All Day and a Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

resources of the criminal justice system. “Any other commonalities?”
    “Certainly not in appearance,” Max said. “The victims ranged in age from twenty-five to forty-three. Heights from five-one to five-seven. Some were thin, some were heavy. All white, but complexions and hair colors were all over the map. All shot, but all with different guns.”
    “Meaning he was smart enough to dump the weapon with each kill,” she said. “Cheaper to buy replacement guns on the street than risk getting nailed with ballistics evidence.”
    Max continued his summary. “Same postmortem injuries. There was geography, of course: the five victims killed before Deborah Garner were found in Roscoe Conkling Park. And we’re talking about a relatively tight time frame. Six women killed within seven years.”
    Ellie was realizing the enormity of the task awaiting them. Two presumably competent homicide detectives had been working on the Helen Brunswick case for weeks without an arrest. The other six cases were ancient—the original investigators most likely retired or dead by now—and involved victims at the fringe of society, where witnesses tended to be few and forgetful. “You haven’t mentioned DNA,” she said.
    Max shook his head. “No DNA. At least, not at the time. Is there anything to be found today? We don’t know, but we’ve got NYPD looking at the Garner evidence and the state crime lab analyzing the Utica cases.”
    “Isn’t that a little premature?” Rogan asked.
    “It was Martin’s call.” Martin Overton was the elected district attorney. There were four levels of managers between him and Max. Max’s comment about this being the most important case of his career was taking on new meaning.
    Rogan still hadn’t sat down. Now he stepped away from the table, leaned against the conference room door, and crossed his arms. “Did your boss stop and think about what you’re supposed to do if the labs actually find something new?”
    “Martin has made it very clear that this needs to be a transparent process. Any exculpatory evidence will get turned over to the defendant.”
    “He’s worrying about his next election,” Rogan muttered. “The pendulum has officially swung.”
    When Ellie first put on a uniform, city residents would regularly flash her a thumbs-up. Crime was down, the streets felt safer, and zero-tolerance policing was all the rage. Now, after years of decreasing crime and increased security, voters had revolted against any elected official who publicly supported the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices. They kicked out the long-serving Brooklyn DA for failing to protect defendants’ rights. And now Martin Overton appeared to be acting more like Anthony Amaro’s defense attorney than a prosecutor.
    Ellie wanted to hit rewind and tell Max he should know better than to parrot his boss’s talking points to them. Instead, she tried to translate Rogan’s comment. “Does Martin understand the problem of jumping straight to the DNA?”
    Rogan still looked like he was trying to press his body through the closed door and escape unnoticed. “These were working girls, Donovan. The science is so good now that the lab is bound to find something that was undetectable all those years ago. Just because some john leaves behind a drop of saliva, that doesn’t exonerate Amaro.”
    “No, but our office strongly believes that something like that—in combination with this letter—would need to be looked at closely.”
    “Right, because of a transparent process.” Rogan stepped forward, reached into the open cardboard box, and removed a file folder. He flipped it open on the table and stopped on a color photograph of a woman’s corpse. Her face was gray-white and bloated, her pale, dry lips starting to droop. “This woman had a name: Deborah Garner.” He kept flipping and landed on an image of Deborah Garner’s partially nude body splayed on dirt. All four of her limbs had multiple fractures, leaving them