Angel's Tip (31 page)

I’ve often heard it said that writers conjure up plots by starting with an initial observation and then asking themselves over and over again:
What if?

On February 25, 2006, New York City graduate student Imette St. Guillen was barhopping in SoHo with a girlfriend. The friend called it quits, but St. Guillen stayed behind for one last drink. Her nearly unrecognizable body was found the next day. Five months later, eighteen-year-old Jennifer Moore was drinking in a Chelsea nightclub with a girlfriend when city authorities towed her car. Denied access to her vehicle at the impound lot, she wandered off alone along the West Side Highway. Her body was discovered in a New Jersey trashbin. In the fall of 2007, reports were filed by two separate women who claimed that they had been kidnapped and then raped after leaving the Box, one of Manhattan’s hottest nightclubs, on their own.

I began to ask myself,
What if Ellie Hatcher caught cases like these and saw a connection where no one else did?

The inspiration for
Angel’s Tip
lies in none of the above-mentioned cases, and yet in all of them. For many of us—especially women—that alcohol-fueled argument at two in the morning is familiar. Someone wants to go home. Someone wants to stay behind for one last drink.
I have been both of those women, and I have been lucky. But I know from the cases I saw as a prosecutor, and from the string of tragic cases reported in New York City, that sometimes the luck runs out.
Angel’s Tip
is fiction, but the danger that made me ask
What if?
is real and universal.

My hope is that the policing depicted in
Angel’s Tip
is also portrayed authentically. Having learned most of what I know about cops as a prosecutor in Oregon and as a law professor in New York, I have been assisted in my depiction of Ellie Hatcher’s professional life by the generosity and knowledge of others. For helping me transition from the prosecutorial viewpoint to the police perspective, and from the localized norms of Portland to the culture of the NYPD, I am grateful to Assistant District Attorney Matthew Connolly, Nassau County; Retired Desk Sergeant Edward Devlin, NYPD; George Q. Fong, Unit Chief, National Gang Targeting Enforcement and Coordination Center, Deputy Program Director, National Gang Intelligence Center, FBI Headquarters (phew); Chief Carla Piluso, Gresham Police Department (who confirms that female detectives do in fact carry purses); and the anonymous desk sergeant at the Thirteenth Precinct who served as my impromptu tour guide. I especially appreciate the input of Retired Lieutenant Al Kaplan, NYPD, who didn’t know me from a hole in the ground but helped me out anyway.

I was also helped by my agent, Philip Spitzer, Lukas Ortiz, Fauzia Burke at FSB Associates, my family, and the incredible team at Harper. Special thanks to my friend and editor Jennifer Barth.