City of Fear

by Alafair Burke

  ‘I’m ready when you are.’

  The white plastic card was a hotel key emblazoned with a blue capital H surrounded by a curly Q.

  ‘We got three Hiltons in Manhattan,’ Rogan said. ‘Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and the Financial District. Try your luck.’

  Ellie was wriggling out of her running clothes in the footwell of the backseat, trying not to think about the various forms of mucus that had been hurled and smeared against the upholstery since the car’s last disinfection.

  ‘Girls that age don’t stay near Wall Street.’

  ‘Unless they’re hookers,’ Rogan interjected.

  ‘And we don’t think she was. So between the other two, I’ll go with Times Square. Who doesn’t love Times Square these days?’

  By the time Rogan pulled up to the giant copper clock outside the hotel’s Forty-second Street entrance, Ellie had just finished snapping on her holster. As she stepped from the backseat, she waved off a uniformed valet. Rogan flashed his shield as he followed behind her. ‘We’ll be quick, man. Thanks.’

  To their surprise, the hotel lobby was on the twenty-first floor. They bypassed whatever businesses occupied the tower’s bottom half with an express ride in the Art Deco elevator. At the front desk, they cut to the head of a long line of guests who were presumably waiting to check out.

  The woman who greeted them had pale skin, red hair knotted into a bun, and glasses dangling from a chain around her neck. ‘How may I help you?’

  Rogan produced the hotel key and explained in a hushed voice what they needed and why.

  ‘Oh, my.’ The clerk lowered her voice as well. ‘Unfortunately, that key isn’t ours.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m certain.’ She produced a white card that looked identical to the one they’d found in the victim’s purse, but with the addition of the words Times Square below the corporate logo. ‘This here’s one of our keys. People like the Times Square thing, you know. And we’re considered “boutique style”. People like that, too. You should try our hotel at Rockefeller Center. They’ve got over two thousand rooms.’

  ‘And the one in the Financial District?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘Five hundred and sixty-five.’

  ‘So, if you’re playing your odds –’

  ‘Our Rockefeller Center location is on Fifty-third Street and Sixth Avenue.’

  As the two detectives rode the elevator back to the ground floor, Ellie watched as Rogan checked out his freshly shaven scalp in the mirror. She snuck a look at herself, then quickly thought better of it. She knew from experience that messy strands of her shoulder-length blond hair would be flipped in every direction, thanks to dried sweat and the ponytail holder she’d worn during her run. At some point she’d try to find a hairbrush and at least wash her face.

  ‘How come between the two of us we didn’t figure out to hit the monster-sized hotel first?’ Ellie asked, keeping her eyes on the elevator’s digital display as it counted down each passing floor.

  ‘I guess the first twenty floors are misleading. Makes it look larger than it really is.’

  ‘That’s what she said.’ Ellie hadn’t meant to slip into a Michael Scott impersonation in front of her new partner, but the response to his comment had been automatic.

  So was Rogan’s. He laughed. It was a good laugh. Loud. From the gut. ‘Careful, Hatcher. If word gets out you’ve got a sense of humor, the guys at the house will really be chasing after you, and I won’t be able to protect you. That is, assuming you ever get around to taking a shower.’

  The Monday-morning traffic was already starting to pour from the Lincoln Tunnel into Midtown. Rogan hit the wigwag flashers on the headlights of the Crown Vic and made it to the circular driveway at the Sixth Avenue entrance of the Hilton in four minutes flat. Leaving the car pulled up behind a large Trailways bus, he badged the valet as they headed for the lobby, working their way through a large group of teenagers wearing John Marshall High School band T-shirts and dragging backpacks and instrument cases. Most of them were using cell phones to snap their final photographs of Manhattan as they milled around, waiting to board the jumbo bus.

  Ellie knew they’d found the right place when she spotted two girls huddled next to the bell stand on the opposite side of the lobby. She couldn’t make out their words, but she could tell from the pitch of their raised voices that the girls were distressed. They appeared to be arguing, but then one of the girls burst into tears, and her friend placed an arm around her shoulder. A bellhop in a red uniform and captain’s hat stared at the girls awkwardly, clearly wishing to extract himself from the situation.

  J. J. started toward the reception desk, but Ellie grabbed his elbow and cocked her head toward the agitated girls.

  ‘You go check that out,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the key to the front desk and see if they can get us any information on it.’

  As she approached the bell stand, she was able to catch the tail end of the girls’ conversation.

  ‘We can’t leave without Chelsea.’ The crying girl had dark brown hair pulled back in a low ponytail, topped off with a black headband. She wore a pink hoodie sweatsuit and Puma tennis shoes.

  The girl’s friend was rubbing her shoulder soothingly. ‘I didn’t say we should leave without her. I just said we should go to the airport. Chelsea’s probably there.’

  The comforting girl was petite with a black pixie haircut. Ellie spotted the top of some kind of tattoo peeking out from the back of the waistband of her jeans. The girl looked at her watch with a furrowed brow. ‘We’re missing our flight anyway. It’s almost seven o’clock.’

  ‘They said it was delayed,’ the girl in the ponytail reminded her. She was starting to get control over her tears. ‘Chelsea would never leave us hanging like this.’

  Another bellhop hurried past the duo and grabbed a set of car keys from the counter beside them. ‘Andale,’ he shouted, hurrying along the perplexed bellhop who was trapped with the girls.

  ‘Chewanna cab or not?’

  The question sent the crying girl into sobs again, and the bellhop finally gave up, grabbed a set of keys from the counter, and fled to the hotel entrance.

  ‘Do you two need some help with anything?’ Ellie asked.

  The pixie threw her an impatient look, as if the attention of strangers was yet another piece of unwarranted drama.

  ‘We’re fine, ma’am. We didn’t mean to make a scene.’

  ‘No need to apologize.’ Ellie flipped up the badge that was clipped to the waistband of her pants. ‘You’re looking for one of your friends?’

  ‘She’s just running late. It’s fine –’

  ‘Stop saying it’s going to be fine, Jordan.’ The crying girl pushed her friend’s hand off her shoulder. ‘She’s missing. She should be here, and she’s not here. She knew what time we were leaving, and she’s not here. She’s … she’s missing.’

  Ellie heard the girl’s pain in the way she spoke that single word. She said it with the knowledge that to be missing meant so much more than to be in an unknown location.

  The petite girl with the pixie haircut and tattoo, the one whose name was apparently Jordan, said they just needed to get to the airport. If they could get to the airport, they could make it onto a later flight and wait for Chelsea.

  ‘I told you, I’m not leaving.’

  Jordan muttered something under her breath. Ellie heard it but hoped the crying girl hadn’t.

  But she had, and she responded as predicted. ‘Seriously? Chelsea’s missing, and you decide to say you’re going to kill her? Do you have any idea how disgusting that is?’

  ‘All right. Just try to calm down, both of you. Your name’s Jordan?’ She spoke directly to the tattoo girl, who nodded in response. ‘No one’s killing anyone, Jordan.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry. Sorry, Stef.’

  ‘And you’re Stef?’ Ellie asked the crying girl.

  ‘Yeah, Stefanie. Stefanie Hyder.’

  ‘Okay. So you’r
e obviously upset, but I need one of you – only one,’ she said, holding up a finger, ‘to tell me what’s going on. Can you do that, Stefanie?’

  The girl sniffed a couple of times and tugged on her ponytail nervously. ‘We’re on spring break. Our flight leaves this morning – like, basically now. And our friend Chelsea isn’t here.’

  ‘But –’

  Ellie held up her hand. ‘You’ll get your turn.’

  Stefanie continued without prodding. ‘We went out last night. It was time to come home, and she wouldn’t leave. Chelsea wouldn’t leave. I should have stayed, but it was time to go home. And she promised.’

  Jordan placed her arm around Stefanie’s shoulder once more, and this time Stefanie didn’t push away. Her tears brought on sobs as she spoke.

  ‘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

  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.’