Page 26 of The Writer

“They don’t know.”

“Could be transfer from someone he sat next to on the subway. Someone in a wool coat.”

“Maybe.”

“Hoffman will say it’s transfer from the real killer.”

“Maybe.” Cordova leans back, closes his eyes again. Goes quiet.

Declan has worked with the man long enough to know what’s going on in his head. “You don’t think she did this, do you?”

He doesn’t open his eyes. “I think we need to consider that possibility. Maybe she found him, just like she said.”

“Yeah, she’s as innocent as O.J.”

“Maybe we missed something.”

Declan steps over to his desk and shuffles through the mess on top. He finds the blueprints of the Beresford and tosses them in front of Cordova. “We spent, what? Two hours going over these with Saffi? Three main lobbies at ground level, all leading to separate sections of the building. It’s not really one building, it’s more like three buildings with zero access to each other. To get to the Morrow apartment, you have to go through the entrance on Central Park West and take the main elevator. There’s also one service elevator for that part of the building.That’s it. Doorman and cameras put only Denise Morrow there. Even if someone managed to get in or out from the terrace, like she claimed, they’d have to pass through the Central Park West entrance or scale the building from the outside. That’s fucking crazy, but we checked it anyway because, contrary to what Hoffman would like everyone to believe, we’re fucking thorough. Traffic cams on Central Park West give us full visual of the exterior. There’s no Spider-Man on the footage. No nobody. Hoffman can claim we haven’t looked for other suspects all he wants, but the truth iswe have lookedand there are none. Maybe we releasethatto the press.”

“We’re not releasinganythingto the press. That’s what Hoffman wants. Give a guy like that the chance to try a case in the court of public opinion, and he’ll run over us. There’s no rules there, only sensationalism.”

Cordova’s mobile rings. It’s Roy Harrison, IAU. “Let it go to voicemail,” Declan says.

“He’ll just come down here.”

“He needs the exercise. What does he want, anyway? You never told me why he called you at the Morrows’.”

“It was nothing.”

“It wassomething. You looked pissed.”

“He was just fishing on Maggie Marshall. Same old, same old.”

“Why call you at the Morrow place?”

Cordova purses his lips, says nothing.

“Jarod… what’d he say?”

With a sigh, Cordova tells him. “He said, ‘What are the odds of your partner planting evidence on this one?’”

Cordova has barely gotten the sentence out when Harrisonsends a text: A picture of a condom wrapper. The same kind they found on David Morrow. He shows it to Declan.

“What a dick.”

“Yeah.” Leaning forward, Cordova loads up the security footage from the Beresford. “I’m going over this again. If Hoffman is right about anything, it’s that we’ve got holes. We missed something.” He nods at Declan’s computer on the desk facing his. “IT sent over everything they could pull from David Morrow’s phone. Why don’t you try and track down his girlfriend? Emails. Texts. Call logs. There’s got to be something there.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

DECLAN IS ON his third cup of crappy coffee and nursing the beginnings of one hell of a headache when he finally sits back in his chair and rubs his tired eyes. “This guy was either a Boy Scout or he had a burner. I’ve got nothing useful. His texts with Denise are the usual—‘On my way home,’ ‘Working late,’ ‘Heading out,’ ‘Need me to pick something up?’ He had a handful of other doctors he talked to, but it was all about patients. Emails are mainly from medical journals. Nothing remotely romantic or confrontational. His only friends appeared to be Geller Hoffman and a guy called Jeffery Varano. According to the website for Mercy, Varano runs the cardiology department. They had a weekly poker game on Wednesdays. Aside from that, David Morrow didn’t have much of a social life. GPS datahad him moving between the hospital and his apartment, not much more. If he was having an affair, he was smart enough to leave his phone behind so his movements wouldn’t be tracked.” When Cordova doesn’t say anything, Declan asks, “Hey, you still with me?”

Cordova is lost in his screen, a frown on his face.

“Jarod?”

When Cordova speaks, his voice is soft, like he’s thinking aloud, working through some problem. “The blood on Denise Morrow only matched the blood on the knife you found next to her. CSU found no trace of it anywhere else in the apartment. That means it had to be on her when she got home, right? She had to pick it up somewhere else.”

“Unless the lab screwed up.”

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