212: A Novel Part 35

What had Paul Bandon done to cause this scene?

Rogan looked surprised when he saw her approaching.

"I've been trying to call," she said. He glanced at the bedlam around him and then gave her a look that said he'd been too busy to answer the phone.

"So you know?" she asked.

"Know what?"

"It's him." She pointed at Bandon lest Rogan miss her point. "Tanya Abbott's mother was the Bandons' nanny in Baltimore. That's why he and Tanya were calling each other. He's known Tanya since she was ten years old."

She'd already known in her gut that she was right, but if she'd carried any doubts, the expression on Judge Bandon's face would have washed them away. He'd appeared panicked when she'd first spotted him with Rogan, but now his face fell in that same way she'd seen so many times when a suspect knew it was over. Paul Bandon knew that all of his lies-everything he'd been trying to hide for nearly two decades-had finally caught up to him.

Rogan, however, looked confused.

"This is about Alex. The son. He's on the roof."

Ellie looked to the sky and understood now why the crowd in the street had been gazing upward. She made out the dark outline of a body on the roof of Bandon's building. He appeared to be dangerously close to the edge.

"He saw me," Rogan said.

"Who?"

"Alex, the son. I was parked around the corner. Right after I got off the phone with you, he came up Park Avenue from the south and saw me. He did a double take, so I knew he recognized me from when we were here the other morning. I figured he'd say something to his father, so I stuck around in case to explain about the warrant. I was about to leave when I saw a woman pointing up at the roof. I called in a response team."

"You have to get him down," Bandon said. "You have to save my son."

Rogan resumed an authoritative tone. "Like I said, everyone here's gonna work to do that, Judge, but you need to help us help your son. We've got ESU here. They've got a guy who's trained to talk to ju-to people who are distraught like Alex." He had almost slipped and referred to the man's son as a jumper. "It might help us to know what he's doing up there."

Bandon's lips parted, but no words came out.

"I know what happened back in Baltimore with Tanya," she said. "Did Alex find out about it?"

He shook his head. "No. Well, I mean, yes. But he's known about it for years. So has Laura. Jesus-Laura. She's on a spa trip in the country. I need to call her."

Tanya Abbott had not been the one to post those messages on Campus Juice. And Paul Bandon had not been the one who tried to kill Tanya, taking her roommate's life in the process. It had been his son, Alex.

"You need to help us with information right now, Judge."

"Tanya and I, well, it sounds like you know. We had an affair a long time ago."

"An affair?" She pictured herself delivering a solid right hook to his temple. s.e.x with a thirteen-year-old girl did not const.i.tute an affair.

"Nothing happened until she was fourteen. And Tanya was very mature."

She let him continue. This wasn't the time to rid Bandon of the rationalizations he had created during sixteen long years of denial.

"When Tanya's mother found out about us, I told Laura everything. She stayed with me, and we agreed with Marion that we'd help her out financially."

"You bought her off."

"We came to an agreement. Our families were very close, Detective."

Obviously. She held her tongue. And that right hook.

"You were the one who got her out of that prost.i.tution arrest in Baltimore," she said.

His eyes were glued to the roof of the building, impatient to get past this conversation but realizing that any attempt to avoid it would only delay turning full attention to his son's safety.

"That and plenty of other problems back then. We set up a college tuition fund, but the money just sat there, since Tanya didn't have any inclination. And for the last several years, things had finally quieted down. I thought things were fine. And then she called me at the end of May, saying she was in trouble."

"After Robert Mancini was killed."

He nodded. "She said she'd witnessed a murder. I had no idea she was in New York, let alone what she was up to with NYU. I tried to get her to come forward, but she was convinced it wouldn't do any good. She never saw the man's face or heard any names, but she remembered hearing him say something to Mancini about blackmailing a cop. She didn't think she could trust the police, and she was terrified of losing this chance to start over."

"So when we filed a motion in the Mancini case, you grabbed it."

"It was a way to keep an eye on the case. Let her know if there were going to be any problems for her. I was trying to keep her at arm's length, but she kept calling to see if I'd heard anything about the case. Plus the account we set up for her wasn't enough. She called for money a few times, and I gave her a couple bucks here and there but knew it had to stop. Then she called Thursday, saying her roommate was being threatened on the Internet. She wanted to know if there was anything I could do. All that dysfunction, all that chaos, that I thought my family had finally put in the past when we moved, it's been one thing or another all summer."

"And your family knew about this?"

He nodded. "Not at first, but yes, eventually. Laura stopped by my chambers last month when I was on the phone with Tanya. She knew something was up, but even then, I minimized it as a onetime cry for help."

"But she didn't believe you," Ellie said. Like Robin Tucker, so suspicious after an ex-husband cheated on her, Laura Bandon was still broken by her husband's deception. She would be the kind of wife who snuck occasional peeks at her husband's phone. She would have seen the calls to and from a Baltimore cell number.

"She looked at my phone and saw all the calls. She was furious. We fought. She said I had to make it stop. Tanya was ruining our lives again. I didn't know what to say. I told her that Tanya was blackmailing me."

"Was she?"

"No, but I was afraid what she might do if I pushed her away."

"When did Alex find out Tanya was back?"

"The same day. It was the end of August. He overheard us fighting. I went to his room afterward and explained the whole thing."

"Along with the blackmail embellishment?"

He nodded. "But I never told him where Tanya lived or the alias she was using."

Bandon was reaching for some piece of evidence that might exonerate his son. If Alex had not known where to find Tanya, then he could not have killed her.

"Have you met with Tanya since you talked to Alex about her? Is it possible he saw you?"

She could tell that Bandon wanted to deny the possibility, but the flash of recognition in his face was unmistakable. "A couple times since then," he said. "I slipped out of the apartment to give her a little cash."

If Alex had trailed his father on one of his outings, he could have followed Tanya home from there. He'd had a full month to nail down her schedule and plant the postings on Campus Juice as a diversion.

"You told us how proud you were of your future Harvard law student. You knew he was disturbed enough to kill an innocent woman, and didn't get him some help?"

"I had no idea. He ran into the apartment fifteen minutes ago yelling that the cops knew and were after him and everything was over for our family."

"But Tanya must have told you."

"No. She called me from the hospital. She said the man who stabbed her wore a ski mask. She a.s.sumed that whoever killed Mancini had finally tracked her down. The next thing I know, her face is on the front page of the paper as a missing person and the two of you are at my door. I haven't heard from her since."

They'd been so consumed by Tanya's cell phone records that they had never bothered asking for a list of the calls from her hospital room.

"Now, please, do something. Alex is-oh Jesus, he's up there. He's going to jump."

Ellie heard a commotion near the barriers at Park Avenue and turned to find a cameraman jumping out of an NY1 van.

"Jesus," Rogan said. "How the h.e.l.l do they manage to get here before our negotiator? Hey," he yelled to the unis, "get them the h.e.l.l out of here."

"Wait," Ellie said, holding out her arm to stop him. "Let them film. But on three conditions: they have to announce the address; they have to say we've got a twenty-one-year-old male Columbia student on the roof; and they need to mention that detectives involved with the Tanya Abbott case are on the scene."

Rogan turned to deliver the instructions.

"What are you doing?" Bandon asked.

"I'm trying to save your son. Tanya doesn't know Alex is the one who hurt her. She still has childhood pictures of him. At least as of last night, she was in the city, and she's probably following the news."

"You think she'll come here," he said.

"She might. And if she does, she could be our best chance of talking your son off that roof."

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE.

10:20 P.M.

Tanya Abbott let the paperback drop to the floor beside the sofa. The mystery novel had kept her occupied for the entire day since she'd found it in the nightstand drawer, but now it was over. She wasn't ready to sleep yet either. She was stir-crazy.

She'd walked out of St. Vincent's on Friday night, knowing that once the hospital dug further for insurance information, they'd realize the real Heather Bradley was buried in Arizona. She thought about going to Penn Station and catching the first train down to Baltimore, but she knew herself too well. Once she was back home, she'd crash with Mark. Or Trent. Or maybe Saundra. Either way, she'd fall into her old ways. Drinking too much. Floating bad checks. Taking cheap dates. Feeling lucky not to get busted.

So instead she'd come here.

When she'd moved to New York last spring, it was supposed to be a truly fresh start. New name. New place. New age. None of the same bad habits. She had an entire summer before cla.s.ses started so she could adjust to her new life.

But the money hadn't been enough. Maybe it would have been fifteen years ago when the Bandons first set up the college fund. But college tuition had outpaced the interest on the account. The fund would barely cover tuition through graduation, not the cost to live in New York.

She thought about going to the Bandons for more, but knew it was no use. They'd always been good about helping her in a jam, but a few bucks here and there wasn't the same as a lump sum. The one and only lump sum had been paid with the college fund. She'd found that out for sure when the bank sold the house. Maybe Paul was willing to do more, but her mother had always made it clear that Laura's family was the one with the real money. Fair enough. She had, after all, made a deal.

And so Tanya had supplemented her income, the same way she always had. Craig's List made it easy to jump back in, even in a new city. It was still a new life, only with a bit of a transition from the old one.

She tried to look at the bright side: but for the dates, she wouldn't have had this apartment to hunker down in for the weekend. Granted, she also wouldn't have been at the 212 that night and therefore wouldn't need this place, but that was another issue.

She'd dated Henri twice a month since May, but still didn't really understand what his job was. An equity something-or-another. He lived with his wife and two children in Paris, but worked in his New York City office every Thursday and Friday and kept an apartment in h.e.l.l's Kitchen. Every other week, he delayed his return trip until Sat.u.r.day morning. His wife thought the extra nights were for business dinners.

They were not.

She'd shown up for their date on Friday as planned, making up an elaborate story about a horse-riding accident to explain the bandages. Henri had been sweet. Even tender. She did find a way of pleasing him, even under the circ.u.mstances.

And as the time came for him to leave for JFK in the morning, she'd complained from the shower that the bandages were slowing her down. He trusted her to close the door behind her. Instead, she'd helped herself to the extra key in the top drawer of the kitchen, leaving only for a quick dash to the Gristedes on Eighth Avenue-and for that one ill-fated attempt to find the blond detective on her own.

Only two more nights until Henri returned. She needed a plan.

When four months had pa.s.sed after that awful night at the 212, she thought she might have actually pulled through. No cops. No questions. Even after that maniac attacked her and Megan on Friday morning, she had wanted to believe it was whoever wrote those creepy Internet posts. It wasn't until the next day, when the news anchor said that the woman killed at the Royalton had led a double life as a call girl named Miranda, that she realized she was in danger.

She flipped on NY1 to catch the mid-hour headlines. She'd been watching incessantly for anything new-about her, about Megan's death, about any connection to last May's murder.

The correspondent was breathless with the pressing report: a twenty-one-year-old male Columbia student was on a building roof at Seventy-eighth and Park, reportedly threatening to jump. He did not know the source of the man's despondence, but detectives looking for the missing woman Tanya Abbott were apparently on the scene.

By the time he promised to keep viewers apprised of any new developments, Tanya was already out the door.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX.

10:55 P.M.

Wherever Tanya had been hiding, it could not have been far. Twenty-five minutes after NY1 went live, the woman for whom they'd been searching for three days stepped out of a cab on the corner of Park and Seventy-eighth Street.

Her eyes fell first on Paul Bandon and then directly on Ellie. She looked five pounds thinner and ten years older since they'd first seen her in the hospital. She looked her own age.

Ellie waved her past the blockade, and Tanya wasted no time on explanations.

"Where's Alex?"

Ellie pointed to the sky. "We've had a negotiator on the phone with him for forty minutes. Alex hung up at one point, saying he was going to jump, but I called him back and said you were on your way-that he should at least talk to you first."

"I don't understand. Why would he do something like this?"

"Because you came back into their lives."

"But we used to be so close," she said.