City of Fear

‘But the fingerprint in a couple of hours?’

‘End of the day at the latest.’

‘Call my cell, all right?’ Rogan gave her his card.

‘No problem. And congrats on landing Jeffrey James here, Hatcher. He’s a good egg.’

More than five miles north, a man exited the 6 train at 103rd Street and Lexington. He kept his head down and his hands in his pockets, focusing on each step as he tried to ignore the steady push of harried subway riders hoping to catch a waiting train.

He hated the proximity to other people that was required by mass transportation. The eye contact. The bumps. The pressing of sweaty bodies against one another in the rush of squeezing onto the train before the doors closed. The name – mass transportation – said it all. The transport of the masses. Moving through narrow turnstiles like cattle moving through the sorting gates. Moo, cow, moo.

His hatred of the subway was part of the reason he paid for a car and two garage parking spots, one near home, one near work. But today his car was on West Eleventh Street for complete interior detailing – rugs vacuumed, mats shampooed, every surface hand-polished. He had worked quickly last night on that desolate Tribeca corner outside the Holland Tunnel, but he’d nevertheless been careful, strangling the girl in the front seat, then moving the body to the carefully draped plastic tarp in his trunk for the cutting. Now, for a mere hundred bucks, any trace of the girl would be gone from his Taurus.

He walked briskly up Lexington Avenue to the familiar brick building at 105th Street. He used his security key to open the front door. No doorman. No elevators, which meant no cameras. No electronic entry system that tracked the residents’ comings and goings. Those were the kinds of luxuries that could cost you big-time down the road.

He climbed the stairs to his third-floor apartment. Used one key on the auxiliary mortise dead latch. Heard the metal tumble from the block cylinder. Used another key on the dead bolt. Inserted the same key into the doorknob. Then he was home.

He did a quick protective sweep of the apartment. Living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, two closets. Everything was in place. He checked the light on his answering machine. No calls.

He rolled the brown leather ottoman away from its matching chair and pushed it against the living room wall. Then he took a seat on the floor – back against the ottoman, legs crossed in front of him – and carefully pulled up six wood parquet tiles, stacking them neatly to his left as he went, one through six. He worked his index finger into a crevice in the subfloor. It took three tries before he popped up the rectangular piece of removable particleboard. That was how perfectly he had cut it to fit – like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, disappearing into the rest of the world around it.

He propped the particleboard carefully against the sofa, then took a deep breath. He reached in and removed two ziplock bags. He placed both on the floor in front of him. He didn’t dare remove the contents of the one on the right – too much of a danger that it wouldn’t all make it back in. He allowed himself to open the one on the left and remove a single earring and a small plastic card.

The earring was a chandelier of crystal and red beads dangling from a simple gold hook. The plastic rectangle was an Indiana driver’s license. It had been in the girl’s teeny-tiny purse, along with a lipstick, a cell phone, a hotel key, and a credit card. Name: Jennifer Green. According to the date of birth, she was twenty-four years old.

The license probably wasn’t real. She hadn’t said she was from Indiana, and girls like that often had reasons for using fake names and IDs. Not to mention, he realized now, that the photograph was too good – too posed, too pretty – to have originated with any Department of Motor Vehicles.

The girl’s credit card had been in yet another name, and the thought had crossed his mind it might have been stolen. He’d tossed it in a garbage can along the FDR, along with the tarp and the girl’s pants.

The picture on the license was definitely his Jennifer, though. Those were undeniably the same girl’s bright blue eyes, round cheeks, and square jaw. That sexy smile, turned up on one side like she had a secret she might just be willing to share under the right circumstances. And, whether it was real or not, the card had belonged to her. She had carried it, touched it, used it. Those were the things that mattered – not the name or address.

He looked at his watch. He was running on empty but had a meeting at three. He held the ID carefully between his left index finger and thumb. He unbuttoned his pants with his right hand. For the next three minutes, his eyes remained fixed on the other plastic bag – still sealed, its contents still safe and contained. All of that beautiful wavy blond hair worn by Jennifer Green in her fake Indiana driver’s license belonged to him now.

Chapter Nine (#uea692545-f844-5ba8-a6b5-d19f1cab5ecf)

By Ellie’s estimate, the drive from East River Park to the medical examiner’s office up by Bellevue would take at least eight minutes, even with the help of police lights on the FDR. Eight minutes wasn’t a lot, but it was too long to ride in total silence, and just about the right amount of time to ask Rogan the question that was on her mind.

‘So I noticed Mariah Florkoski said you were lucky not to get paired up with Larry Winslow.’ She had seen Winslow around the squad room. As far as she could tell, he worked on his own, and only on desk jobs.

‘You got Florkoski’s name after just one meet? I thought I was good with names.’

‘I think the name I was more interested in was Larry Winslow.’

‘The guy’s the next to retire. And he’s lazy. Now Casey, my old partner, he did it right. Everyone knew he wanted to ride out the end in Arizona, but he worked the job a hundred percent every day. Everyone was surprised when he took off right at twenty years. But Winslow’s just counting down the hours. No one in the house wants to work with that. Lucky for me you came along.’

‘But you never would have gotten partnered with him after you’d just had one partner retire on you. Eckels made it sound like I was the one who was supposed to inherit Winslow. In fact, he said I had you to thank for sparing me.’

Rogan reached for the radio, hit the power button, and began scanning for a song that met his approval. He settled on Hot 97, a mainstream hip-hop station. He turned up the volume on a Kanye West tune, and Ellie reached over and turned it down a notch.

‘Sorry, but if we’re going to be partners, you need to know now I like dealing with things head-on. If I’m out of line, bringing up something I shouldn’t, just tell me. I’ll back off. But drowning me out with the radio?’

‘Don’t read into it. It’s just, this is my joint, y’know?’ Rogan moved his head back and forth with the beat.

‘Yeah, I know. And I also know there’s some story behind how you and I became partners. And if everyone else in the house knows about it, I thought maybe I should, too.’

‘See? This right here? That’s what the issue was.’ Rogan turned the radio off.

‘What do you mean, “This right here”?’

‘This whole dialogue.’ Rogan moved his right hand back and forth between them. ‘It’s like fighting with your girl or something. Like, “C’mon baby, we just need to talk.” ’

‘Uh, except I’m not your girl, and I didn’t call you “baby.” ’

‘That’s not what I meant. It’s just, partners need to get each other, you know? And, well, some of the guys weren’t so sure you’d ever be able to get them, and vice versa.’

‘Because of the whole not-having-boy-parts thing? Because that’s not really something I can get past.’

‘Honestly? Yeah, that’s probably part of it. But it’s got a lot more to do with how you got into the unit. It doesn’t help that McIlroy brought you over – my moms taught me not to talk smack about the dead, but no one liked that guy. He was a show-off. He had a picture of him and Rudy and Bill Bratton on his desk. Who does that? And then that First Date case exploded all over the place, and suddenly it’s your face in all the papers instead of his. Then your cute little self makes second grade in record time, and you’re in the squad? You have to see that’s a hard pill to swallow. The guys in the squad are all asking who’s your rabbi.’

The old Tammany Hall phrase was now standard code for questioning a fellow officer’s connections. She had wondered how long it would take for another detective to call her out on the genesis of her new assignment. After four years on patrol, she had spent only one year as a detective before the First Date case had come along. In the aftermath, she found herself holding newfound leverage with the department brass. A gig in the homicide squad was unusual for her level of experience, but not prohibited, and Ellie had cashed in all her chips to get it. She supposed she was her own rabbi.

‘Look, I know I got here faster than most, and I know I have to put in my dues, but I made sure to stay out of the papers on the First Date case.’

‘That trip to Kansas wasn’t exactly secret.’

‘That was on my own time. For my family. Anyone who would even begin to suggest that I get off talking to the press about my father has no idea what we’ve been through.’

For more than twenty-five years, the Wichita police had insisted that Jerry Hatcher killed himself. For more than a quarter of a century, Ellie’s mother had to live with the consequences of that decision: no insurance money, no pension, no answers. The trip to Wichita had offered a chance to prove that her father had not voluntarily widowed his wife and left his children fatherless. Of course she had to go. And when Dateline called her for an interview, she had to give it.

‘I’m not saying any of this is fair,’ Rogan said. ‘I’m just saying how it is. You worked with McIlroy. You’re in the news just like McIlroy. That means you’ve essentially inherited his shit. Plus you’re a woman, plus you’re all blond and pretty and wholesome looking, and people think you got a leg up from that.’

‘And so how did that translate into me almost getting partnered with Winslow?’

Rogan paused before answering. ‘Because Lieutenant Eckels told everyone that’s what he was planning to do unless someone else volunteered. It was Eckels’s way of leading from the top down, making sure we all knew it was all right with him if we gave you the cold shoulder. You should’ve seen Winslow’s face. Ironically, I don’t think it had anything to do with you personally. That man just doesn’t want to be out in the street anymore.’

‘So why aren’t I with Winslow? Why am I with you?’

Given the strings she’d pulled, she knew why Eckels never said good morning when he passed her on the way to the locker room. She got why he’d given her nothing but grunt work last week. She would even have understood if Eckels had partnered her up with a loser like Winslow. What she didn’t understand is why Rogan would have gone out on a limb for her. Cops who were skeptical of her, she could handle. Old news. She’d eventually win them over. A man who gave her a pass for no obvious reason was another problem altogether.

Rogan kept his eyes on the road.

‘Because, you know, I’m not looking to get personal with anyone I work with.’

Rogan’s stoic expression changed to a stifled smile, then he broke out into a full laugh. ‘In your dreams, woman. I’m very much spoken for. Oh, my lord, look who thinks she’s all irresistible and shit.’

‘That’s not what I meant. It’s just – I didn’t know why – really, that is not what I meant.’

‘That’s exactly what you meant. Stupid-ass Eckels goes and tells you I stepped up to the plate, and you assume the only reason a man would help you out is if he’s looking to hit that. Well, don’t think I didn’t get the same flack around the house. That, or they figured I was somehow sympatico with you because of the number of times I’ve heard bullshit behind my back. Affirmative-action hire. Diversity detective.’