaro was probably guilty, she wasn’t denying her former foster mother’s allegations about the young Amaro.

“You didn’t think this doll episode was relevant back when Tony was first suspected of killing those women?” Rogan asked.

“I’m not saying anything against Tony. You know he’s the only kid from all those years in all those homes that I’m still in touch with? And he’d say the same for me. What’s that tell you?”

“I think it tells us you’re not saying anything against Tony,” Ellie said.

Debi nodded once, her point made.

Ellie tried a different angle. “When Tony was arrested after Deborah Garner was killed, he told the detective he had come to the city to visit someone he knew from foster care. That was you?”

“Damn straight. That’s how close we are. No one I know from Utica would come here like that. Only Tony. He loves me.”

“What kind of love?” Ellie asked.

“I think you have a sick kind of mind. You come here with one little report from CPS. Do you know the big picture? Do you know why Tony was in foster care in the first place?”

They said nothing.

“Tony broke the shower rod in the bathroom. His mother heard the sound, found him in there, and gave him such a beating that she broke his arm.” Another broken limb in Amaro’s background. “She didn’t seem to care that the shower rod broke because Tony tried to hang himself from it as a twelve-year-old. So when I say Janet wasn’t so bad, it’s because that’s the kind of parents me and Tony had. My whole life, everyone I ever met used me. Never Tony, though. We found family with each other at Janet’s, and then we all got broken up to different homes. His love for me is pure, and you’re trying to make it into something sick.”

“And what about Deborah Garner? Wasn’t Tony using her? There was nothing pure about picking up a prostitute.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Tony told me he only gave that girl a ride because she was stranded at that rest stop and needed to get to the city. He has no idea who went and killed her. That’s it. Do what you want with your grand jury. I’ll be there with bells on if you make me, but I’m done for now.”

T
hey reported back to Max from the car, using Ellie’s cell as a speaker phone.

“Paydirt,” Rogan said. “She didn’t contest a word of the CPS report. Plus, she added the fact that Amaro’s mother broke his arm as a child. And get this: she placed Deborah Garner inside Amaro’s car. She was trying to defend him, saying he was only giving her a ride. No way Amaro can try to pin that on Buck Majors.”

While Ellie had given Max an edited version of her powwow with Buck Majors the previous night, Rogan had gotten every detail.

“That’s good,” Max said. “Very good. It doesn’t change the plan for now, though. Utica’s already got a BOLO out on Amaro. And they still need to pick up Joseph Flaherty. I’m keeping the affidavits for Flaherty’s arrest warrant simple, focusing solely on the murder of Helen Brunswick.” They had Brunswick’s complaint about Flaherty as a teenager; his presence near her apartment, armed with a gun, just hours before she was shot to death; and a lifetime of his interactions with law enforcement to demonstrate his tendency to fixate on perceived grievances. It was enough to do the job.

Nothing to do now but wait.

T
he badge-and-gun crowd was pulling out of Plug Uglies at shift change, soon to be replaced by young bridge-and-tunnel types fresh from their first city jobs, grabbing a beer before heading back to Long Island. Jess had prepped the empty barstool next to him with a Johnnie Walker Black in front of it. It had been a while since they’d met for drinks, just the two of them. This used to be her bar of choice, located conveniently between the precinct and her apartment. Now that the apartment was his, it worked well for both of them.

He kicked back the stool with one foot. “Welcome home. Did you give Utica the finger for me when you left?”

“It wasn’t that bad, Jess. People seemed nice.”

“Didn’t you say something about two different limb-breaking murderers being on the loose there? Seems like an awfully high madman-to-normal ratio for my tastes.”

She looked at her watch. Sixty-seven minutes since the judge signed the warrant for Joseph Flaherty’s arrest. “With any luck, we’ll soon be down to one madman on the loose.”

She took a tiny sip of her drink.

“Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my lush of a sister?”

“Sorry. I want to be clearheaded if we catch a break.”

“Forty minutes late, plus you’re not drinking? Might have to trade you in. Besides, you’re more clearheaded on a liter of whisky than most of the stone-cold-sober detectives we knew growing up.”

“Not the bar I’m aiming for, Jess. How’s Mona the mama bear?”

“Slightly less freaked. Told her I’d personally lie down on the West Side Highway if you did anything to put her in jeopardy.”

“It won’t be necessary. I hope I didn’t do anything to mess up your rep at the Rump Roast.”

“Please, little sister. You got skills, but nothing close to that power.”

She looked at her watch again. Sixty-nine minutes since the warrant was signed.

“I’m the one who should be looking at my watch. Shift starts in forty. That’s why you were supposed to be here one whole drink ago.”

“I’m sorry. I should’ve called. And I’m still getting used to you being a responsible person with a job and a schedule and everything.” She leaned over and bumped him with her shoulder.

“To be truthful, your being late makes it a little easier to ask if you had a chance to call Mom today.”

“Dammit. I keep forgetting.” Freud would probably see a self-serving reason for this particular memory lapse. Ellie’s mother had a way of treating every missed call as (a) a reason to fear her daughter was dead, (b) proof that her daughter didn’t love her, or, (c) most curiously, both of the above.

“I think she knows,” he said. “She calls the apartment. I let it ring, like you told me. But she’s Mom, so a message isn’t enough. She’s got to hit redial and redial and redial. Last week, I unplugged the phone, and she called 911 to have someone check the apartment because the machine wasn’t picking up, which had to mean that someone her detective daughter arrested broke into the apartment and was in the process of torturing her. So instead, last night, I answered.”

“You didn’t tell her I moved, did you?”

“No, but despite all appearances, she’s not that stupid. You can’t spend nineteen years with Dad and not be a tad wily.”

“Message received. I’ll call her.”

He downed the rest of his beer and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Off to protect the shaking boobies from the animals. God’s work, you know.”

Ellie had every intention of talking to her mother, but another mother’s phone call interrupted her plans. It was Rosemary Blank. “You need to come to the hospital. Right now.”

E
llie spotted a petite, older Asian woman pacing in front of the nurses’ station on Carrie’s floor. She wore her hair in a straight, salt-and-pepper bob clipped directly at her chin, and the kind of dress that moms of a certain type all seemed to own—made of black jersey that could be squished into a ball in the corner of a suitcase and spring back to life the following day. Ellie had purchased a similar item for her own mother two Christmases ago, only to receive it in the mail the following February with a note saying it was too “urban” for Wichita.

“Are you Mrs. Blank, by any chance?” Ellie asked.

“What are you doing to catch the person who did this?” the woman demanded.

Apparently Ellie had found Carrie’s mother. “Is your daughter awake?” All Rosemary would say on the phone was that she wanted Ellie to come to the hospital as soon as possible.

“No, and I have no guarantee she ever will be.”

“Mrs. Blank, you gave me the impression there was an emergency here.”

“Of course there is. My daughter is in a coma. Or a ‘coma-like state,’ as it was explained to me, which sounds exactly like a coma. And this vicious assault happened to occur after she worked on one—exactly one—murder case, for one week in her entire legal career. Clearly there is a connection, and yet no one has been arrested, and I arrive at the hospital to find absolutely no one looking after Carrie.”

She was tempted to lecture the woman about misleading a police officer, but she realized she would want someone to be as dedicated to her.

“This is a well-staffed hospital, Mrs. Blank, with its own security. They know to monitor her visitors—no one without your permission, in fact—and to call us if there is any concern whatsoever.” Ellie could see an argument forming behind Mrs. Blank’s eyes. “We’ve got an entire team of officers looking for Anthony Amaro. And the doctors here are caring for your daughter. But I understand it won’t be enough until Carrie’s healthy and we punish the person who did this to her.”

The fight fell from her face.

“Were you close to her sister, Donna, at all?” Ellie asked. How difficult for one family to lose two daughters to violence.

“Half sister,” she quickly corrected. “No, I would not call the two of us close, but she was my husband’s daughter, and Carrie’s only sibling. Blood is blood, but that girl was . . . troubled.”

“Did Carrie say anything about a confrontation with Amaro? How did he handle the news that she was quitting as his defense lawyer?”

“She told me she found his presence unsettling, but, no, she didn’t mention any kind of confrontation. I got the impression she resigned by calling Linda Moreland, not Amaro himself. If anything was weighing on her, it was the past. Coming home can be hard on her. She has a lot of guilt about being the only one of her friends to have gotten out of Red View.”

“The lieutenant governor was at her bedside when I was here earlier. Seems like a success story to me.”

“Exactly, which is what I tell Carrie all the time. It goes back to this scholarship they all wanted. In hindsight, it was a cruel kind of gift—selecting one child to win a pot of gold, while the rest were left scrambling for coins.” Ellie remembered reading about the award when she first looked up Carrie on the Internet. “Carrie never expected to get it, but two of her friends—including Bill Sullivan—pulled out of the running. Carrie got it, and then lost it. She always says she won’t consider herself a success until a news search for her name turns up more information about her legal career than stories about that scholarship and what she saw as her failure to keep it.”

Ellie remembered the sight of Bill, holding Carrie’s hand, ready to say something he’d been wanting to tell her for years. Had he loved her so much, even in high school, that he held back so she could have the scholarship instead? It was a sweet story—one that Ellie hoped would have a happy ending—but had nothing to do with Anthony Amaro.

“Do you know if your daughter believed Amaro was guilty? Is that why she quit?”

“She didn’t seem to know what to believe. She took the job initially because Linda Moreland said Amaro was innocent. But then she started having doubts, and it became clear to her that Linda was using her. No one uses my daughter.”

Rosemary Blank was clearly a force to be reckoned with.

“Do you think it’s possible she might have been willing to violate attorney-client privilege to make sure the truth got out?”

“You mean revealing things she found out while she was his lawyer? Do you think that’s why someone hurt her? Was it Amaro?”

“It’s just a theory at this point. We did receive some information about Amaro from an anonymous source, but until your daughter’s conscious, we don’t know if it was her.”

“That’s—oh, I really don’t think so. My daughter worked so hard to become a lawyer. She takes her ethics
very
seriously. If you knew her, you’d understand that she takes
everything
very seriously. I think it was difficult enough for her to quit when she felt a conflict between legal ethics and her personal ones. Leaking information? That would eat away at someone as principled as Carrie. No, I can’t picture that.”

As Ellie left the hospital, she thought about the way her own mother described her children. In Roberta Hatcher’s eyes, Jess was a successful rock star, the frontman for Dog Park, just one catchy single away from landing the cover of
Rolling Stone
. And Ellie was a doting daughter and sister, the perfect combination of beauty and smarts, following in her father’s footsteps—for now, until she met the right man and settled down to have a family. So what if Rosemary Blank didn’t believe her daughter would violate the rules of professional ethics?