City of Fear

‘She looked me in the eye, and she promised she’d be back by now. She promised she’d be here. She promised. And she’s not. Something happened to her. Something’s wrong.’

Rogan had snapped a digital photograph of the girl from East River Park, but she didn’t want to do the ID that way. Not in a crowded Midtown hotel lobby. Not now.

‘Do you have a picture of your friend?’

The girls both shook their heads.

‘You sure?’ Ellie recalled the band students outside snapping shots with their phones. ‘Not in your cell phone or something?’

‘Yeah, right. No, of course.’ The one called Jordan stepped over to a tangle of bags that were piled in the corner next to the bell stand counter. She rifled through a large white tote, pulled a patent leather clutch from the larger bag, and then began sifting through its tightly packed contents. ‘Sorry. You have to put everything in two bags for the airlines.’

She finally slid out an iPhone and pushed a few buttons before holding it out toward Ellie. ‘That’s her, just last night at dinner. In the middle.’

Ellie took the device from her and peered closely at the picture. The three friends were huddled together, posing for the camera with open-mouth smiles, as if they’d been laughing. A bystander in the background didn’t look too happy with them. The girls had probably been too rowdy for the restaurant. At least their last night together had been a happy one.

It was a small screen, but she could make out three faces. The girl on the right was Stefanie Hyder, with her hair down and her eyes bright, not bloodshot as they were now. The one on the left was pixie-haired Jordan.

And Ellie recognized the girl in the middle as well. She recognized the long shiny blond hair before it had been hacked off. She recognized the red sleeveless shirt, chosen no doubt to match the crimson bead chandelier earrings that peeked out from behind the beautiful blond hair. And she recognized the smiling face before someone had used it as a carving board.

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

When Ellie was seven years old, her father had come home with a bandage on his temple.

Jerry Hatcher had been working a missing child case for more than a month. For more than thirty nights, the family had known their daughter was missing. The family had known for more than a month that their girl was last seen leaving Cypress Park with an adult male whose description was wholly unfamiliar.

Ellie’s father focused on a suspect who had a pattern of arrests for indecent exposure to children in Cypress Park. The guy had missed work the day of the abduction. The next day, too. The evidence was thin, but the case was high-profile. Ellie’s dad managed to get a warrant. He found the missing girl’s body in an oil drum that was buried beneath the suspect’s brand-new hot tub.

Three days after delivering the news to the girl’s parents, Detective Jerry Hatcher had used the past tense. He hadn’t known how to fill the silence as the parents sat side by side on the sofa, staring at the framed picture of their daughter’s second-grade portrait. Everyone tellsme your daughter had a smile that lit up the room.

It was a sentiment offered in kindness. Trite, maybe, but well intended. The victim’s father had upended the coffee table and shoved Jerry Hatcher into the fireplace mantel. Why? Because he’d used the past tense too soon.

Ellie’s memories of her father were filled with stories like that one. Other kids’ fathers talked about client meetings when they got home from work. Or a real piece of work on the delivery route. Or a tough cross-examination of a trial witness. Ellie’s father explained why he had a bandage on his head, and if the telling of the story happened to involve an eight-year-old girl buried in an oil drum, so be it.

And, although she didn’t realize it at the time, she’d learned from those stories. On that particular day, she’d learned never to use the past tense. Even after delivering the news to the family. Even after the official ID. Even after the body’s in the ground. Until the family starts using the past tense, everyone else must remain in the present.

Of course Chelsea’s friends still spoke of her in the present. They didn’t know her body was on a stainless steel table at the medical examiner’s office.

Rogan led the way through the Thirteenth Precinct, past the front desk officers, the precinct briefing room, and two wire holding cages, up the narrow staircase to the third-floor homicide squad. Their head start on the day was over. Detectives bustled throughout the squad room, crowded to capacity with desks, chairs, file cabinets, and random boxes of evidence waiting to be cataloged. Jack Chen, one of the younger civilian aides, sat perched at the front desk.

Rogan asked Chen to get two coffees and Danishes, then handed him a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet. Ellie flashed three fingers over Rogan’s shoulder and threw Chen a wink.

Detouring around their desks, Rogan headed for the back corner of the squad room, then down a hallway leading to three interrogation rooms. He skipped the first two doors and held the final one open for Stefanie, Jordan, and Ellie. Because it was at the end of the hall, interview room 3 was the least used, and therefore the most presentable, of their interrogation rooms.

There were only three chairs surrounding the small laminate table in the center of the room. Two on the left. A single on the right. Two detectives. One suspect. That’s how the room was arranged.

The girls stood awkwardly until Ellie gestured toward the chairs. Jordan and Stefanie sat together, side by side.

They started with names and dates of birth. Stefanie Hyder was the worried brunette with the ponytail and headband. Jordan McLaughlin was the girl with the dark pixie hair and a tattoo on her lower back. And Chelsea Hart was their missing friend.

Ellie jotted down all three names, in that order, in a spiral reporter’s notebook. She circled the last one. All the girls were nineteen years old.

Rogan let her take the lead on questioning. ‘I heard you mention at the hotel that you’re here in New York on spring break?’

‘Right,’ Stefanie said. ‘We got here Tuesday. We were supposed to fly out this morning. Chelsea didn’t come back to the hotel last night, and she wasn’t there when we were ready to leave for the airport.’

Jordan shifted in her seat. She was clearly still fixated on that flight home.

‘When was the last time you saw Chelsea?’ Ellie asked.

‘Last night. Or I guess this morning. We were out late.’

‘Doing what?’

The girls stared at the table. Stefanie studied her pearly red fingernails. Jordan chewed her lower lip.

‘You can’t find your friend. I think we can look past a little barhopping.’

‘We went clubbing. We left around two thirty.’ Stefanie paused and dropped her head. ‘Chelsea stayed.’

Ellie scribbled ‘2:30 a.m.’ in her notebook.

‘Stayed where? Was she at a specific club?’

‘Yeah. It’s called Pulse.’

Ellie was pretty sure she’d heard of the place, one of the newest, hippest Manhattan hot spots among the many new, hip Manhattan hot spots that were several notches too cool for her to frequent. ‘In the Meatpacking District, right?’

The girls nodded.

‘What other clubs did you hit?’

‘None.’ Stefanie shook her head. ‘That’s it.’

‘You sure? No quick pop-ins somewhere you might have forgotten about?’

The girls shook their heads. It was just the one club.

‘You went straight from your hotel to the club?’ she asked.

The girls started to speak at once, then Jordan deferred again to Stefanie.

‘No, we went to dinner first. Some place in Little Italy. Wait. I’ve got the name.’ Stefanie slipped her fingers inside a small black purse and pulled out a wrinkled piece of yellow carbon paper. She smoothed it out. ‘Luna.’

Ellie wanted to nail down a basic timeline while the girls were still relatively calm, before she had to deliver the news. She walked them through the activities of the previous day. Brunch at Norma’s at 10:30 a.m. At the Museum of Modern Art by twelve thirty. One drink at the hotel bar at five o’clock. Back to their rooms at six to get ready. Taxi to SoHo at seven fifteen. At the Luna bar by eight. Seated at eight thirty. Ate between nine and ten. Left around eleven and walked to Pulse. Two of the girls left at 2:30 a.m. Chelsea stayed.

Into the notebook it all went. Somewhere in that timeline Chelsea’s killer had found her.

‘And it was just the three of you the entire day?’