City of Fear (12 page)
‘You’re jealous? Jess is my brother. My father was his dad, too. And it’s our mother.’
‘You don’t need to explain to me that you and your brother share the same parents. I’m not jealous. I wish you would have let me in, just a little. And, yeah, I guess it sort of made me wonder what exactly we were doing.’
Much of what Ellie had learned about the College Hill Strangler during her trip to Wichita was now part of the public record, easily attainable with a few Google searches. After believing for nearly two decades that the killer who’d haunted her father for his entire career had been responsible for his death, Ellie finally received concrete proof from the Wichita Police Department: on the night of Jerry Hatcher’s death, William Summer had been the best man at his sister’s wedding in Olathe, more than 175 miles from the country road where Ellie’s father died in his Mercury Sable after a single bullet was discharged from his service weapon into the roof of his mouth.
The implication was clear. If Summer hadn’t pulled the trigger, then her father had. He had chosen to end his life, leaving behind two children and a mother who was incapable of caring either for herself or them on her own. Ellie was still learning how to accept a version of history she had always rejected.
She poured herself a glass of water from the Brita pitcher in her refrigerator and carried it to the coffee table. And then Ellie did something she rarely did. She apologized. ‘I’m so sorry. You should have heard it all from me, in my words – not in sound bites from a television show.’
Peter pushed her hair from her eyes and kissed her forehead, then her lips. ‘Let’s get some sleep.’
For the first night since she returned to New York from Kansas, Ellie Hatcher did not dream about William Summer.
Three hours later, a man closed the door of his Upper East Side apartment behind him and used two different keys to secure two separate locks. He walked the two flights of stairs down to 105th Street.
It was still dark, the streets relatively deserted, but the man could see when he turned the corner that the Chinese man who operated the newsstand at 103rd and Lex had just unlatched his makeshift storefront and was using a pocketknife to free stacks of newspapers from the constraints of cotton twine.
The man slowed his pace. He did not want to be in a position where he either had to wait for the news man or help him. Then he might be remembered as the impatient man who was waiting for the morning’s papers, or the friendly man who had assisted with the twine. He preferred not to have any adjectives associated with him.
Once the papers were stacked and the Asian was back in his booth, the man allowed himself to approach. He selected three local papers – the
Daily Post
, the
Sun
, and the
Times
. Extended three dollars across the row of candy bars – exact change.
He folded all three newspapers together, tucked them under his arm, and made his way back to 105th Street. Turned the corner. Into the building. Up two flights of stairs. Past the locks.
Inside his apartment, he unfolded the papers and placed them side by side on the small dining table in the corner of his living room. Chelsea Hart’s murder was splashed across the front page of both the
Sun
and the
Daily Post
. Front page of the
New York Times
Metro section. This would not have happened if she were not a college student from Indiana.
He recognized the photograph used by both the Post and the
Times
. It was the same picture Chelsea had used to make her fake ID card. The photograph in the
Sun
was different – candid, casual, less professional.
The man began to read the text of the
Sun
article but then looked again at the image of Chelsea Hart. Even with the cropping, he understood the photo’s significance. The red shirt. Collar necklace. Beaded earrings that matched the one buried beneath his floorboards.
He knew precisely when and where that photograph had been taken. He even remembered the limoncello-shooting tomcat who’d snapped it.
The coverage of Chelsea Hart’s murder had hit full throttle by Tuesday morning. It was the lead story on NY1’s morning show, and Chelsea’s photograph dominated the front page of both the
New York Sun
and the
Daily Post
. The case even warranted a story in the Metro section of the
New York Times
.
Ellie noticed that the
Sun
had run the photograph with which she was now long familiar – cropped around Chelsea’s smiling, happy face while she waited for a table at Luna, the last restaurant she’d ever frequent. She wondered whether the
Sun
had paid Chelsea’s friend Jordan for the picture or simply given her the standard line about how important it was for the public to see Chelsea as she had actually lived.
In contrast, both the
Daily Post
and the
New York
Times
ran the same formal, posed headshot – Chelsea’s senior high school portrait, provided directly by the Hart family. After their talk the previous day with a caseworker from the Polly Klaas Foundation, Paul and Miriam Hart had apparently taken a page from the parents of Elizabeth Smart and Natalee Holloway, marshaling all of their resources to launch an orchestrated public relations campaign to ensure that their daughter’s case was at the top of every news cycle until they found something resembling justice. Press releases. Photographs. Tearful public statements from designated family representatives.
Ellie didn’t blame them. Given the symbiotic relationship between the media and law enforcement, nothing put the screws to the criminal justice system like a watchful public. She had taken advantage of that reality in her own life to call attention to her father’s death. She could not imagine the lengths she would go to as a parent who had lost a child.
The publicity surrounding the case had no doubt influenced Lieutenant Dan Eckels’s decision to summon them once again into his office. He sat. They stood.
‘We’re more than twenty-four hours out,’ Eckels said, steepling his fingers. ‘Tell me what we’ve got.’
Rogan spoke up first, giving the lieutenant a rundown of the investigation, ending with the events of the previous night.
‘Good call arresting the friend instead of Myers,’ he said, clearly directing the comment to Rogan. ‘If you’d hooked up Myers and he broke on what you had, the DA wouldn’t have run with it.’
‘Thanks, Lou, but it was Hatcher’s idea.’
The idea earned Ellie a nod of acknowledgment. To the untrained eye, it was just a tilt of Eckels’s chin, but to Ellie it was the Thirteenth Precinct equivalent of Armstrong’s one small step from the
Apollo 11
.
‘That explains the call from Kluger in the mayor’s office this morning. Apparently he got wind of some kind of arrest last night from the parents. What the hell kind of luck do we have that our vic’s somehow related to the deputy chief of staff?’
‘Actually,’ Ellie said, ‘I think he’s a frat brother of the father’s brother-in-law.’
Eckels gave her an annoyed look, and she decided it was best to move on.
‘I just got a call from the city’s taxi commission,’ she reported. ‘They circulated the picture I sent them yesterday of the victim. One of the drivers thinks he may have seen her that night outside Pulse. We’ll follow up.’
‘Good, because we’ve been popular this morning. I also heard from the DA’s office. They want to get in early, so I’d start by having them set up a face-to-face with your Nick Warden before his arraignment. A night in jail might have given your hedge fund boy some different priorities.’
Eckels peeled off the top sheet of a Post-it pad next to his phone. He started to reach toward Rogan, but then handed the yellow square to Ellie.
ADA Max
Donovan for Knight
, followed by a phone number. ‘Some kid called Donovan was the one to reach out, but it’ll be Knight’s case.’
Ellie had no idea who Max Donovan was, but anyone who followed New York City criminal trials knew about Simon Knight, the chief prosecutor of the trial unit at the district attorney’s office. His day-to-day job was to run the busiest trial unit in one of the nation’s largest prosecutor’s offices, break in the newbies, and ensure that the other assistants didn’t wuss out. His personal and early attention to the Chelsea Hart case was yet another indication that this one was big.
‘We’ll call this Max Donovan straight away, sir.’
‘Very good.’
Ellie and Rogan meted out tasks on the short walk back to their desks. She’d track down the cabdriver while he checked in with ADA Donovan, the medical examiner, and the crime scene unit.
She’d just plopped down into her chair when Eckels called out after them. ‘And, in case this wasn’t clear, don’t screw up.’
Nothing like a pep talk to kick-start the day.
According to the taxi commission, the driver who last saw Chelsea Hart alive was one Tahir Kadhim. Ellie dialed his number, then flipped open the
Daily Post
and checked out the byline: reporting by George Kittrie and Peter Morse.
Last night Peter had mentioned staying late at the paper to write something up with his editor. Now she saw that Kittrie had taken first billing for himself. Given the history there, she could only imagine Peter’s aggravation. A few years earlier, Kittrie had made the leap from career crime-beat reporter to author, and then editor, when he published a book about all of the opportunistic crimes that had been perpetrated in the chaos following September 11. From what Ellie understood, the book had put enough extra cash in Kittrie’s pocket to pay for a cottage in East Hampton. In the back of Ellie’s mind, she wondered whether George Kittrie was in part responsible for Peter’s excitement about writing a true-crime book. She also wondered if Kittrie’s success as an author might explain why Peter harbored such resentment toward his boss.
‘Balay!’
Ellie held the phone away from her ear. The man on the other end of the line was yelling over some kind of Persian music in the background.
‘This is Detective Hatcher. NYPD. Is this Tahir Kadhim?’
The music immediately quieted. ‘Yes, this is Tahir. This is about the picture, yes?’
Ellie was relieved she wouldn’t need a translator. The city’s taxi drivers sometimes appeared to have problems with the English language when you told them to turn on the air conditioning or turn down the radio, but their difficulties often faded away under less convenient circumstances.
‘That’s right. The taxi commission told me you recognized the girl in the photograph?’
‘I was not certain last night when I first saw it because of how it was printed from the fax, but I sent in a message nonetheless because I did think it was the same girl. But now that girl is the one in the newspapers. It is most definitely the same girl I saw yesterday morning.’
‘We’re going to need to talk to you in person, Mr. Kadhim. Where should we meet you?’
‘Where are you located?’
‘Thirteenth Precinct. Twenty-first and Second Avenue.’
‘I am ten blocks away. You will help me with parking?’
‘I think that can be arranged.’
Rogan was still on the phone when Ellie hung up. He covered the mouthpiece with his palm. ‘Asshole put me on hold and never came back.’
Ellie scanned the DD5 containing the information that had come in about the case on the department’s tip line. The vast majority of calls were complaints about the city’s 4:00 a.m. closing time for bars – thirteen separate calls, by her count. Every time some crime was even tangentially associated with the late-night bar scene, the same people who complained on a weekly basis about the noise at the clubs in their neighborhood used the case as an opportunity to lobby against their favorite pet peeve.
Then there were the usual crackpots: three – count them, three – psychics offering their abilities to communicate with the dead; a woman whose schnauzer got sick early the previous morning, certainly a sign that he shared a karmic connection with Chelsea Hart; and some crank call from a guy who wanted to know if the girl had any cute midwestern friends heading to the city for the funeral.
No false confessions yet, but there was still time.
One entry tucked in among the rest caught her attention. ‘Bill Harrington. Daughter (Roberta, aka Robbie) murdered 8 years ago. Similar. Flann McIlroy thought there were others.’ At the end of the notation was a ten-digit phone number. Ellie recognized the Long Island area code.
She found herself staring at two words:
Flann McIlroy
.
Detective Flann McIlroy had been famous – infamous, many would say – for his creative theories about investigations, creative enough to earn him the nickname ‘McIlMulder’ within the department, an allusion to the agent who chased space aliens on the television show
The X-Files
. Ellie’s own experience with him had been far too brief, but she had come to trust him as both a man and a cop. If Flann had spoken to a murder victim’s father about his suspicions of a broader pattern, then Bill Harrington at least deserved a return phone call.
She wrote down the name ‘Roberta Harrington’ and walked the slip of paper down to the records department. She was still trying to learn the names of the Thirteenth Precinct staff, something that had paid off in her previous assignments. A clerk who introduced herself as Shawnda promised she would order the old police reports from the Central Records Division immediately. Ellie thanked her for her time and made a point of repeating her first name.
Rogan was just hanging up his telephone when Ellie returned to her desk. ‘Something better shake soon, because the lawyers want us at the courthouse in two hours.’
Tahir Kadhim was dark, slight, and reluctant to leave his taxicab in front of a fire hydrant on East Twenty-first Street.
ʻIt’s the only spot on the street, Mr. Kadhim,’ Ellie said. ‘I’ll leave a permit on the dash.’
‘Some meter maid will not believe that a taxicab is with the police. If the city tows my car, that is my entire day, not to mention the record I get on my medallion number.’
‘We really need to speak with you.’
‘Must I go inside? Why can we not speak out here?’
Ellie didn’t see the harm in getting the quick version of the driver’s story now, to avoid what she could foresee was going to be a headache-inducing conversation about the lack of adequate parking, the ineptitude of municipal employees, and the financial burdens of cabdrivers. She hopped into the passenger seat, and Kadhim hit his emergency blinker. At least it wasn’t the meter.
‘You said you recognize this girl?’
She pulled an eight-by-ten printout of Chelsea Hart from a manila folder.
‘Yes, that is right,’ he said, tapping the photograph for emphasis. ‘I stopped Sunday night for her. She hailed me down, I think it was at Fifteenth and Ninth Avenue.’
‘Where did you take her?’ If Chelsea had left Pulse and headed to another club by herself, she would have an even tougher time linking Jake Myers to the murder.
‘I did not take her. She stopped my cab, but I did not drive her.’
Ellie waited for Kadhim to explain, but he did not. ‘Did she change her mind?’
‘No. See, there is a bit of a problem here. I want to help. That is why I called when I saw the picture. I did not have to call, you know.’
‘What are you trying to say, Mr. Kadhim?’
‘The Taxi and Limousine Commission. They are crazy. They have these rules, and they think nothing of shutting us down.’
‘Mr. Khadim, I assure you, I am not trying to jam you up about some taxicab regulation. I just need you to tell me everything you can remember about this girl. Her name was Chelsea Hart. She was from Indiana. Her parents flew here yesterday to identify her body. I’d like to have something to tell them, sir.’
‘You do not report to the commission?’
Ellie shook her head and waited for him to speak.
‘She got inside the cab and told me to take her to the Hilton at Rockefeller Center. Before driving away, I checked to be sure she could pay me in cash. She could not. She asked me if I could take her Visa card instead.’
‘But aren’t you all upgraded? The GPS, automation, credit cards.’ The cabdrivers had gone on strike twice to try to prevent the change, but ultimately the commission had prevailed. Ellie peered over the partition into the backseat and saw the required equipment in Kadhim’s taxi.
‘The credit card processing is broken,’ Kadhim explained. ‘I told that to the young lady, but she said she had spent all of her cash. It happens a lot in that part of town at that time of night.’
‘What time was it?’ Ellie asked.
‘It was not quite closing time, I remember. It was probably three thirty.’
An hour after Stefanie and Jordan left. Thirty minutes later than Jake Myers’s faltering estimate of when Chelsea had supposedly walked out alone.
‘So what happened when she said she couldn’t pay cash?’
‘I told her I would not drive her.’
Ellie now understood why Khadim had been nervous. She remembered from the taxi strike that the drivers were especially upset about a rule that required them to pull their cabs out of service if their credit card machines malfunctioned.
‘Then what?’
‘That is when the man offered to give her the money she needed.’
‘Wait a second. There was a man with her?’
‘She was alone. At first. But then when we were talking about how she was to pay her fare, a man came and knocked on the window. He … he propositioned her, if you understand.’
‘Yes, okay, I think I know what you mean by that,’ Ellie said, nodding even though she was having trouble picturing the scenario. ‘A man came up out of nowhere and knocked on your taxi window and offered to pay her for sexual favors?’
‘No. It was not like that. She was talking to me, but then when the tapping began at the window, she lowered the glass and spoke to the man. I do not recall all of it, but it was along the lines of persuading her to stay with him, wherever she had been prior to coming outside. She told him she needed to go to her hotel – that she had an early flight in the morning – but that now she didn’t have any money, and I would not take her credit card. I remember that: she said, “And now this guy won’t take my fucking credit card.” Not angry, but as if she were trying to be humorous. They both seemed intoxicated.’
