City of Fear (4 page)

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

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 tells
me 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?’

Two nods for
yes
.

‘No guys?’

Two shaking heads said
no
. Ellie didn’t buy it.

‘So tell me about the restaurant. Luna. You didn’t speak to anyone while you were there?’

‘No,’ Stefanie said. ‘We ate by ourselves. Well, we had a couple shots with these lawyers at the bar, but we didn’t see them again once we were seated.’

‘No chance Chelsea gave one of them her number and hooked up with him later in the night?’

Stefanie shook her head. ‘No way. Those guys were probably, like, thirty. Way too old for us.’

‘You sure about that?’ Rogan asked. ‘You said you had two drinks with them.’

‘It’s not like we were bonding or anything. Chelsea gave them fake names and told them we were models in town for a car show. They knew we were messing with them.’

Ellie had always assumed that the New York City dating scene was kinder to men than women, but these girls were painting a different picture.

‘What about the club? Did you meet any guys there?’

Two sets of shrugged shoulders and nervous eyes until Stefanie spoke up. ‘She started talking to some guys in one of the VIP rooms. We were all hanging out in there.’

‘Did you get any names?’ Ellie asked.

‘No.’

She looked to Jordan, who shook her head.

‘Nothing? First names? A nickname?’

‘It’s really loud in those places. You just say things like, “Hey, cool place, have you been here before?” that kind of thing, unless you take it outside to actually talk.’

‘And you didn’t see Chelsea go outside?’

Two shaking heads.

‘Okay, well, was Chelsea with anyone in particular in the VIP room? Or just a big group?’

‘Mostly just the whole group,’ Stefanie said. ‘But she was talking to this one guy when we first got there, and he was the one who brought us all into the VIP room.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘He was tall, probably a little over six feet. Sort of shaggy, sandy blond hair. Cute.’

‘Oh, I remember him,’ Jordan said. ‘Chelsea was with him for, like, a couple of hours, I think. They were dancing. Looked pretty hot and heavy.’

‘It was flirting,’ Stefanie admonished.

‘I know. I’m just saying, I noticed.’

‘So you got a good look at him, too?’ Ellie asked.

Jordan nodded. ‘He kind of looked like an older Zac Efron. You know, cute more than good looking.’

‘And I would know him from where?’

‘
High School Musical? Hairspray
? Like, every single tabloid magazine known to man?’

Feeling slightly older than she had a minute earlier, Ellie tried not to think about how much easier this would be if the people who met at Manhattan clubs bothered to exchange names like normal people. She was going to have to sit these girls down with a sketch artist in the small hope of finding someone who apparently looked like an overage teen hunk and probably had absolutely nothing to do with Chelsea’s death.

‘Now, Jordan, you said Chelsea was with this guy for a couple of hours. Did you see her with anyone else?’

Jordan shook her head, but Stefanie spoke up. ‘Yeah, she was dancing with some other guy when I told her we were leaving. I didn’t really pay any attention to him, though. He was giving me a hard time for trying to get Chelsea to leave. Jesus, I let it get to me, and I shouldn’t have. I should have made her come home with us.’

Jordan told Stefanie it wasn’t her fault. Ellie got the impression she’d spoken those words many times that morning.

‘Can you remember anything about him?’

Stefanie chuckled to herself. ‘Yeah, I called him Duran Duran. He had that poser fauxhawk hairdo.’

‘Kind of gelled into the middle?’ Ellie said.

‘Exactly,’ Stefanie said. ‘And he was dressed like some retro eighties MTV video star. Skinny pants. Skinny tie. Really stupid.’

‘What about the basics? Height, weight, age?’

‘Also kind of tall. Not as tall as the first guy. Probably right around six feet. A little older than us, maybe mid-twenties? Dark brown hair. Kind of thin, I guess. I really didn’t pay any attention, but I might recognize him if I saw him again.’

‘Well, I can understand how the outfit might have distracted you.’ Ellie was hoping a little humor might deter Stefanie from another guilt-induced digression.

‘Oh, and Chelsea was calling him Jake.’

‘His name was Jake?’ Ellie clarified.

‘No, like for Jake Gyllenhaal. It’s this thing Chelsea does. If someone looks like a celebrity, she’ll just call them that. So, I didn’t get a great look at the guy, but according to Chelsea, he looked like Jake Gyllenhaal.’

Ellie could certainly see how a guy who looked like that – regardless of the outfit – might get the attention of a nineteen-year-old girl from Indiana.

‘Okay, so we’ve got the shaggy-haired guy who brought you into the VIP room and Jake the bad dresser,’ she said. ‘Anyone else from last night you can remember?’

‘No.’

‘What about back home? Does Chelsea have a boyfriend?’

‘Her boyfriend’s not here,’ Stefanie said.

‘Where is he?’ Ellie asked.

‘Indiana. He went to Cancún for break, but he came back yesterday so he wouldn’t miss any classes. Oh, my God. He’s totally going to flip out when we’re not on the plane.’

‘Worry about that later. What’s his name?’

‘Mark. Mark Linton.’

Two more words for the notebook. She didn’t care whether the boyfriend was supposedly hiking in the Amazon rain forest. Until she verified his whereabouts, the boyfriend was always a suspect.

‘Who else?’ Ellie asked.

Stefanie cocked her head, clearly put off by the question. Jordan gave her an annoyed look.

‘Who else other than Mark Linton?’ Ellie asked again. ‘I mean, it’s not like they’re married, right?’

‘Not married,’ Stefanie said defensively, ‘but dating. And for like nine months. He’s her boyfriend, okay? She was dancing with some guys last night, but so were the rest of us.’

‘No problem. Sorry if I offended you. I figured in college most people would still be dating around. You girls all right? Need to take a bathroom break or anything?’

Jordan raised her hand chin-high.

‘Detective Rogan will show you the way.’

Jordan scooted past her friend and followed Rogan out, while Ellie continued to walk Stefanie through the basics. Chelsea had no enemies. No one was watching them. No one was following them. No tawdry affairs or illicit drug deals over spring break. The guys at Pulse seemed harmless enough, and Chelsea wouldn’t have left with any of them anyway.

It was just a fun night in the city. In fact, Chelsea had told Stefanie, just before they left her alone at the club, that it was the best night ever.

When Rogan returned to the room with Jordan, he gave Ellie the look she was expecting.

‘This has been good, you guys. Very helpful. We’re going to make a few calls, and we’ll be right back.’ Ellie waited for the door to close behind them to talk to her partner in the hallway. ‘So?’

‘Miss All-American Innocent, my black ass.’

Ellie feigned a judgmental
tsk
. ‘My goodness, Jeffrey James. You are so cynical.’

Facts. Reality. The truth. A timeline. It all sounds objective. Absolute. Black and white.

It never was. Sometimes a story changed because a witness lied. But more often, it was simply because there was another side to the story.

According to Rogan, it hadn’t taken much to get Jordan to come clean.

‘I caught her on the way out of the ladies’ room,’ Rogan said. ‘I told her I noticed her expression when Stefanie insisted Chelsea had only the one boyfriend. She gave me the usual “I don’t want to say anything about my friend”. ’