Page 100 of NYPD Red 7: The Murder Sorority

“Don’t ask me how Jenson has managed to stay around all these years,” Cates said. “He’s like a mistake that nobody wants to own up to. As for Rich, he would have been there, but he’s busy trying to track down that JAG lawyer Sheffield talked about in the video. And speaking of lawyers, the commissioner of legal hit the nail right on the head.”

“That we need more evidence before we can charge Rollins?”

“Well, that, yes,” Cates said, “but Theresa said out loud what I was thinking. I can’t picture Megan Rollins, with her perfect hair, makeup, andmade-for-televisionsmile, on a rooftop in a UPS uniform, pulling the trigger on a .50-caland scattering Warren Hellman’s trachea all over Centre Street.”

“I can picture her,” Kylie said. “In fact, if you look at the surveillance videos, the person getting into that UPS truck was right at Megan’s height. I know it doesn’t prove anything, but it doesn’t eliminate her. Also, Megan was her predictable overbearing self at the funeral home right before Winstanley was shot. And yet, she was nowhere to be seen on the day the Hellman jury announced a verdict in the most publicized trial in this city in years.”

“Circumstantial,” Cates said. “The ADA would wave you out of her office.”

“How about Megan’s thumbprint etched in gunpowder on her business card?” Kylie said. “Fingerprints don’t lie.”

“But they don’t always hold up in court,” Cates responded. “Which brings us back to the chief of Ds’ burning question. Can we get what we need to charge her?”

“No problem,” Kylie said, as cocksure now as she was when the chief asked us.

“How?” Cates said. “I’m all ears.”

So was I.

“Simple,” Kylie said, taking the ramp to the FDR Drive at the posted speed limit like alaw-abidingcitizen instead of her usual NASCAR driver racing for the checkered flag. “We give Megan what she wants.”

“And what would that be?” Cates said.

“She’s been fanning thefreedom-of-the-press flames and pressuring the PC and the mayor to find out what we know about the murders that she may well have committed. So let’s give it to her. Plant information that Red is closing in on some photographer who took out a material witness at a trial in Canada. No names, minimal details. Then we see what she does with it. We’re up on Wayman Tate’s phone. If she calls him, we’ve got her.”

“It’s a good thought, but it won’t work,” Cates said. “She won’t buy it. She doesn’t trust cops, and she especially doesn’t trust you and Zach.”

“I agree. Which means she’s got to hear it from someone shedoestrust,” Kylie said.

“Like who?” Cates said.

“Theo.”

“Hell, no!” I snapped.

“I agree with Zach,” Cates said.

“Hear me out, Cap,” Kylie said. “Don’t we ask sex crime victims to contact their abuser, and then we monitor the phone call? I’ve seen it work several times where women call their attacker, engage him in a dialogue, and get him to make an admission.”

“Hold on,” I said. “It’s one thing to enlist an adult victim to call the guy whodate-rapedher. But you’re talking about asking a boy to goone-on-onewith a professional assassin.”

“Theo is not a boy,” Kylie said. “He’s over eighteen, incredibly smart, deceptively charming, and he’s the only person on the planet that Meganwantsto talk to. She knows he has information, and I’m willing to bet she’ll jump at the chance to get it out of him. Zach, I’m not suggesting he meet her for lunch at Gerri’s Diner. I’m talking about one phone call that we supervise. Theo plants the seed, and we take it from there.”

“Kylie has a point,” Cates said. “Megan gave Theo her card. All he has to do is reach out to her and let her think she’s pumping the information out of him. It could work, because as cautious as Megan Rollins is, she’s not going to think of Theo as a threat. She’ll see him as a kid.”

A kid, I thought.Very possiblymine.

CHAPTER 67

By the time Kylieand I laid out the scenario for the phone call, it was five thirty.

“Megan goes on the air at six,” I said. “And most nights, she stays at the studio till after the eleven o’clock broadcast.”

“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Kylie said. “But we won’t prep Theo till the last minute. The kid is a master of overthink.”

The next morning, we were back at Gerri’s Diner, touching base with Edlund and McDaniel.

“We’re still not picking up a signal from Vincent Ackerman’s cell,” McDaniel said. “It could mean he knows we’re onto him, but it’s more likely that his girlfriend is tired of having to share him with his sister and she told him to turn off his phone or their romantic little getaway won’t be as romantic as he planned.”

---