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This seemed like a good time to fill them in.

“So if the chip was removed, it wasn’t a failure on the part of LyfeTracker that the police couldn’t find her,” Peter Woon said, his Wharton-educated brain rewriting history to save his corporate ass. “Detective, can you make a public statement to that effect?”

We’re all whores in one way or another. We get into bed with strangers because we have something they want, and they have something we need.

“Once this case has been resolved,” I said, “the department would be happy to tell the press that the kidnapper removed your tracker from Erin’s arm because he was concerned that we would use it to find her.” And I will leave out the fact that the damn thing was broken anyway, so it was a wasted effort on Dodd’s part .

Wide smiles and animated Korean chatter around the room as the suits realized that their company’s reputation could be salvaged.

“Mr. Kang,” Kylie said, cutting through the din. “Now that we have the chip, can you help us figure out where it’s been since it stopped transmitting? And no more theories, please.”

“Yes, I can. All we need is a power source.” He barked some orders in his native language, and the youngest two suits bolted from the room.

Twenty minutes later the chip was hooked up to a contraption that was linked to Mr. Kang’s laptop in Seoul.

“Give me a date and time,” he said.

“Sunday, June ninth, at five p.m.,” Kylie said.

“The chip was at three-eleven West Thirty-Fourth Street in New York City,” Kang said, the address of the Hammerstein Ballroom.

“The damn thing was recording the whole time,” McMaster said.

“Last night at eight p.m.,” Kylie said.

“It was at one fifty-three East Sixty-Seventh Street, also in New York.”

And we knew for sure that was exactly where it had been—tucked away for safekeeping in the evidence room at the Nineteenth Precinct.

More than a month after it had stopped transmitting, and a week and a half after Dodd had dug it out of Erin’s arm, the damn thing was still recording.

There were ten of us in the meeting—nine in New York, one in Korea—all with one thing in common.

Big, wide, shit-eating grins.

CHAPTER 76

ERIN EASTON HAD a brand-new stalker, and she had no idea that he was tracking her every move.

It was my old friend Benny Diaz from our Technical Assistance Response Unit.

We gave Benny the LyfeTracker, the power source that Peter Woon graciously donated to help us gather evidence that might help wipe some of the egg off his corporate face, and Declan McMaster’s detailed log of Erin’s comings and goings over the past year.

“One question,” Benny said. “Erin’s security people know exactly where she was ninety, ninety-five percent of the time. Shouldn’t I just focus on the times when she went off on her own?”

“No,” I said. “I know it’s a lot more work, but if Declan has her shopping at Fifty-Ninth and Third, and the LyfeTracker says she was at Fifty-Eighth and Park, then none of the data will hold up, and the DA will kick us out of his office.”

“Benny,” Kylie said, “if we’re going to use this technology to prove where Erin was when McMaster wasn’t watching, then it better be spot-on for all the times when he was .”

“You got it,” Diaz said. “But it’s going to take me a few days. I’m crushed with other work.”

“Take all the time you need,” Kylie said. “We’ll tell the chief of Ds you’re busy with stuff that he doesn’t give a shit about.”

“Come back tomorrow morning at eight,” he said. “I like my coffee black and my bagels buttered.”

The next morning we were back with coffee, bagels, and high hopes.

“I’ll start with the good news,” Benny said. “I know they had transmission problems, but the GPS in that little sucker is as good as anything on the market. Maybe better. It was pinpoint accurate across the board. There was one time when McMaster’s log said Erin was on a photo shoot in front of the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, and LyfeTracker practically had her sitting in Alice’s lap. I’d testify in court that the damn thing knew where Erin was every step of the way.”

“Good news is usually followed by bad,” I said. “Drop the other shoe.”

“Ye of little faith,” Diaz said. “This time the good news is followed by even better news. Listen to this—over the past year there were eleven separate days when Erin went off on her own. I cross-checked them with Bobby’s diary. On five of those days, he didn’t post anything. That leaves six days when she’s off the grid, and he writes that he was with her.

“I eliminated three of them right away because his description of where they were is completely different from where the GPS says she was. For instance, one entry said they took a romantic sunset cruise to the Statue of Liberty, but I know for a fact that she was in an apartment building near Tompkins Square from four in the afternoon till ten at night. There might have been romance in the air, but I doubt if she saw the sun set.”

“So we’re down to three days when they might have been together,” I said.

“May nineteenth, May twenty-seventh, and June third,” he said. “According to McMaster the tracker stopped transmitting on May twelfth, so as far as Erin was concerned, she was untraceable on those three days. But once I powered up the chip I knew exactly where she was—Pelham Bay Park all three times.”

“Dodd lived in Pelham Bay. Does he mention that park in his diary?”

“Not in so many words. On May nineteenth he writes, ‘Erin and I had our secret rendezvous down by the water.’ I tracked her walking through the park to the Long Island Sound.”

“How many cameras do we have in the park?” I said.

“Not a one. Sorry. It’s Pelham Bay, Zach, not Central Park.”

“Then why are you getting my hopes up?”

“Because on May twenty-seventh, Bobby writes about walking through the park and smelling the horses.”

“I read that,” Kylie said. “I figured he was talking about the hansom cabs in Central Park.”

“NYPD mounted troop D has its stables in Pelham Bay Park,” Diaz said. “Maybe those are the horses he smelled.”

“ Maybe won’t cut it with the DA,” Kylie said. “Even if you can put Dodd in the same location as Erin, that doesn’t prove anything. He stalked her wherever she went. Unless you get us hard evidence that they were together, the only thing that tells us is that Erin Easton was being followed by a crazy person. And without any cameras in the park—”

“That’s what I thought,” Diaz said, cutting her off. “And then it dawned on me—those stables are a department asset, and like every NYPD facility, it’s on camera twenty-four/seven. I called the desk sergeant this morning, and he verified it. I sent one of my guys over there to download the footage from May twenty-seventh. He should be back here in an hour.”

“Benny,” I said, “if you can find proof of Erin and Bobby together, it’s going to blow her story out of the water and turn this case on its ear.”

“I think maybe I can,” he said. “And if I do, it’s going to cost you guys a lot more than a bagel.”

CHAPTER 77

KYLIE AND I had Erin’s cell phone records on file. We dug them out and tracked back to the days and times that Benny had zeroed in on.

In all three cases, Erin’s phone was off. It didn’t prove a thing, but it was highly coincidental that the woman who almost never pulled the plug on her cell had rendered it untraceable during the exact times that we suspected she and Bobby were together.

An hour went by. And then another. And then Benny called and said three words that would change Erin Easton’s life forever.